Hoodia gordonii kills hunger and thirst! It’s not a medicine, but a plant that grows wild in the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. Priced almost like a narcotic, it is the latest craze of the dieting industry.

But this hot demand, along with rampant smuggling, is threatening the rare plant — already listed as an endangered species. This hunger for money may soon kill this unique hunger-killing plant.

Catching cold may now save your life. British scientists are trying to kill cancer tumours by infecting them with viruses like common cold. If successful, it would be the third therapy against cancer after radiotherapy and chemotherapy. And avoid some of the major side effects of these previous ones. The trials are based on the fact that cancer cells suppress body’s local immune system.

“If you can get a virus into a tumour, it finds it a very good place to be, because there’s no immune system to stop it from replicating. You can regard it as the cancer’s Achilles’ heel”, says Leonard Seymour, a professor of gene therapy at Oxford University, who would lead the trials later this year.

By 2020, China’s garbage pile would reach 400 million tonnes, equal to the weight of the world's entire load in 1997! According to the China Council for International Cooperation and Development (CCICD), millions of rural dwellers would migrate to more affluent urban areas, and increase the waste burden of the cities. About 860 million people would be living in cities by 2020, reports the China Daily.

This would turn large tracts of land useless, and cause air, surface and water pollution through toxic emissions. A better lifestyle always comes with a price tag. Here, it’s a little too high!

We are not Earthlings. We are from Mars! According to an international team of researchers, life may have begun on Earth after primitive organisms arrived on a meteorite from Mars. To prove this, the researchers sandwiched some primitive microbes between slices of Gabbro, a coarse-grained rock similar to that known to make up Martian meteorites.

And then, subjected them to highpressure impacts. Surprisingly, most microbes were able to withstand the pressure. This is the theory of Lithopanspermia, which suggests life may be spread from one planet to another aboard lumps of rock that are knocked off the surface, reports the journal Icarus.

It’s not a weather forecast but the result of a study conducted in two 500-bed private hospitals in Delhi, India. The mercury level in their premises was exceptionally high, which is a serious threat to the hospital staff and patients. It far exceeded the minimal risk level for mercury of 0.2 micro g/m 3 (the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry).

And this, in spite of implementing mercury management policy and measures like using digital thermometers instead of the mercury ones. It owes to the fact that India is the second largest user of mercury after China, but has no policy to regulate the use of this hazardous metal!