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 …
If scientists are part of a global community, does that mean there is a uniform pattern in the choices they make? The answer can be both yes and no, going by the results of a recent survey of Indian scientists. Unlike most of their fraternity in the us and Europe, …
Brain senses smell, the way it recognizes musical notes THE fragrance of almonds is closer to that of roses than of bananas. Scientists from Weizmann Institute, Israel, have, for the first time ever, mapped odours and determined the distance between them. This helped them distinguish one odour from another.
acidic oceans: Dissolved CO2 makes water more acidic. UK researchers saw a fall in the species numbers and snails with their shells disintegrating in vents in the Mediterranean sea. They say impacts such as changing of marine food web and decrease in biodiversity might become common with the increase of …
Many aspects of the Indian scientific development are extremely unsatisfactory, lacking in both quality and quantity. Although the outreach of teaching and research programmes has increased considerably, populist political themes are favoured and special institutions have been created where research is undertaken independent of the university system. This article reviews …
Doomsday predictions are funny things. We are predisposed to pay attention to bad news, and the news industry thrives on disasters. Yet our fascination is fickle. If the warning is too scary or distressing, we attack the messenger as a doom-monger. Take the 1972 book The Limits to Growth, one …
The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) was set up to take stock of our knowledge, technology and policy, and help find a way to feed the world without destroying it . With $12 million funding from the World Bank, UN Environment Programme, UN Food and …
Environmental policymaking has been equated with the art of making the right decisions based on an insufficient understanding of the underlying problems. Given the tremendous complexities of the earth system, effective global environmental governance must rely on scientific information on both the kind of problem at stake and the options …
Last month, The Washington Post reported that President George W. Bush had personally intervened to weaken new regulations to control smog just as they were about to be announced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In response, advocates of tighter standards predictably charged that the president had overturned a scientific …
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Mauna Loa CO2 record, the longest continuous record of CO2 in the atmosphere. Initiated by Charles D. Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the record provided the first compelling evidence that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere …
Climate change authorities long ago tagged carbon dioxide public enemy number one. Now, there may be a new number two: tiny particles of black carbon, or soot. According to a new analysis reported online in Nature Geoscience, climate scientists are concluding that reports such as last November's assessment by the …
A federal study released documents the significant impact that climate change is expected to have on the U.S. transportation system. Its conclusion, says Henry Schwartz, the former head of one of the country's largest highway engineering firms, is "a pretty damning tale of what could happen."
Hydroxyl radicals are often called the "detergent" of the atmosphere because they control the atmosphere's capacity to cleanse itself of pollutants. In this article the researchers show that the reaction of electronically excited nitrogen dioxide with water can be an important source of tropospheric hydroxyl radicals.
More than a hundred people live in cities that fail to meet international standards for air quality. Efforts to improve conditions in these urban areas have usually focussed on reducing emissions of reactive hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide free radicals and primary and secondary sources of particulate matter.
In the 7 December 2007 issue, L. Roberts and M. Enserink discuss malaria eradication in the News Focus Story "Did they really say..eradication?" Information from India's 5-year economic plans shows that even if complete eradication cannot be secured, economic gains and reduced suffering may be worth the effort. (Letters)
Rinderpest, an animal disease that devastated cattle and other animals-and their human keepers-across Eurasia and Africa for millennia, may join smallpox as the only viral diseases to have been eradicated.
In impoverished Yunnan Province in southwestern China, a confrontation is brewing between economic growth and habitat preservation-and authorities are sending mixed signals about their intentions.
In December 2005, Stephen Johnson dunked himself in hot water. Johnson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), decided to discard advice from a scientific advisory committee when he set a major air-quality standard for soot. Scientists and environmental groups were outraged. This time Johnson did it again …
Late last month the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened in Longyearbyen, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The facility is nothing less than a Noah's ark of plants for the 21st century, aiming to preserve the world's crop biodiversity while we still have a fighting chance.
