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 …
INTERNATIONAL Business Machines Inc, the market leader for the large and powerful mainframe computers, is adapting its machines to the growing demand for smaller, more flexible and less costly computers. The new technology developed over five years by IBM at the cost of over $1 billion, will allow these computers …
SCIENTISTS have recently confirmed the presence in the lungs of asthmatics of an enzyme that produces nitric oxide, which damages cells lining the airways. Nitric oxide was known to be present in the air exhaled by asthmatics but the enzyme -- nitric oxide synthase -- that triggered its production in …
TWO mathematicians from Dublin's Trinity College have found a new solution to the age-old conundrum of how to pack a given space without wasting it. They have designed an object that has broken a 107-year-old record for the most efficient filler of 3-dimensional space. The problem of finding identical objects, …
GAMBLING, of all our many sins, has finally gone and redeemed itself. Darts, as often a game of chance as of aim and calculated trajectories, has provided theoretical mathematicians -- who casually play ball with tesseracts and other hypothetical objects of more than three dimensions -- a new method of …
THERE has been a reduction in the emissions of the oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, but the observed decrease in the acidic content of precipitation is less than expected. According to a recent study, the decrease hasn't come about because of the decline in the atmospheric concentration and deposition of …
SCIENTISTS are trying to simulate the generation of hot poisonous gases from the mouth of a volcano in order to minimise the vast destruction they cause. And some scientists posit that volcanic gases, particularly sulphur dioxide, can also help predict eruptions. The most ambitious and sophisticated model so far is …
NEWBORN children whose mothers suffer from a severe form of AIDS may develop the disease quicker, a recent French study reveals. The finding by Stephane Blanche and his colleagues at the Paris-based Hospital Necker Enfants Malades, could help prevent the pre-natal transmission of the infection (The New England Journal of …
IT'S no use trying to corner global warming on any day of the week but Wednesdays, says Adrian Gordon of the Flinders Institute for Atmospheric and Marine Sciences in Adelaide, Australia. His admonition came after he studied satellite readings of daily global temperatures for 726 weeks, from January 1979 to …
THE results of the recent analysis of a skull excavated 10 years ago from cave deposits at the Jinniushan site in China reveal that it is the oldest specimen of Homo sapiens found in the country (Nature, Vol 368, No 6466). The skull, along with an almost complete skeleton, was …
DNA technology has taken yet another step forward in its quest to unravel life's mysteries. The longest contiguous DNA sequence ever decoded has recently been deciphered by scientists at the Genome Sequencing Centre in St Louis in the US and the recently founded Sanger Centre in Cambridge, UK (Nature, Vol …
Meteorite buffs are given to complaining that these bolts from the cosmic blue almost always land unsighted (provided, that is, they escape annihilation by friction in the Earth's atmosphere). But for once, a meteorite landing was caught by camcorders when they maundered off a football match their owners were filming …
A NEW rapid dipstick method to detect the presence of the malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, could prove a boon to diagnosticians. The test, which has a sensitivity as high as 95 to 100 per cent, has been successfully tried in Kenya and the US (The Lancet, Vol 343, No 8897). …
IT IS only now that the unimaginable horrors of greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals are coming home to roost. Several recent studies indicate that changing climate and mutilation of the ozone layer have led to a wilder spread of infectious diseases, a lowering global cereal production and the aggravation of …
NOT ONLY are chubby babies adorable, scientists now say they are less prone during adulthood to disorders such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Recent studies indicate that the nutritional status of the developing foetus and that of the infant in the early stages of growth have an …
AN ARGENTINE scientist may finally have found a hirsute way to solve a long-standing anthropological poser. Carmen Reigadas of the Instituto de Ciencias Antropologicas in Buenos Aires has come up with a new approach to determining exactly when South Americans turned away from hunting camelids such as guanacos and vicunas …
WHAT'S good for the stomach is good for the earth. Reclaiming clay soils contaminated with toxic waste is a pain at the best of times. Now a technology, inspired -- believe it or not -- by the layered Italian pasta, lasagne, may do the trick. Already Monsanto, General Electric, Du …
FIRST the myth: the spectacular light dance -- the massive vibgyor curtain of northern and southern lights that shift every decade or so from their polar homes to produce vivid displays in the temperate skies -- is orchestrated by solar flares, which are streaks of fiery clouds flying away from …
Simple urine and blood tests could soon be used to detect cancer. Scientists at the Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School have detected increased levels of a tumour-related protein in the urine of patients suffering from cancer. Further, researchers at the Massachusetts-based Matritech Inc have reported finding proteins …
METHANE, a key greenhouse gas that has been growing alarmingly in the atmosphere, suddenly stopped in its track beginning 1992. Although previous studies had shown that the rate of methane increase slowed down in the '80s, a new analysis carried out by Edward Dlugokencky of the US's National Oceanic and …
