150 years of humanitarian action: peace in war

In 1863 Swiss entrepreneur Jean Henry Dunant mobilised statesmen, doctors and philanthropists to form the International Committee of the Red …

A dark tunnel

Twenty-nine workers were killed in a landslide at the Tehri dam. The contractor building the dam has blamed the "weak mountains" for …

Still life in waves

The visual media is into the business of producing images. Sometimes, just sometimes, they become iconic. For disasters there is a recognisable …

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, …

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 …

What makes us so?

This is no longer a question for philosophers. Evolutionary biologists also dwell upon it. Manuel Massot from Laboratoire Ecologie & Evolution,…

Reconstructing atmospheric history

Old paintings can provide information about the composition of the atmosphere of bygone ages. When a volcano erupted in Indonesia in 1815, …

Ways to budge Karzai

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Simulating real-life networks

India is a leader in IT. But how do researchers here apply the science to improve people’s lives? Malay Bhattacharyya, assistant professor …

Recession makes north renege on aid

Against a background of worldwide recession, the Rio conference came and went with many promises of aid by the Northern countries. But by the end …

Frozen at gateway

The Doha outcome is all talk no action. In 2007, the Bali Action Plan had called for an urgent reduction in carbon emissions by developed …

`Top scientists misuse power, funds'

It seems like a lost cause but Kasturi Lal Chopra battles on. As president of the Society for Scientific Values (SSV), he leads the charge to …

Earth crusaders

Ever since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, countries around the world celebrate April 22 by organising programmes to plant saplings, …

`Growing food is like printing your own money'

Ron Finley grows food and for this he has been branded as a guerilla gardener, a renegede, an ecolutionist. It all began four years ago, when Ron,…

Monsoon of death

Every monsoon, Baba Raghav Das Medical College of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, witnesses hundreds of children dying of viral encephalitis or Acute …

What's the fuss about Bt brinjal?

Mohammad Rafiqul Islam Mondal, director-general of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), is among the handful of people who have …

G Nammalvar, messiah of organic revolution

G Nammalvar was one of a kind, a messiah of farmers who was revered as a saint-teacher by his followers. He was an agriculture scientist, a …

Shift grain bowl status from North to other regions of India

Balwinder Singh Sidhu, agriculture commissioner and chief conservator of soils in Punjab, is known for giving his opinion in a frank and …

'I cannot be a mute spectator to the carnage of Ganga'

As Uttarakhand grapples with the task of repair and restoration, octogenarian environmentalist G D Agarwal's fast to free Ganga of dams continues.…

`We've strong evidence that eating sugar contributes to heart disease'

Kimber Stanhope, nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davis, US, is studying the health effects of fructose, a component of …

Technology interventions that save water

It was early June. Jaspal Ram of Lehra Turkot in district Bathinda of Punjab was busy in his field putting gunny bags filled with mud on a plank …

Organic goes online

India’s organic food exports have found a new strength—online traceability. Web-based TraceNet can trace an organic product right …

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, …

Land subsidence is serious

India depends heavily on groundwater. But overextraction can cause the land to sink. A recent study found that signs of land subsidence are …