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. …
A 5-mw power plant fuelled by municipal garbage is being set up in south Madras. The project is a joint venture between the Newam Power Company Ltd and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation Ltd, with technical collaboration with the UK-based Henley Burrowes and Co Ltd, which has worked on …
Using a material known as "piezoelectric plastic", a US company is trying to convert the kinetic energy of waves into electricity. Piezoelectric plastic generates an electric charge when physically strained. The company plans to laminate several sheets together, hanging them from ocean rafts to anchors on the sea floor. The …
Romantic behaviour has more to do with environmental influences than heredity, according to a study by behavioural geneticists at the University of California, Davis, US. The finding comes as a surprise to psychologists who often cite the heritability of sexual promiscuity (Science Vol 266, No 5183). Niels G Waller and …
The polluter pays. This maxim seems to be ringing uncomfortably true for Exxon Corp and Union Carbide Corp whose image was further tarnished when they were listed among the 8 worst corporate polluters in the us by the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities. The conclusions of the council, which …
WATCHING the Hollywood movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, one couldn't help marvelling at the special effects that made the smaller-than-ants kids look so real. But imagine watching a film with characters infinitely smaller than those miniaturised kids. And without any special effects. Recently, 2 research groups in the US …
WASHINGTON is in the grip of a GATT fever with the American Congress and the Clinton administration locked eyeball to eyeball over Congressional approval of the Uruguay round. So far, President Clinton and his crew have tried in vain to convince Congressmen that the multilateral trade agreement is the best …
Intel Corp, the leading US chipmaker, has joined hands with the Beijing-based Jitong Communications Co. Together, they plan to grab lucrative offers. An exhibition will open in Beijing of Intel's networking and personal conferencing products. "Intel and Jitong can help China's industry merge the power of the PC with the …
If one lacks an important protein, and this is manifest as a disease, Elizabeth Fenjves and her colleagues at the State University of New York, in Stony Brook, suggest a cure -- inserting the gene-coding for the missing protein into a culture of the patient's skin cells and grafting the …
The Union finance ministry has decided to get all future power purchase agreements (PPA) between foreign investors and the state electricity boards (SEBs) vetted by competent foreign consultancy organisations before giving its approval. This follows the decision of the Union power ministry requiring the finance ministry to provide counter guarantees …
Feeding non-infective bacteria to infants may protect them from diarrhoea, a recent study concludes (The Lancet, Vol 344, No 8929). Jose Saavedra and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA, performed a clinical trial on 55 infants aged 5 to 24 months, who were admitted to …
For creatures that were supposed to have dominated the entire planet, dinosaur fossils have been singularly missing from Africa. But now palaeontologist Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago claims that he has disinterred from Algeria and Niger fossils of several dinosaur species, among them 2 previously unknown -- a …
WHAT the United States proposes, the rest of the world meekly disposes. The most recent example is its stand on the Law of the Sea treaty of 1982, a wide-ranging document that covers issues like fishing rights, deep seabed mining, oil exploration, marine pollution and scientific research. After turning its …
The law accepts the basic principle that there can be no free lunches in a high risk, capital-intensive venture like deep seabed mining. As a direct fallout, the role of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and its business arm, the Enterprise, has been drastically scaled down. The original regime for …
Now Americans can windowshop to glory without stepping out of their homes. Shopping Network (HSN) and America Online Inc (AOL), the 2 front-runners in the television retailing and computer-networking industry, are gearing up to sell goods in cyberspace. The HSN has bought the Internet Shopping Network and the AOL Inc …
AFTER 4 years of hot pursuit, a us biotech company has won the race to isolate the much sought-after breast cancer gene called BRCA I. Close on the heels of this discovery, an international group has reported mapping of another breast cancer gene called BRCA2. Together, the pair probably accounts …
A US ecologist has warned that certain species that seem to be faring well may already be doomed to extinction in the next 100 years or so, even if their remaining habitat is preserved. "Given the habitat destruction already done, we've already incurred a massive 'extinction debt'," says David Tilman …
The triumvirate of the American automobile industry, General Motors, Chrysler Corp and Ford Moors, have joined hands with the Clinton administration to develop a "safe, high-performance supercar" which will triple the modern car's efficiency. But some sceptical auto-watchers claims that the project is merely a ploy to hedge and stall …
All is not over for haernophiliacs (patients suffering from a rare disease of the blood) and those suffering from night blindness can still hope to see better in the dark. Research on human embryos, which have important bearings on these diseases, has received a shot in the arm. The us …
TWO Scandinavian companies are trying to replicate the fruitless toil of Sisyphus, a Greek mythological character who was given the task of pushing uphill a stone that would at once roll down again. The difference will be that the Kvaerner Group, a Norwegian industrial company, and Asea Brown Boveri, a …
Alchemists have succeeded in fashioning the high-tech version of the Philosopher's Stone: they can now make diamond films out of soot and a gas named argon. Chemist Dieter M Gruen's magic recipe: flash light on a mixture of pure soot -- buckyballs, which contain 60 carbon atoms arranged in a …
