Models in mutilation
Modern industrial design, pandering to essentially Western consumer-led markets, has spelt doom for the environment. The author, therefore, …
Poverty abounds in bio-rich areas
Complex systems of preserving biodiversity, evolved over centuries, have not saved traditional communities living in bio-rich areas like India …
The corporate playing field
Here's the changing face of multinational companies: Headquartered in Europe, R&D in the US, produced in Asia and marketed around the world. One …
Paying for environmental abuse
Warer-cess assessment and collection have proved to be inadequate in getting local bodies and highly industrialised states like Maharashtra to …
Coral cause
The world's seas and oceans harbour about 600 species of corals, most of which are hard put to escape human marauders. A people's initiative in …
Order out of chaos
New Zealand's far-reaching reforms in conservation and forest management has "changed the face of forestry" in the country
The climate for a change
Are the nations of the world serious in their much-touted efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions? VINAYAK RAO examines the motives, moods …
Playing with life
An ayurvedic researcher's forays against the dreaded AIDS virus unmasks a tale of greed and un-Hippocratian behaviour
Evolution with full stops and commas
Darwinian sapience takes a beating as the notion of 'punctuated equilibrium' - which postulates that evolution occurred in sudden fits and starts -…
Its cold on Mars
Although freezing temperatures have led to a loss of contact with the Mars Pathfinder, data collected by the mission is invaluable in improving …
A perfect world
A majority of the earth's ecosystems today are in a state of 'accelerated death', one that can be traced to activities structurally linked with …
UTTARKASHI
Houses that hold on
Singapore: Breathing Easy
It's all about taming traffic: keeping a tab on the number of vehicles on the road, and promoting public transport. Singapore, one of the …
Rulers of the waves
A call for leadership
It can only come from the South
Spectrum wars
Mobile service providers battle over additional bandwidth
Schrodinger's kittens dead or alive
Can a cat be both dead and alive at the same time? If you believe the classic interpretation of quantum physics, it can. But several scientists …
Shutting down the particle powerhouse
Even though funds for the Superconducting Super Collider have dried up, particle physicists are determined to prove their theory of, well, everything
Heading for a burnout
Increased incomes, innovative financing schemes, short-sighted policies and wasteful attitudes have led to an enormous amount of energy being …
Cracking the cancer code
In recent years, scientists have closed in on cancer, pinning down precisely how its hellish manifestations are caused and spread. Their findings …
Maps of the world
Geographical Information Systems is revolutionising the present and portend a happier future. Or so we hope in the maps of our minds.
A scientist, a Marxist and a dreamer
Thirty-five years ago, a renowned British biologist branded England "a criminal state" and migrated to India. Today, in the year of his birth …
Wheel harrows
While advances in the transport sector have mitigated humankind's problems, the ensuing costs in terms of environmental, economic and social …
Executing a killer
Should the remaining two stocks of the smallpox virus be wiped out permanently from the face of the earth? The question, which brings to fore …
Kyoto's ghost will return
If predictions of global warming turn out to be true, the ludicrous decisions taken at the Kyoto conference will prove very costly to the world