Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
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 -- …
PEGGY Rismiller of the University of Adelaide has unveiled the sexual exploits of the elusive and solitary egg-laying Australian mammal, the spiny anteater or echidna, which might help to successfully breed them in captivity. Rismiller found that during the breeding season, which occurs in winter, 10 or more males form …
RECENT research findings have come as a breath of fresh air. A study based on data from 27 monitoring stations all over the world reveals that the carbon monoxide levels in the atmosphere have taken a nosedive and the atmosphere is getting cleaner for the first time in 3 decades …
US SPACECRAFT Galileo has recently sent pictures of a tiny moon orbiting 243 Ida -- a 56 km-long asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This is the first confirmed evidence of a natural satellite kowtowing to an asteroid (Nature, Vol 368, No 6470). The miniature moon, astronomers …
AS THE link between cigarette smoking and cancer and heart disease is more firmly established, scientists are increasingly looking at the impact a parent's smoking has on both the unborn and the growing offspring. Two recent studies reveal that not only does a mother's active smoking expose her young children …
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 …
ENVIRONMENTALISTS who wish to revert to a non-polluted era may have to revise their glorious vision of an idyllic past before the industrial revolution. A recent analysis of lake sediments in Sweden reveals that lead pollution was a problem even 2,000 years ago (Nature, Vol 368, No 6469). Ingemar Renberg …
THE Big Bang theory postulates that a uniform mix of radiation and particles pervaded space immediately after the explosion of dense matter. As the matter cooled, defects appeared in this uniform mix that, cosmologists speculate, led to the formation of galaxies. In 1976, theoretical physicist Thomas Kibble of Imperial College …
A NEW type of safety catch will prevent children from accidentally triggering firearms. The US Department of Justice and the Pentagon are jointly developing "smart" guns that will fire only when held by their legitimate user (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1921). Smart guns become operational only when sensors embedded …
GREEN pigments, scientists believed, were found only in plants. In most animals whose plumage or body parts appear green, the colour is seen not because of pigments but because of the refraction of light through the not-so-opaque scales or feathers. Now, scientists from London's Natural History Museum and Oxford University …
A UK power company, Eastern Electric, has pioneered a technique to prevent fresh fruit from ripening and decaying in storage. Normally, fruits stored in refrigerated warehouses continue to ripen because the warehouse is not quite air tight. Moreover, whenever the warehouse is opened, the sudden increase in oxygen accelerates decay. …
YOU better start cultivating a taste for broccoli. Two John Hopkins University scientists say they have discovered in broccoli the presence of a chemical compound -- sulforaphane -- which helps fight cancer in animals. Paul Talalay and Gary H Posner had previously reported that sulforaphane increased the production of anti-cancer …
SCIENCE appears to have finally found the elusive cure for baldness. Proscar, a drug manufactured by Merck & Co to treat enlarged prostate glands, has an interesting side-effect: in low doses, it increases hair growth. In clinical trials carried out on 200 young men at an early stage of baldness, …
ABOUT 2 million years ago, deep in the tropical jungles of Africa, a humanoid creaked into an upright posture. This was Homo erectus, our most immediate ancestor; it soon learnt to chip stones into useful tools and weapons, such as handaxes. A million years later, armed with these tools, the …
Cold start A 10-YEAR old controversy about whether a nuclear reprocessing plant in northwest England was responsible for a high occurrence of leukaemia reported in the area has been finally laid to rest. The English High Court recently ruled that there was not enough evidence to implicate the company -- …
A COMPOUND derived from the female sex hormone oestrogen has been found effective at suppressing tumour growth, without the horrendous side-effects that normally accompany anti-cancer drugs. Theodore Fotsis of Children's University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, and his collaborators found that 2-methoxyoestradiol, formed in the body on the breakdown of oestrogen, …
SWELLING concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are threatening the diversity of tree life on Earth, say 2 US ecologists (Science, Vol 263, No 5149). O L Phillips of the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA, and the late A H Gentry (1945-1993) analysed independent surveys of tropical forests worldwide and …
A NEW batch of occupants has moved into Biosphere 2 -- the glass and steel structure enclosing 3 ha in Oracle, Arizona, where scientists are trying to create a miniature earth complete with rain forests, savannahs, a marsh and an "ocean" (Nature, Vol 368, No 6467). Unlike the earlier occupants, …
IN THE first occurrence of its kind in a wild species, scientists report that fruit bats males (Dyacopterus spadiceus) occasionally lactate. Till now, this oddity was seen only in humans and domesticated animals (Nature, Vol 367, No 6465). Jennifer A Brunton and Thomas H Kunz of Boston University and their …
DO YOU prefer the natural light that floods the room, but abhor the heat that it invariably brings along, especially on hot summer afternoons? Now, a system devised by a Queensland University of Technology lecturer, will not only help you cut lighting costs, but obviate the need for expensive airconditioning …
