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. …
Over a period of time, composite materials such as plastics wear because of day-to-day usage, creating tiny cracks that continue to grow until the item breaks. But now Scott White, a materials engineer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA,has created composites that can fix its own micro cracks before …
the Russian mafia has been accused of practising illegal fishing in the western Bering Sea. In an investigative study by Trade record analysis of flora and fauna in commerce (traffic), it is claimed that fish poaching amounting to us $ 4 billion annually is being carried out by organised crime …
the lawn waste recycling industry in the us is alarmed after traces of Clopyralid, a herbicide harmful to garden vegetables, was found in compost made from recycled grass, straw and manure in California, Washington and Pennsylvania as well as New Zealand. The industry is demanding the elimination of the herbicide …
The US Supreme Court has upheld the legality of patents for plants and seeds. The recent ruling will help the crop-biotechnology industry. But it has upset populist farm groups and anti-biotechnology groups. The 6-2 opinion has kept intact utility patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in the …
a team of researchers believes it has found another component in the complex system that makes us sleep at night and wake up in the morning. Humans have an automatic system that responds to day and night. Researchers think that figuring out factors that promote wakefulness and sleep could, in …
does evolution occur through very small genetic changes involving a very large number of genes, or does it occur through changes associated with a smaller number of genes? This question has nagged researchers for decades now. They have been studying the possible mechanisms underlying evolution but the challenge has been …
today, the quest to eliminate obesity has more than a slim chance of succeeding. Thanks to the discovery of a gene that controls the growth of fat cells. The recent research published in the journal Genes and Development says that the gene, discovered by Harvard University and pharmaceutical company Pfizer …
the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (bwc), banning biological and toxin weapons, has reached a stalemate with the us proposing the termination of the ad hoc group (ahg) at the Fifth bwc Review Conference that was held in Geneva from November 19 to December 7. Ironically, despite the September 11 terrorist …
Whales and dolphins could be dying because of noise pollution. Researchers from the Navy Marine Mammal Programme in San Diego, USA, claim that noise from the US navy sonar and explosives tests as well from tankers and oil exploration activities is causing mammals to dive deeper, thereby, increasing their chances …
Only about half the people with the highest risk from AIDS are tested in the US, according to a study done by researchers of the Atlanta-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. This means that infection rates in the country could be higher than what health experts estimated. Just 54 …
Researchers in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), USA, have cloned and identified the role of a regulatory gene whose malfunctioning can lead to sudden cardiac death. In the presence of underlying heart failure, the gene appears culpable in the occurrence of cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heart beats, that …
a chicken a day would not keep bugs at bay. Yes, this mantra has been resounding in the scientific circle for long, but now scientists have found conclusive evidence that meat laced with antibiotics promotes the growth of super strains of drug-resistant microbes. Recently conducted studies show that regularly feeding …
hudson river, flowing through many us cities, will soon be depolluted. The us Environmental Protection Agency (epa) recently gave a nod to a massive dredging project aimed at removing around 2.02 million cubic metres of contaminated sediments from a 64 kilometre section of the river. For decades, the epa has …
Saving just two female northern right whales a year could halt the decline of the species. Female right whales are by far the most vulnerable among the species, shows an analysis of over 10,000 right-whale sightings since 1980 by Masami Fujiwara and Hal Caswell at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution …
about 470 million years ago, land plants had bloomed for the first time. But scientists, till recently, were unable to track down their family history. Now, by studying the gene sequences of common fresh water algae, researchers from the University of Maryland, usa, have traced this family tree. They have …
salmons from two rivers have shrunk in size due to a decades-old fight for food in the Gulf of Alaska. This was discovered by scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, usa, who used high-resolution digital imaging equipment to look at about 2,000 fish scales taken from chum salmon caught …
a number of cloned monkey embryos that look healthy are in reality a "gallery of horrors' deep within. This was revealed during a study done by a researcher of Advanced Cell Technology (act), a us-based company that recently cloned human embryos for the first time in the world history. The …
DID modern medicine inadvertently give birth to one of the deadliest diseases of the 20th century? This is the question that is currently haunting medical circles . It is triggered by a hypothesis that points to a chilling linkage between large-scale use of penicillin injections and the origin and spread …
Given the lack of ability and desire around the world to get to the root of the global conflicts, it was clear to many of us a decade ago that bioterrorism and biological warfare would soon be upon us. Therefore, when Saddam Hussain said during the Iraq-Kuwait conflict in 1991 …
