Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
MUCH speculation has been devoted to the question of what determines the size of animal brains. The reason: relative brain size is the quickest rule-of-the- thumb estimator of mental capacity. However, before comparing brains of different animals, it is important to make an adjustment to the measurements. This is because …
THE lethal human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) may yet be vanquished. Two teams of researchers in the Netherlands and the us have simultaneously unveiled 3-dimensional structures for part of the enzyme that helps the virus infiltrate human dna. The Dutch have also discovered a compound -- hiv integrase -- that can …
APES might come to the rescue Oour AfDS-infected planet. After a pro- longed period of deliberations, the us Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the green signal to a revolutionary experiment that might lead to the discovery of a cure for this deadly disease. The process involves injecting baboon …
Hokkaido University researchers in Japan are investigating a 'smart' material that could be useful in bio-medical applications. Hydrogels -a cross-linked polymer network filled with water molecules -can show 'shape memory'. The gel which can be deformed at low temperatures, can revert to its original shape when heated above 50
Your institute has been trying to revive the traditional medicines in India. What have been the specific steps taken to popularise ethnomedicine? Have they been successful? Today, there's a revival of interest in traditional medicines and herbal therapy the world over. An overgrowing number of scientists are turning to nature, …
DON'T turn a deaf ear if someone told you that ears not only receive sounds but also produce them. Now, a team of scientists led by Nicholas L Powers at the Hearing Research Laboratory in Stat.e University of New York, USA, has confirmed that the inner ear sometimes acts as …
RESEARCHERS in Germany recently provided some vital clues about migraine and its origin by watching it in action. Carnelius Weiller and his colleagues at the University of Essen suggest that the real source of a migraine attack lies in the brain stem though the pain is experienced at the temples …
• The Shiv Sena-BJP bigwigs in Bombay have reintroduced the bill banning the slaughter of cows and calves. The new, "improved" bill calls for an imprisonment increased from 2 years to 5 years and a fine upped from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000. • The Cauvery river is to be …
A REPORT presented in mid-July by the Institute for Environment and Health (mii), Leicester, United Kingdom, has hit hard especially those living in the northern hemisphere. It makes a startling statement that 60,000 human-made chemicals are likely to be causing not only impotency among men and wildlife, but might actually …
WHILE localised prostate cancer is not fatal, its metastatic spread - occurrence or development of secondary foci of cancer at a distance from the primary site - is invariably fatal. Researchers have long been plagued by the question - what dictates molecular changes in metastatic prostate cancer making it life-threatening? …
WHAT do you think would happen if someone were to discover, god forbid, that either of the 2 Homo sapiens sexes is biologically more gifted than other? Ever since Mary Wollstonecraft laid the foundation of feminism -- as we know it today -- late last century and right through suffragetism …
Complex Women had more activity in the cingulate gyrus, an evolutionarily recent region that controls complex expressions of emotions, such as showing anger by looks, not punches Simple Men had more activity in their temporal limbic system. This evolutionarily ancient region controls emotions linked to action, especially aggression
WOMEN • Women perform better than men on tests of perceptual speed -- in which subjects must rapidly identify matching items, such as pairing a picture with its twin in a given set of photos. • Women can remember if an object or series of objects have been displaced, or …
The human instinct and obsession to explore, and discover in all ways, shaped the world we know. Humans have visited virtually every desolate face on the face of Earth, have lifted off the planet to walk on the moon, and continue to inspect the solar system and the limitless reaches …
Take a look at this scenario: researchers trying to trace the causes of the Bosnian war, in deficiencies in seratonin-reuptake mechanisms, in the brain of the Radovan Karadzic(Bosnian Serb leader), or studying a corrupt politician in a bid to identify the genes that make him corrupt. The emerging synthesis of …
SCIENTISTS have now found a way to render "killer" malaria viruses impotent. Researchers based in the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University and other research bodies in the us have identified a family of genes which are thought to be responsible for people dying from the disease. There are …
THERE is good news for heart patients requiring bypass surgery on the aorta, the main artery which carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the rest of the body. British researchers have recently developed a technique that uses plastic tubes, called catheters, to insert synthetic grafts into the blood vessel, …
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 …
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 …
VITAMINS are the key to a healthy heart: this theory -- once considered bunkum by heart specialists -- has again gained widespread currency. Of major interest to medical circles at the moment is folic acid, a vitamin of the b group. How folic acid works on the heart is explained …
