For India to realise its full potential, author of Accelerating India’s Development: A State-led Roadmap for Effective Governance Karthik Muralidharan pushes for investment in good institutions which can restrain politicians

How about getting plants to produce some of the nutrition they need?

Soap nut berries and powder can be used for the washing machine and cut down on pollution. A look by S. Vishwanath

Even if you can’t go to the wild and soak in diverse ecosystems look around and you will find them right here in our city, says Pauline Deborah R.

Have a red, white and green Christmas with these pretty poinsettias

Here are three gardening essentials and Hema Vijay tells you how to use them

Green ideology is the essence of Gerard da Cunha’s buildings, and the effect is striking. By Nandhini Sundar

Changes in global natural gas trade have reflected geopolitical alignments but these may shift, depending on policies of incoming US President Donald Trump

Singapore : Springer Nature Singapore : Imprint: Springer, 2024.

128 salons and counting! Veena and C.K. Kumaravel talk to Priyadarshini Paitandy about taking their beauty chain to small towns and creating job opportunities

Anakapalli SP urges the personnel to upgrade their skills to perform better at the valedictory of training programme

Edinburgh : Printed and sold by D. Schaw & Co. Riddell's Close., 1799.

Arish John Andrews designs and makes bespoke ornaments from natural materials such as seeds, clay and bamboo

RmKv Silks which turned 100 this year, has launched their range of thematic handloom silk saris with natural dye this festive season

Sujatha Shankar Kumar on indigenous architecture and designs emerging at Auroville

When it comes to furniture, wood steals the show.

Are you busy and still interested in gardening? Green Orchid Nursery offers tips and services that you could find useful.

Such screens could yield protein drugs with advantages over natural ones

U.S. natural gas production loses 2.3% of methane to leaks

A growing group of researchers believes photoprotective compounds from algae and other organisms could soothe consumers’ concerns

Aniket Mahato, one of prominent faces of the doctors’ movement who fell ill during the hunger strike, has sought Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s intervention to resolve the crisis

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Some trends are worth the hype and organic hair products is one such trend. Switching to natural and organic products seems like a gamble that we are not too crazy about. Don't you think that it is high time that you

Scientists have long debated how large-scale plant patterns such as the famous "fairy circles" of Namibia form and persist. Now, a new Princeton University-led study suggests that instead of a single overarching cause, large-scale vegetation patterns in arid ecosystems could occasionally stem from millions of local interactions among neighboring plants and animals. The work could explain many patterns throughout the world.

Princeton University researchers have found that the roundworms Caenorhabditis elegans have a sure-fire method of ensuring a steady supply of a bacteria they eat — they grow their own. The worms carry the bacteria Escherichia coli along with them, and drop bacteria along the way to create thriving new bacterial colonies that the worms later return to "harvest" and eat.

Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (App) is the etiological agent of acute porcine pneumonia and responsible for severe economic losses worldwide. The capsule polymer of App serotype 1 (App1) consists of [4)-GlcNAc-β(1,6)-Gal-α-1-(PO4-] repeating units that are O-acetylated at O-6 of the GlcNAc. It is a major virulence factor and was used in previous studies in the successful generation of an experimental glycoconjugate vaccine. However, the application of glycoconjugate vaccines in the animal health sector is limited, presumably because of the high costs associated with harvesting the polymer from pathogen culture. Consequently, here we exploited the capsule polymerase Cps1B of App1 as an in vitro synthesis tool and an alternative for capsule polymer provision. Cps1B consists of two catalytic domains, as well as a domain rich in tetratricopeptide repeats (TPRs). We compared the elongation mechanism of Cps1B with that of a ΔTPR truncation (Cps1B-ΔTPR). Interestingly, the product profiles displayed by Cps1B suggested processive elongation of the nascent polymer, whereas Cps1B-ΔTPR appeared to work in a more distributive manner. The dispersity of the synthesized products could be reduced by generating single-action transferases and immobilizing them on individual columns, separating the two catalytic activities. Furthermore, we identified the O-acetyltransferase Cps1D of App1 and used it to modify the polymers produced by Cps1B. Two-dimensional NMR analyses of the products revealed O-acetylation levels identical to those of polymer harvested from App1 culture supernatants. In conclusion, we have established a protocol for the pathogen-free in vitro synthesis of tailored, nature-identical App1 capsule polymers.

Anomalous Payloadbased Worm Detection and Signature Generation.

Ending a year-long race that had been nip-and tuck every month, renewable energy sources cumulatively provided more new electric generating capacity in 2014 than did natural gas.

U.S. President Barack Obama says natural gas can be a bridge from coal to a cleaner energy future. Investors are showing it’s more likely a bridge to nowhere.

A recent judgment of the Court of Appeal suggests that in some indirect discrimination cases there should be a greater focus on the nature of and reason for the claimed disadvantage than has previously been the case. The ruling may make it harder fo...

In the Buckeye State, the large furry mammals are back, but are humans ready for them?

Lori Vallow, the Idaho mother jailed in connection to the disappearance of her two missing children, is also under investigation with her current husband in the death of his former wife.

“Deep-speare” crafted Shakespearean verse that most readers couldn’t distinguish from human-written poems

Sure, it’s great to have clear blue skies but for most of the world the pandemic spells famine and disease, not the planet fighting back

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Cormorants are hunting fish in the now clear waters of Venice. Wild boars roam the avenues of Barcelona and wild goats the streets of Llandudno. Above Los Angeles are blue skies. From smogless Delhi, you can once more glimpse the Himalayas.

“The Earth is healing, we are the virus,” runs the meme spreading fast across the internet. It’s a sentiment echoed by many policymakers, commentators and celebrities.

Max Verstappen says his early elevation to Formula One feels perfectly normal after he received some pearls of wisdom ahead of his debut from some of the sport's most experienced drivers

He gave McCartney tips on how to scream in tune and paved the way for everyone from Otis Redding to Prince. Richard Penniman showed the world how rock’n’roll could be a manifesto for personal liberation

Little Richard’s Rip It Up entered the UK top 30, right at the bottom, in December 1956. It looked up at a chart that included Bill Haley and Elvis Presley, but was mostly filled with light opera gloop such as Malcolm Vaughan’s St Therese of the Roses, three different versions of the cod-calypso of Cindy, Oh Cindy, and toddler-friendly novelties including Dickie Valentine’s Christmas Island and Mitchell Torok’s When Mexico Gave Up the Rhumba, while the spirit of the blitz lived on with Vera Lynn’s A House With Love in It. Play any of these records either side of Rip It Up and the effects are guaranteed goosebumps, an involuntary laugh and real surprise. With the sheer volume of Richard’s raw-throated scream – ebullient, gleeful, quite filthy – the shock of the new can still be felt. Rip It Up – that title alone!

Think of Bowie. Think of Prince. Little Richard was doing the same thing – with greater extravagance – decades earlier

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