Tag: "india" at biology news

India's smoking gun: Dino-killing eruptions

New discoveries about the timing and speed of gigantic, 6500-foot (2-km) thick lava flows that poured out of the ground 65 million years ago could shift the blame for killing the dinos. . The Deccan Traps of India are one of Earth's largest lava flows ever, with the potential of having wreaked havoc with the climate of the Earth - if they erupted and released climate-changing gases quickly enough...

HIV mortality in India drops with introduction of generic antiretroviral therapy

The survival rate of HIV-infected patients in India has risen in response to a 20-fold drop in the price of antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to an article in the Nov. 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. The introduction of generic drugs into the country has encouraged people to seek HIV treatment because of the cheaper cost, the article states. . Many of the mor...

Genetic analysis of Asian elephants in India reveals some surprises

Researchers in India and from The Earth Institute at Columbia University have discovered that one of the few remaining populations of Asian elephants in India is actually two genetically distinct groups. The results of the study, which appear in the current issue of the journal Animal Conservation, could have far-reaching implications in conservation plans for the endangered elephants as well as...

Alcoholism, smoking and genetics among Plains American Indians

Alcoholism and smoking have a high rate of co-occurrence in the general population. Yet little is known about the co-morbidity of alcoholism and smoking among American Indians. In the March issue of . "The shared heritability between smoking and alcoholism, particularly in heavy smokers and heavy drinkers, i...

Researchers make progress in studying genetic traits of India-born populations

Despite the fact that the people of India constitute more than one-sixth of the world's entire population, they have been underrepresented in studies related to genetic diseases. And with the growth of modernization, complex genetic diseases associated with urban and western lifestyles have risen to near-epidemic proportions, making genetic cataloging and association studies of particular importa...

New technologies coming too fast for Indian farmers

The arrival of genetically modified crops has added another level of complexity to farming in the developing world, says a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. . .. The study, published in the February 2007 issue of Current Anthropology, focuses on cotton production in the W...