'We have no reason to be secretive'
The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (geac) braved roaring controversy to approve commercial plantation of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) …
'Censuses mean little'
A POPULATION expert sharply critical of India's achievements in curbing population growth. A demographer with scant respect for the census. A …
Aid cuts will defeat objectives of Agenda 21
WITH HUGE reductions in aid already under way and further cuts to follow soon, transfer of resources remains the most contentious issue in …
"There can be no development without women"
REACHING Doongri, a picturesque village perched 1,750 m above sea level in the Pindar valley in Chamoli district, is a daunting task. The nearest …
"Over 15 per cent of Russia is ecologically unsafe"
Professor Alexei Yablokov is head of the inter-departmental commission for ecological security under Russia's National Security Council. He …
Light on India’s fourteenth meteor shower
The Vidarbha region in Maharashtra was hit by a meteor shower on May 22. It was no spectacle—it came between 2 pm and 2.30 pm—in the …
We give them complete mentorship
IN a special programme to help industry, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has created Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Programme …
We must move from the reverse to the forward gear
Raghunath Anant Mashelkar is the director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and a former director of one of …
"Desertification is a global problem"
Ambassador BO KJELLEN has seen it all, from diplomacy and development to even sports. A "family man", as he describes himself, …
"The name of the game is resource productivity"
Currently chairperson of the Bundestag committee on environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker has …
California's rare earths mine set to meet a third of global demand
Until the 1980s, the Mountain Pass mine in California provided most of the rare earth materials to the world before China overtook it. China, …
"Indian science is run by a mafia"
p m bhargava is the founder-director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (ccmb), Hyderabad. He has also been a former fellow of …
Who wants what, and how?
The subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC) met recently in Bonn, Germany. These were the first …
"The world needs a new work culture, not just jobs"
Austrian-born Frithjof Bergmann, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, USA, founded the Center for New Work in 1984 to help …
A reliable HIV self-test
Nitika Pant Pai, assistant professor at the department of medicine, McGill University, Canada, and her team have analysed data on acceptability …
Most disease maps unreliable
Disease maps help capture distribution of pathogens and their transmission intensity. An international team of researchers has reviewed 355 of …
Pocket air sensors
Rapid urbanisation coupled with growing industrialisation has increased the levels of pollutants in the air manifold. But detecting these …
'Workers' safety is connected with the environment'
The increasing risk of industrial closure on environmental grounds seems to be stirring many trade unions in India to sensitise themselves to …
The politics of globalisation
POLITICIAN, economist and teacher all rolled into one --Johannes Pieter Pronk, better known as Jan Pronk, is in his second term as Netherlands …
"We have set up a toothless pollution control board"
Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB): one would expect an organisation with a name like that to penalise polluters and care about the quality …
"Tribals are being treated like stray cattle"
Twenty seven-year-old chekkoth karian janu has never attended school. But this has not prevented her from becoming a champion of the rights of …
"We hope to encourage alternative lifestyles"
Having successfully brought the plight of the peasants and tribals of Narmada valley into international focus, MEDHA PATKAR continues her crusade …
Africa is heading for trouble
The founding president of African Academy of Science, Thomas R Odhiambo , has been working to evolve a framework necessary for stimulating …
"The UK has to live by its wits"
DAVID ANTHONY KING has been chief scientific advisor to the United Kingdom government for 3 years now. Prior to this, he was head of the …
"We need to think about all of us as being citizens of the same world"
Joseph E Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics - the Economics of Information. This earned him the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. …