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. …
SEVERAL thousand hectares of forests were destroyed in big wildfires that raged across southwest us in the beginning of May. A raging blaze which broke out in the 1,16-million-ha Tonto forest in Arizona, was brought under control after hundreds of firefighters battled it out for more than a week. The …
A TINY speck of particle floating in the air could ultimately send you to the grave. That air pollution leads to respiratory and heart ailments speeding up death, is a well known fact. But a recent study by an environmental group has revealed alarming facts about the lethal powers of …
ALL predictions about the world having sufficient oil stocks for the next 30 years may have been a lot of wishful thinking after all. A recent report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) based in Washington DC, says that oil supplies could start drying up as early as 2007 AD, …
IT COULD be the key to unlocking the mystery of the AIDS virus. Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Maryland, have found a protein that enables the entry Of HIV, the AIDS virus, into human immune system cells, signalling a deadly cycle of destruction. …
A bacterial colony was recently discovered 4,500 ft below the earth's surface, surviving apparently on only rock and water. The cluster was found in an aquifer near the river Columbia (close to the Hanford nuclear facility), in the state of Washington, US, by microbiologist Todd Stevens and geochemist James McKinley, …
THOSE taking a trip to space need no longer subsist on a staple diet of frozen food straight out of tins. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the us announced recently that a new strain of wheat has been developed that can be grown on international space stations and …
RESEARCH on climatic shifts and patterns acquires new dimensions every time scientists add a new reason to the list of factors responsible for these changes. The latest of these proposes that the waxing and waning of the sun - in a regular II -year cycle - may be responsible for …
TOUTED to be the best if not the only option for cures against major diseases, biotechnology had seemed to falter midway. Now, however, it is poised for a major breakthrough in treating cancer. A monoclonal antibody - a product of medical innovation - will soon have a go at treating …
Anthropologists at the Nevada State Museum, US, recently unearthed the oldest known mummy in North America, and they found it right on their own shelvest The mummy, known as the Spirit Cave man, had been found in a Nevada cave in 1940, but very recent advances in radiocarbon dating helped …
WILDLIFF conservation in the us received a jolt after the [louse of Representatives passed on April 24, what has been mis- named as the National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act. For it seeks to do precisely the opposite. One of its notorious features is that it allows the country's 500 odd …
McNeil Consumer Products of Fort Washington, US, has come out with Nictrol NS, aDasal spray containing 100 mg of pure nicotine to 'wean off people &om; smoking. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the product on the condition that it will be sold by prescription to adults who want …
A vaccine developed &om; genetically engineered cells has been found to eradicate tumours from the brains of laboratory rats. Developed by cancer scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles, US, the vaccine is expected to be tested on humans this year. Lead researcher Habib Fakhrai explained that the …
QUITE A SAVING: Those suffering from skin cancer will now have to dish out less money for their medical bills. Scientists from the Cancer Research Campaign in Britain have invented a light emission device called Paterson Lamp that cures the disease at a lOth of the price of laser therapy. …
A NEW find by a team of researchers from the Duke University Medical Center, us, may hold a lot of promise in finding a suitable antidote to Huntington's disease. This genetic neurodegenerative condition that strikes in the middle age causes involuntary muscular movements and, at an advanced stage, dementia. Three …
A GROWING number of companies throughout the world are exploiting the power of laptop and palmtop - small handhelds that include a keyboard - computers. These systems are being used to speed up information flow to distant sites, feed field employees with the collective. intelligence of the organisation, and set …
AN ALLIANCE of environmental groups have stepped up its campaign to get Pacific Telesis (parent company of the Pacific Bell Directory) to stop printing its phone books with paper made from ancient rainforests, by taking the issue before the company's shareholders. Rainforests Action Network (RAN) along with two other shareholders, …
THE landmark 'Freedom To Farm' bill which was recently inked by the us President Bill Clinton, marks a sweeping change in us farm programme instituted in the post-deprewon era- The bill will gradually phase out not just the heavy subsidies enjoyed by American farmers, but also 11inlrate them from earlier …
Johnson Wax, a US based company, has come up with a microbe-based insecticide that, it claims, will be able to put off the most persistent of cockroaches. Two varieties of the microbe, Bacillus thuringiensis, have been identified that can give cockroaches lethal cases of indigestion, Different strains of the microbe …
A sugar-based pill has been lauded as the most promising candidate for a male contraceptive. In fertilisation, the sperm penetrates a sugary coating around the egg with the help of an enzyme called N-acetyl-beta- D-hexoaminidase (HEX). After several computer-aided drug design programmes, Joseph Hall, a biochemist from North Carolina University, …
Researchers from the Harvard Medical School and Brigham Women's Hospital, Massachusetts, US, have found an unlikely scapegoat for all the lazybones found dozing at work: Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. In a study published in the February issue of Nature, the researchers reported that normal indoor …
