A way to live with the demon

I have often wondered whether I am doing the right thing by using anything that looks like plastic or buying anything remotely associated with it.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Technology Instant repair

Secretive tribunals, hidden damages

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) appears to have generated the most number of investor-state treaties and shows that rich countries are as much at risk as developing countries. Would you agree?  Interviewee:  Gus Van Harten

India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable

Would it be correct to say that all countries are at risk from BITs and FTAs although the treaties are targeted at developing countries? Interviewee:  Nathalie Bernas...

Watch before you eat

FARMERS in urban outskirts mostly rely on wastewater for growing vegetables. The level of air pollutants like aerosols is also high in these areas. Scientists have found that both these factors have a cumulative effect on the quality of the vegetables.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Health Sciences Assault by medicines

Investment terror

The New Year may not have started cheerily for the claims brigade. An international arbitration panel awarded US oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp just $908 million in compensation for Venezuela’s nationalisation of its assets in 2007, less than 10 per cent of what the behemoth had reportedly sought. It was presumed that Venezuela’s feisty president Hugo Chavez, known for his America-baiting, would be celebrating.

US sets mercury emission limits

TO MINIMISE the largest source of pollution from coal-based and fuel oil power plants, America’s environment protection agency has set the first ever mercury and air toxics standards (MATS). Some 7,000 power plants in the country will now have to reduce their mercury and other toxic emissions levels.

RESIDUE OF A REVOLUTION

Bhola Singh is dead... Bhola Singh was a farmer from village Balloh, district Bhatinda, Punjab. He is part of a story with a beginning and an end. But it has no middle. Thus what follows is a fragment. But it is not fiction.

Wash out

Detergents, their environment concerns and the regulations to control them have evolved side by side in the developed world. Detergents were developed during the Second World War. They became popular in the late 1950s and the first regulation to control their environmental impact was enacted in 1961 in Germany. So what's there in detergents that harms the environment? Detergents are not easily biodegradable; more so the detergents of the 1950s.