"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einsteins' brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops". Stephen…

The past few times I've driven in New Jersey (in NJ for work, through NJ to get to fun places), I've noticed a sign that says "Restricted CMV." To me this means HLA-restricted cytomegalovirus. I…

Not to beat a dead squid, but a reasonable question came up in a conversation with one of my labmates today: Who's to say that the Architeuthis collected in the Gulf of Mexico this summer was alive…

The ultimate do-it-yourself and hack-your-way-to-happiness magazine, MAKE, recently launched a new section to their Make:Online website just for supporting the at home citizen scientist. Having just…

Tribals of Jaipur district worship all the God and Goddesses of Hindu religion along with number of local deities. These deities are associated with a number of plant species. During the present…

Traditional medicines are used in all civilizations and cultures in health care systems worldwide. Since the beginning of civilization, people have used plants as medicine. Ethnobotany is the study…

The intimate relationship between the human and plant world has evolved over generations of experience and practices. The tribal people and ethnic races throughout the world have developed their own…

Let us take an Observer (O) who is sitting on a chair and in front of him is a table, upon which sits an apple. Now, if (O) decides to pick up the people, we can say that his ‘Mind’, his ‘Self’, his…

For many the turbulence of life are inexplicable and profoundly frustrating our faith in goodwill. What is the essence of personal meaning in a world where human relations are becoming increasingly…

My eyes open, and as usual, I don’t feel like getting up. I’m still sleepy, feeling lazy and bored to do anything. But I’ve got to get up, because I have something called work. And work gets my rent…

I had occasion last week to tell the story of my high school friend Allen (name changed to protect his by now certainly stellar career). We had met again back in Evanston, before starting…

Wild medicinal plants in Indian Folk Life-A Historical Perspective Plants of over 3500 wild species are used to cure ailments in man and his domesticated animals : Plants in folk medicine of the…

Recently, checklists of Ayurvedic and Yunani treatises have been published (Anonymous, 1963 and Tripathi et al., 1978). A list of some of the important Indian treatises is presented in Table 1.…

Yup, they found a giant squid. And this is exactly why I get snarlish about people referring to Humboldt squid as giant squid. If you cry "giant!" every time Humboldts appear, then when you get a…

Scientific Name Sida cordifolia Linn. Family Malvaceae Used Part Seeds Distribution Area Common Uses .Considered useful in sexual debility and spermatorrhoea. Used in drugs for sexual strength…

Natural drugs obtained from plants and animals are called drugs of biological origin and are produced in the living cells of plants or animals. Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from…

A recent LiveScience article argues that part of the problem in health care costs is the poor dietary and health habits those in the U.S. have.   "Americans get sick more. Why? Some argue that…

Recent events in the Chrematosphere*  have brought the following to mind. It is from Fred Hoyle’s Frontiers of Astronomy, concerning the collapse of a giant star before it explodes as a…

For most of its life, Olin College of Engineering in scenic Needham, Massachusettes was free.  All students received a 100% scholarship.  In a sad reflection of the times, though, this has…

Rajasthan : Hadoti Plateau Ethnobotanical studies in Rajasthan were conducted by Singh and Pandey (1980), Joshi (1982, 1995), Katewa and Arora (1997), Singh and Pandey (1998) and Sharma and Dadhich…