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. …
Lightening never strikes in the same place twice, says a popular myth. But the scientists believe otherwise. They say lightening strikes actually depend on vegetation. D Dissing and David Verbyla, forestry experts at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, USA, recorded the patterns and intensities of lightening in Alaska between …
The theory that polar regions once experienced summers while the tropics froze under ice has recently been challenged by Darren Williams of Pennsylvania State University in usa. According to him, many organisms which survived this period would have died off if this had happened. Instead, Williams believes that the Earth's …
your telephone stops working, television conks out, bank account statement goes berserk and your computer? Well, it is dead. Welcome to the first day of the 21st century. The y2k syndrome has wrecked havoc on every computer and computer networks all across the planet. Can doomsday scenarios such as these …
wind energy is considered to be the world's fastest growing energy source. And why not. It generated a record 2,100 megawatts (mw) of power in 1998. This was 35 per cent more than the previous year, according to a study conducted by Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute based in …
those who have seen them say its an awe-inspiring sight: giant redwood trees in the fog. Towering above all other vegetation, these ancient biological wonders stand like mythical giants shrouded in the mist. It is a timeless landscape. But now, scientists think that the fog that wraps these giants in …
in order to counter military threat from North Korea, Japan's Defence Agency plans to set up research on a system to shoot down ballistic missiles. The Japanese intend to borrow technology from the us Department of Defence, which is developing a similar programme called the Theater High Altitude Area Defence …
Volcanoes triggered the deep freeze that has covered polar regions with ice for millions of years, say US geologists. For years, researchers have debated the causes of the latest series of ice ages, which began roughly 2.6 million years ago. Among the prime suspects were periodic changes in the tilt …
heart cells, unlike most cells in the human body, lose their ability to divide and multiply soon after their birth. However, by tinkering with the genes, researchers have created mice whose hearts do not lose this ability. They say the discovery could pave the way for treating heart failure using …
when William Gibson, the then-unknown author of cyber-age science fiction penned Neuromancer in the 1980s he had no way of knowing that many of his ideas, would become reality in this century itself. One of his ideas was to eliminate all visual display units and tv s by projecting images …
eleven years ago, about 4,000 metric tonnes of toxic incinerator ash was dumped from the city of Philadelphia, usa, near the town of Gonaives in Haiti. The waste was to be shipped back to the us in mid-November 1998. But the Caribbean Dredging Excavation, the company entrusted with collecting the …
Honey contains low-to-moderate levels of disease-fighting antioxidants with the dark-coloured variety containing more antioxidants than do lighter ones, US researchers announced recently. According to researchers May Berenbaum from University of Illinois in Urbana, USA, honey might "play an important
On November 5, 1998, a major breakthrough in organ transplant was achieved by two independent teams of scientists from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the John Hopkin's University School of Medicine in USA. From human embryos and foetuses, they cultured human embryonic stem cells which had the capacity …
A gene's DNA sequence reveals which amino acids will appear in the protein of the gene. To guess a new protein's function, scientists compare its amino acids with those of familiar proteins. If two proteins share much of their sequence, then chances are they do similar jobs. But the structure …
take big, complex machines and make them small. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of nanotechnology. But not just small, so very small that nanoengineers need powerful microscopes to even see them. And since the mid 1980s, nanotechnologists have periodically astonished us with micrometer-sized turbines, gears and other pieces …
Researchers in the US have used a washing powder ingredient to turn waste leather into a high-value protein used in the manufacture of adhesives and packaging films. Agricultural Research Service scientists used alkaline protease to break leather shavings into low value protein hydrolysate that can be used in fertilisers. By …
patenting of basmati rice by Ricetec Inc of the us has been in and out of the news since February 1998. In response to a public interest petition filed in the Supreme Court, the Attorney General of India says Indian scientists and the best legal brains in the us are …
a flawless countdown, a false dawn over much of Florida, gasps and cheers from onlookers marked the launch of space shuttle Endeavour , aptly named as it is humankind's first attempt to make a room with a view in outer space. The space shuttle blasted off from the Kennedy Space …
one of the reactions to the nuclear explo-sions at Pokhran has been the imposition of sanctions by the United States on various Indian institutions. These include all research institutes funded by the Depart-ment of Atomic Energy like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research ( tifr ) in Mumbai and the …
