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. …
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 …
FRUIT and vegetable farmers in California, USA, are experiencing one of the driest seasons of the century, not because of paltry rains but due to a shortsighted official policy. A new ruling has reined back billions of gallons of water in rivers and streams to protect the dwindling supply of …
Are we alone in this vast universe? Perhaps. Perhaps not. However, those who believe in the plurality of life have so far had little luck in their search for extraterrestrial intelligence. But recently, astronomers at the University of Illinois in Urbana, USA, detected one of life's building materials, the amino …
In its cynical sense, the price of power is a phrase which often evokes rich imagery. Seen from any angle, the Indian government's decision to go in for what is going to be the world's largest, private sector electricity plant, to be constructed at Dabhol in Maharashtra by the US …
IF YOU fail to respond to a drug, it could be because your body is smashing it up without so much as a hello. Scientists have known for some time now that this happens particularly with drugs that mimic proteins. These drugs usually occur in 2 molecular forms -- one …
LOGGING may resume in the forests of Seattle in USA after a 3-year ban, but on a limited basis. Judge William Dwyer had issued the logging ban in 1991, after environmentalists had filed a lawsuit against the erstwhile Bush administration for "deliberately refusing to comply with the laws protecting wildlife". …
TAXOL, the anti-cancer wonder drug extracted from the leaves and bark of the yew tree, has found another target. Researchers at the University of California School of Medicine say that polycystic kidney diseases (PKD), the most common hereditary kidney disease which accounts for 10 per cent of the patients requiring …
THE ozone layer over the US had thinned to unprecedented and worrisome flimsiness during 1993, say scientists who had monitored sunlight at various ground sites over the year. Between January and April of last year, ozone concentration was 12.6 per cent below normal (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1927). What …
THE United States has once again lost the battle to use trade measures to determine not only tuna fishing methods but also the impact of tuna fishing on other species. In response to a complaint by the Netherlands and the European Community, the second panel report of the General Agreement …
RICE has traversed the world and has ended up where it has no business to be. Should an American multinational, of all entities, hold the international patent for 2 traditional Asian rice varieties -- Indica and Japonica? Agracetus, the powerful biotech subsidiary of W R Grace, claims that it has …
While P V Narasimha Rao was meeting Bill Clinton to discuss "mutual" problems like intellectual property rights, the US had already reneged on the Biodiversity Convention by interpreting that GATT rules override matters related to technology transfer and intellectual property rights in the Convention. Thus, the US has not only …
WHAT do whales have in common with pigs, deer and hippos? All of them share the same ancestors, say evolutionary biologists. This belief has been held for a long time, but now, two groups of palaeontologists working in Pakistan have discovered fossils that are up to 52-million-year-old to support the …
IT SEEMS the war between antibiotics and bacteria is a never-ending one. Time and again these clever organisms have made the most potent drugs look like placebos. But researchers at the Washington University's School of Medicine in St Louis believe they may have finally nailed the Achilles' heel of bacteria …
FACED with a surplus of milk, US dairy farmers have turned to researchers to put their excess milk to new uses. Two fruits of this unique research pact may soon hit the market -- edible packaging and tidier yoghurt. By playing around with the amino acids of a milk protein …
OVERTURNING traditional theories on the natural production of methane, a major component of natural gas, a team of US researchers now says that metals such as nickel and vanadium present in the sedimentary rocks where natural gas is formed, facilitate methane formation. Till recently, it was widely believed that methane …
NEW discoveries in astronomy are sometimes linked to serendipity. It was by chance that astronomer Alexander Wolszczan and his team at the Pennsylvania State University found evidence for what appeared to be the first planetary system outside our solar system. Another 3 years of data on the finding has confirmed …
THE AIDS drug zidovudine can retard the transmission of the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a mother to her foetus, a recent study reveals (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol 271, No 11). Trials carried out by the US-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) show …
SCIENTISTS at the University of Minnesota in the US have developed a new strain of bacteria to fight pollution caused by organohalides -- compounds of carbon and halogens such as chlorine and fluorine which cannot be degraded by naturally occurring bacteria (Nature, Vol 368, No 6472). Pseudomonas putida G786 -- …
