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 …
The day may not be far when people with balding pates will have a permanent solution to their problem. Bradford University (UK) researchers have isolated hair cells from balding pates for the first time. (Spectrum, November-December 1995, No 249). The research involves comparing test-tube cultures of cells from balding and …
THE entire DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) content in a cell can be compared to a book containing instructions for making the plant or animal of which that cell is a part. The four bases that make up the DNA code - A, T, G and c - are like the letters …
VISION is one, of the most stunning achievements of evolution. Beginning in our ancestors with a semi-transparent membrane that had let in light, the visual system in higher animals has evolved to an amazing level of sophistication. The first element in the system, the eye, is as close to a …
Evolution depends on mutations - changes in the sequence or organisation of DNA (the hereditar material). Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variability. One of the cardinal tenets of the theory of evolution by natural selection - Darwinism - states that mutations occur at random., Here, 'random' stands for …
FLANNERY'S prime supposition is that as and when competition with other carnivores and primates increased, hominids turned to new habitats. Such rivalry between different species and the consequent migrations resulting from the same constituted the main driving force of evolution (Natural History, Vol 104, No 12). Fighting it out for …
THE Nobel Prize in Biology for 1995 was awarded jointly to Edward B Lewis of the California Institute of Technology (US), Christiane Nusselein-Volhard of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tubingen (Germany), and Eric Wieschaus of Princeton University, US, for "...discovering how genes control the early structural development of …
THE chimaera - in Greek mythology - is a beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake. Biologists use the word to refer to something no less exotic: an organism whose tissues have two or more genetically different origins. Theoretically, …
A RECENT advance concerning a protein molecule called green fluorescent protein (GFP) promises to lead to improved experimental methods. GFP is found in the jellyfish Aequoria victoria and is capable of spontaneous fluorescence: when illuminated by light at a low wavelength, like daylight, it emits green light at a longer …
The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) recently carried out the third annual nationwide bird count in India, targeting the commonly seen or heard species. The campaign was aimed at creating environmental awareness among people and collating data to enable the BNHS to prioritise conservation activity areas and to determine the …
Researcher Melvin Dyer and his colleagues from the University of Georgia, US, have discovered a peculiar relationship or synergy. while a bug cats a plant, it also secretes a growth-promoting protein, which it supplies to the part of the plant it does not consume. Dyer has found this protein in …
William Wood, a geneticist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, has found a method for controlling crop-decimating nematode (roundworm) populations. A gene, isolated from another small worm - Caenorhabditis elegans - can determine whether a fertilised egg will become a male worm. This gene has been named Her-I …
THE mystery of origin and evolution of life has boggled many minds and provided inspiration to several theories. But none - excepting perhaps the biblical account - has succeeded as famously as Charles Darwin"s masterly enunciation of the logic of life. The central idea of Darwin"s story of life is …
Yet another challenge to Darwin's dogma comes from worthless stretches of DNA- JUNK DNA -or introns. Most evolutionary theorists see the history of life as a progression from spineless blobs to that most exalted of creatures -ourselves. Obviously then, the notion that bacteria might in some way be more advanced …
Anything that evolves in contradiction to the twin engines of random mutation and natural selection is a potential threat to Darwin's theory. John Cairns, a Harvard University geneticist, discovered just such a contradiction in 1988. He found that some of the mutations in the bacterium E coli seemed to be …
THE fact that evolution optimises structures is best exemplified by cases of regressive evolution. These refer to structures that are not 'needed'. Such structures wither away because they are superfluous and because maintaining them is a waste of energy. Spalax ehrenberghi is a rodent that lives in dark underground tunnels. …
THE transition of an embryo into an adult - for instance that of an egg into a chicken - is accompanied by a bewildering variety of changes. Due to these complexities, progress in embryology is likely to be staggered with problems never having single, all-encompassing solutions. As a result, certain …
The immune system responds to invasion by foreign substances in two ways ' One kind of reaction is the release of soluble antibodies by the B cells found in the lymphatic system, which can release soluble antibodies -to bind and immobilise alien molecules in the circulation, T cells on the …
Even if you have a good sense of smell and taste, your sense of perception could still let you down, according to neuroscientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel (New Scientist, Vol 148, No 2005). Each hemisphere of the brain has centres for processing taste and smell. …
The loss of a single gene turns a normal mouse into a sexual offender and murderer! Solomon Snyder and his team at the John Hopkins University and Massachusetts General Hospital in the US witnessed this in mice whose gene, responsible for the production of nitric oxide (NO), had been blocked …
Scientists from the Laboratory of Marine Hydrology, Montpellier University in France have discovered the smallest algal species in the Than Lake, near the Mediterranean Sea (Technical News, No 11, November 1995). This single-celled eukaryote measures less than a micrometre (10-6 M) in diameter. Its unique structure, characteristic mode of division …
