The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
A British geologist has found the first living proof of the idea that life on earth may have begun in hot subterranean crucibles. Five hundred metres below the Sea of Japan, John Parkes of Bristol University has discovered bacteria feasting on a 10 million-year-old compost. And in extremely hostile conditions …
Feeding non-infective bacteria to infants may protect them from diarrhoea, a recent study concludes (The Lancet, Vol 344, No 8929). Jose Saavedra and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA, performed a clinical trial on 55 infants aged 5 to 24 months, who were admitted to …
Scientists at the University of Florida in Gainesville have isolated 2 genes from a bacterium called Oxalobacter rmigenes that may pave the way for removing kidney stones through gene therapy. The genes in question direct the production of enzymes that break down oxalic acid. Left alone, oxalic acid binds with …
A recurring throat infection with the streptococci bacteria can cause rheumatic heart disease. Now, scientist Sumalee Prukksakorn at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and colleagues have identified a small portion of a protein, dubbed the M protein, from the bacteria, which could be used as a vaccine (The Lancet, …
AS IF science isn't perplexing enough to most people, here's a technology that believes not in removing hurdles but putting them up. Fortunately, "hurdle technology" seeks not to confound reason but tries to hamper the growth of bacteria and fungi whose company spoils food and, like other technologies, is aimed …
SCIENTISTS at the University of Minnesota in the US have developed a new strain of bacteria to fight pollution caused by organohalides -- compounds of carbon and halogens such as chlorine and fluorine which cannot be degraded by naturally occurring bacteria (Nature, Vol 368, No 6472). Pseudomonas putida G786 -- …
SCIENTISTS have established beyond doubt the efficacy of inorganic fertilisers in helping mop up oil spills, an idea suggested over 2 decades ago. Although nitrogen and phosphorus fertilisers had been shown to encourage, in the laboratory, the action of microorganisms capable of breaking down oil, the technique when applied to …
A CHEMICAL used originally to kill bacteria in drinking water is now proving extremely effective as a male contraceptive. S K Guha, who is a professor at the biomedical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, both in Delhi, and his …
OIL-EATING bacteria, useful in cleaning up slicks, will soon have water wings, helping to keep them afloat in water. Using gene-splicing techniques, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, USA, have isolated 13 genes responsible for producing air-filled sacs in a floating bacterium called Halobacterium halobium. This comes in the wake …
THE WORLD'S first full-scale experiment to clean up municipal sewage with a reactor full of algae has recently started near Nottingham in the UK (New Scientist, Vol 140, No 1893). The reactor or "biocoil" system developed by Stephen Skill at the London-based Biotechna, contains chlorella algae packed into a 5-m-high …
WHEN CITIZENS of Arcata, on Humboldt Bay in northern California, were faced with the need to treat the industrial waste water and sewage that had been pouring into the bay for decades, they decided against building a $30 million chemical treatment plant and chose instead to spend $5 million on …
MEDICAL wisdom has it that parasites evolve to become less harmful to their hosts. For if they became more virulent and killed off their hosts, they would be terminating their own lives, too. But, a recently published 10-year field study of the relationship between Panama's fig wasps and roundworms that …
HUGE DEPOSITS of iron found in different parts of the world has puzzled geologists because oxygen, which is an important constituent of iron ore, was scarce when they were formed about 3.5 to 1.8 billion years ago. Now, F Widell and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Marine …
A RECENT find of fossils may help geologists break through the ice obscuring Antarctica's past. David Harwood of the University of Nebraska and his colleagues have collected fossils of marine molluscs, microscopic organisms and leaves and twigs, all from the Eocene period of 35 to 55 million years ago (Science, …
TWO ISRAELI scientists say by pitting fungus against fungus, they have come up with an environmentally benign pesticide. A B Oppenheim and Ilan Chet of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have found fungal enzymes called chitinases break down newly synthesised chitin, a major component of the cell wall of most …
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has notified the Rules for the Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Microorganisms/Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells 1989 (known as ‘Rules, 1989’) under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. These rules and regulations cover the areas of research as well as large …
