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. …
Opinions on Jupiter's evolution have undergone a revision, following the data sent by the Galileo probe. Previous measurements had suggested that Jupiter contained about 10 times more oxygen than the sun. The old theory says that young Jupiter, bombarded by comets containing carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, became much richer in …
PARTICLE physic::s describes the strong nuclear interactions using the retativistic quantum theory called Quantul;Il Chrom()dynami~~ (QCD),-This theory is very similar to its counterpart in electromagnetism, Quantum Electro- dynamics (QED), but is Temarkably different in many respects. For one, though electric; charges are of two varieties, positive and negative, QCD charges, …
THE erstwhile -cold war between, the us and Russia seems to have given way to a war over chickens! If a threatened Russian poultry ban takes effect, yankee chickens may no longer be welcome in Russia. Apparently, Russians are holding out the ban threat -as a measure to protect Russian …
Spirogyra along with another algal species Cladophora, disrupts normal aquatic life and forces municipalities to spend enormous sums on declogging water bodies (Frontiers -Newsletter of the National Science Foundation. December. 1995). R Jan Stevenson of the University of Louisville in Kentucky. US. has reiterated the wisdom of following nature's ways. …
A SURFEIT, of fat and urges to go on a diet? May be the sea -urchins living'in the icy waters of Antarctica could hold out clues on slimness. Scientists at the University of Southern California in the US believe that the answers -for reducing human obesity he in Antarctic sea …
A MAN in Connecticut died recently of a newly identified tick-borne disease called human granulocytic erlichiosis,, caused by a hitherto unknown bacte rium. A student in New York contracted a serious case of hanta infection, caused by a rare virus carried by r9dents. There was a fresh outbreak ofthe deadly …
What do red-knobbed hornbills of Indonesia have in common with the -rain forest of Sulawesi? A 16t, it seems. They help in maintaining and regenerating the rain forests of the region while depending upon it. "The hornbills are the farmers of the Sulawesi forest," says Margaret Kinnaird of the 'Wildlife …
If eyes are the windows to the soul, smell is the doorway. Swiss researchers recently reported that male body odour has a strong bearing on the choice of mates by females. The unusual study involved sniffmg of male T -shirts by female volunteers, who rated shirts for pleasantness and sexiness …
Evolution depends on mutations - changes in the sequence or organisation of DNA (the hereditar material). Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variability. One of the cardinal tenets of the theory of evolution by natural selection - Darwinism - states that mutations occur at random., Here, 'random' stands for …
ORGAN transplant rejections could soon become a thing of the past. A new drug which can halve the rejection rate of transplanted organs and billed as 'the most exciting development in transplantation in the 'last decade', has been recently developed by the UK-b6sed Roche company. Though the drug, CellCept, could …
A solar-powered water pasteurising device called Solsaver, designed by John Grandinetti, president of Grand Solar Incorporated of Hawaii, USA, may bring an end to people falling prey to water-borne diseases (World Watch, VoJ8, No 5). The Solsaver uses thermal action to move the water which flows through copper tubing into …
ONE of the most amusing news items that appeared in almost every leading newspaper of November 14, 1995, was about the goings on at the conference of the International Tobacco Growers' Association (ITGA) held in Bangalore. The Hindu said that Karnataka chief minister, H D Deve Gowda, "did not subscribe …
An antiviral drug, which was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treating AIDS, has been found to have the potential to treat chronic hepatitis B infection too. Lamivudine, or 3TC, .the drug manufactured by the Glaxo Wellcome group under the brand name Epivir, is reported to …
A draft law in China seeks to bring down noise pollution. The law authorises municipal authorities to crack down on everything from deafening construction sites to boisterous folk dancing. Some big cities are planning to build noise screens alongside major highways where decibel levels exceed safety levels, said Guo Xiulan, …
RESEARCHERS at International Business Machines (IBM) claim to have overcome a fundamental obstacle to the improvement of microscopes that work by using visible light. They can now directly examine and study very small fragments of matter such as genes. Developed at the company s Yorktown Heights, New York centre, the …
CALORIE-CONSCIOUS eaters, wary of potato crisps with their high fat content, can now wolf them down. Olestra, a zero-calorie artificial fat, developed by the multinational Procter & Gamble, got the us Food and Drug Administration (FDA) go-ahead early this year. It will replace the conventional fat used in crisps and …
A team of British scientists claim to have found a solution to the locust menace- A solitary locust is inactive, while a gregarious one in the company of thousands of others can mean mass destruction. Stephen Simpson and his colleagues at Oxford University discovered that the foam on which locust …
The glamour of the profession apart, airline crew face a heightened risk of cancer. Researchers of the Finnish Cancer Registry conducted a study of the extent to which airline staff were exposed to cosmic radiation and the consequent risk of cancer harboured by them (British Medical journal, Vol 311, No …
It IS time for rare rhododendrons to strike their roots in the native soil nearly a Century after they were sown on foreign soil by a British botanist, Ernest Wilson (1876-1930). 1 lie Royal Botanic Garden. Edinburgh, Scotland, is organising the project under which more than 200 rare and endangered …
More than 50,000 people will pay for the nation'., power crisis. The Vietnamese government announced it., plans to displace a large number of people from a remote northern province to make way for a big hydroelectric power project. According to an informed source, thousands of hectares of forests and farmlands …
