Category: Life & Style

In a remarkable archaeological find in decades, Etruscan and Roman statues were pulled from the mud in Tuscany in Italy with “the intuition” of a retired garbage man. After months of restoration, these statues were put on display at Quirinale Palace in Rome on June 22.

About two dozen bronze statues from the third century BC to the first century AD were extracted from the ruins of an ancient spa. The statues were found in 2021 and 2022 in the hilltop village of San Casciano dei Bagni, a place known for its thermal baths. Archaeologists had long suspected ancient ruins could be discovered at these ancient sites. When the discovery was announced in November, experts called it the biggest collection of ancient bronze statues ever found in the country.

Digging for the statues started in 2019 on a small plot of land next to the village’s Renaissance-era public baths, but nothing substantial could be recovered. Then, a former bin man and amateur local historian Stefano Petrini had an intuition, remembering that years earlier he had seen bits of ancient Roman columns on a wall on the other side of the public baths.

The columns could only be seen from an abandoned garden in San Casciano that had once belonged to his friend, who grew fruit and vegetables there to sell in the village shop. When Petrini took archaeologists there, they knew they had found the right spot.

Gautam Adani has offered to provide free school education to children who lost parents in the Odisha train crash.

The billionaire, in a tweet in Hindi, said it is a joint responsibility of all to support the victims and their families and give a better tomorrow to the children. The deadliest rain accident in nearly three decades left nearly 300 dead and hundreds injured.

“We are all deeply disturbed by the train accident in Odisha. We have decided that the Adani Group will take care of the school education of the innocents who have lost their parents in this accident. It is the joint responsibility of all of us to support the victims and their families and give a better tomorrow to the children,” he said.

Gautam Adani is the Chairman of the diversified Adani Group, which spans ports to energy, commodities, airports and data centres. The conglomerate, through its ports arm Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, operates Dhamra Port in Odisha which has a bulk and liquid cargo handling facility.

In December 2022, the Group had proposed to establish two medical colleges in Odisha to improve healthcare facilities at the district level. It plans to build the colleges in Bhadrak and Rayagada on a public-private partnership mode. It had submitted a formal proposal to the state’s Health and Family Welfare department.

London-based Canadian businessman Craig Cohon crossed the finish line on the Galata Bridge in Turkey on the morning of June 5 after five months of walking, to promote carbon capture. The climate activist walked 4,250 km (2,640 miles) from London to Istanbul.

Cohon’s challenge saw him trek through 14 countries over 153 days. He was joined by a series of 77 guest walkers as he passed through 82 cities and towns on his journey. He said his efforts are a metaphor for the “action and consistency” needed to tackle climate change.

The businessman-turned-climate activist walked 25 km to 35 km (15-22 miles) per day beginning from Trafalgar Square in central London on January 3. He set about trying to make up for his carbon footprint two years ago when he donated one million US dollars of his pension fund to carbon removal projects, which take away carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. His Walk It Back campaign promotes such projects.

Cohon passed through countries like France, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Hungary on his journey. He recalled walking across a bridge in the Netherlands where there were “thousands of diesel trucks,” walking down a canal between Hanover and Berlin where there were barges transporting coal, and sleeping at a truck stop next to the largest steel plant in eastern Germany. Despite the experiences, he was encouraged daily by walking with 77 different people across the challenge, including chief executives, activists and journalists, who discussed the issues of carbon removal, he said in an interview.

A new study has found that a chemical formed when humans digest artificial sweetener sucralose is genotoxic, which means that it breaks up the DNA. The chemical is also found in trace amounts in the sweetener itself.

Sucralose is a widely used artificial sweetener. Previous work by the same research team established that several fat-soluble compounds are produced in the gut after sucralose ingestion. One of these compounds is sucralose-6-acetate.

The European Food Safety Authority has a threshold of toxicological concern for all genotoxic substances of 0.15 micrograms per person per day. The new work suggests that the trace amounts of sucralose-6-acetate in a single, daily sucralose-sweetened drink exceed that threshold. It is not even accounting for the amount of sucralose-6-acetate produced as metabolites after people consume the sweetener.

For the study, researchers conducted a series of in vitro experiments exposing human blood cells to sucralose-6-acetate and monitoring for markers of genotoxicity. They also exposed human gut tissues to sucralose-6-acetate. The team found that both chemicals cause ‘leaky gut,’ or make the wall of the gut more permeable, making wastes that must be flushed out of the body in feces instead of leaking out of the gut and being absorbed into the bloodstream.

Researchers have discovered in the Western Ghats (WG) 62 new species of plants that can withstand extreme dehydration. The newly discovered plants belong to the Desiccation-Tolerant (DT) Vascular Species that are capable of surviving amid extreme water scarcity. The species is known for entering a state of dormancy and reviving when water becomes available again.

A recent study by scientists from Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) Pune, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, has identified these new species that are many more than the earlier known nine species. The research published in the Nordic Journal of Botany provides an overview of Indian DT plants, with a special focus on the WG, and includes an inventory of species with their habitat preferences. While 16 of the newly identified species are Indian endemic, 12 are exclusive to the biodiversity hotspot.

