Path lab in a tablet
Kanav Kahol, an expert on biomedical informatics, quit his teaching job in the US and came back to India to create a technology that would …
Why can't Indians access maps for 43 per cent of their country?
How is it that you can buy a map of India in Paris with details as fine as the location of all tyre puncture shops in Delhi (updated every six …
India's Chandrayaan programme is "ambitious"
A moon rush is hotting up, with India, China and Japan devising substantial space exploration programmes to compete with the big players -- the …
Science for ecology
Down To Earth and the Centre for Science and Environment announce the winner of the 2001 Green Scientist Award. In the exercise to rate the …
European Commission's research commissioner on India's coaction with EU
The first India-European Union ministerial-level science conference took place on February 5, 2007, in New Delhi, signalling, for the first time,…
Lessons from the colonial past
Twenty-two years ago, the publication of a book, Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century, by an unknown Gandhian, DHARAMPAL, took the …
All You Need to Know about Your Bread
A new study by Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has shown that 84 per cent of bread and bakery samples collected …
'Ministries play the blame game'
Jagdish Bahadur, an expert on glaciers and former joint advisor, department of science and technology, and Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who heads the …
Clash of the cyberworlds
In an increasingly digital world, the issue of Internet freedom and governance has become hugely contested. Censorship and denial of access occur …
Battle for the Internet
As the Internet becomes the public square and the marketplace of our world, it is increasingly becoming a contested terrain. Its potential for …
Nobel winner Paul J Crutzen on the neglect of nitrogen cycle
Paul J Crutzen received the 1995 Chemistry Nobel prize for showing that nitrogen oxides react catalytically with ozone, thus accelerating …
Will the boom last?
Fifteen years after it rose and went limp, the biotech sector, globally, as well as in India has seen a bull run of sorts. In January this year, …
Two technologies that shape our future
Battery and meters are two widely used technologies, yet no one stops to think how they work. They determine our future. They dictate how we …
'They asked me to withdraw my court case'
P PARDHA SARADHI is tenacious. This mild-mannered professor at the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Delhi (DU) has …
Flat in 20 days
Global climatic anomalies allied with local weather conditions produced the most freakish hailstorms in central and north India in February and …
‘Watershed conservation can benefit 700 million people in 100 big cities’
Indian cities are struggling to fight water stress. Cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Jodhpur are going to areas located far away to source …
Foss time in India
Microsoft is the most familiar term in the proprietary software industry. The company's penetration in people's minds is so deep that it is often …
Deconstructing science
Nature uses lean sources to get work done. The environmental crises we face today are a result of ignoring this simple paradigm for two centuries.…
Manipulating Research
Private funding has given a new meaning to scientific research today. With rising corporate research budgets, academic institutions are leaning …
On foot and pedal
The teeming millions on foot and pedal are powering mobility in Indian cities. Their numbers exceed those who use cars. Yet they are victims of …
Lives of others
Wildlife is more of an academic concern except when the charismatic tiger is wiped out from a protected forest or our favourite fish vanishes …
Unearthing reality: A DTE-CSE probe into the workings of the Indian voluntary carbon market
1,451. That is the number of projects implemented across India to churn out the new-age essential commodity—carbon credits. Industries and …
We talk about artistic inspiration all the time – but scientific inspiration is a thing too
There is a large literature on “creativity” in science, but I have found nothing that really speaks to the lack of discussion of …
Learning from lasagne
Porous layers of slurry, zapped with electricity, may revolutionise the treatment of contaminated clay soils
Citizen science growing in India: Study
The concept is gaining rapid popularity in India and citizen science projects have considerable potential to contribute to environmental …