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 …
it is, in fact, nitrogen's extraordinary usefulness to life which is at the heart of the damage it can cause. It ranks fourth as the most common chemical in living tissues, after oxygen, carbon and hydrogen. It is important for plant nutrition, and thus for animal life as well. It …
in the specialised world of modern science, it is difficult to find cosmologists, planetary scientists and microbiologists in the same room. But a host of disciplines gathered in Washington dc, recently to discuss the expansion of work on the origins of the universe, planetary systems and life itself. The goal …
Every star has a life and a subsequent death. But still, each one is different in the amount of darkness it drives away due to its own luminance. Born on November 9, 1934, Carl Sagan was certainly one of the brightest. Sagan died of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer …
Scientists at the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences dipas), New Delhi, have recently developed a gas mask containing five per cent carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) and 95 per cent oxygen ( O 2 ), that reduces hearing loss among industrial workers. dipas director, W Selwamurthy said …
a team of scientists at North Carolina State University, US, headed by Boris Yakobson, is investigating microscopic tubes of a material related to c-60, the third form of carbon, the discovery of which won this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Rick Smalley, Robert Curl and Harold Kroto. Yakobson's computer …
WHEN science becomes business, the winner is the one who publishes the most- Noticeably, as research publications became the primary determinant of success of a scientist in the market place, a'publish or perish'regime of practising science has been unleashed over the years. This has increasingly led to scientists racing to …
"GOD is dead", had asserted Nietzsche, proclaiming the arrival of the age of rationality. It is true that for most people, "God" is the antidote to the fear of the unknown, a concept that accounts for all that is unexplainable. Therefore, it seems but natural that as science expands its …
TO COMMENCE a review of Pais' recent book, with 'he does it again', would take away its poignancy. His previous work, Subtle is the Lord, dealt with Einstein's science and his life. This volume, Pais informs us, is not meant to be a sequel to his previous works, but is …
WITH the ivory towers of Indian science Cracking up under economic pressure And the winds I of liberalisation blowing fircely into the cobwebbed windows of the scientific edifice, the talk in scientif- ft bes. all of a sudden, hinged on hmm accountability and com- e - words that had apparently …
ASTROPHYSICIST Subramanyam Chandrasekhar, 83, died of a heart attack on August 21 in Chicago. Humiliated and laughed at when he presented his theory on dying stars for the first time at the Royai Astronomical Society, London, in 1935, recognition for hisepochal contribution came in the form of a Nobel Prize …
American scientists are trying their best to change the popular impression that they are all nerds. Standmuffins of Science is a 1996 calendar with boffins for models. The photographs show them exercising their muscles, not their brains, through skating and running. But they haven't discarded mentation altogether: biographical details under …
Polish-born Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize. She is perhaps the also the first woman scientist whose life Hollywood thought eventful enough to make a film on. She was portrayed as a paragon of scientific virtue, noble and self-sacrificing. Now, a long-awaited biography***(aaaaarrrgh! what …
The New Science Journalists is packed with the kind of science reporting that is intelligent, well-written, entertaining and educative. The editors of the book, like the participants of the Blinding with Science conference, feel that the general public lacks understand- ing and appreciation ofscience. A few people have suggested that …
It is exactly 60 years since the publication of 2 "thought experiments" designed to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum mechanics, and to make physicists come up with a better view of reality than the standard 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation is the standard way quantum physics is …
All of us are familiar with real numbers. But numbers having both real and imaginary parts are called complex numbers. A complex number (y) can be denoted as y=a+ib Where a and b are real numbers and I is an imaginary number (defined as the square root of -1). In …
TILL recently, matter was for scientists a chimera that had 4 known faces -- solid, liquid, gas, and the lesser known plasma, a state of matter that materialises at extremely high temperatures. But 70 years ago, Einstein had posited a new state of matter existent at extremely low temperatures, very …
WHILE the world celebrates a dramatic reduction in polio incidents, its scientific and medical communities mourn the death of the conquerer of the disease -- Jonas Salk -- at the age of 80 from heart failure on June 23, at Green Hospital, La Jolla, California. Salk's story is one of …
Indian-born scientist, V.N. Mallikarjun Rao has been bestowed with the title of "distinguished scientist' by Dupont. Rao who had joined the company in 1973, has 55 patents in different areas which contributed to the development of polymers, agrichemicals, flurochemicals and spandex fibres for which the company is now famous. In …
HISTORY informs us that the year Galileo died was the year Newton was born, thus ensuring a seamless continuum of the spirit of the ongoing revolution in physics. Martin Bernal's recent volumes on the Afro-Asiatic Roots of Western Civilisation, which appeared a couple of years ago, could be seen as …