Biologists said that the newly discovered plants could have a wide-ranging role in agriculture, particularly in areas with shortage of water, as these plants can survive in harsh, arid environments that would be uninhabitable for most others. The findings of the study can also provide valuable insights into the biodiversity and ecology of the WG and aid in the conservation of DT plant species.

Microsoft has to pay $20 million to settle US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that the tech company illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, the FTC said on June 5.

The company had been charged with violating the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal information from children who signed up to its Xbox gaming system without notifying their parents or obtaining their parents’ consent, and by retaining children’s personal information, the statement from the FTC said.

The order requires the tech giant to take steps to improve privacy protections for child users of its Xbox system. It will extend COPPA protections to third-party gaming publishers with whom Microsoft shares children’s data, the FTC added.

The law requires online services and websites directed to children under the age of 13 to notify parents about the personal information they collect and to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting and using any personal information about them.

From 2015 to 2020, Microsoft retained the data that it collected from children during the account creation process, even when a parent failed to complete the process, according to the complaint.

Seven of eight earth system boundaries (ESBs) that are critical for stability of the planet’s health and survival of species have already been crossed, said a research paper by the Earth Commission published in Nature journal on May 31, suggesting risks posed by climate crisis on humankind.

According to scientists’ evaluation, ESB transgression is spatially widespread, with two or more ESBs already transgressed throughout 52 percent of the land area on the planet and impacting 86 percent of the population. India, along with other South Asian countries, Europe and parts of Africa, is an ESB transgression hotspot, with at least five ESB transgressions occurring in the Himalayan foothills.

The Earth Commission created a set of ESBs for climate, the biosphere, fresh water, nutrients and air pollution at global and sub-global scales. These features were chosen based on the fact that these cover all the major components of the planet (atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, biosphere and cryosphere) and their interconnected processes (carbon, water and nutrient cycles) or “global commons.” These factors, as the report says, “underpin the planet’s life-support systems and, thereby, human well-being on Earth; they have impacts on policy-relevant timescales; they are threatened by human activities; and they could affect Earth system stability and future development globally.”

Climate, functional integrity, and levels of surface water, groundwater, nitrogen, phosphorus, and aerosols are among the seven ESBs that have been breached, said the research paper, Safe and just Earth system boundaries.

Members of UK-based climate activist group, Tyre Extinguishers have managed to deflate tyres of parked sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in 18 countries to combat global warming. The countries include the US, the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Germany and Italy. Once done, the activists put a note on cars that reads, “ATTENTION – your gas guzzler kills.”

Tyre Extinguishers has a wide presence internationally. Its website explains the reason for protesting against SUVs. It also shares various ways to quickly deflate tires of parked cars. There is also a template for pamphlets that activists can use during their operations. Once a tyre is deflated, the group leaves the pamphlet on the vehicle’s windshield that reads, “You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s your car. We did this because driving around urban areas in your massive vehicle has huge consequences for others.”

The protest against the SUVs and 4x4s is also because of the fact that these big cars are rising in numbers across towns and cities. The activists called these cars big polluters and unnecessary vehicles, causing inconvenience and expense for their owners, and problems for others. 

The US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti has said that one out of every five US student visas will be issued in India in 2022, which is more than the proportion of the Indian population in the world.

The US Mission in India held its seventh annual Student Visa Day countrywide on June 7 with Consular Officers from New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai interviewing almost 3,500 Indian student visa applicants.

Speaking on the occasion, Garcetti underlined that more Indians come to the United States as students than from any other country in the world. He also said that his office is on track to process the highest number of visa applications for students in the US history, and will be making more visa appointments available for students this year than ever.

According to the data shared by the embassy, the US Mission in India issued more than 1,25,000 student visas, which is a record-breaking number. In 2022, Indians were issued the highest numbers of H&L employment visas (65 percent) and F1 student visas (17.5 percent) globally.

Last year, more than 1.2 million people from India visited the US, making Indians one of the largest groups of international visitors to the US.

Indian students comprise more than 21 percent of the total population of international students in the US. 

Israel has launched its first tourist marine nature reserve in the Mediterranean Sea off the country’s northern coast, Israel Nature and Parks Authority has said.

Rosh Hanikra-Akhziv Marine Reserve spans approximately 7 km of coastline, and encompasses bays from the Lebanese border to Nahariya. It extends 15 km westward into the sea and covers over 100 square km.

The protected site is the second tourist marine reserve in Israel, after the Eilat Coral Beach Nature Reserve in the Red Sea, and the largest of the nine marine reserves in the country with an area of more than 100 square km.

The reserve protects the flora and fauna on the coastline, underwater, on four islands, and in an 850-meter-deep underwater canyon. Monk seals, 13 species of cartilaginous fish, and nests of many bird species, including some rare species, were earlier observed in the reserve area. The site also contains Israel’s largest population of grouper fish, Mediterranean slipper lobsters, various sea anemones, snails, urchins and cucumbers, as well as many other marine species.

In addition to marine nature reserves, Israel also plans to establish marine national parks to protect ancient coastal cities with their ports and various heritage sites near the beach or at sea.