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. …
DECADES of industrial growth, while making our lives easy and comfortable, has also degraded the environment severely. Today, we are paying the price for it: global warming has reared its ugly head. Already, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (co2) are 30 per cent higher than the pre-industrial levels. In 1995, …
THANKS to global warming, the Arctic is slowly melting. And this climate change is affecting wildlife, according to a US biologist. Rising temperatures, which allowed the black guillemots to gain a foothold here some two-and-a-half decades back, are now pushing these birds out.Black guillemots live right across the higher latitudes …
SCIENTISTS at the New York University have come up with another possible way of helping women overcome infertility: they took the genes of an infertile woman and injected them into a donor egg from a fertile woman. The technique, which is similar to the one which was used to clone …
According to a report, a moderate diet does not reduce cholesterol unless it is supplemented with exercise. Studies have shown that a healthy bloodstream carries low levels of "bad" cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high levels of "good" cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein (HDL). Ultra low-fat diets reduce LDL but …
THERE's a lot more to good sex. Especially if you're really looking forward to having a baby. A recent study by Jacky Boivin of Cardiff University, USA, says good sex raises the chances of conceiving. Boivin examined the cervical mucus of 71 women, within two to three hours after they …
A SMALL radio-controlled aircraft could soon be monitoring the air for signs of biological weapons. Fitted with a sensor developed at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, the craft will venture into possible danger zones and send back data on any biowar bacteria it detects. The biosensor was …
Scientists at the United States department of agriculture are conducting studies on the biology and the ecology of mushrooms to provide a better understanding to manage resources efficiently. Research is being conducted to ensure that harvests are sustainable and to determine the influences of forest management practices on fruits and …
IDLENESS has a hefty price tag, inform old proverbs. And in this age of electronic gadgetry, that price tag has become even heftier, inform US-based scientists and researchers. Electrical and electronic gadgets such as televisions, compact disc (CD) players, videos and burglar alarms are consuming more energy in stand-by mode …
COG and Kismet are "brothers". They might not share the same blood, but they definitely share a microchip or two. Their parents, several scientists wracking their brains to come up with intelligent, artificial life forms, are trying to "teach" this robotic duo a thing or two about the world they …
THE mid and late-1980s witnessed global tension rise when scientists discovered a hole in the ozone layer of our planet's atmosphere. This, they said, could be dangerous as ozone shields us from the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation that can cause skin cancer. The main culprit responsible for "punching" the hole, …
The next generation of anti-AIDS drugs could be based on a chemical extracted from green coffee beans, US researchers claim. Edward Robinson and his colleagues from the University of California made extracts from over 60 plants routinely used by medicine men of the Kallawaya tribes in Bolivia. They discovered that …
All stocks of smallpox virus in laboratories should be destroyed as soon as possible, scientists in the US have warned. No one has been immunised against the once-fatal disease for more than two decades now. And hardly any facilities for making the vaccine still exist, says Donald Henderson, epidemiologist at …
CANCER VACCINE: Researchers at the Kanazawa University and Kyoritsu College of Pharmacy in Japan claim to have developed a cancer vaccine that boosts the body's capacity to build anti-cancer immune responses. According to the researchers, when laboratory mice were injected with this vaccine, transplanted cancer cells failed to multiply. If …
BETWEEN our eyes, something always smells. Right, it is the nose. And till now, the nose has always taken the rear seat when it came to radical medical breakthroughs. But now, those with a nose for innovation have found a novel use for... well, the nose, US researchers say very …
A number of mysteries including why Saturn appears to be much younger than the rest of the planets may soon be resolved. Gilbert Collins and his colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA, are working to unearth the reality. They have conducted studies with vast quantities of …
Scientists in the US have conducted experiments that could help manufacture strong bullet-proof vests. They have proved that nanotubes are about 200 times tougher than any other fibre. "It's amazing but it is true," says Daniel Wagner, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute at Rehovot, Israel. According to him, the …
Radio dish pieces which may have picked up some interesting evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence are on sale now. In 1977, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) programme was carried out by a huge Big Ear Dish at the Ohio State Radio Observatory, and it shot into fame when it picked up …
THEORIES of gravity are coming under scrutiny because of the bizarre behaviour of some spacecraft. "We have been working on this problem for several years, and we accounted for everything we could think of," says John Anderson, planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), …
WHEN Sharon Lopatha of Maryland, USA, disappeared in 1996, the police checked her home computer for clues. They learnt she had posted messages in a forum devoted to sexual sadism. Her body was found buried in the front yard of a man who browsed the same forum. In another instance, …
PLASTIC could soon form the heart of the "wired" home. According to American researchers, data for everything, from multichannel digital television to the Internet, could be channelled through cheap and easily-fitted optical fibres, and all because of an annoying effect that makes the substance useless for precision optics. Unlike glass, …
