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 CURIOUS dichotomy in the development of higher animals (plants are exceptional in this respect) has come to light following recent research. During the course of embryogenesis, a fertilised egg goes through a series of multiplications that, along with growth, are responsible for a tremendous increase in the number of …
A SMALL group of proteins, collectively known as heat shock proteins (HSP), have been the cause for considerable excitement lately. These proteins had initially attracted attention because they seemed to be generated in an extraordinarily large variety of organisms - ranging from bacteria to humans -in response to an increase …
THE development of a multicellular organism begins with a fertilised egg and proceeds through a series of inter- mediate steps -growth, cell division, differentiation into specialised parts, and so on -before culminating in the adult. An important part of the process is what is called pattern formation, the orderly arrangement …
A bacterial colony was recently discovered 4,500 ft below the earth's surface, surviving apparently on only rock and water. The cluster was found in an aquifer near the river Columbia (close to the Hanford nuclear facility), in the state of Washington, US, by microbiologist Todd Stevens and geochemist James McKinley, …
Genome sequencing of Methanococcus jannaschii, at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US, has confirmed that this ancient-Iooking microorganism is not really a bacterium, but belongs to the phylogenetic family, Archaea (Science, VoI 271, No 5252). Methanococcus jannaschii lives near hot sea vents in temperatures close to …
All organisms have an inbuilt protective mechanism -shielding them from attack of viruses - called the immune system. The immune system in the case of vertebrates is highly evolved because it can recognise and eliminate 100 million different substances. According to Martin Gellert, a biochemist at the National Institutes of …
Birds like female blue tits control the sex of the eggs they lay, but this crucial decision hinges on the health of their mates. If the males are more active and healthy, the females produce more sons than daughters. This was revealed in a study conducted by researchers from Lund …
SPECIES are to biology what electrons and protons are to physics or what mole- cules are to chemistry. A species is a set of individuals of the same kind, It is the Darwinian process of natural selection that moulds a species. Since natural selection is a mechanism for weeding out …
A BEETLE known as tpe coffee borer (Hypothenemus hampei) is the major insect pest bothering the coffee growers of the world today. Together with some other close relatives, the creature leads what -by normal standards -can be called a strange life. The cycle begins and ends with a single female …
IT HAS long been an enduring enigma as to how a foetus, genetically very much a 'foreign' entity, is tolerated by the mother's immune system through the months of her pregnancy. At the molecular level it is rather puzzling that the foetus manages to retain a foothold even though many …
THIS mouse, was born in the Jackson laboratory at Bar Harbor, Maine, us. Its birth marked the culmination of years of research by developmental biologist John Eppig and his research assistant Marilyn O'Brien. The actual process of raising the creature took three weeks, which is the normal period of gestation …
WITH the recent finding of a rare dinosaur fossil, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are trying to create a sound that may resemble the call of the dinosaur. Sounds of roars, screeches and grunts of celluloid dinosaurs have been dismissed by palaeontologists as mere works …
Scientists are now working towards developing efficient vaccines out of 'complements', proteins which safeguard against disease-causing pathogens (New Scientist, Vo1149, No 2014). Douglas Fearon and his team at the University of Cambridge, UK, and immunologists from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, US, are experimenting with the complement protein C3. …
Most DNA particles are said to be 'characterised' -that is, they code for a specific protein or possess regulatory properties. However, certain uncharacterised material in the form of short DNA sequences are also carried to the new organism in the course of the transfer of DNA from one organism to …
An enzyme called RuBisCo might help scientists from Japan's Research Institute for Innovative Technology for the Earth and the Shizouka Perfectural University in realising their dream of making plants grow in dry climates (New Scientist, Vo1149, No 2013). In hot climates, plants lose water molecules every time they 'fIX' carbon …
FORTY-ONE year old Tully ofCold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York, us, bears an uncommon epithet: the lord of the flies. Sitting for hours together in a dark closet which resounds to the buzzing of hundreds of flies is the way, according to Tully, to unravel~ne of the least understood mysteries …
THE animal kingdom is inhabited by some species which exist in groups or packs, and these groups are led and dominated upon by individual male or female members. It had been believed for long that animals which are subjugated are the most stressed and suffer from various problems like miscarriages …
THE ideal way of curing an inherited disorder would be to adopt gene therapy (correct the genetic defect). Failing that, it would be worth exploring whether the severity of the disorder might be ameliorated by substituting a functional gene product - protein - in place of the dysfunctional product (or …
THE question of the origin of modern human beings - Homo sapiens - has been the cause for considerable debate in the past. One hypothesis goes by the name of 'Multi-regionat theory of human evolution'. As the name suggests, it contends that our ancestral species, the Homo erecrus, spread to …
For two centuries, an unusual bird had been kept in wrong company. The hoatzin of South America, the only bird species to have a ruminant digestive system like a cow, was placed in the order Galliformes which includes pheasants, chickens and other birds with heavy bodies. However, a group of …
