24 World Food Prize laureates urge US President to make fighting global hunger top priority
Reading Time: < 1 minuteON February 23, 2021, 24 World Food Prize Laureates through the World Food Prize Foundation released an open letter, U.S. Leadership Needed to Help End World Hunger, urging the Biden-Harris Administration to focus on alleviating hunger, poverty, and malnutrition around the globe. The World Food Prize Laureates last came together for a global call to action 19 […]
Indonesia passes post-monitoring regulation for genetically engineered crops
Reading Time: < 1 minuteTHE Ministry of Agriculture passed Regulation 50/2020 that provides guidelines for establishing a post-monitoring evaluation scheme for genetically engineered (GE) crops. The guidelines were developed in accordance with the country’s regulatory framework through Regulation 21/2005. Indonesia adopted its national biosafety regulatory framework in 2005 but GE crop varieties have failed to reach commercialization due to the lack […]
Vitamin D – The DIY supplement
Reading Time: 4 minutesBy Yang Wei Ling & Nor Aini Jamil Back in the 1920s, Steenbock and Archie Black discovered that exposing foods to mercury vapour lamps and feeding them to rats with Rickets helped promote their growth and calcium absorption; similar positive effects were observed when rats were directly irradiated. Later, Hess and Weinstock also reported that […]
Didik TV teacher not solely to be blamed for goofing
Reading Time: 2 minutesI AM observing the current public criticism thrown at the DidikTV teacher who conducted a science lesson on the reproductive system. As a science communicator and advocate, I think we have all gone off tangent on this issue. The flaw was not her proficiency in English. We do not need Queen’s English to teach Math and […]
All the coronavirus in the world could fit inside a Coke can, with plenty of room to spare
Reading Time: 4 minutesBY MISHA KETCHELL WHEN I was asked to calculate the total volume of SARS-CoV-2 in the world for the BBC Radio 4 show More or Less, I will admit I had no idea what the answer would be. My wife suggested it would be the size of an Olympic swimming pool. “Either that or a teaspoon,” she […]
WHO confirms Coronavirus came from animals not laboratory
Reading Time: 3 minutesBy Saarani Vengadesen There has been a longstanding cold war between USA and China, with the USA accusing the latter of creating the infamous SARS-CoV2 virus in the lab. The latest probe concluded by WHO states that coronavirus originated from animal and it is not leaked from the lab. WHO team revealed the preliminary finding during […]
Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2
Reading Time: 3 minutesGLOBAL greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favoured by bats. A new study published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment provides the first evidence of a mechanism by which climate change could have played a direct role in […]
The immune system mounts a lasting defence after recovery from COVID-19, researchers find
Reading Time: 3 minutesAS THE NUMBER of people who have fought off SARS-CoV-2 climbs ever higher, a critical question has grown in importance: How long will their immunity to the novel coronavirus last? A new Rockefeller study offers an encouraging answer, suggesting that those who recover from COVID-19 are protected against the virus for at least six months, […]
Novel analytical tools developed by SMART key to next-generation agriculture
Reading Time: 4 minutesSINGAPORE: Researchers from the Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) of Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), highlight the potential of recently developed analytical tools that are rapid and non-destructive, with a proof of concept through first-generation examples. The […]
Could Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine Pave Way for an HIV Vaccine?
Reading Time: 2 minutesThe introduction of the mRNA vaccine could be the key to suppressing the spread of Covid-19, but mRNA technology has also created a series of possibilities to treat other diseases as well. Moderna recently announced that they will be developing an HIV vaccine following its successes with the Covid-19 vaccine. “The recent clinical achievements reported […]