Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
• Oil provides energy for 95 per cent of the world’s transportation - Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, had an annual profit of US $17 billion in 2001 (equivalent to about five per cent of India’s GDP) - Oil, which could have made Nigeria one of the world’s wealthiest …
President and chief executive of Monsanto Co Hendrik Verfaillie resigned following a series of losses. Monsanto is one of the biggest agriculture and biotechnology companies in the world. Verfaillie, who has held the post for only two years, helped pioneer the company's role in the introduction of genetically modified crops …
Oil field services company Halliburton Co, once headed by us Vice President Dick Cheney, has reached an agreement by which it could settle all its present and future claims of individuals affected by asbestos. Once the agreement is approved, the company will have to put up 59.5 million shares, us …
According to a General Accounting Office (gao) review, the us Center for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc), Atlanta, Georgia, which is supposed to keep track of dangerous pathogens, is not functioning efficiently. The gao review began in November 2001, following a series of anthrax attacks in the wake of the …
Some of the coolest sounds in the world are coming from a laboratory in Pennsylvania. At the lab, two US researchers are working on ways to use sound to chill food. They have produced a sonic fridge that converts very loud sounds to directly cool a fridge containing ice cream. …
If Bahamas-based cloning company Clonaid is to be believed, the world's first cloned baby, Eve, was born on December 26, 2002. The birth, at an undisclosed location, went "very well', according to Brigitte Boisselier, head of Clonaid. Boisselier is connected to the Raelian Movement, a group that believes that life …
a recent study could have broad implications for farmers' ability to stop pests from becoming resistant to pesticides. Scientists from the us-based North Carolina State University have found that in the us, cotton pests mature feeding on corn all summer before moving towards south to munch cotton in the autumn. …
Despite being at the receiving end of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, the us is drifting away from the convention that seeks to ban biological weapons. On top of it, Washington has readied a plan for vaccinating us troops against smallpox and enhancing its biodefence infrastructure. Against this backdrop, the country's …
six companies control 91 per cent of the us automobile market. They are also responsible for more than 90 per cent of vehicular emissions in the country. This was revealed in an environmental rating of automobile companies in the us, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (ucs), a non-governmental …
jumbo fighters: Tiny bugs would no longer trouble jumbo jets. If undetected, microbes in aviation fuel harm the planes' instruments and even eat through the wings. They also produce misleading readings in fuel gauges. Now, Cardiff-based ECHA Microbiology has developed an industry-standard test for the pests, which lets non-microbiologists check …
Environmental groups in the US and Canada have got together and filed a suit in a federal district court in Washington DC, challenging the US' continued use of wood preservatives containing arsenic and other harmful substances. The groups say the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has "overwhelming data' on the …
president Bush may now be compelled to reconsider his climate change policy. The most comprehensive study conducted in the us about the potential greenhouse impacts details how major water problems could evolve over the next 50 years in the western parts of the country. Many people have heard about the …
WORLD AIDS DAY . MTV To mark the occasion of World AIDS Day on December 1, MTV organised concerts at Cape Town, South Africa and Seattle, USA, featuring well-known performers such as Puff Diddy, Alicia Keyes and others. The show was broadcast on global MTV channels and on more than …
The organisation Californians for Alternatives to Toxics (cats) has sued the state's department of pesticide regulation (dpr) for not following the California Environmental Quality Act. The petitioner alleges that dpr has not reviewed the impacts of pesticides widely used in the Sierra Nevada amphibian habitats. This, it contends, has led …
The detrimental effects of air pollution on health have been recognized for most of the last century. Effective legislation has led to a change in the nature of the air pollutants in outdoor air in developed countries, while combustion of raw fuels in the indoor environment remains a major health …
This paper presents maps of anthropogenic Hg emissions worldwide within a 1°×1° latitude/longitude grid system in 1995. As such, the paper is designed for modelers simulating the Hg transport within air masses and Hg deposition to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Maps of total Hg emissions and its three main chemical …
Breakthroughs in biotechnology may finally resolve the quest for the elusive blue rose, which alas does not exist because the flower lacks the required pigment genes. At us-based Vanderbilt University's school of medicine, scientists studying how drugs metabolise in the liver, stumbled across a human enzyme that may hold the …
undersea hydrothermal vents have for long been considered as possible sites for the origin of life. But scientists have often wondered whether the atmospheric conditions near the vents were suitable for dna, rna or proteins to accumulate in concentrations high enough to get kick-start evolution. Researchers from Rockfeller University in …
