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 …
Fitness-conscious mothers can now safely put aside doubts and swing to Jane Fonda's aerobics. According to a study conducted over 12 weeks by a team of American researchers, lactating mothers run no health risk from exercises while breast feeding (The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 330, No 7). The …
The holy grail of synthetic taxol may be in sight. Taxol, used to treat breast and ovarian cancers, is extracted in very small quantities from the leaf and bark of the endangered Himalayan and Pacific yew. But now, two teams of organic chemists -- led by K C Nicolaou of …
Life on earth may have started after an asteroid banged into her. Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California say that an asteroid collided with Earth between 3.6 and 4 billion years ago, thawing her frozen oceans and creating the right conditions for life to begin humming (New …
A SMOOTHLY moving bus suddenly comes to a screeching halt and you are jerked forward. You purple the air around the driver with invectives as you recover from the jolt. But if you remember your physics lessons well, you'll know that the driver isn't to blame. Inertia, or the tendency …
PEOPLE paralysed because of spinal injuries need not give up hope. Two independent studies reported in the British journal Nature (Vol 367, No 6459) show that damaged nerve tissue can be repaired, at least partly. In one study, scientists from Kyoto University in Japan used rat foetal tissue transplants to …
HOW did humans acquire intelligence? Two competing theories have attracted a lot of attention. One holds that the complex social relations among higher primates provided a key driving force; the other asserts that it was the complexities involved in obtaining food. Recent evidence indicates both pressures may have been equally …
IS RATIONALITY a solely human chartersistic ? Perhaps not, contend two evolutionary biologists who applied a decision making model similar to one used for social behaviour of a bird called the white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bulockoides). These birds, common to east and central Africa, live in joint families of five to …
IN JANUARY, after a break of 22 years, the US once again turned its attention to the moon. This time, however, it was not NASA that launched a spacecraft, but the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO), the successor to the Strategic Defence Initiative Organization. The spacecraft, christened Clementine, was originally …
THOUGH floods cannot be wished away, they could soon be whisked away. A group of British computer experts is trying to model river flows so as to predict the best way to control flooding (New Scientist, Vol 141, No 1907). When a river spills over its sides, some of the …
LONG perplexed by the causes of more than a thousand brain disorders, neuroscientists are now increasingly finding that genes are often the culprits. Delving deep into the brain's molecular structure, scientists have identified the genetic defects that are responsible for 40 disorders of the nervous system and have a good …
ARE forests linked with the spread of malaria? Or, for that matter, do terrain, agricultural practices, water-bodies or ground-water have any bearing on the disease? Now, a computer-based analysis technology -- the Geographical Information System (GIS) -- may provide answers to these complex questions. The Malaria Research Centre (MRC) in …
CAPITALISING on more than 100 years of expertise in plant product chemistry, Dabur, one of India's largest Ayurvedic formulation manufacturers, has now ventured into modern pharmaceutical research and product development. Dabur recently announced that it had perfected a method to extract taxol -- a potent drug used to treat ovarian …
IMAGINE a building swaying like a pendulum so that it doesn't crumble during an earthquake. Engineer Victor Zayas of Earthquake Protection Systems in San Francisco has designed just such a system (Science, Vol 262, No 5139). The new Friction Pendulum System (FPS) is quite unlike others, which dissipate tremor energy …
JUPITER will be the site of violent activity when fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the planet in the second or third week of July. The once-in-a-millenium event will offer astronomers a grand 6-day fireworks spectacle. The comet, now broken up into 21 large chunks, will bombard the planet and …
YOU thought loofahs were just for scrubbing in the bath? Well, an Italian firm has come up with a new role for the fibrous skeleton of the gourd-like Luffa cylindrica. It can be a non-toxic and inexpensive substitute for polyurethane foam packing materials and polystyrene. And, expensive petroleum is not …
CLASSIC movies can now be preserved for generations without fearing loss of print quality. Though movie films are kept in sealed cans to keep dirt out, they are vulnerable to the "vinegar syndrome", a decay caused by traces of acetic acid released by the film as it ages. Researchers at …
LEON Baert and Rudy Jocque have found the world's smallest known female spider (Anapistula caecula) in the Ivory Coast's Tai Forest Reserve. The 0.46 mm long female members of this new species easily beat the previous record of 0.59 mm held by the Colombian forest spider Patu digua (BBC Wildlife, …
IT'S NOW almost taken for granted that if a flood occurs in the plains, then a forest must have disappeared in the mountains. However, this notion, which indicts the land-use practices of the mountain people, is fast losing its punch for lack of evidence. Two recent studies sponsored by the …
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 …
A BRITISH astronomer may be the first to have witnessed a bizarre celestial phenomenon: the formation of strange heavenly bodies when a superdense neutron star -- one that has been crushed by its own gravity -- insinuates itself inside a red giant star and transforms it (Science, Vol 262, No …
