Wiping out all of Africa’s elephants could accelerate Earth’s climate crisis by allowing 7% more damaging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, scientists say. But conserving forest elephants may reverse the trend, providing a service worth $43billion in storing carbon, the academics found. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that …
On October 3, Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission director, Chandrayaan-1, is visibly tense. The spacecraft, moved out the previous day from the laboratories of the isro Satellite Centre in Bangalore, is being transported at 20 kmph by road to the spaceport in Sriharikota, some 300 km away. Annadurai is tense because …
an indian court has convicted two Czech nationals arrested for illegally collecting insects in Singalila National Park, West Bengal. On September 10, the chief judicial magistrate in Darjeeling sentenced Emil Kucera to three years in jail and fined him Rs 50,000. Entomologist Petr Svacha was fined Rs 20,000. The Czechs …
Two Americans and a Japanese have won the Nobel chemistry prize for discovering the glowing proteins that have become an essential tool in biomedical research. Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese citizen who has worked in the US for almost 50 years, originally extracted
STOCKHOLM: Two Japanese citizens and a Japanese-born American were awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries in the world of subatomic physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday. An American, Yoichiro Nambu, 87, of the University of Chicago, won half of the prize for the discovery …
Three European scientists shared the first of this year's Nobel awards, the medicine prize, for identifying the viruses responsible for Aids and cervical cancer. Yesterday's award of half the SKr10m ($1.4m,
NEW YORK: The AIDS virus has been circulating among people for about 100 years, decades longer than scientists had thought, a new study suggests. Genetic analysis pushes the estimated origin of HIV back to between 1884 and 1924, with a more focused estimate at 1908. Previously, scientists had estimated the …
The annual summer retreat of the sea ice cloaking the Arctic Ocean appears to have ended with the ice not quite matching last year's extraordinary recession, polar scientists said. Still, the scientists, at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said that the ice in the Arctic …
Last week, India's Department of Biotechnology announced that it was teaming up with the Wellcome Trust on a 5-year, $140 million program to support up to 375 scientists in all stages of their careers.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) elected new leadership last week in Geneva, Switzerland, unanimously re-electing the Indian economist Rajendra Pachauri as chairman but choosing new heads of the three working groups that coordinate the writing of its massive reports.
Just how harmful are baby bottles, eyeglasses and other bisphenol-A plastics? Patricia Hunt, who helped to bring the issue to light a decade ago, is still trying to sort it all out.
Glaring gaps in Gangotri glacial melt study Science seems to have been the casualty in the study on glacial retreat in Gangotri, source of the Ganga. The Uttarakhand government had commissioned a study to an expert committee in 2006. The committee came out with a report in December 2007, which …
Where does innovation come from? How can it best be nurtured and encouraged? These questions are taking on global significance as fast-developing nations such as China, India and Brazil increasingly see leadership in innovation as key to their economic competitiveness. Although the link between innovation and economic strength is a …
To understand what has happened to the earth's atmosphere--and, therefore, how our climate might change in the future--some ice-core scientists in the Arctic are training their eyes directly downward. It's an incredibly important job. It's also, as the participants in the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project will attest, …
Swedish researchers have launched a scathing attack on the scientific credentials of an international advisory body on biodiversity, warning that its effectiveness is being undermined by the increasing dominance of politicians and professional negotiators. Their concerns about the work of the scientific body that advises the Convention on Biological Diversity …
The lay-off last week of a senior political scientist involved in helping poor countries prepare for climate change has exposed a stark division in opinions on the core purpose of a key US climate-research institution. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, says its hand was forced …
