A creeper found in south India is an answer to several common ailments, says Sumana Narayanan Around September each year, when the northeast monsoon usually started, bags of wet plant material would make their way to our home in Chennai. Every other week my grandmother would collect this plant called mudakkatraan from our untended garden in the village and my father would transport it
Microorganisms explain more about us and our world than we ever imagined. sumana narayanan courses through rodent brain, feline gut, and the human stomach This is not something you are likely to see in a Tom and Jerry animation. Imagine a cat readying itself to pounce on a mouse. The mouse notes the feline but does not budge. It grooms itself and looks away. Soon, it is cat food.
“We found several pugmarks had the toes rounded off. We realized the park staff were creating pugmarks with casts ” When it was found there were no tigers in the Panna Tiger Reserve, P K Sen was called to join the government special investigation team. Former head of Project Tiger, he told Sumana Narayanan the
Port Blair bench allows resort that may endanger Jarawas THE Calcutta High Court has cleared the construction of a holiday resort near the forest area reserved for the threatened Jarawa tribe in South Andamans. The Andaman administration had appealed against building the resort saying it was within the five-kilometre buffer zone of the reserve and would endanger the tribe
Section 377 of the penal code will apply only to child abuse THE Delhi High Court has de-criminalized consensual gay sex between adults. In its order passed on June 2, the court said Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, relating to unnatural offences, would now apply only to cases of child abuse and rape. The court was hearing a 2001 petition filed by the non-profit, Naz Foundation
Parliamentary committee asks centre to hold back CMZ notification sustained protests by fishing communities and environmentalists has forced the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests to review the proposed Coastal Management Zone (cmz) draft notification that allows airports and other development projects in coastal areas. The ministry has set up a committee to review the draft
Used phony journals to push Vioxx pharma giant Merck has been accused of using unscrupulous methods, including publication of fake journals, to promote its anti-arthritis drug Vioxx. The evidence against Merck was presented before an Australian court in May after it began hearing a four-year-old lawsuit. Merck paid a well-known academic publisher, Elsevier, to compile favourable
Invests US $4 billion to lease land in Ethiopia INDIA is leasing land in Ethiopia to grow food to meet its domestic demand and boost exports. The government invested US $4 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) on agriculture, horticulture and sugar estates in the African country where land is cheap. This is a fallout of the economic crisis and jump in food prices, said US-based research agency, the
