Although spending on science has risen worldwide, greater investment is needed in the face of growing crises, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recommended in a new report published. The latest edition of its Science Report, which is published every five years, further reveals that there is …
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
Tanzania and Zambia are petitioning the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to "downlist" the conservation status of their elephants to allow sale of stockpiled ivory. But just 2 years after CITES placed a 9-year moratorium on future ivory sales, elephant poaching is on the rise. The petitioning …
Remobilization to the atmosphere of only a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming, yet it is believed that sub-sea permafrost acts as a lid to keep this shallow methane reservoir in place. Here, we show that more than …
Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000
Many countries devote substantial public resources to research and development (R&D;) for energy-efficient technologies. Energy efficiency, however, depends on both these technologies and the choices of the user. Policies to affect these choices focus on price changes (e.g., subsidies for energy-efficient goods) and information disclosure (e.g., mandated energy-use labels on …
In 1998, a handful of geoscientists breathed new life into a daring idea: that Earth froze over from pole to pole more than a half-billion years ago, threatening life with extinction but perhaps prodding it to greater evolutionary heights. Geoscientists report evidence that the tropics also hosted glaciers more than …
Reconstructing sea-level changes during the last deglaciation provides a way of understanding the ice dynamics that can perturb large continental ice sheets. The resolution of the few sea-level records covering the critical time interval between 14,000 and 9,000 calendar years before the present is still insufficient to draw conclusions about …
Europe's food safety watchdog on 25 February issued a scientific mass-verdict on more than 400 so-called health claims, the promises that food producers make on their labels and in advertisements, rejecting purported health benefits of a raft of substances. The decisions are the latest installment in a gargantuan and controversial …
The science and technology com- mittee said the therapy is not effi- cacious or, it does not work beyond the placebo effect British MPs have restarted the controversial debate on the efficacy of homeopathy after a House of Commons committee advised the government to stop funding homeopathy treatments on the …
CHENNAI: Top scientists from international agricultural institutes are heralding a new system of farming based on using fertilizer trees to increase crop yield. The new system, which was inspired by small time farmers in Africa who grew the Acacia, could provide a solution to dwindling paddy production in India and …
R.K. Pachauri THE RECENT news about the decision on Bt brinjal has received a great deal of attention from the public and the media. Issues involving radical change often invoke radical reactions. That the use of genetically modified (GM) foods is a major departure from long-standing practice and belief is …
Jimmy Wales, the founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, once wrote, “Free culture knows no bounds.” The idea sounds marvellous. But according to sociologist Damian Thompson, cyber age has rendered all claims to knowledge as equally valid. In Counterknowledge, he writes the new technology’s egalitarianism leads to the tyranny of …
THE 97TH Indian Science Congress is in session at Thiruvananthapuram (January 3 to 7, 2010), the capital of the state of Kerala. For me, every session of the Congress is a new experience; an experience of learning and rededication to the cause propounded by the country's first Prime Minister, Pandit …
The Copenhagen climate change meeting needs to make decisions on the structures and institutional arrangements to fund and deliver climate change adaptation (CCA) at the international level, and mechanisms to integrate CCA principles and approaches into developing country policy processes. But incorporating scientific knowledge and expertise into policy dialogue on …
N.R. Narayana Murthy While India is uniquely positioned to use technology for progress, it has in the recent past lagged behind in the quality and spread of science research. The need for a strong science eco-system based on a sound research foundation has an integral connect with India
This report is the result of the effort to highlight the use of scientific and technical knowledge as an essential foundation for disaster risk reduction, and to make recommendations on key issues and priorities, including ways that specialist scientific and technical information can be more effectively adopted and put into …
The battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the most dangerous consequences of climate change will be waged across multiple fronts, including efforts to increase energy efficiency; efforts to deploy nonfossil fuel sources, including renewable and nuclear energy; and investment in adaptation to reduce the impacts of the climate …
The possibility that substantial quantities of CO2 can be injected into subsurface porous rock formations has been investigated sufficiently to show that pore space available to contain the CO2 is abundant. Multiple rock types and physical mechanisms can be used to trap the CO2 indefinitely. With careful site selection and …
A LOT of people who write on ecology do so with an unsaid assumption. That people in the past lived in sync with nature till industrialization and modernity disrupted this harmony. Some people
