Feature Article

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to increase the government's R&D spending and create incentives for the private sector to increase spending on science and technology as well.

The Open Source Drug Discovery network's army of volunteers is building a kind of Wikipedia on tuberculosis, which is the leading cause of death in India for those in the prime of life.

In 1905, Sir William Osler, the most influential physician of his time, stepped down from the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins University at the age of 55. At his farewell, he emphasized that the “effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of 25 and 40—these 15 golden years of plenty.” Many of us, who are old but still active like myself, may like to strongly disagree. But the power of the creative prime in this age group is irrefutable.

In preparing for the RIO+20 Earth Summit the world community must acknowledge that population trends interact strongly with economic development and environmental change at local and global levels.(Letter)

Issues related to the safety and security of our food supply top the news on a regular basis. Yet the news media continue to undermine the entry of students into the study of agriculture. (Letter)

Humans have been cutting Ethiopian forests for fuel and agriculture for centuries. Only about 35,000 fragments remain in the northern highlands, ranging in size from 3 to 300 hectares. These fragments escaped deforestation because of their religious and spiritual importance; they are protected by, and are an integral part of, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. (Letter)

An elite group of 22 influenza scientists, public health officials, and journal editors from 11 countries recommended last week that the details of how a highly pathogenic bird flu virus was rendered capable of being transmitted easily among mammals be published in full. The recommendation, agreed to at a meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, flies in the face of advice from an influential U.S. committee that key details of the experiments be confined only to those who have a need to know.

Activists say similar plants elsewhere in the country are lying defunct. The small municipality of Bhagalpur in Bihar is considering setting up a waste-to-energy plant in the city. On February 19, the city municipal corporation selected one of the proposals submitted to it to manage the city's waste. The proposals were submitted in response to a request sent out by the municipality in December last year. The proposal under consideration is based on private-public partnership model that promises to generate three megawatts (MW) electricity.

Thomas Sakmar remembers one of the founding fathers of chemical biology - Har Gobind Khorana.

The National Green Tribunal has put on hold the Bhadreshwar thermal power plant at Mundra in Gujarat. It has asked the project proponent, OPG Power Gujarat Pvt Ltd, to stop all works at its 300 MW power plant till it gets the requisite environmental clearance.

"We have no hesitation to hold that until OPG Power Gujarat Pvt Ltd obtains clearance to use reserve forest land and clearance from the Coastal Regulation Zone Authorities, it cannot go ahead with the project," said a bench comprising chairperson A S Naidu and Vijai Sharma on February 14.