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. …
Globe trotters might at last get a breather -- a drug for jet lag is in the offing. A team of researchers from the Harvard and Yale Universities' medical schools are close to nailing down the gene responsible for cloning the gene that codes for melatonin, the hormone that governs …
Scientists have now been able to reason why black Americans suffer higher rates of hypertension, heart disease and stroke than their white counterparts. The new findings of Randall Tackett and his team at the University of Georgia in the US reveal that Afro-Americans may have less flexible veins (Science, Vol …
CON artists in the us have never had it so good. Now all they have to do to rob gullible citizens of their hardearned dollars is switch on their computers. There has been a deluge of financial scams all over the country ever since the high-tech electronic mail (E-mail) came …
THE Pacific atoll of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands is still paying the price for a badly-managed American nuclear test explosion 40 years ago, which drove its people from their homes, irrevocably changing the course of their lives. The final straw came in late July, when the exiles from Rongelap …
The Union minister of state for tex-tiles, G Venkat Swamy, has threatened "retaliatory action" against American products, if a recent US ban on the sale of rayon ghagras made in India is not withdrawn. The ban, imposed on the grounds that they are highly inflammable, had demolished Indian hopes that …
THE conflict between the US oil industry, which manufactures methanol, and the ethanol producers lobby, has acquired the overtones of a guerrilla war. Charges are flying thick and fast. A recent advertisement in the Washington Post proclaimed: "One ounce of methanol will make you permanently blind." Using ethanol -- an …
The US-based Carrier Corporation has come up with what it claims is the world's first chlorine-free, non-ozone-depleting airconditioner. Carrier says that the new unit, Weathermaker 134a, uses hydrofluorocarbon 134a and is 50 per cent more energy efficient than traditional airconditioners using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). With CFCs due to be phased out …
Removing stains from clothes is a quid pro quo affair -- for bleaching agents to work, the clothes have to be washed in warm water, which can ruin texture and colour. But now, researchers at Unilever Laboratories in the US and Holland claim to have developed a low-temperature bleacher (Nature, …
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Testing in Maryland, USA, have developed an instrument that can detect gases present in infinitesimal amounts (Environmental Science & Technology, Vol 28, No 6). The instrument uses microwaves similar to those used in microwave cookers to measure as little as 10 parts …
Irving Weissman and Fang Qian of California's Stanford University have discovered a protein that mimics the adhesive action of Velcro fasteners, a trait that could help in preventing cancer cells spreading from a tumour to other parts in the body (New Scientist, Vol 143, No 1933). Called integrin alpha4-beta1, the …
The US dairy industry is having second thoughts about the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Jim Bar, the head of the National Milk Producers' Federation, has complained that GATT, as currently structured, is a net loss to North American dairy producers, in a letter to US diminutive but …
Decades of mining have slopped about 72 million tonnes of lead, zinc and other metal wastes into the Coeur d:lene lake in Idaho state in the US. Now, representatives of the Coeur d:lene tribe and the environmentalist group, Sierra Club, have urged the Congress and the Clinton administration to fund …
SO FAR, a great deal of US space exploration has been the hegemony of massive spacecraft such as those used in the Apollo moon exploration programme, the Voyager flybys of the outer planets and the latest Galileo and Cassini missions. However, a severe resource crunch is compelling the National Aeronautics …
BEAVERS, known for their ingenuity at damming small streams using branches, are unwittingly contributing to global warming (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1931). Beaver ponds flood low-lying areas and, like wetlands, cause the decay of submerged vegetation, which produces the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide. But Joseph Yavitt and …
THE US played a lead role in urging recalcitrant nations like Russia to endorse a treaty banning chemical weapons, which these 2 countries and 152 others are due to ratify. But, although the US Congress has directed the army to eliminate its stockpile by 2004 AD, the army may not …
ON JULY 17, the construction of India's largest power station and one of the world's biggest private sector power plants would have begun. The ultra-modern, 2,015-mw plant in Dabhol, 170 km south of Bombay in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district, is being pitched as the "most efficient solution" to the looming power …
SCIENTISTS at the University of California at Berkeley in the US have developed a method that cuts to 1/10th the cost of cleaning up nitrogen oxides produced when fossil fuels are burned (Nature, Vol 369, No 6476). The new technology is also environmentally less harmful than the techniques currently used …
Plants have long been known as air purifiers, but now Paul Jackson, a microbiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is using plant cells to purify liquids contaminated with heavy metals like barium and uranium, and with the residue of explosives like TNT. Jackson's "green filter" consists of a silica-based powder …
Rats and mice used for cancer tests in the US may soon have a diet regimen. Studies show that modern lab rats are about 25 per cent heavier than their ancestors were 20 years ago, which has caused a rise in the natural incidence of mammary and pituitary tumours, interfering …
A carnivorous pack of bacteria has struck terror in parts of the US and Europe. Known as group A streptococcus, the bacteria, say researchers, can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure, toxic shock and organ failure. In their most macabre form, they eat away human flesh. Over the past …
