And they are exacerbated by bad management, says Simon Long AS IT SCOURS the universe for signs of extraterrestrial life, NASA has a motto-cum-mission-statement: “Follow the water”. About 70% of the human
Astronomers disagree about whether Pluto really is the solar system's ninth planet, or just a puffed-up asteroid, or something else entirely : a
Hundreds of miles of canals make their way to the Atlantic. Once there they disgorge into the ocean 1.7 billion gallons of fresh water a day. A hundred miles to the south, the parched Everglades
Among the happiest people to see Li Peng end his term as Chinese Prime Minister last March were the opponents of the $28 billion Three Gorges Dam on the Yangzi river. Mr Li, a hydrologist before he
Conventional theories about young planets and young pulsars (remnants of exploded stars) need rewriting, according to findings presented to the 1999 meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS)
Billy Hau-hang, a young botanist at the University of Hong Kong, hopes to restore Hong Kong's forests to their natural diversity. His efforts are being studied carefully in Beijing. Reforestation has
In the next few days the shutters will be coming off the world's biggest scientific mirror. It is 8.3 meters across, and although it sits on a mountain top on the island of Hawaii rather than in
A study done by Jennifer McElwain and her colleagues at the University of Sheffield, in England, and published in this week's Science states that the late-Trissic extinction, which opened the earth
A few miles south of Tampa Bay in United States, a desalination plant is about to be built which will provide the cheapest drinking water ever extracted from the sea. The plant will be built jointly
For the past three years, researchers from America's National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have been carrying out the most extensive and rigorous evaluation to date of a promising
The droughts currently affecting the east-coast states of America are estimated to have caused at least $800m worth of crop losses so far. Yet nine months ago, large areas of the very states in
