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. …
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 …
The Clinton government is impatient as the Senate continues blocking the ratification of the Biodiversity Treaty. The treaty, a product of the 1992 Earth Summit, aims at protecting all plant and animal species. President Clinton agreed to sign it after drawing up, in subjective, interpretive language, the that the administration …
International commerce could well be dictated by robots, starting early this month, says a report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics. The production of robots is likely to go up from last year's 610,000 to more than 830,000 by 1997 end, with …
LIVING in the US, as I have been for nearly 6 months now, is like attending a crash course in nutrition. In the poorer world, the key issue is how to get enough food to eat. Here, in the rich world, people are worried about what they should eat to …
The German chemicals group BASF is using its plastics manufacturing technologies to improve mclicine-making process. The echnology replaces the tradi 3-stage manufacturing se e with a single process in the active ingredients are d and shaped as pliable Is, passed through rollers, and ed into tablets. Drugs, howew ? usually …
Chemists have confirmed that the Mediterranean cuisine's 2 most important ingredients - garlic and red wine - apparently have a beneficial effect on the heart (Science, Vol 265, No 5178). Andrew Waterhouse of the University of California, Davis, has isolated from red wine a chemical called catechin that is believed …
AS MORE and, more North Americans fall victim to the myriad charms of a personal computer and avail of on-line consumer information services, electronic companies in the us are rushing to find a place in cyberspace. There are already 60 million users of home computers in North America and the …
If you want to pass your exams or learn a new skill quick indulge in sleep. in 2 experiments on animals and human scientists have found the first direct evidence that memoceft are consolidated during sleep. In the rat studies conducted at the University of Arizom at Tucson, researchers found …
WITH 28 huge forest fires raging across western United States in August and threatening to reduce 2.025 million ha of forest to cinders by October, national attention is focused on America's native forests. Ecologists and foresters agree that a century of mismanagement has suppressed regular forest burning and transformed these …
When Rafiki, a sea lion protected by the US government, was shot in the head at point blank range while swimming in the Monterey Bay in California, she became the latest victim of spiteful violence against endangered species. US wildlife officers say that some people have developed this strange penchant …
Every year, millions of tonnes of food are lost to the most voracious and abundant of animals -- the ubiquitous insects. Whether seeds be present on the plant or stored away carefully, insects worm their way into them, making them inedible. But humans have built up an impressive arsenal of …
A piece of good news for those who cannot give up smoking -- take a lot of vitamin C and you could avert heart and lung diseases caused by cigarette smoke (Nature, Vol 370, No 6489). A team of German and US scientists successfully tested the hypothesis on hamsters exposed …
US scientists have found what makes fruits such as bananas, avocados and tomatoes, vulnerable to fungal diseases that destroy up to 50 per cent of the produce post-harvest. Moshe Flaishman and Pappachan Kolatukuddy from Ohio State University's Biotechnology Center found that the hormone that triggers the ripening of fruit also …
The deficiency of vitamin A -- the cause of nictalopia, or night-blindness -- has now been linked to the transmission of the AIDS virus from pregnant women to their babies (Science, Vol 265 No 5170). The study could spur foetal protection. Conducted by Richard Semba and his colleagues at the …
Scientists at the US's Argonne National Laboratory have found a cheap and quick method to produce diamond films by using soccer ball-shaped carbon molecules called fullerenes (Science, Vol 265, No 5172). Diamond films are used in electronic circuits to remove heat and as a tough coating for machine tools. The …
Cigarette smoke makes a small but detectable contribution to smog, reveals a study conducted by Glen Class, an environmental engineer at the California Institute of Technology. The study reveals that cigarette smoke comprises 1 to 1.3 per cent of the fine particles polluting the air around Los Angeles. Although Class …
An increasingly sedentary lifestyle is making Americans, largely white, obese. The US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1988-91, reveals that 33.4 per cent of Americans 20 years of age or older were estimated to be adipose -- an increase of 8 per cent over the figures from …
ANXIOUS to curb air pollution, the US government is tightening the screws on automobile manufacturers. Air quality laws in California and Massachusetts now stipulate that 2 per cent of the total sales in the car market by 1988 should comprise "zero emission" vehicles, a requirement that only electric cars can …
A major land conservation bill lies stalled in the us Congress. The California Desert Protection Bill, described as the biggest land conservation measure in the country in over a decade, is being fought tooth and nail by 5 Republican representatives from California. The Bill seeks to create 74 wilderness areas …
