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. …
researchers in the us have identified several seed varieties that are resistant to ozone damage. The findings would help farmers to select crop seeds that are less susceptible to damage from ground-level ozone. Scientists at the us Department of Agriculture's ( usda ) research center, Beltsville, Maryland, have found that …
in a new book titled Mad Cow USA: Could The Nightmare Happen Here? co-authors John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton say that thousands of cattle in the us are carrying a deadly strain of bovine spongiform encephalopathy ( bse ), commonly known as "mad cow disease'. But the administration has played …
A cheap, effective technique to remove toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from contaminated soil has been developed in the US by scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee. The technique is considered an important advance since, unlike the biological remediation (disintegration) process developed by research workers in the early 1990s, it …
Women who gain weight between the age of 18 years and post-menopausal years may be twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those who do not. Zhiping Huang and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, say that staying within 2-4 kg of one's weight …
Babies infected at birth with a common sexually transmitted bacterium Ureaplasma urealyticum , are more likely to develop asthma in later life. More than 50 per cent women in western countries are found to be asthmatic. Rita DeLollis at the Winchester and Lawrence Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, screened throats of 132 …
Treatment with an anti-depressant drug can help smokers give up the habit. People who smoke are more likely to have depression than non-smokers. Richard Hurt and his colleagues of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA, conducted a study on 615 people. They found that an anti-depressant bubropion helped many of …
biological pesticides offer a more sound means of controlling insect pests than synthetic chemicals. A bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis ( b t) produces a crystalline protein that is highly toxic to moth larvae. At a time, when nearly 500 species of arthropods have evolved insecticide resistance to other pesticides, there …
nerve cells help detect an object even if it has been seen just once. They are stimulated by vision, but continue to respond in the dark as if the stimulus is present and visible. M S A Graziano and his colleagues of the Department of Psychology, Princeton University, usa , …
Diamonds can be a computer's best friend, say researchers at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, USA. They claim that diamond coating could allow computer disk-drives to hold nearly 20 times more data than the existing drives. Hard drives can store merely four gigabytes of data. But the …
Passenger aircraft in the future may fly without wind screens for pilots to peer through. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been experimenting with a wind screen-less cockpit they may find application on the second generation supersonic airliner. The NASA has developed a scale model of a fighter …
the South Korean government temporarily banned the import of fruits from two areas of California on November 7 following the us administration's declaration that harmful insects were found in the fruit grown in the region. The ban covers nine fruits including oranges, lemons, melons, kiwi and limes grown in Walnut …
The absence of a mother's touch can severely affect the development of an infant's brain. Mary Carlson, psychologist and neuroscientist at the Havard Medical School, USA, says that the lack of physical touch increases levels of a critical stress hormone in a child's brain, making a baby ill-natured. This may …
it is a common belief that computers and telecoms have been playing a major role in accelerating economic growth. The mindboggling investment by companies in the us on computers and telecommunications further proves the necessity of information technology in recent times. Yet, if official figures are to be believed, the …
engineers are planning to build highly efficient ships and submarines that would be based on penguin's propulsion system. Michael Triantafyllou, a professor at the department of ocean engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, usa , and graduate student James Czarnowski have built a prototype vessel called
Scientists are developing radar flashlights that would see through doors and walls. The device developed at Atlanta's Georgia Tech Research Institute, USA, can detect a stationary human's presence through solid wood or a 20 cm block wall from nearly 1.2 m away. The flashlight uses simple microwave technology. It emits …
listening to climate change talk in the us and in Europe, I wonder whether we all are living on the same planet. Several European governments have detailed plans for cutting down their use of fossil fuels (hence emissions of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide) by 15 to 20 per cent …
Although most falling debris is burnt up when it re-enters the atmosphere, there have been costly and potentially dangerous exceptions. On January 24, 1978, a nuclear-powered satellite launched by the erstwhile Soviet Union, Cosmos 954, crashed over northwestern Canada, spilling radioactive debris. The Canadian government presented the USSR with a …
the Mars Pathfinder may have lost its way on the red planet. Scientists at the us National Aeronautics and Space Administration's ( nasa 's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( jpl ) at Pasadena, California, have virtually given up hope of reviving the probe. Both the Pathfinder lander and its 10-kg rover, …
