-The Indian Express World Health Organization guidelines define a normal BMI range as 18.5 to 24.9, overweight as 25 or higher, and obesity as 30 or higher. India ranks third and fifth from the bottom respectively among countries where 19-year-old girls and boys have a low body mass index, according to a study in The Lancet to be published on Friday. The study provides new estimates for height and BMI trends in...

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which was released on July 6th (observed as World Zoonoses Day by research institutions and non-governmental organisations across the globe) this year, says that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases in humans are estimated to have an animal origin. Likewise, almost three-fourth of all new and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic i.e. these diseases...

-The Indian Express A female teenager from 9,000 years ago has been identified as the oldest hunter burial found in the Americas. Overturning the notion that hunting was exclusively a male domain while women only gathered, an analysis of burial records indicates 30-50% hunters from a similar period were female. About 9,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers buried a teenager with hunting tools in the Andes mountains of South America. When researchers analysed the...

-Down to Earth Sharad Chandra, director, flood forecast monitoring division, Central Water Commission, spoke to DTE on increasing instances of urban flooding   Urban flooding is increasingly becoming a common occurrence in India, the latest victim being Hyderabad. The city received unusually heavy rainfall October 13-14, 2020, due to a deep depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal. Heavy damage to property, roads and human lives were reported. Experts have argued that...

-Newsclick.in An assessment by the Environics trust and the Mineral Inheritors Rights Association shows that not even a single company qualifies the fit and proper person test often used by international agencies as a benchmark for a place in the bidding process of natural resources. For the first time in five decades, India’s coal reserves are up for grabs to private sector bidders. The auction for 38 coal blocks is currently underway....