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. …
It is exactly 60 years since the publication of 2 "thought experiments" designed to demonstrate the absurdity of quantum mechanics, and to make physicists come up with a better view of reality than the standard 'Copenhagen interpretation' of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation is the standard way quantum physics is …
All of us are familiar with real numbers. But numbers having both real and imaginary parts are called complex numbers. A complex number (y) can be denoted as y=a+ib Where a and b are real numbers and I is an imaginary number (defined as the square root of -1). In …
Women have always had it bad...patriarchy has ensured that down the generations. A look at women in the various spheres of life, in education, workplaces, health status and in power show that men are still cornering the dress circle seats in the world theatre. Discriminated against in terms of education, …
SLIM figures are in vogue. Flab is consid- ered ugly aesthetically and unhealthy scientifically. Recently, researchers at the London-based Hammersmith Hospital developed a state-of-the-art technique for mapping fat deposits in the body through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that leaves no place for fat to hide (New Scientist, Vol 146, No …
THE heads of states in Africa attending the Third Presidential Forum on Utilisation of Science and Technology for Development in Kampala, Uganda, on July 24, will deal with unpalatable facts and information on the continent's food production and nutritional status. According to an advance press release from the Nairobi-based randforum …
AD artificial heart valves presently substituted for faulty ones, introduce a foreign substance into a patient's body and thus increase the chances of rejection by the body's immune system. Now, researchers at the Children's Hospital in Boston are trying to develop a tissue-engineered valve. Recent findings in this field indicate …
In the wake of the frightening revelation that infected blood was supplied to 10 city hospitals in Bombay between February 1992 and July 1994, by the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), Bombay -a leading blood bank of the country -the question today is whether blood banks are any longer the …
Anti-abortionists are giving sleepless nights to the French judiciary. While a Paris court recently allowed a group of save foetus" activists - who had barged into a hospital and started praying outside the operation theatre where abortions were being performed - go scot free, in Bourg-en-Bresse, central France, 12 activists …
NOT many of us are aware that the controversial pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), played an important role in the Second World War, when this 'wonder pesticide' was used to kill the lice responsible for the spread of typhoid among the Allied forces. It was in the '60s that the world came …
Venezuela has finally opened the doors of its oil fields to foreigners. For the first time since the nationalisation of its petroleum industry in 1976, the country has taken a decision to invite foreign equity investment in oil exploration and production. A joint session of the Venezuelan Congress has approved …
Biologists have discovered a wealth of new frog species in the rain forests of eastern Madagascar, highlighting the astonishing diversity of life in the tropics and the special importance of Madagascar as a wildlife hotspot (African Wildlife, Vol 4, No 2). At least 106 new frogs and 26 reptiles came …
A HAU-INCH long parasite that thrives on blood extracted ftom the gut of the host, the hookworm is playing havoc with the health of about 900 million people worldwide, predominantly in the Third World. According to the World Health Organization, the parasite affects 132 million people in Africa, 104 million …
In the last 2 decades India has seen 2 major exoduses triggered by health catastrophes: the first, after the Bhopal gas leak in 1984; and Surat's plague-scare exodus exactly 10 years later. But were the risks as great as the rumours which induced the panic? Perception of a risk is …
WE are a tribal people from Western India, from a predominantly tribal area, about 125 kilometers north of Bombay. Though barely a 2-hour journey from the suburba prima of India, we are part of a third world within the Third World, so we are really 6 worlds away from you. …
Ever since Rachel Carson's famous expose of pesticides, chlorine and its chemical allies have been on the hit-list of environmentalist. DDT was banned in 1972, followed by PCBs in 1978. Two decades later, CFCs were sentenced to a phase-out for violating the sacred ozone-space. And now, with the recent US …
The pulp and paper industry is the world's second largest consumer of chlorine and the greatest source of toxic organochlorine discharges directly into the waterways. Although dozens of mills across the world are now producing high-quality, bright paper using totally chlorine-free (TCF) technology, most of the world's producers have yet …
A domestic but prolific generator of organochlorines is the homely dry-cleaning business. Over 90 per cent of alndry-'ters use chlorine-based perchloroethylene (perc) to clean clothes. Some 3 million pounds of this highly toxic chemical are annually by the industry in the US and Canada alone. Dry-cleaners are the single largest …
The US Environmental Protection Agency is likely to cut down or ban the production of chlorine and compounds containing it. However, many scientists believe that even were manufacture of chlorine-containing chemicals to be prohibited, their creation would not cease. Nature produces many of them, more than 1500, with more being …
Paper companies: 55 mills now produce totally chlorine free, high-quality bleached pulp. Province of Ontario: Pulp mills must eliminate organachlorine discharges by 2002. British Columbia: Pulp mills here must eliminate grganochlorine discharges by 2002. Sweden National: Goal to end toxic discharges from-Ifie-company pulp mills by 2000. International Joint Commission on …
In May of 1993 the British medical journal The Lancet published a paper by a Danish researcher that linked a global decline in sperm counts in healthy men over the past 50 years to accumulation of estrogenlike compounds, mainly organochlorines, in the environment. While enviros grabbed the study as another …
