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 …
AL GORE FORMER VICE-PRESIDENT OF USA, NOBEL LAUREATE, AUTHOR AND AWARD WINNING FILMMAKER To me, there is a striking contrast between the confidence and dynamism, the success and legendary energy drive of modern India
The Union Ministry of Science and Technology is forcing through a controversial act which seeks to regulate rights over government-funded research. Many feel that Public Funded R&D; (Protection, Utilization and Regulation of Intellectual Property) Bill, 2007, will benefit the private sector more than the public. The ministry feels the benefits …
Food scientists are meeting in Cusco, Peru, this week to find ways of boosting world potato production to ease the strain of surging cereal prices on the world's poorest countries. Potato production already reached a record high last year as cereal prices rose, partly as a consequence of grain producers …
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 …
When economist Carl Pray heard about plans for the first international assessment of agricultural research, a gold standard sprang to mind: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But things didn't turn out the way he expected.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Albert Gore Jr., sending a strong message about the importance of the world's future climate. Indeed, for two decades, international scientists and policy-makers contributing to the IPCC process have provided assessments of climate …
An international collaboration to study insects in the Western Ghats mountains in southern India has been unable to get off the ground because of government concerns over biopiracy.
cancer cure: Scientists in Germany are considering developing a new drug for neuroblastoma, a tumour of the nervous system in children. They have identified a constituent in a fungus that might be useful for the drug. The substance, HC-toxin, from a maize pathogen, reprogrammes neuroblastoma cells in a way that …
Lawmakers are again asserting that the Bush Administration is meddling in science. House Science Committee Democrats charge that federal officials have suppressed a report on potential health threats from pollution in the Great Lakes. They also say officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, …
Even as life science companies in seed business and vocal lobbyists for pro-genetically modified (GM) crops combine to make propagandist noises about the goodness of the technology and rapid spread of area under GM crops worldwide comes the news that pests are slowly developing resistance to transgenic crops. Currently, corn …
Many a student nightmare originates in chemistry labs. Titration is one of them. It may be a big word but it's a simple process to detect a solution's potency. It requires sucking in acid through a pipette (a thin glass tube) to measure it. A measured amount of a solution …
the science congress which ended on January 7 failed to create an impact. Held in Visakhapatnam, the key theme of the five-day conference organized by the Indian Science Congress Association was a
Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to a prestigious university in Rome in the face of hostility from some of its academics and students, who accused him of despising science and defending the church's persecution of Galileo. The Pope had been scheduled to make a speech at La Sapienza …
Antarctica is the most unspoiled continent on Earth - and fast becoming a tourist hotspot. It has been 50 years since the first cruise ship visited with 200 passengers, but now 30,000 tourists go each year. Veteran polar researcher and zoologist Bernard Stonehouse has seen for himself how Antarctica has …
Last year, climate change scientists thought they had driven a silver stake through the idea that fluctuations in solar activity were behind global warming in the last century. Now, a high-profile team led by geophysicist Vincent Courtillot, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, has sought to …
