Ape and human cast

It is currently the hottest topic in palaeoanthropology, and visitors to London’s Natural History Museum can now get to see what all the fuss is about. The institution has taken delivery of casts of Australopithecus sediba.

Science and Technology - Briefs

BIOLOGY Strength in numbers

Politics of the Internet

Five years ago, the World Summit on the Information Society (wsis) established the Internet Governance Forum (igf) with somewhat ambitious goals. It would serve as a global platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue on “key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet”.

Shell in a hole

South Africa’s advertising watchdog ordered oil giant Shell on July 13 to withdraw its claims in newspapers about its use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to explore gas in the Karoo, a semi-desert wilderness.

Disclosure-shy industry

Disclosure is now at the heart of the misappropriation debate—and the centrepiece of vexed international efforts to hammer out a treaty to protect the last major resources of developing nations. Talks in the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) last month on protecting genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions were snarled in serious disagreements as developing countries sought legal measures to safeguard their resources from being plundered.

TB diagnosis in two days

ABOUT 500,000 people in India die from tuberculosis (TB) every year. The disease can lie dormant in an infected person for years without showing any symptoms but those with weakened immune system, like HIV/AIDS patients and the malnourished, are likely to develop active and contagious TB. Current diagnostic techniques, including a series of blood and skin tests, and chest X-rays, can take four to 12 weeks to give accurate diagnosis of whether a person has inactive infection or active disease.

Mock Jesus

“Today I will start with a three-part sermon on Jesus was HIV-positive,” South African pastor Xola Skosana recently said in a Sunday church service.

News 360° - Briefs

UNIVERSE EARTH-LIKE PLANET FOUND

News Snippets

>> The annual Titirlandia Puppet Festival in the Spanish capital, Madrid, concluded on August 29 with a day long show to raise money for schools in the Bolivian mining province of Potosi.

News 360° - Briefs

HYBRID SEEDS AND PESTICIDE Haitians shun Monsanto aid As Haiti struggles to recover from the quake that battered it on January 12, biotech giant Monsanto has offered it 475 tonnes of hybrid corn and vegetable seeds, worth US $4 million.