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. …
CAR MANUFACTURERS in the US will begin offering "zero emission" vehicles by 1998. Overriding monopolistic concerns, the big three -- General Motors, Ford and Chrysler -- will cooperate closely in the development, design, testing and even possible manufacturing of the components of these electronic cars. While electric cars are still …
THE CAMPAIGN by astronomers to stop artificial light in cities from affecting stellar views, which prevents them studying stars, is gaining a wider audience. Relentless light from surrounding cities has shut down the largest telescope at Mount Wilson in Southern California. Scientists believe artificial lights should be shielded so that …
FINALLY, an AIDS vaccine that works -- on monkeys. Harvard University researchers in despair turned to the old-fashioned, but unsafe, method and injected four rhesus monkeys with a weakened, live form of SIV, the virus that causes AIDS in primates. The researchers reported that the vaccine immunised the monkeys with …
SCIENTISTS from the University of Michigan in the US have discovered that stony lumps of calcium carbonate, known as otoliths, found in the ears of most fishes, can offer clues to seasonal temperatures thousands or even millions of years ago (Science, Vol 258 No 5085). The finding has given a …
1992 has been a watershed year. Trends that were visible over the last few years came to a head, both globally and locally. At the global level, the events that preceded the Rio summit and took place at the meet were fascinating proofs that micro movements at the community, state, …
THE UNCED conference at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and its immediate aftermath disappointed everyone involved in sustainable development. During the March 1992 PrepCom for UNCED, US$125 billion was tabled as the net annual flow of new and additional financial support to developing countries to spark a $600-billion annual effort …
SOMALI activist Rakiya Omaar, who helped establish Africa Watch and served as its executive director for four years, has been dismissed for opposing the United Nations military intervention in Somalia. Omaar said she believed the arrival of USA-led troops "without prior consultation with Somalia's underground and with the relief organisations" …
A UNICEF report, The State of the World's Children 1993, which has been adopted by 150 countries including India, says US$ 25 billion is the annual cost of ending malnutrition, preventable diseases and illiteracy for all the world's. children. To put the figure in perspective, the report says "the amount …
THE end of 1992, there was no dearth of Western libk vwring to the view that sovereignty, as a concept mming the interpersonal behaviour of nations, must be limited. For instance, Jan Tinbergen, the eminent Dutch nowist who won the world's first Nobel Prize for economists and who has been …
In the early hours of Moday, Dec 3,1984, a toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate (MIC)gas enveloped the hundreds of shanties and huts surrounding a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Later, as the deadly cloud slowly drifted in the cool night air through streets in surrounding sections, sleeping residents awoke, coughing, …
DURING the 1992 September-October southern spring, the world's ozone layer dropped to the lowest levels recorded in 35 years. According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the ozone levels over northern Europe, Russia and Canada last winter and spring were 12 per cent below the seasonal average. The Antarctic ozone …
A bacterium that causes botulism can be used to temporarily banish wrinkles (Asian Wall Street Journal, Nov 9, 1992). While treating a patient with dystonia -- a condition characterised by severe muscle contractions -- researchers at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Centre discovered the patient looked younger after being injected with minute …
CLIMATE change brought about by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could lead to mass extinction of wildlife in isolated habitats (Conservation Biology, Vol 6 No 3). Global warming is expected to raise temperatures in the northern temperate latitudes by 2o to 6oC by …
The controversial Human Genome Project -- a collaborative effort to decode and understand the human genetic code in chromosomes -- is already showing results and is likely to be completed ahead of schedule (Nature, Vol 359 No 6394). The first maps of two human chromosomes -- the long arm of …
ELECTRIC cars run on batteries but work best without them. Batteries halve electric cars' speed and range and increase their cost because it is more difficult to get electricity into and out of a battery than it is to pump and burn petrol. With stricter emission controls slated for later …
EN ROUTE to the sun, the spacecraft Ulysses dropped in on planet Jupiter in February this year. Launched on October 6, 1990, by the space shuttle Discovery, Ulysses -- a joint venture of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency -- has sent home valuable information …
Scientists at the University of California, Irvine, have made the world's smallest battery -- about the size of the common-cold virus (Science, Vol 257 No 5074). Chemist Reginald Penner and his co-workers stumbled on to it while trying to prove that silver and copper could be deposited as closely-spaced nanodots …
BETWEEN the 1960s and 1990s, if there is one thing that is different, it is the level of material consumption of the richer sections of the world. Says Swedish environmentalist Anders Wijkman, "When I used to go to school in the 1950s, I was one of the few kids in …
NEXT YEAR, a longer-lasting and more efficient bulb known as the electronic light, or "E-Lamp," will hit the US market. A magnetic coil generates a radio signal that interacts with the gas inside the bulb, as a result of which a phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb starts …
THE BILL Clinton-Al Gore team, as expected, put the Democrats back in power in the US after 12 years. Gore, the vice president-elect, has been widely acclaimed as a "sincere environmentalist" and his book, Earth in the Balance, is seen as one coming straight from the heart. But exactly how …
