Flu sends 17,000 to their beds
Officials with St. Petersburg's Influenza Institute say a flu epidemic sweeping the city has left 17,000 local residents bedridden. The institute's Oleg Kiselyov said Friday that the local outbreak was classified as an epidemic when the number of people infected rose beyond the 9,000 mark earlier this month.
- Reservoir blamed for Koyna quakes
While seismologists in general have time and again debated the suspicious role of the Koyna reservoir in the occurrrence of frequent earthquakes in western Maharashtra, results of detailed research work being conducted by the Central Water and Power Research Station, Pune since 1963, clearly establish a strong correlation between the …
- Poison flow from aided tubewells
For the past two decades, water from a million or more wells sunk into the alluvum of the Ganga delta by agencies such as UNICEF, the World Bank and Britain's Overseas Development Administration has been slowly poisoning Bangladeshi villagers with a naturally occuring arsenic. Now thousands of villagers are being …
Pipeline water for villages
The Ministry of Public Health of Thailand announced the construction of village water pipeline systems worth some two billion baht to cope with the drought expected this summer. Minister Rakkiat Sukthana said the ministry plans to construct 865 village water pipelines, 1,000 artesian wells and 99 water tanks so that …
Increased tobacco taxes proposed
Speaking at a conference on the economics of tobacco control in Cape Town, on Thursday that an increase in tax on tobacco will have the dual effect of reducing cigarette consumption, while boosting government revenue in South Africa. Economist Rowena van der Merwe attributed the estimated 20% decline in cigarette …
Creutzfeldt-jacob disease causes a scare in Portugal
The Minister of Health of Portugal Maria de belem, started a bit of a panic when she told a radio station that two patients in Portuguese hospitals had been diagnosed as having the new strain of CJD, apparently caused by Mad Cow Disease. The new strain is apparently linked to …
- A tail of renewal
About five years ago, Ellen Heber-Katz, an immunologist at the Wistar Institute in Philadephia, sent one of her students to punch holes in the ears of a group of experimental mice. Three weeks later, however, all the holes had diappeared. When the two researchers tried again, the same thing happened. …
- Electronic 'watchdog' for medicinal plants mooted
The draft 'Bangalore Declaration' coming at the end of a global conference on medicinal plants has proposed an electronic "watchdog" and data network of related organisations to monitor developments in the area. The meet on Thursday also suggested a four-pronged action plan covering trade, enterprise and traditional resource rights.Its final …
- US charges 2 with possessing biological toxin
Federal agents have charged two men with possession of a biological toxin believed to be anthrax after tracking them for hours as they prepared to test the substance at a suburban medical clinic, authorities said.
-Capital faces water crisis
The Capital is facing a serious water crisis. The production of drinking water has been reduced by half because of a sharp deterioration in the quality of raw water in the Yamuna. The quantum of production at the water treatment plants was reduced today after an abnormally high percentage of …
- Men born in spring taller than those born in autumn
A person's height may be determined by the time of year they are born, according to an Austrian study published on Thursday in the British scientific magazine Nature. According to Gerhard W. Weber and his team at Vienna University Institute of Human Biology, "Men born in springtime tend to be …
- Alternative therapy comes to forefront
The rapidity with which modern science and medicine are making advances gives one the hope that someday all ailments would probably find easy cures in the form of pills , injections. But today many people stand disillusioned with the modern medicine system. And in this mechanised existence individuals are seeking …
- Workshop on interventional neurology inaugurated in city
The second workshop on interventional neuroradiology, organised by the Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, was inaugurated here on Thursday.This three-day workshop has been convened in order to expose neuro-scientists in India and the neighbouring countries to the new techniques of surgery developed at the hospital.The main thrust will be on the technique …
- Sunscreens may not help prevent cancer
A provocative presentation at a science conference on Tuesday questioned the widely held belief that sunscreens lower the risk of deadly melanoma skin cancer, but specialists still caution against going into the sunshine without these lotions.
- Multipronged approach to hydel project finance
The draft paper on the proposed hydel policy, currently in the proces of finalisation, has mooted a multipronged and flexible approach with regard to the financing of projects and the operationalisation of the private participation process in the hydel sector. In an effort to make projects bankable, the Government has …
- Skin cells to grow human vein
Scientists have grown the first all-human replacement part--a 5-cm vein--and implanted it in dog. The breakthrough is set to transform heart surgery by giving doctors a new source of replacement veins for bypass operations. Team leader Nicolas L'Heureux of the University of California, San Diego, said such possibilities had been …
- Signal for a silent world
A report in the Lancet notes that though about 4% of people under the age of 45 suffer from genetic deafness, most of the cases are sporadic-patients who have no family history of hearing problems. But a team led by geneticist Xavier Estivill has found a defect in the connexin-26 …
- India, UK sign biotechnology MoU, experts' meet in April
India and the UK have signed an MoU for cooperation in the field of biotechnology. The two governments have agreed to cooperate over a wide range of areas that include vaccines for communicable and non-communicable diseases, diognostics for infectious and non-infectious diseases and bio-process engineering.
- Genetic tug-of-war determines sex of a mammal, says study
Two genes lock in a tur-of-war to determine whether a mammal embryo will become male or female , a new study suggests. One of the genes, called SRY, has long been known as the master switch that makes an embryo become male. The New Work suggests that a second gene, …
