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 …
Fever that follows viral infection is believed to be a defence mechanism of the body. High temperature is thought to harm virus more than the host. However, researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, have discovered that one virus has a chilling effect on the defences of the host. Vaccinia …
it is a whole new twist to the very concept of geochemistry. And what are propelling the changes in outlook are millions of tiny microbes working quietly behind the scenes, literally, to effect mighty changes in the earth's interior. These microbes, hitherto neglected as subjects for study, have shot into …
What makes a person dance to loud music? Neil Todd, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, UK, thinks that the urge has its roots inside the ears. Basing his arguments on studies on animals, Todd suggests that sacculus, a chamber in the inner ear of vertebrates is responsible for …
Ants are known to relay information to one another through chemicals called pheromones which diffuse through air. But Robert Hickling of the University of Mississippi in US suggests that ant hotline for distress or danger may be acoustic and not chemical, as sound travels faster than air-borne pheromone molecules. When …
Researchers have long puzzled over how nitric oxide (NO) plays a vital role in a range of biologoical processes, from dilation of blood vessels to immune defence, learning, memory and even maintaining erections. Now Jonathan Stamler and his colleagues at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, have discovered one …
a worm' s life is offering something to humans, in way of knowledge about cell death. Besides setting a limit to our lifespans, death also plays an important role during pre-reproductive life. In this phase, cells and tissues within the organism die in the course of normal development
coat colour in mammals comes high on the list of genetically encoded characters that have been studied in detail. The reason is, of course, that colouration is an extremely obvious trait. Because it is small and reproduces rapidly, the mouse has been a popular animal for such studies. There are …
in developmental biology, two philosophically distinct models have dominated the field of pattern formation. The subject matter of the field is, broadly speaking, the question of how spatial patterns arise during the course of transition of an egg into an adult. The patterns could be those formed by the stripes …
Ever seen a chicken transform itself into a duck? The discovery of resear chers at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College, both in the US, seems to have done that. On injecting a mutant gene for bone morphogenetic protein (BMP, a growth factor involved in …
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with those at the Marine Biological Lab in Massachusetts, US, have worked out the mechanism behind the fastest muscle among vertebrates. The toadfish's swim-bladder muscle contracts and relaxes 200 times per second as it makes its mating call, compared to 0.5-5.0 hertz …
How do some species of bacteria and a species of algae manage to survive in the inhospitable salty waters of the Dead Sea? Researchers in Israel and USA have got an answer for at least one such bacterium, Haloarcula marismortui . Since a high concentration of salts pull water molecules …
experiments conducted on the fruitfly 15 years ago have done much to advance our understanding of the development of an embryo into an adult. There were two main insights that followed these researches: firstly, that varying levels of protein molecules act as guideposts
in many species, the sex of an individual is determined by the chromosomal constitution of the cells in that individual. For example, in humans, both males and females have 23 pairs of chromosomes; 22 of these are the same and are called autosomes. In females, the 23rd pair consists of …
biologists were taken aback by the discovery in 1977 that genes came in bits and pieces. It was found that in practically every higher organism, a dna sequence that constituted a gene was made up of two sub-units: exons (working parts of a gene that encoded a protein) and introns …
The archaeon M jannaschii was originally isolated in 1983 by John Leigh (then at the University of Illinois; now at the University of Washington) from a sample collected from the hydrothermal vent 2,600 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, approximately 100 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. …
Stuttering and the reasons behind it have perplexed scientists for long now. Some assign the trouble to the deficiencies in hearing, others to the peculiarities in the areas of the brain that govern the motor functions of speech, and still others to the undeveloped left side of the brain which …
Why do some people suffering from hypertension get strokes while others do not? Researchers, for the first time, have obtained direct evidence of the existence of genes connected to strokes. Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, US, have identified the approximate location of three stroke-related genes in a …
Microbes found in mud, soil, and water contain compounds with potent anti-cancer activity, say Michael Shipman and his research team, which is supported by the UK Cancer Research Campaign at Loughborough University of Technology. Researchers are hopeful that these compounds, called azinomycins, will be valuable in treating some of the …
life begins with a single cell - the fertilised egg. The egg, on its part, undergoes a number of divisions and ends up as an adult plant or animal. The most striking feature about an adult is that its body is made up of a number of specialised parts, all …
