India
According to new research presented today at Digestive Disease Week, drinking caffeinated beverages may benefit some people who are at high-risk for liver disease. Conversely, a study by researchers from India found that soda drinkers, who represent a huge percentage of the American population, may actually have an increased risk of developing esophageal cancer.
Male school children exposed to the pesticide endosulfan showed delayed sexual maturity compared with similar children who were not exposed, according to a study published today in the December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). Endosulfan also appears to interfere with sex hormone synthesis, according to results of the study of males aged 10-19 years in a community of cashew plantations in northern Kerala, India. Although endosulfan is no longer made in the United States, an estimated 1.4-2.2 million pounds are used in the United States on crops including squash, pecans, and strawberries.
The epidemic of HIV/AIDS in India is following the same pattern as that of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, and it could become just as devastating unless preventive action is taken now, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, in a paper to be published Saturday (June 21) in the British Medical Journal. "In hindsight, opportunities were missed to stem the explosive growth of AIDS in Africa," says Dr. Malcolm Potts, professor of population and family planning at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health and lead author of the paper. "It would be a tragedy if we don't apply the lessons learned from the failure to control the spread of HIV in Africa to the current situation in India. It is very painful to watch history repeating itself."
Recent results of a joint experiment conducted by 460 physicists from 57 research institutions in 12 countries strongly indicate that the scientists have succeeded in reproducing matter as it first appeared in the universe; this matter is called the quark-gluon plasma. The experiment, called PHENIX and conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, has brought together physicists from Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Sweden and the United States. The Israeli team is led by Prof. Itzhak Tserruya, head of the Weizmann Institute's Particle Physics Department. Tserruya and his colleagues have designed and built unique particle detectors that are a central part of PHENIX's detecting system.
Under the right economic conditions, a growing demand for forest products that accompanies development may lead to an increase ? not a decline ? in forest cover, according to a new study by researchers at Brown University and Harvard University. Policies that focus on reducing paper demand may not necessarily increase forestation.
Cotton crops in India that were genetically modified to resist insects produced dramatically increased yields and significantly reduced pesticide use compared with non-bioengineered crops, according to the results of farm trials reported by researchers in California and Germany. The study, published Friday, Feb. 7, in the journal Science, holds particular promise for small-scale, low-income farmers in developing nations, said the researchers. These farmers, especially those in tropical regions, regularly risk large, pest-related crop losses because they cannot afford to use the pesticides available to larger farms.
Despite perceptions that additive-free cigarettes and the hand-rolled cigarettes from India called bidis may provide a less-toxic smoke than conventional cigarettes, new research suggests the opposite may be true. For the study, researchers asked 10 volunteers to smoke an unfiltered, additive-free American Spirit cigarette, a strawberry-flavored bidi, a non-flavored bidi and one of the participants' own preferred brands of conventional cigarette. Results showed that two minutes after smoking the unfiltered, additive-free American Spirit cigarette or either type of bidi, participants' plasma nicotine levels were significantly higher than when they smoked their own cigarettes. The high nicotine levels lasted longest with the American Spirit cigarette. Study results are published in the December issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
Detection techniques and technology have improved so much in recent years that seismologists now say they are able to detect and identify virtually all events that might be nuclear explosions of possible military significance under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Verification was a major issue in the U.S. Senate debate in 1999, in which American ratification of the treaty was defeated.
