Wiping out all of Africa’s elephants could accelerate Earth’s climate crisis by allowing 7% more damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists say. But conserving forest elephants may reverse the trend, providing a service worth $43billion in storing carbon, the academics found. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that …
PUSHPA M BHARGAVA Former director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology Manipulating research is not a new phenomenon. Earlier, the reason for manoeuvring the results of scientific research was professional rivalry. But for the last four decades, it has been economic gain and power, which could be personal, corporate or …
Antarctica seems to be melting and contributing to the slow rise of the ocean levels, scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) report. Using two sets of radar data from the European Remote Sensing Satellite, the scientists found that a large amount of …
Scientists in California and Finland have done what may be the first study that provides estimates of the strength of genetic influences on the size and shape of different parts of the brain. The study, which compared brain images of identical and fraternal twins, shows very high hereditary incidence for …
Scientists have discovered that nature may be slowly scrubbing the lower portion of the river Hudson of its pollution. During a year long study of the river's lower estuary, scientists from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers and the State University of New Jersey, USA, found that …
Scientists in India have created a new vaccine for anthrax, which they say could be less toxic and more effective than the one that is currently available. The alternative has been developed by a team from the Centre for Biotechnology at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University. It is made …
The prestigious Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, US , has admitted that one of its researchers used patients at the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) in Kerala as human guinea pigs to test experimental cancer drugs. The internal investigation conducted by the varsity has found that its faculty member carried …
a loophole in the law could make human cloning legal for scientists in Britain. This loophole, exposed in a uk court by anti-cloning campaigners, has triggered a lot of furore. Following the court's ruling in favour of the activists, the British government has said it would consider emergency legislation to …
the mystery shrouding the sudden collapse of Middle East civilisations more than 4,000 years ago might just have been solved. A two-mile-wide circular depression which looks like an impact crater has been found through studies of satellite images of southern Iraq. Scientists say that the depression raises the possibility of …
imagine a whale running to catch a prey, instead of swimming in the ocean to gulp one? The picture may be unimaginable today, but it was a reality about 50 million years ago. Scientists have found that the primitive hoofed mammals were actually predecessors to the whale family. The evidence …
A supposedly scientific expedition into the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (ndbr) has stirred the minds of people in Lata village of district Chamoli, in Uttaranchal. They say the expedition was a farce. They claim it was a surreptitious attempt to open the region to high-end tourism with tour operators and …
Scientists have demonstrated that undifferentiated human embryonic stem cells can be turned into blood cells. The work, conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, demonstrates that undifferentiated stem cells can be coaxed to become primitive types of blood cells that later develop into more mature types of blood cells that, …
it is one of the unwritten assumptions of physics that the laws of nature are the same not only in all parts of the Universe but also at all times. This assumption is what allows us to say meaningful things about very distant realms of our Universe and also about …
an anti-diabetic substance is currently being tested in India for accelerated stability and shelf life studies. The news is that the substance is being synthesised from a source not found on land but under water. It's derived from a marine organism. The compound has been also found to be effective …
A magnet when heated above its so-called Curie temperature becomes demagnetised. Recently a calcium compound, cab6, doped with lanthanum was reported to have a Curie temperature of about 600
for the first time ever, a joint team of Indian and British scientists have found bacterial cells believed to be from outer space. According to them, it is the first real evidence of the presence of living organism floating in the Earth's stratosphere. "Air samples collected aseptically over tropical India …
Kerala is setting the trend for the rest of country in more ways than one. Recently, an action plan was formulated to protect the state's biodiversity. The Peechi-based Kerala Forest Research Institute ( kfri ) has drafted the Biodiversity Conservation Order 2000, which has been approved by the Kerala biodiversity …
A proposal to give remuneration to scientists and engineers in accordance with their work is on the anvil in Pakistan. "The allowances and other financial benefits would be offered to scientists and engineers on the impact factor of publications of their works at different international journals and its citations,' said …
gravity pulls together objects of all sizes. It's easily observable in case of planets and other celestial bodies that are spaced wide apart but its difficult to observe its effects on minute masses that are kept close. Scientists at the University of Washington, usa, have verified the working of the …
