WHO published its World health statistics report 2025, revealing the deeper health impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on loss of lives, longevity and overall health and well-being. In just two years, between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy fell by 1.8 years—the largest drop in recent history— reversing a …
A 35-YEAR-OLD man, the first person in the world to receive a baboon's liver, died after two months of the transplant. Though he was found to be HIV-infected, he had reportedly not developed AIDS. Surgeons at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre plan to continue experimental transplants as rejection of …
HUNGARY'S last ditch efforts to halt the Slovakian hydro-electric project failed with Slovakia continuing to divert the waters of the Danube, Europe's largest river, into an environmentally controversial barrage along their common border. While the two heads of state agreed on setting up a joint commission to head off confrontation …
THE VILLAGERS of Pali, 30 km from Delhi in Faridabad, are up ip arms over a move to set up 300 stone- crushing units on panchayat land that was once theirs and have gone to court to get a stay. The Faridabad Complex Administration (FCA), acting on a Supreme Court …
THREE thousand people are feared dead in flash floods caused by heavy rains in northeastern Afghanistan in the first week of September. A nine metre-high tidal wave brought torrents of mud and boulders down three river valleys in the Hindu Kush mountains sweeping away hundreds of houses. Thousands of hectares …
THE US National Institute of Health (NIH) has halted grant to a conference on 'Links between genetic disposition and criminal behaviour', following complaints that the conference might be a covert attack on African- Americans, who constitute 46 per cent of prisoners in USA. The conference on genetic factors in crime, …
THE UNITED States Agency for International Development (USAID) stopped assistance for irrigation development projects in India with effect from September 15. Sources attribute this measure to the gradual shifting of US attention to areas such as health and population control and agriculture -- specifically food processing. Some observers feel irrigation …
CIVIC authorities in Kanpur never seem to find the time or the resources to solve the problems of the 3,000 residents of Rajapurva, a slum in the heart of the city. This must be so, otherwise how can one explain why a slum settlement that's older than the nation was …
CHINA came of commercial space age with the launch of the Australian telecommunications satellite, Optus B1. This was their second attempt at launching the satellite. The first, in March, failed as a short circuit cut off fuel flow to the rocket engines. China has for years been trying to break …
BETWEEN the radical and the official view of socio-economic developments, there is a middle ground of development ideology that does not readily find a voice on television. Catalysts for Change is one such series, made by the Centre for the Development of Instructional Technology (CENDIT). It was intended for Doordarshan, …
BRAZIL is getting too smart for the European Community. It has imposed import duties on EC milk products saying the enormous European subsidy to farmers makes its home products uncompetitive. The EC has petitioned the subsidies committee of the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to resolve the …
THE STAKES are high in the rifampicin (a new anti-TB drug) sweepstakes. Lupin Laboratories presently dominates the market, which, according to the ministry of chemicals, did a business of Rs 236 crore during 1992-93. To break the monopoly, which enables Lupin to charge as much as 15 per cent more …
PROLONGED use of chlorinated drinking water can cause cancer, says a study by scientists at the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR). When chlorine gas reacts with naturally occurring organic contaminants in water, minute concentrations of carcinogenic compounds are formed. The risk is greater in water got from rivers and …
SWEDISH pharmaceutical firm Astra has developed a drug -- Losec -- that inhibits acid secretions in the stomach wall and heals ulcers. It has been found that as many as 80 per cent of all ulcer patients will suffer a relapse unless they are given some form of preventive therapy. …
THE JAPANESE who are among the heaviest smokers in the industrialised world -- 36 per cent of the over-18 population smoke -- are being lured away from tobacco by a programme that sets the yen as bait. Several companies now pay bonuses ranging from 7,000 yen (Rs 28,000) to 40,000 …
AMERICANS will now get designer food -- created by altering the genetic structure of fruits and vegetables. The first to hit the market is likely to be a sweeter tomato -- altered by Calgene of California so that it no longer produces the rotting enzyme, polygalacturonase. This means it lasts …
THE average global life expectancy may be an unprecedented 65 years and still climbing, but according to the annual report of the World Health Organisation (WHO), people are not living healthier lives. Over the next half-decade:lone, life expectancy will increase by another four months, thanks to improved water supply and …
RABINDRANATH Tagore's much loved tree, the scholar's tree or Alstonia scholaris, is today a bone of contention within the faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology (11T) in Kanpur. Last year, when about 10 Alstonia trees were felled on the campus after several staff members complained of asthma attacks, it …
Potassium bromate (KBrO3) is an oxidizing agent that has been used as a food additive, mainly in the bread-making process. Although adverse effects are not evident in animals fed bread-based diets made from flour treated with KBrO3, the agent is carcinogenic in rats and nephrotoxic in both man and experimental …
The effect on the charring temperature of arsenic in blood with wall and platform atomisations of a number of matrix modifiers, such as cobalt, copper, nickel and palladium, has been studied. Based on this study, a nitric acid de-proteinisation-nickel matrix modification-graphite platform-in-furnace atomic absorption spectrometric method was developed for the …
The purpose of Mental Health Act, 1987 is to consolidate and amend laws relating to the treatment and care of mentally ill persons and further to make provisions for their property.
