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 …
set a thief to catch a thief, goes the saying. In a remarkable molecular biological variant, scientists have made use of one virus to prevent the growth of another. The two under discussion are the sindbis virus (non-specific rna virus that infects insects) and the dengue virus. Dengue is a …
cortisone and related chemical compounds - falling in the category known as glucocorticoid or steroid hormones - have a seemingly magical ability to reduce inflammation and suppress the immune system. It is this property that accounts for their wide use in the treatment of many human ailments including asthma, rheumatoid …
Antarctic krills, small shrimplike creatures, have adopted special mechanisms to avoid turbulence. According to Konard Welse, a zoologist at the University of Hamburg, Germany, their antennae pick up pressure waves from their neighbours for maintaining contact among themselves. After placing a small pressure sensor near the swimmerets of a krill, …
A recent discovery of the 26 million year old fossil of Eomys quercyi , in Enspel, Germany, has revealed that it was a four-inch long gliding animal with a membrane, similar to that of flying squirrels. The elbow on the E quercyi's forelimb had a bony spur which is common …
the assumption - in force till a few years ago - that obesity, or the condition of being overweight, might be reduced by simple drug treatment, had been a cause for much euphoria. Recent studies, however, indicate that things may not be all that straightforward. It has long been known …
a gene, according to established beliefs, is a stretch of deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) which encodes hereditary information. When decoded, the message is seen to be a protein that performs a specific function
one of the principal discoveries of modern molecular biology has been that genes come in pieces. More precisely, in higher organisms, the sequence of dna that encodes a protein message corresponds to the protein called exons, interspersed with portions called introns. The introns are cut and removed between the production …
The largest flying creature ever- a pterosaur called Arambourgiania philadelphiae that lived some 65 million years ago -has been identified by British and German palaeontologists as the owner of an elongated neck bone which was found in Jordan in 1943. The pterosaur had a wingspan of 12 metres. Wrongly identified …
Ants, who else! Fire ants were believed to communicate mainly through pheromones -chemical signalling messages. Researchers also knew that the insects made sounds, whose function they were unclear about, by moving the abdomen up and down. Robert Hickling and colleagues from the University of Mississippi, US, have now recorded the …
Men lose brain tissue as they age at almost three times the rate women do; this could reduce their memory, concentration and reasoning power, says Ruben C Gur, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, US. His findings are based on a study of the brain functions -measurement …
HAEMOGLOBIN, the ubiquitous component of red blood cells (RBC), known to be a transporter of gases - ferrying oxygen from the lungs to tissues and carbon dioxide (c02) on the return journey - has been found to distribute a third gas on its rounds through the body. This gas is …
THALASSAEMIA patients have reason to rejoice. Dominic Ciavatta and his colleagues at the University of Alabama, us, have managed to generate thalassaernic mice which can help in finding genetic methods for treatment of the disease in humans (Proceedings of the us National Academy ofSciences, Vol 92, 1995). Haemoglobin, responsible for …
GLIAL cells constitute 25 per cent of the brain of a fly, 65 per cent of that of a rat and 90 per cent of that of a human being. Yet, their functions have remained shrouded in mystery. F W Pfrieger and B A Barres Of USA'S Stanford University School …
DESPITE their oxygen deficiency, which should cause them to die or should stunt their growth, turnours often continue to thrive. Why is this so? Recent work by T G Graeber and colleagues of the Stanford University School of Medicine in the us suggests that the absence of an all-purpose protein …
SELECTING a mate is perhaps a daunting task, but is it really that complex? Lee Dugatkin, a behavi6ural ecologist at the University of Louisville, us, fixes up Trinidadian guppies on dates in aquariums and probes the sociobiology of these creatures. His study seeks to determine the criteria employed by female …
ALTHOUGH forms of life found on oceanic islands have their mainland cousins, they develop distinct identities for themselves. The uniqueness of these living beings is attributed to the changes that they undergo in order to adapt to the island environment. Scientists believe that such differences could not be chance occurrences …
Crippled Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) could be useful in gene therapy, says Inder Verma, a gene therapy specialist at the Salk Institute in California, USA. Retroviruses, the family to which HIV belongs, are good vehicles for delivering therapeutic genes into cells of patients with genetic disorders. But while retroviruses cannot …
Scientists at the University of Virginia, USA, have found that circadian clocks in vertebrates arose 450 million years ago. The circadian clock is the brain's light-sensitive timepiece which regulates hormone and sleep cycles. The components of the clock being soft tissues, they do not fossilise; so scientists devised an interesting …
British scientist Chris Hill discovered the world's oldest flower recently in 130-million-year-old clay rocks in the south of England. Christened Bevhalstia pebja and belonging to the Cretaceous period, this plant fossil is a 25-cm high herb and has aquatic roots. It combines a primitive fern-like anatomy and leaves with more …
