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 …
Scientists said they have created a distinctive red and yellow butterfly in the laboratory by interbreeding two different species in a way similar to what they believe has occurred in nature. The laboratory hybrid is nearly identical to a wild species of butterfly in Colombia known as Heliconius heurippa. "We …
In "An Island Away' (Down To Earth, April 30, 2006), I talked about the theory of island biogeography which played a major role in community ecology and conservation biology in the 1970s and the 1980s. In the 1990s, another theory came to the fore: metapopulation biology or dynamics. The term …
science may have found it a year ago but discovered its value only recently. The shy, white-whiskered, greyish-brown monkey found in Tanzania in 2005 had earlier been classified as a new primate species. But it now turns out that the monkey represents a new genus (class)
After around three years of debates and deliberations, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Department of Biotechnology have released 24 pages of guidelines clearly spelling out the do's and dont's of stem cell research and therapy in the country. While foetal and adult stem cells (cells from …
Canadian Milissa Vatikin has joined thaousands of couples flocking to the U.S. to cash in on the disputed luxury of being able to dictate the sex of their next baby. Parents from around the world, including apparently India, are forking out around $19,000 ( about Rs 8.55 lakh) for a …
Scientists have found a "missing link' between fish and land animals that include the prehistoric ancestors of humans. The discovery of the new animal, called Tiktaalik (meaning a large freshwater fish), was reported in Nature (Vol 440, No 7085, April 6, 2006). Found in Ellesmere Island in northern Canada, the …
It is one of the mysteries of gene regulation. The male of a species has one X-chromosome, the females two. So it would seem that female cells would produce twice as much proteins encoded by X-chromosome as males. But this does not happen. The cells resolve the problem by either …
The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology here has developed India's first "gene knockout' mouse which cannot produce milk. With his development, India has joined the select list of nations which have carried out similar experiments. The CCMB scientists achieved it by manipulating a milk-producing gene in the mouse that …
University of California, San Francisco, scientists are attempting to use controversial cloning techniques to generate human embryonic stem cell lines, resuming an effort shelved as a failure five years ago. At least half a dozen other groups in the United States and abroad also are getting involved in such work, …
in perhaps the most significant contribution to the world of science from India in recent years, a team of researchers from Hyderabad has helped resolve the mystery of how animals grow from a fertilised egg. It is well known that cells differentiate and proliferate to form various organs that a …
A private firm, LifeCell, has announced the launch of its collection centre for umbilical cord stem cell banking. LifeCell has a stem cell processing and banking facility near Chennai. Other places where the collection centres have opened are: Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Kochi and Surat. According …
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University in the US have discovered a genetic switch that is crucial to cell survival. They found the gene HIF-1 controls the rate at which cells are supplied energy and even helps them cope with the absence of oxygen. A cell's energy demands are met …
human genes associated with metabolism, skin pigmentation, brain function and reproduction have evolved in response to recent environmental changes, according to a study by scientists at the University of Chicago, usa. Led by Jonathan Pritchard, the researchers scanned the entire human genome. They found more than 700 genetic variants that …
Melbourne's Australian Stem Cell Centre and a leading US university with $US3 billion ($A4.1 billion) to spend have sealed a unique deal that forms one of the most significant groups in regenerative medicine in the world. The deal between the ASCC at Monash University and the University of California San …
US tourism industry leaders and top government officials yesterday urged collaboration between the public and private sectors to stem the shrinking US market share of international travellers. Michael Chertoff, homeland security secretary, told industry leaders at the Global Travel and Tourism Summit in Washington that the government was attempting to …
Differences have emerged between senior ministers in the lead-up to a politically sensitive cabinet decision on stem cell research. Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane declared yesterday it would be "negligent" for Australia to abandon cutting-edge stem cell research and deny sufferers of many diseases "the very hope of science improving …
A high-tech laboratory with a stem cell research facility will come up in Salt Lake, West Bengal within the next two years. Authorities of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology declared today that they will build the research facility on their proposed Salt Lake campus. CSIR has already acquired land …
a group of scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (embl) in Heidelberg, Germany, has developed a computational method to reconstruct the tree of life
An Indo-French team of scientists has for the first time established that genes in chromosomes have a "switch on and off" system working through the RNA interference (RNAi), which plays a vital role in development of the animal and human body. "Genes in chromosomes switch on and off like electrical …
