Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
ecuador , the tiny Latin American nation flanked by Peru and Columbia and traversed by the Andean ranges, has ventured into an area that very few countries in the world have explored. Its government, which came to power in August 1996, has enacted a law asserting its
Human genes are not for the asking, thus intoned the International Bar Association (IBA) and about time too. For, the field of human genome sequencing, though only five years old, has seen an almost runaway kind of research explosion. It was at the instance of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), …
a worm' s life is offering something to humans, in way of knowledge about cell death. Besides setting a limit to our lifespans, death also plays an important role during pre-reproductive life. In this phase, cells and tissues within the organism die in the course of normal development
in developmental biology, two philosophically distinct models have dominated the field of pattern formation. The subject matter of the field is, broadly speaking, the question of how spatial patterns arise during the course of transition of an egg into an adult. The patterns could be those formed by the stripes …
experiments conducted on the fruitfly 15 years ago have done much to advance our understanding of the development of an embryo into an adult. There were two main insights that followed these researches: firstly, that varying levels of protein molecules act as guideposts
in many species, the sex of an individual is determined by the chromosomal constitution of the cells in that individual. For example, in humans, both males and females have 23 pairs of chromosomes; 22 of these are the same and are called autosomes. In females, the 23rd pair consists of …
biologists were taken aback by the discovery in 1977 that genes came in bits and pieces. It was found that in practically every higher organism, a dna sequence that constituted a gene was made up of two sub-units: exons (working parts of a gene that encoded a protein) and introns …
werner's syndrome is a malignancy affecting only a small number of people, but shows devastating manifestations. The victims are cruelly wizened and grey by the time they reach their late 20's. They await their death from prematurely clogged arteries and heart malfunctions in their late 40s or 50s. The cause …
the assumption - in force till a few years ago - that obesity, or the condition of being overweight, might be reduced by simple drug treatment, had been a cause for much euphoria. Recent studies, however, indicate that things may not be all that straightforward. It has long been known …
to the tribals of India, February 25, 1996, had seemed like a red-letter day. On that day, S S Ahluwalia, the minister of state for urban development in the erstwhile Congress government, had formally announced that the Centre was at last ready to pay heed to the Bhuria Committee Report, …
Since the colonial era, resources from tropical forests and woodlands have been indiscriminately appropriated by Northern agricultural systems and then by multinationals. The Convention on Biological Diversity (cbd), for the first time, recognised
the Fourth International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) in Leipzig, Germany, from June 17-23 , was dogged by criticisms even before the curtains were actually raised on it. The representatives of the 148 nations who met there to forge an agreement …
THALASSAEMIA patients have reason to rejoice. Dominic Ciavatta and his colleagues at the University of Alabama, us, have managed to generate thalassaernic mice which can help in finding genetic methods for treatment of the disease in humans (Proceedings of the us National Academy ofSciences, Vol 92, 1995). Haemoglobin, responsible for …
FROM being the ultimate tool of bakers and those in the brewery industry to the prolonged cynosure of geneticists, the humble yeast has come a long way. Its similarity to the human cell has allowed scientists to arrive at a breakthrough which is being variously described as a "triumph" and …
The Danish study on declining sperm counts worldwide has finally been challenged. It had to be. Two articles have just been published in the journal Fertility and Sterility which show that men in several us cities might have more sperm today than men 20 years ago. The alarm about sperm …
SPECIES are to biology what electrons and protons are to physics or what mole- cules are to chemistry. A species is a set of individuals of the same kind, It is the Darwinian process of natural selection that moulds a species. Since natural selection is a mechanism for weeding out …
SCIENTISTS from the Natural Environment Resource Council (NERC'S), Institute of Terrestrial Ecology at Banchory, and the department of zoology at the University of Aberdeen - both in Scotland - have embarked on a novel method to study population ecology. The programme called Molecular Genetics in Ecology (MGE) Initiative, Uses DNA …
PROVIDING yourself with an insurance cover may not be all that easy in the near future. Insurance companies are now looking at the prospect of genetic testing to weed out high risk people or else insisting on their payment of higher premiums. This will then allow insurance companies to compensate …
