Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
A new study has revealed that some boxers are genetically predisposed to suffer brain damage due to blows taken on the head. The findings were presented at the World Boxing Council's first medical conference on boxing safety at the Caribbean island of Aruba by Barry JordAn, a neurologist at the …
David Gems of University College, London, says that contrary to held belief, males are genetically programmed to live longer than female but the relentless pursuit of sex is behind the shorter average male life span. During research on a species of worms, Gems observed that isolated male worms lived longer …
RECENT research on a genetic mutation in Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as vinegar fly or fruit fly, has thrown new light on its effect on sexual orientation. This mutation, initially discovered more than 30 years ago, was found to convert normal heterosexual males into bisexuals. These males courted both males …
THE discovery that a DNA molecule can conduct electricity may help in repair of damage caused in the molecule by exposure to the sun. This was tested by attaching a chemical group at one end of the DNA molecule, which is situated some distance away from the chemically damaged part. …
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologists transplanted small poplations of Anolis sagrei lizards from Staniel Cay in the Bahamas to several nearby islands, in the hope that the reptiles would go extinct. Instead, the small brown lizards flourished even though their new homes differed dramatically from their original island. Resear- chers …
Researchers in Israel say that the tendency to abuse heroin arises partly from one's genes. According to them, a handful of genes playa role in a wide variety of addictions and that there is a link between a specific gene mutation and opiate addiction. Richard Ebstein of the Sarah Herzog …
POLYEMBRYONY is the strategy to split embryos to produce many identical off-springs. Eighteen animals are known to use this strategy as their method of reproduction. Biologists from the State University of New York say that as compared to asexual and normal sexual reproduction, polyembryony appears to offer the worst of …
WITH drug-resistant microbes increasing by the day, researchers at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, are looking at frogs for developing powerful antibiotics. Tests have indicated that compounds derived from the poisonous secretion of African tree frogs, African marsh frogs and other amphibians can kill even the most harmful drug-resistant …
SCIENTISTs at the MRc Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, claim to have unearthed a significant relationship between calcium present in our bodies and cellular responses. Calcium plays an important role in various physio -biological functions ranging from normal development to illness and cell death. Besides, the calcium atom …
EVOLUTION has moulded living creatures in such a manner that their ability to survive an reproduce is constantly improving. on a rough sense, one may say that given two populations, one of ancestors and a second of descendants, the descendants will carry a subset of ancestral genes: genes which contribute …
David Roos and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, present evidence that parasites responsible for some of the world's most serious diseases, including malaria, stole large chunks of DNA from plants. Called apicoplast, the stolen DNA matter forms a third class of DNA in these single-cciled …
Enter the eighteenth month and a child begins to distinguish between its own desire and someone else's. This was discovered recently by Betty Repacholi at the University of Sydney in Australia and Alison Gopnik at the University of California in the US. After studying 160 toddlers, half of them aged …
A RECENT piece of work by Fen-Biao Gao and colleagues at University College London shows that oligodendrocytes, cells that are responsible for the insulation that protects vertebrate nerve cells, do count time but not in terms of the number of cell divisions. Earlier studies had shown that when isolated from …
THE building of a multiccllular organism requires an intricate network of signals going to and fro between the cells that constitute the organism. Traditionally, these signals are studied in terms of the effects they cause, in terms of their molecular constitution and in the manner in which they are sensed. …
After studying over 500 budding musicians, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, believe that while early musical training is an important factor in the ability to recognise musical notes, genes also play a vital role. The team leader, Nelson Freimer, says that it is a classic case where …
Discovery of a viral protein that slips in and out of living cells by a mysterious route has raised hopes of making gene therapy more effective. Christened viral protein 22, or VP22, the enigmatic protein is made by the virus that causes cold sores ( New Scientist , Vol 153, …
why do humans behave so differently from one another? Behavioural scientists say that a study of this variation is a rather controversial one even while it is exciting. They say that if you look hard enough, genetic influence on behaviour can be easily identified. For example, variation in personality traits …
genetic engineering is primarily based on the existence of a class of enzymes known as restriction enzymes. These enzymes are made by a large number of bacteria and have the ability to cut dna at or near specific recognition sites. Because of this property, when a piece of foreign dna …
the metamorphosis of a child into an adolescent is no longer a natural wonder as scien-tists have found new insights into the body mechanism, which provide clues to the onset of puberty. Researchers of the University of Califor-nia propose that leptin (a protein secreted by the adipose cells), famed for …
