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. …
the International Maritime Organisation (imo), a un agency, has recently approved a convention that sets up rules and regulations about liability and compensation in cases of oil spills by ships. Until now imo rules covered spills from tankers carrying oil as cargo. The convention covers pollution damage in the territories, …
In a bid to protect its beef exportsthe Argentine government concealed an outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease for monthsaccording to media reports. This disclosure was followed by an immediate ban of Argentine beef by the usthe European Union and other countries. The country's agriculture minister and the head of the …
this monumental book is a fascinating analysis and documentation of the development of urban sanitation infrastructure in the us . It takes one through an illuminating journey spanning almost 500 years from the urban epidemics of the early 1500s to the debates around waste incinerators in the 1980s and beyond. …
a new process, devised by researchers at the us department of energy has made it commercially viable to recover a valuable rare-earth element from tons of stockpiled magnetic scrap. They have refined high-energy neodymium-iron-boron magnets, which are used extensively in automotive, consumer electronics and biomedical applications. The superior performance of …
the turning point in the history of planetary exploration came in 1976. Two Viking crafts, launched by the us, tested the soil on Mars for microorganisms. Unfortunately, they found none. Scientists concluded that life did not exist on Mars, or at least on the parts of the planet where the …
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 …
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, have developed a self- healing plastic that could be useful in repairing cracked plastic items and in recycling plastics. Most composite materials, out of which a variety of things ranging from aircraft wings to circuit boards are made, consist of fibres …
the infrastructure for coordinating research about various worldwide environmental changes must be restructured for taking correct decisions on issues such as greenhouse gas emission policies. This was stated in a report by the National Research Council (nrc), which aims to influence president George Bush's administration. The report
" i oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 per cent of the world, including major population centres such as China and India, from compliance and would cause serious harm to the us economy.' This retrogressive statement made by us President George W Bush in a letter to Republican …
The Maheshwar hydroelectric project on Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh has suffered another setback. The Portuguese government has refused to become a guarantor for a loan of Rs 200 crore being given to the project. The refusal means that Asia Brown Boveri (abb), a multinational company, will not be able …
biodegradable plastic is now a reality. Environmental Polymers Group (epg), a us-based private company, has created a biodegradable plastic wrapper that is soluble in water under the right conditions. In coming up with its product, the company claims, it has beaten some of the big plastic manufacturers, such as Du …
Patients who had smoked just before the onset of a heart attack had bigger blood clots in their coronary arteries than those who hadn't smoked. These are the results of a study conducted by a team headed by Murray A Mittleman, director of cardiovascular epidemiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital …
Keeping the houses cleaner could prevent about 40 per cent of asthmatic cases in children below the age of six. A recent study, conducted in the US, reports that factors like tobacco smoke, pets in the house and use of gas oven for heating accounts for 39.2 per cent of …
the orangutan could go extinct within a decade unless illegal logging in the habitat and poaching is controlled . These are the findings of a research conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society (wcs) based in the us. The study has documented the tremendous decline in orangutan population throughout its range. …
The residents of Vieques, a Puerto Rican island, have achieved a landmark victory in a long-standing dispute about the us navy's activities on their island. The us navy uses Vieques to provide training to battle groups. Donald H Rumsfeld, the us defence secretary, recently ordered the navy to call off …
earthquake-resistant building codes came to the rescue of the residents of Seattle and prevented large-scale damage, when an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck the city on February 28. The quake was the city's first major test of the building policy, known as seismic retrofitting. "Seattle's regularly-updated building …
soot or black carbon particles combine with other aerosols to influence climate. The magnitude of the climate forcing caused directly or indirectly by black carbon exceeds that caused by methane, suggesting that black carbon may be the second most important component of global warming after carbon dioxide. Mark Z Jacobson, …
A team of researchers from the us and New Zealand has found penguin chicks in the Antarctic covered in oil. It has completed an environmental survey of a former Antarctic research station at Cape Hallett and recommended steps to safeguard penguin chicks from melt pools contaminated with oil from an …
