Science and Technology - Briefs

Zoology New world order

Science and Technology - Briefs

COMPUTER SCIENCES Super disc Typical compact discs (CDs) store 600-700 megabytes (MB) of digital data. A new technology can now help develop CDs that can hold 2 terabytes or 2,000,000 MB of data. Instead of packing more data on the surface, the idea is to make an optical film with 64 data layers.

More arsenic

Dinanath Singh has a cancerous wound on his left foot from which blood and pus continuously ooze. He has black and white spots (lesions) all over his body. The 61-year-old also suffers from skin cancer. Two fingers of his left hand had developed ulcers and had to be amputated. His ailments are many, but the cause is one: arsenic.

The dark zone

It is a story about underground water: when the nectar turns into poison. When a daily task of drinking water from the handpump becomes the source of crippling disease and death. This is not a "natural" disaster -- where natural arsenic or fluoride, present deep down, just happened to make their way into drinking water. It is about a deliberate poisoning.

Unmasking aerosols

A P Mitra couldn't believe it. He along with 200-odd scientists from India, Europe, Maldives and the us was conducting an intensive six-week field experiment in 1999 to study the effect of airborne tiny particles called aerosols on climate.

Cell towers, a health risk

AN EXPERT committee, appointed by the Maharashtra government to study the effect of mobile phone towers on public health, has recommended a ban on these structures near schools and hospitals, and restricted access to rooftops of buildings having such towers. 

Extracting a cost

Vedanta refinery pollutes river, sickens people in Orissa

Clay has curative properties

modern medicine has found clay can be of good use now. Though it has been used as cosmetic by beauticians for long, therapeutic values of clay has not been recognized by modern science. us researchers have found the green clay in the mountainous regions of central France possesses antibiotic properties.

Arsenic more toxic for specific gene variation

people with a specific variation in a gene who are exposed to arsenic have greater risk of getting skin lesions and hyperkeratosis, a precursor to skin cancer, say researchers from Kolkata. The gene, called ercc2 (excision repair cross-complementing rodent repair deficiency, complementation group 2), repairs any damage to dna. The findings of the study will be published in the forthcoming issue of Carcinogenesis.

South Asia

Delayed aid: Sri Lanka's tsunami reconstruction work has been delayed by three months due to non-payment of foreign aid. The government announced on February 7, 2005 that donors had finally approved the payment US $1.5 billion aid for and "its from now the construction phase begins". But this happened only after it went public with the complaint that the reconstruction was getting delayed because the foreign aid pledged by donors wasn't materialising.