GREGG BRADEN GREGG BRADEN - Earthstar

Earth Star Up FrontTATA to Sell Nano Car for $2,500Tata Motors Ltd., India’slargest truckmaker, unveiledthe country’s cheapest car,pricing it at 100,000 rupees ($2,500) asit aims to convince the nation’s fortyfivemillion motorcycle riders to tradeup to four wheels.Ratan Tata, seventy, the company’schairman, displayed the Nano at theDelhi auto show in January. The companywill also offer more expensiveversions with features such as air conditioningand will start sales later thisyear, he said.The Nano will cost almost half asmuch as Suzuki’s Maruti 800, thecheapest car currently on the market.Tata said the car will be powered bya two-cylinder, 623-cc engine mountedin the back, with 33 horsepower, andcan seat four to five people. It willmeet all safety requirements in India, he said. The Nano will get an estimated twenty kilometers on a liter of gasoline (fortysevenmiles per gallon) and a diesel version will follow.The car has four doors, a single long windshield wiper, one side-view mirror on the driver's side and a manual 4-speed transmission.The car has been tested up to a top speed of 105 kilometers an hour (65 mph), Tata said. —BloombergCurry Could Protect Against Heart Disease, Cancer and Alzheimer’sAstudy in a recent issue of Arthritis & Rheumatismsuggests turmeric, one component of curry spice,almost completely prevented joint swelling in ratswith arthritis. Other studies have suggested that the spicecould protect against diseases such as heart disease, cancerand Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease that afflictsnearly five million people in the USA.Rates of Alzheimer’s in India are about four times lowerthan in the USA, says Gregory Cole, a researcher at theUniversity of California-Los Angeles. His studies suggestthat curry contains a powerful substance that might protectthe brain from damage that leads to Alzheimer’s.For centuries, doctors trained in Ayurvedic medicine, a traditionalmedical system in India, have turned to turmeric totreat inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, says JanetFunk, a researcher at the University of Kansas. In the USA,many people with arthritis take over-the-counter supplementsthat contain curcumin, the active ingredient inturmeric.Curry may also offer some protection against cancer.“Indians eat from 100 to 200 milligrams of curry every day,and that might be enough to prevent cancer,” says Aggarwalof the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University ofTexas.The curcumin in curry seems to shut down genes that triggerthe development and the spread of breast cancer, animal studiesin Aggarwal’s lab suggest. And a preliminary human studysuggests curcumin supplements might—in a handful ofcases—be able to stabilize pancreatic cancer, he says. —AFP8 EARTH STAR FEBRUARY / MARCH 2008 www.earthstarmag.com