Dengue, the world’s most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral disease, is taking a far bigger human toll than was believed to be the case. As many as 390 million people across the globe could be falling victim to the virus each year, according to a multinational study published by Nature on Sunday.

India emerges in the analysis as the country with the world’s highest dengue burden, with about 34 per cent of all such cases occurring here.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), incidence of dengue has shot up 30 fold in the past 50 years. Its estimate has been that globally there were 50-100 million dengue infections taking place annually.

Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences to submit paper

Why did the Harappan civilisation, which flourished for hundreds of years and once extended across a vast area from northwestern India and across Pakistan, suddenly go into a terminal decline some 4,000 years ago and wither away? Like their script that has remained indecipherable, the question what caused a sophisticated urban culture, capable of great feats of town planning and which had established a trading network that extended across the Middle East, to suddenly collapse is one that has aroused much scholarly debate and writing.

More than two decades after India's first operational optical remote sensing satellite went into orbit, the country's space capabilities are poised for a big technological leap now with the launch of an entirely indigenous radar imaging satellite, RISAT-1. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is preparing to send the satellite into space aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle that is scheduled to lift off from Sriharikota early this Thursday.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has criticised non-governmental organisations that receive support from abroad for stalling the use of genetic engineering in agriculture and leading protests against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.

In an interview published in the latest issue of journal Science, Dr. Singh pointed to the potential of biotechnology, saying “in due course of time we must make use of genetic engineering technologies to increase the productivity of our agriculture.”

Report says notwithstanding the success in India, current stalemate is unsustainable

Many experts feel that injectable vaccine should be introduced during the transition phase

With oral vaccines, India appears to have achieved what was once thought a Herculean task — decisively breaking the circulation of wild polio viruses that paralysed countless children. But the use of oral vaccines, which contain live but weakened strains of the virus, can be a bit like riding a tiger. Discontinuing them, without risking a resurgence of polio that would undo all that has been achieved, is going to be a tricky exercise.

Precipitation has dropped owing to human-influenced aerosols: study

Human activity that spews out fine particles into the atmosphere could be taking a toll on the Indian monsoon, leading to a decline in recent decades, say researchers in a paper being published online by the journal Science .