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. …
In a desperate bid to stop mushrooming legal claims against the industry, the British tobacco firm, BAT Industries PLC, is considering settling compensation claims brought by Americans who are suffering from smoking-related illnesses. The company's shares fell sharply after a jury in Florida ordered its US tobacco unit to pay …
studies over the past eight decades have shown that an individual's inherited characters play a strong role in suggesting whether he or she will become an alcoholic or not. This suggests that a person's genes have a role to play in the onset of alcoholism. However, genes by themselves cannot …
According to an early February report, the highly ambitious Mahakali project implemented by the Nepalese government requires much more organised effort to control flooding, river shifting and leakages of irrigation canals. This assessment is based on past experiences of the Sarada barrage of the project
for all parents in the us who suspect that their children are using drugs, a government-approved kit will soon be at their disposal. The kit called "Dr Brown's Home Drug Testing System" has recently been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (fda) for use. The nod came four months …
the German government called upon agricultural and health experts to hold an emergency meeting on January 22, following a report of the confirmation of the nation's first case of bse (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or the
sekap, the Greek cooperative cigarette manufacturing company, has developed a cigarette filter which it claims will drastically reduce adverse effects of smoking. George Delikonstantinos, one of the three researchers who invented the benign filter, said, "Smokers who use normal filters retain 1.75 ml of tar in their lungs. The bio-filter …
John Matese and Daniel Whitmire of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, in a recent paper say that tide-like variations in the pull exerted on the orbit of the solar system by the rest of the galaxy causes comets to pummel Earth once every 30 million years. Most comets orbit …
an understanding of the emergence of structure in the universe is one of the most perplexing problems in cosmology. The matter is complicated because of a paucity of observations of the universe at early times. Among the furthest objects seen by astronomers are quasars, which are relatively small objects at …
A problem of mammoth proportions has besotted the Thai capital as well as Phuket, Pattaya and Chiangmai. Nearly 100 elephants from the northeastern part of the country have recently been brought to these areas to enable their mahouts earn a livelihood. While there are dangers posed by a rampaging elephant …
Flyash, produced in millions of tonnes as a waste by thermal power plants can serve as an excellent soil conditioner, studies at the Central Research Institute, Dhanbad, Bihar, show. The studies confirm that the yield of crops increases by 20-60 per cent on the addition of 25-200 tonnes of flyash …
defying rules does not pay as Germany and Italy have realised to their dismay. The European Commission (ec) has slapped heavy fines on these countries for disregarding the rulings of the European Court of Justice on breaches of European Union (eu) environmental legislation. For infringing laws related to the protection …
an oil-spill off Mikuni on the north-western coast of Japan, is threatening wildlife and nuclear reactors. The spill was caused by the Russian oil tanker Nakhodka when it split in two and sank in the Sea of Japan on January 6. It was carrying 15,300 tonnes of heavy fuel oil. …
RECYCLERS turn old cans and bottles into new ones and old newspapers into today's daily. Now it is the turn of waste tyres in the country? Robert Romine, working at Rouse Rubber Industries, Mississippi, us, has introduced an eco-friendly technique for processing old tyres by using microorganisms (Environmental Health Perspectives, …
scientists in developed countries are trying expensive combinations of drugs to prolong the lives of those infected with aids. But something quite different is going on in Africa, where aids has taken a far greater toll. Experts are finding new hope in an old warhorse: the common antibiotic. Antibiotics cannot …
a study by Dale Bauman and William Kelly of the Cornell University in Ithaca, us, shows that supplementing a cow's diet with corn oil increases the amount of conjugated linoleic acid (cla), a fatty acid manufactured by bacteria in the cow's rumen, which helps in preventing melanoma and leukaemia. cla …
Sri Lanka's minister of public administration, recently announced a new health insurance scheme which promises Rs 3,000 and six month's maternity leave to state-employed women. The proposal immediately faced flak from family planners, whose programmes have brought down the country's birth rate to 1.4 per cent. "We cannot take chances …
Ranitidine hydrochloride (Zantac) is one of the most extensively studied and widely used drugs of all time. This has provided an excellent opportunity to define its safety profile. Original Source
efforts to promote ecotourism in the Manuel Antonio National Park in Quepos, Costa Rica, seem to have boomeranged. Every year, thousands of tourists visit the 680 ha park, which is home to capuchin monkeys, two-toed sloths, poisonous dart frogs, the long-tailed coatimundi and scarlet macaws. Authorities have banned camping in …
the latest item to join the list of banned products in Europe because of its possible risk to human health is an antibiotic called avoparcin. The European Union (eu) is going to ban the antibiotic following latest evidence from Denmark and Germany showing that the drug develops resistance to certain …
stromatolites, considered to be the most abundant fossils in rocks representing the first two to three billion years of Earth's history, may not be fossils at all. Instead, they could very well be just fossil-like structures, as revealed by the recent findings of John Grotzinger and Daniel Rothman of the …
