One of my favorite zoologist habits is to gesture on one's own body when describing an animal's anatomy. The weirder the animal, the funnier the implicit analogy. "These worms have a ventral nerve…

A good part of basic research in fundamental physics focuses on the definition, the prediction, and the measurement of quantities which put the current theory -the standard model- to the test in the…

Measurements matter in global climate affairs. "IBUKI" is the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) that has been circling the Earth since January 23, 2009.   IBUKI ('breath'…

PEPcase determinations As a key enzyme in C4-photosynthesis and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (Kluge, 1983), phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (EC 4.1.1.31) has been studied intensively in several…

Calotropis procera (Ait.) Ait. f. giant milkweed ASCLEPIADACEAE Synonym: Asclepias procera Ait. General Description.—Giant milkweed is also known as sodom apple, calotrope, French cotton, small crown…

1 JATROPHA CURCAS: HIGH YIELDIG ACCESSIONS AND IMPROVEMENT. A. Kumar, A. Kumari Energy Plantation Demonstration project and Biotechnology Center Bio-Technology Lab Department of Botany University of…

My friend and colleague Stephalopod published this cool paper a couple of years ago about how deep-sea squids use their ink. The fun fact from this paper that I trot out most often in social…

1 The early colonizers : Some of the early colonizers including small ephemerals include: Polygala erioptera DC.; Polycarpaea corymbosa (L.) Lamk. ; Gisekia phamacioides L ; Mollugo cerviana (L.) Ser…

S containing bioactive cancer preventive compounds in almost all major genera and in every class of primary and secondary metabolites of Euphorbiaceae. The glucosinolates are especially abundant…

Pharmacognostical studies on Calotropis procera (Ait.) R.Br. Ashwani Kumar Calotropis procera (Asclepiadaceae) is a wild shrub, which grows upto a height of 1-3 m and its leaves are 10-13 cm wide…