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. …
among the novel methods of combating cancer are some drugs that fight the disease by blocking blood supply to the cancerous cells. These drugs stop angiogenesis
a recent research now says that depression may be as dangerous as high cholesterol in giving you a heart attack. The new study by William W Eaton of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, in Baltimore, us, shows that those depressed were four times more likely to …
biomass has moved a key step towards competitiveness with fossil fuels. The McNeil generating station, a biomass power plant in Burlington, us, when completed, will house the world's first gasifier capable of burning biomass for electric power generation. Biomass gasification has the potential to marry the environmental advantages of biomass …
In a desperate bid to stop mushrooming legal claims against the industry, the British tobacco firm, BAT Industries PLC, is considering settling compensation claims brought by Americans who are suffering from smoking-related illnesses. The company's shares fell sharply after a jury in Florida ordered its US tobacco unit to pay …
American troops are currently using computers that can give instant translations of foreign-language documents. Armed with the new device called the Forward Area Language Converter (Falcon), they will be able to assess the significance of any papers they discover, by simply feeding them into a scanner and reading the text …
tomorrow's commuters may not travel to work in cars or underground railways, but in overhead carriages 16 feet above city streets. Called System 21, it differs from the conventional light rail transport system in that the trains travel above an overhead six feet steel beam. Futrex, a transport technology company …
stroke victims will now have better chances of survival. In a pathbreaking experiment, doctors from ucla Medical Centre, California, have developed a technique that reverses the plumbing of the body's circulatory system by using veins to supply blood to oxygen-starved parts of the brain. The new approach has been tried …
John Heyning and James Mead from the American National Museum of Natural History in Washington, US, have analysed the eating habits of whales. They found that the female beaked whales or Ziphiidae are toothless, while the males have just one or two pairs of teeth. These whales can barely open …
the us has evolved a multi-pronged stra-tegy to tackle the problem of greenhouse gas emissions calling for the setting up of emission targets, reporting them and budgeting emissions by deve-loping and developed countries. According to the us state department, the guidelines will help both the developed and developing countries in …
skyscrapers could soon be one of the solutions to urban pollution problems. A proposal to that effect has been introduced by Melvin Prueitt, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, us, who has been awarded four patents for several tower configurations. These towers will transform hundreds of …
contaminated soils can be cleaned if exposed to bacterial action. But the effectiveness of any such clean-up operation can seriously get hampered if the population of protozoa, which eat these bacteria, is not controlled. Bryan Travis and his team at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, us, have discovered …
the possibility of life on Mars has been given a jolt by two new analyses, one published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta and the other accepted for publication by the same journal. This could well end claims made by nasa scientist David McKay and his team in August 1996, of …
Agracetus, a company in Middle town, Wisconsin, US , has genetically engineered cotton plants to produce fibres containing granules of plastic for making ultrawarm winter wear, carpets and insulation material. Maliyakal John of Agracetus injected cotton plants with genes from Alcaligenes eutrophus , a bacterium that makes a biodegradable plastic …
if a scrubbing technique developed by a us research team turns out well, cleaner coal power may soon be possible. Laboratory experiments show that the method is nearly twice as effective as existing techniques at removing sulphur dioxide, a by-product and one of the gases causing acid rain, and can …
"Nitrogen enrichment is pushing us towards a weedier world,' says David Wedin of the University of Toronto, Canada. Burning fossil fuel releases nitrogen oxides, which ecologists believe could act as fertilisers and promote luxuriant growth of weeds. This shift in vegetation could hinder the earth's ability to moderate global warming, …
for all parents in the us who suspect that their children are using drugs, a government-approved kit will soon be at their disposal. The kit called "Dr Brown's Home Drug Testing System" has recently been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (fda) for use. The nod came four months …
baby food manufacturers have been found guilty of violating international codes which seek to safeguard infants' health. A study released recently by the Interagency Group on Breastfeeding Monitoring, a coalition of 27 health and development groups in the uk, found that many companies regularly breach domestic and international regulations on …
RECYCLERS turn old cans and bottles into new ones and old newspapers into today's daily. Now it is the turn of waste tyres in the country? Robert Romine, working at Rouse Rubber Industries, Mississippi, us, has introduced an eco-friendly technique for processing old tyres by using microorganisms (Environmental Health Perspectives, …
sharks in the Atlantic are in dire straits indeed. Their plight has led the national marine fisheries service of the us to propose stringent restrictions on shark fishing. There has been a sharp decline in shark populations
High Speed Civil Transport, a joint US-Russian project to test Russia's supersonic airplane, the TU-144L on which future concords are to be modelled is underway at the Tupolev aviation complex in Russia. NASA is paying the complex US $10m for trial flights and equipment. A number of other aeronautics companies …
