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 …
Pregnant women often complain of lack of concentration and poor memory. Scientists now offer an interesting explanation for this phenomenon; that a woman's brain size shrinks during late pregnancy and it takes up to six months to regain its full size. Using magnetic resonance imagery, Anita Holdcroft and her colleagues …
Laws of physics explaining the mechanism that keeps an aircraft airborne fail to do so for insects. Reason: insect's wings, unlike an aircraft's, have a highly unsteady motion that cannot be explained by conventional laws of motion. They change direction and speed at a phenomenal rate. Charles P Ellington, a …
behind their facade of apparent passivity, plants possess a sophisticated behavioural repertoire. In particular, they respond to pathogens by mounting a variety of self-protection measures. Recent work by Sreeganga Chandra and colleagues at Purdue University, us, provides an insight into the method by which plants resist microbial infection (Proceedings of …
studies over the past eight decades have shown that an individual's inherited characters play a strong role in suggesting whether he or she will become an alcoholic or not. This suggests that a person's genes have a role to play in the onset of alcoholism. However, genes by themselves cannot …
in a recent issue of the journal Current Opinion in Genetics and Development (Vol 6, No 3), D J Weatherall and A O M Wilkie of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford, uk, provide a succinct introduction to the current state of understanding in the area of human genetics …
Did the Europeans bring syphilis with them, a venereal disease caused by infection with the bacteria Treponema pallidum , or did they catch it from the places they travelled and take it back to Europe? The question, long debated, may finally be settled. Bruce Rothschild, a paleopathologist at the Arthritis …
there might be much more in common between sex, parasites and immunity than one thinks, if a recent study is anything to go by. Evolutionary biologists who have for decades pondered on why sexual reproduction is so prevalent did not have much evidence to help them. Now Andrew Read, Mark …
alone and uncared for? Reach out to others, or you may grow up to be disturbed and dangerous individuals, who are likely to die at a young age. This is the outcome of a recent conference organised at Georgetown University by the New York Academy of Sciences. Called
women who eat poorly before and during pregnancy have babies who grow up with a tendency to heart disease and stroke, according to David Barker and his colleagues at the Medical Research Council's Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, uk. Barker observes that the nutritional status of the mother during …
all genetic research begins with isolation of mutants: genes or organisms that appear different from the normal ones (the wild-types). Keith Williams and colleagues from the School of Biological Sciences in Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, have found a solution known as fluorescence-activated cell sorting (facs) for identifying mutants that differ …
humans are the only animals who consume the milk of other species and continue with it long after the age of weaning. However, this can lead to problems. Recent studies have linked the consumption of cow's milk with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (iddm), commonly known as diabetes, which is caused by …
previous studies on the fruitfly Drosophila have revealed that heterochromatin in a chromosome represses or silences genes that lie close to it. Heterochromatin is most commonly found at the centromere, the point of attachment on a chromosome during cell division when sister chromosomes are pulled apart. The activation and repression …
Alcoholics are often heavy smokers too. The link has its roots in the brain, say researchers. Neuroscientists at the Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, US, have found that alcohol and nicotine, the chemical in tobacco, affect the same protein, the acetylcholine receptor molecule, on a brain cell. Experiments conducted …
A rare genetic defect has been found to cause high blood pressure. The gene is responsible for making an enzyme that converts the stress hormone cortisol into inactive cortisone. Paul Stewart and colleagues at Birmingham University, UK, report that a defect in the gene leads to an excess of cortisol …
Soon it may be possible to get resistance against a disease by simply eating a potato. A team headed by Charles Arntzen at the Boyce Thompson Institute of Plant Research in New York, US, has undertaken advanced research on a vaccine for diarrhoea, using raw potatoes. A gene introduced in …
THE origin of life has intrigued and fascinated researchers over the years. Every time a new finding is made, a link in the chain of events is added. A similar finding now seems to put another block of the puzzle in place. Based on genetic evidence, recent molecular research suggests …
CURRENT research in developmental biology largely consists of isolating a gene and trying to guess from its sequence what its functions might be. V Rodrigues of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and collaborators at the National University of Singapore have chosen to study the working of the nervous …
IT IS well known that indiscriminate use of antibiotics or antimicrobial agents generally carries with it major risks. The reason why resistant microbes establish themselves in a population is simple. Every time one tries to eliminate a microbial infection, one is unwillingly carrying out an evolutionary lottery in which the …
PREVIOUS studies have shown that the human brain is efficient at using different portions of itself to perform different tasks. Interestingly, there is evidence from neuropsychology that localisation of brain's functions goes further. Thad Polk and Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, us, have built a thesis around the …
