India's scholar-Prime Minister aims for inclusive development
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to increase the government's R&D spending and create incentives for the private sector to increase spending on science and technology as well.
Richard Stone
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India rising
At the Indian Science Congress last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to hike R&D expenditures from around $3 billion last year to $8 billion in 2017. The windfall is meant to turbocharge initiatives
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China amasses war chest to confront its environmental nightmares
In a nod to rising public expectations, China's government work plan for 2010, rolled out last week at the country's two major annual political powwows, puts the environment front and center. At the National People's Congress, officials announced that science priorities include new energy sources, energy conservation, environmental protection, and marine technology.
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New tuberculosis lab hailed as breakthrough in health diplomacy
Researchers from Stanford University and a consortium of nonprofit organizations have been working side by side with colleagues from the North Korean Ministry of Public Health
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Severe drought puts spotlight on Chinese dams
Southwest China's monsoon-driven climate doesn't bring much precipitation in autumn and winter. But this year's dry season
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Dialing up knowledgeand harvests
From paved roads that carry crops to market to modern grain silos that reduce postharvest losses, infrastructure is critical to achieving food security. But nothing is currently having a more profound effect on farmers in the developing world than telecommunications networks.
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Burdened by Soviet legacy, nations spar over water rights
As scientists worry about the prospect of a catastrophic flood from Lake Sarez in the Pamir Mountains, agricultural communities on the plains below face a very different problem. This arid region in Central Asia has inherited a set of resource blunders made decades ago by the Soviet Union. And since the Soviet collapse in the 1990s, competition for fresh water has increased.
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Peril in the Pamirs
Lake Sarez was born nearly a century ago, when a mountainside in Tajikistan crumbled during a magnitude-7.4 earthquake. The 567-meter-high landslide blocked an alpine river, forming the world's tallest dam. Since then, the valley behind it has filled with 17 billion cubic meters of snow and glacier melt.
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Confronting a toxic blowback from the electronics trade
China has been accepting vast quantities of discarded televisions, computers, printers, and other equipment from abroad since the early 1990s. E-waste processing, a burgeoning cabin industry in coastal
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Nursing China's ailing forests back to health
In sections of southern China, villagers and local governments conspire to transform vibrant forests into plantations for money-spinners such as eucalyptus, rubber, and oil palm. Yet forests cover only about 18% of China's landmass, and timber yield and quality are lower than in many other places.