To save the planet, first save elephants
Wiping out all of Africa’s elephants could accelerate Earth’s climate crisis by allowing 7% more damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists say. But conserving forest elephants may reverse
Wiping out all of Africa’s elephants could accelerate Earth’s climate crisis by allowing 7% more damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists say. But conserving forest elephants may reverse
Court asks Centre to spell out its stand The Supreme Court has appointed an expert committee to go into all aspects of the ban on endosulfan and the disposal of the existing quantity of the pesticide. The court has asked the Centre to spell out its stand on the manufacture and use of endosulfan in the country. A Bench comprising Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice Madan B. Lokur, hearing a writ petition filed by the Democratic Youth Federation of India on Tuesday, said the committee to be headed by the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) would have the Member-Secretary of the Centre Pollution Control Board, two scientists, and the Joint Secretary of Plant Protection from the Agriculture Ministry on it.
Strongly favouring GM crops, India’s top science advisory panel on Tuesday virtually questioned the moratorium on commercialisation of Bt brinjal and pitched for comprehensive reform of the biotechnology regulatory mechanism. “The current regulatory system for recombinant products administered under Rules (1989) of Environment Protection Act, 1986, should be reformed till Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India is in place,” the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Prime Minister (SAC-PM), chaired by eminent scientist C.N.R. Rao, said in a statement.
<p>Uttarakhand has a total population of 101.17 lakhs with females accounting for 49.1% of the population according to the 2011 census. The state has more than 300 higher education institutes and a number
Stockholm: A British researcher and a Japanese scientist won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that ordinary cells of the body can be reprogrammed into stem cells, which
STOCKHOLM: Shinya Yamanaka of Japan and John Gurdon of Britain won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for work in cell programming, a frontier that has raised dreams of growing replacement tissue for
A genetically modified cow whose milk lacks a substance that causes allergic reactions in people has been created by scientists in New Zealand. In their first year of life, two or three in every hundred infants are allergic to a whey protein in milk called BLG. The researchers engineered the cow, called Daisy, to produce milk that doesn’t contain the protein. While the genetic alteration slashed levels of BLG protein in the cow’s milk to undetectable levels, it more than doubled the concentrations of other milk proteins called caseins.
Now it is official. There is a general perception that birth defects among the population in the high level natural radiation areas of Kerala are more than those in areas of normal background radiation.
Passionate arguments were heard on Wednesday for and against GM or genetically-modified technology in an event that was held on the sidelines of the CoP MoP 6. Scientists from Europe and Africa presented their studies on the observed health effects of GM foods and the resistance that insects are developing towards GM varieties. Representatives of the GM industry offered counter-arguments and said the evidence presented in two papers was incorrect. Robin Mesnage, a scientist at the University of Caen in France was part of a study that found tumours developing in rats after they were fed Bt maize with and without a herbicide called Roundup. The paper was published in the prestigious journal, Food and Chemical Technology.
Genetic engineering has been hailed as a panacea for the problem of global hunger and population explosion, but research studies reveal that it has failed to deliver the goods. At the same time, it has created more problems than it could solve. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an international research group based in the US, said none of the genetically engineered crops under cultivation so far has boosted farm yield or overcome the problem of drought conditions. “Genetic engineering has actually done very little to increase the yield of food and feed crops. It appears unlikely that this technology will play a leading role in helping the world feed itself in the foreseeable future,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a document — Failure to Yield — released at the CoP-11, the research group reviewed the data on soybeans and corn, the main GE food/feed crops in the USA.
A 20-year campaign of scientific fraud says as much about the research community as it does about the perpetrator. The system that allowed such deception to continue must be reformed. (Editorial)