The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
YOU better start cultivating a taste for broccoli. Two John Hopkins University scientists say they have discovered in broccoli the presence of a chemical compound -- sulforaphane -- which helps fight cancer in animals. Paul Talalay and Gary H Posner had previously reported that sulforaphane increased the production of anti-cancer …
IN THIS provocatively titled book, the authors point out that laws governing the use of "the commons" were not usually written because the complexity they dealt with was not amenable to generalisation. Laws were also subject to constant change, as a balance had to be struck between the availability of …
SCIENTISTS have recently confirmed the presence in the lungs of asthmatics of an enzyme that produces nitric oxide, which damages cells lining the airways. Nitric oxide was known to be present in the air exhaled by asthmatics but the enzyme -- nitric oxide synthase -- that triggered its production in …
AS CHINA prepares to enter a market economy, it is busy putting its house in order. Two specialist courts will be set up in the key commercial centre of Shanghai to handle trademark and copyright violation cases, the pro-China Hong Kong-based daily Wen Wei Po reported. Shanghai courts have been …
A COMMON charge against the British is that they have sex on their minds more than anywhere else. Now, scientists would have us believe, the Brits were right all along. Recent research indicates that the lack of oestrogen, the hormone that plays an important role in the sexual grooming of …
TRADITIONAL systems of biological resource use are staging a comeback after having taken a beating from the invasion of technology, capital intensive systems of use and catastrophic erosion of our biological resource base. The time is now ripe to consider the feasibility of promoting traditional systems in terms of tangible …
In keeping with its determinedly frothy approach to TV programming, Aavishkar, Zee TV's weekly science programme (Monday evenings at 5 pm) has at least as much clowning around as cerebral illumination. This is science made fun for yuppies and puppies. The competing panels always span three generations of both sexes …
MUCH to the dismay of environmentalists in the UK, British Nuclear Fuels has been given a go-ahead for its Thorp plant by the High Court. The decision marks the end of a long battle between the British government and two organisations -- Greenpeace and the Lancashire County Council. The organisations …
THE Grameen Bank - a rural credit scheme in Bangladesh - is making waves. The bank, the brainchild of economist Muhammad Yunus, advances loans to the poorest sections of the society and reached out to more than 1.6 million people in the last decade. Inspired by its success, Grameen Bank …
BRITAIN is having a hard time reconciling its business interests and its self-professed environmental concerns. Although the British firm GEC-Alsthom has supplied turbine generators for China's Daya Bay nuclear power station near Hong Kong, the British establishment has vociferously protested against the setting up of the plant. There are fears …
LEON Baert and Rudy Jocque have found the world's smallest known female spider (Anapistula caecula) in the Ivory Coast's Tai Forest Reserve. The 0.46 mm long female members of this new species easily beat the previous record of 0.59 mm held by the Colombian forest spider Patu digua (BBC Wildlife, …
Although about 4.5 per cent of Australia's population is of Asian origin, local whites know little about Asia's economy or culture. But today, growing economic ties with southeast Asian countries have made it imperative for Australians to understand the East. Changing Times, a series of film clips, examines Australian assumptions …
FINLAND'S forestry and paper industries have attracted world attention but for all the wrong reasons. The country is ravaging its ancient forests with mechanical tree harvesters, according to an article in the German news weekly, Der Spiegel. These accusations have been rejected vehemently by Finland's forestry industry as an example …
AS RUSSIA moves to a market economy, some celebrated but impecunious cosmonauts are cashing in on their space legacies. Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, pocketed $255,500 as he watched his training space suit go under Sotheby's hammer in New York in December (Nature, Vol 366, No …
THE WORLD Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) gutsily staged a street play in January this year in enemy territory, Delhi's Sadar Bazar -- the core of animal skin trader Sansar Chand's territory. Chand, who masterminded the biggest poaching network in north and east India, was nabbed by Delhi police in …
LUFTHANSA airlines of Germany has been conferred the "Stratospheric ozone protection award" by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the US. EPA recognised the airline as the first in the world to do away with ozone-depleting chemicals used in the maintenance and overhaul of aircraft. The airline says it was …
EVERY child has been fed the story of Isaac Newton's discovery of universal gravitation. But what is not told is that this idea did not come to Newton as a flash of insight. Treating the discovery as just a bright idea vulgarises the creativity of a great scientist and philosopher, …
EVEN AS the developed world congratulates itself on the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Third World countries are trying to come to terms with what has been left unsaid. The World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have concluded that …
There is increasing likelihood that by the early 21st century, water and not energy will claim the primary focus of world attention. There are substitutes for energy other than depleting fossil fuels in the form of renewable and non-conventional sources; none for water. Desalination remains energy-intensive and expensive, especially for …
VITAL Signs responds to the need for information on the trends that are reshaping our world. It surveys 42 global indicators, such as the decline in per capita availability of food and water, economic recession over the past two years, increasing water scarcity and the population increase to outline the …
