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. …
MOMS have for generations been singing the virtues of green leafy vegetables, usually to deaf ears. Now, new findings vindicate their emphasis: scientists suggest that vegetables like spinach are not only essential for balanced growth but could also guard against several types of cancers -- including cancers of the colon, …
Australian researchers reported in January that a gene for a vitamin D receptor was a possible culprit behind osteoporosis, a disease that causes the bones to become brittle. Now, a clinical study at a hospital in Bangor, Maine, has found a marker for another bone disorder, osteopaenia (bone thinning). The …
The age of the universe is an enigma that only becomes more puzzling with time. If the Big Bang theory, the raison d'etre of the universe, is to be believed, then it should be 15-20 billion years old. But 2 recent measurements, one by the earth-bound Kitt Peak telescope at …
IMAGINE a rapidly expanding gas confined in a container and subject to immense external pressure. The laws of science tell us that the balance of forces cannot be sustained for long without some transformation taking place in the gas. Now, substitute the gas with the institution monolithically called "scientific research" …
THE human body has an impressive battery of security guards. Everybody knows about the infection-fighting capabilities of white blood corpuscles. But there are other little known body defenders, such as the heat-shock proteins, that are equally valiant and useful. The heat-shock proteins (HSP) are produced by cells in response to …
STRFSS is an inescapable consequence of our times. The body has its own mechanism of dealing with it - physical or psychological - to a certain degree, beyond which an individual has to depend on medication to keep it in check. Scientists looking for substances to relieve stress have now …
Would parents discriminates between their offspring on the basis of their looks? Yes, claim Bruce E Lyon from the University of Toronto and his colleagues, who have found that American coots often prefer to feed those chicks that have a colourful plumage rather than the plainer ones (Nature, Vol 371, …
IS THERE anything new to be said on the subject of women and health? The first impression of-the section on this topic in the government's Draft Country Paper for the 1995 Beijing Conference on women is that everything the women's groups have been saying for the last 2 decades is …
FOR a human, a fall from a 6-storey building means death. But a cat can coolly jump down and walk away: a freefalling cat is a light and compactly made animal. Endowed with 4 legs, flexible joints and an efficient vestibular system, cats are designed to take mishaps in their …
RESEARCHERS from all over the world will gather at Lucknow from November 17 to 21 this year for the Fourth International Congress of Ethnobiology, organised by the Society of Ethnobiologists. They will debate on indigenous knowledge and the utilisation of plants and animals to societal use. For the vast majority …
ONCE scientists learnt that the complexity of life is determined by a single molecule-the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule-they have been striving to unravel its structure and molecule carries the code of life in the from of millions of genes. A lot of scientific effort worldwide is focused on genes. Genetic …
LIVING in the US, as I have been for nearly 6 months now, is like attending a crash course in nutrition. In the poorer world, the key issue is how to get enough food to eat. Here, in the rich world, people are worried about what they should eat to …
The development and application of two methods for determining bromate in bread are described. A gas chromatographic (GC) method which relied on the formation of a volatile derivative of bromate gave a detection limit of 12 μg/kg. Duplicate analyses agreed well but recovery from breads spiked with bromate were low …
If you want to pass your exams or learn a new skill quick indulge in sleep. in 2 experiments on animals and human scientists have found the first direct evidence that memoceft are consolidated during sleep. In the rat studies conducted at the University of Arizom at Tucson, researchers found …
It is a sad commentary on ate of the world's cnous peoples that about in northern Canada, are to turn their sacred nto a nuclear dump - hange for jobs. The ps that make up the ow Lake Tribal 11 are convinced that atc-owned Atomic of Canada Limited ka)file LIP …
MEDIEVAL afflictions were not restricted to Beed, Surat or other parts of India hit by the plague last fortnight. They showed up in the blinkered reception of the news in several supposedly informed quarters in the country, and other nations as well. Take the case of the mainstream Indian press. …
Most water starved nations cannot afford the extravagance of purifying water for agriculture through conventional desalination techniques. The London-based Light Works may have just the answer: a cost-effective system for producing pure water in hot coastal regions, which is then used to irrigate crops. Its prototype greenhouse, built on the …
Russia's health care system is on the verge of collapse. With a freeze on capital investment, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a leading hospital in Moscow has resorted to using cats to root out mice and vermin from operation theatres. One of the more serious facets …
An increasingly sedentary lifestyle is making Americans, largely white, obese. The US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1988-91, reveals that 33.4 per cent of Americans 20 years of age or older were estimated to be adipose -- an increase of 8 per cent over the figures from …
President Suharto of Indonesia is under fire for allegedly diverting $189 million intended for the forestry ministry's rainforest preservation programme to the state-owned aircraft maker, Industri Pesawat Terbang Negara, as an interest-free loan. Suharto now faces a legal challenge from 11 Indonesian environmental groups who plan to take their case …
