Articles

India has moved up 35 places to become the 88th best country in the world to live, leaving behind nations like Russia and China, according to a survey. The rise has made India the second best place after Bhutan to live in the sub-continent, according to the 2010 Quality of Life Index, published by travel magazine International Living.

Most polymers — materials made of long, chain-like molecules — are very good insulators for both heat and electricity. But an MIT team has found a way to transform the most widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a material that conducts heat just as well as most metals, yet remains an electrical insulator.

Interest on medicinal plants has grown tremendously as a re-emerging health aid and it is evident in the rising number of prescription of drugs in the maintenance of personal health and well being.

Young people in Britain turn to the Internet to look for help with personal problems rather than seek advice from their parents or friends, according to a survey released recently. Nine-tenths of the 1,000 under 25s told the survey for national free help line Get Connected that they had used the Web to search for help in solving a personal problem.

The University of Montreal has demystified the myth that the blind have a more acute sense of smell than the sighted. Vision loss simply makes blind people pay more attention to how they perceive smells.

 A newly discovered species of monitor lizard, a close relative of the Komodo dragon, was reported in the journal Zootaxa which describes this distinctive lizard as living in the Moluccan islands of east Indonesia. The scientific name of this lizard is Varanus obor; its popular names are Torch monitor and Sago monitor.

The Government of India is running a campaign to save the tigers. Tiger is a charismatic animal playing a pivotal role in the preservation of the ecosystem. It is at the apex of the food chain, a top predator that keeps the population of the wild in check.

 Sleep can be an important tool when it comes to enhancing memory and learning skills. And now, a new study sheds light on the role that dreams play in this important process.

The World's biggest administrative exercise, the Indian Census 2011 will begin on April 15, 2010 in two phases. The census to take place is the seventh since Independence and is conducted once every ten years. The two phases for the census are housing census and the population census.

In a surprise result that can help in the understanding of both ageing and cancer, researchers working with an engineered type of stem cell said they reversed the ageing process in a rare genetic disease. The team at Children's Hospital Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute were working with a new type of cell called induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells, which closely resemble embryonic stem cells but are made from ordinary skin cells.

Southern India especially, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is graying much faster than the rest of the country. Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, is projected to remain the youngest state for three decades, starting from 2011, and will be followed by Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal, says a study by the International Institute of Population Sciences.