The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has published the R&D; Roadmap for Green Hydrogen Ecosystem in India. This document was published on 13th October, 2023. One of the central pillars of the National Green Hydrogen Mission is the establishment of a supportive research and innovation ecosystem for green hydrogen …
Researchers at the us Agriculture Department claim that pest population in grain stores can be controlled by increasing the population of a tiny insect-eating bug. Lycotcoris Campestris -- the larger pirate bug -- is found in grain stores thriving on the insects that thrive on grain. According to entomologist Thomas …
THE direct steelmaking process, long the holy grail of researchers around the world, may soon be reality. Scientists from Nucor, a US steel producer, have identified iron carbide as a new raw material for steelmaking. The new technology aims at producing steel directly from iron carbide, cutting out expensive and …
COMPUTER models used by climatologists till date have come under a cloud. American researchers Peter Pilewski of National Aeronautical Space Agency's Ames Research Centre and Francisco Valero of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography indicate that clouds can absorb much more energy - up to 30 per cent of the incoming …
The department of biotechnology (dbt) is planning to promote research in correcting genetic disorders. Scientists will now be encouraged to produce proteins, vaccines and genes for treating hereditary disorders, stated renowned biotechnologist V K Vinayak, a dbt official, at a meet of Indian physiologists in New Delhi recently. Vinayak claimed …
Research indicates that there is still a place for that much maligned pesticide DDT, in controlling the Tse-tse fly, a vector in the debilitating disease trypanosomiasis -- the dreaded sleeping sickness. Scientists from Britain's Natural Resources Institute, who studied the impact of DDT in Zimbabwe, found that the pesticide had …
Several rare butterfly species are facing extinction with the uncannily swift habitat destruction of the Western Ghats. Of the 350 butterfly species available in the Ghats, up to 70 are at the brink of the precipice, warns Harish Gaonkar, an Indian-born scientist at Copenhagen's Zoological Museum, who is urgently mapping …
A team of Californian scientists has synthesised a poison which contributes to the lethality of "red tides" -- the sudden population explosion of certain microscopic algae in coastal waters. This work promises to boost the search for antidotes to treat red tide poisoning and the development of tests which would …
ANJU Sharma's reply to my letter (Down To Earth, November 15, 1994) is replete with misinterpretations, incomplete understanding and, in at least one instance, a downright falsehood. Nowhere do I state that all elephants in a population would regularly raid crops. I have recognised that only some among the males …
WHILE scientists debate the reality of global warming, an extraordinary experiment in the Pacific has dredged up impressive evidence in favour of the seemingly preposterous idea that pumping iron into the sea might stave off the heating of the planet. The theory is that many parts of the ocean lack …
Scientists from the Kochi-based Central Institute of Fisheries Technology have developed surgical suture -- a fibre for stitching up a wound -- from fish gut that can be absorbed by the body. "This is significant," says M K Mukukundan who specialises in biomedical products from fishery wastes, "because their manufacture …
Researchers associated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in 12 countries have embarked on a project that aims to develop new varieties of food crops that will be better at absorbing critical minerals directly from the soil. Says Howarth E Bouis, director, CGIAR Micronutrients Project, "This is …
What do you hope to achieve by patenting the protein gene extracted from Amaranthus or Ramdana? Cereals like rice and wheat are an important protein source. However, they are not nutritionally very efficient as they have very low concentrations of several essential amino acids, like tryptophan and lysine. Legumes like …
THE annual convention of the Indian Science Writers' Association (ISWA) always provides a contrast to most other scientific meets in the country, which tend to be gala, self-congratulatory affairs. In contrast, the ISWA gathering this year, held in Delhi on February 18-19, took a critical look at some skeletons in …
WANT to get vaccinated against malaria? Just chew a few tobacco leaves instead. Researcher Thomas H Turpen of the California-based Biosource Technologies Inc and his colleagues at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, the US, have worked out a way to produce an experimental vaccine against malaria by genetically …
RESEARCH at the Delhi-based Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) have developed an ecofriendly and biodegradable insecticide from marigold flowers. Scientists have found that 2 compounds present in the flower -- alphateriophene, or alpha-T, and erythrosin-B -- are effective against the larvae of the malaria-causing Anopheles mosquito as …
IRON alloys are usually hardened before they are shaped into products -- by a technique that is slow, polluting and expensive. But recently, scientists at the Pune-based Institute of Applied Research claim to have developed a process that is little of the above. The hardening process, called nitriding -- from …
SCIENTISTS from the Delhi-based National Institute of Immunology (NII) have developed a drug called MUJ-7, which they claim could be a potential weapon against cancer of the colon and rectum. The new drug's modus operandi is to starve the cancer cells of the growth factors that sustain them, explains Rama …
THE Environmental Resources Research Centre (ERRC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, seeks to promote research and studies in identification of natural resources, and their use by developing required technologies. The ERRC aims at spearheading the environment movement through planning r&d; in 6 major research areas including wetlands, wastelands and the Western Ghats …
Environment Resources Research Centre Pumalliyoorkonam Post Box 1230, Peroorkada Thiruvananthpuram 695 005 Kerala Association for Arid Lands Studies Box 41036 Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 79409-1036 USA Survey of Economic Plants for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Centre for Economic Botany Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond Surrey TW9 3AE UK NGO …
UNEDUCATED and less educated people in rural India suffer more from coronary heart disease than their better educated counterparts, a study by a team of doctors from Jaipur reveals. The scientists from Monilek Hospital and Research Centre and the University of Rajasthan also found that factors that increase the risk …
