Feature Article

Google’s Street View is heading down the Amazon to capture pictures of “some of the most remote and biodiverse areas in the world”, says its official blog.

It was once described as the most British corner of Buenos Aires and frequented by writers such as Graham Greene and Jorge Luis Borges.

Philip Morris Interna­tional, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, is trying to force a British university to reveal details of its research involving thousands of children aged between 11 and 16 about their attitudes towards smoking and cigarette packaging.

Twenty years ago, when Tim Berners-Lee linked up a community of scientists in what came to be known as the worldwide web, Jaron Lanier was an enthusiast of the project.

Once famed as the bicycle city of India, Pune has lost that reputation because of rising number of motor vehicles. It can once again host a quiet and clean transportation system, albeit with a twist. The Maharashtra transport authority has approved a scheme under which Puneites can hire electric scooters that emit absolutely no exhaust gases.

Try punching the air in front of you. Does it leave a hole? Surely not. But the ozone layer that exists in the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere just above us, does have a hole.

Last week just as Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis was set to begin its final arguments in the Supreme Court against the rejection of a patent for its cancer drug Glivec (see ‘Evergreen Novartis’, Down To Earth, September 1-15) there were two swift and stunning developments. A letter was written by five activists complaining to the ministers of law, commerce, health and family welfare about Justice Dalveer Bhandari, one of two judges hearing the case.

ON A pleasant morning when fifty-four-year-old Australian marine diver David Hannan was gearing to plunge into the deep sea, a bunch of American scientists were ready to set sail for the Arctic Ocean. In another corner of the world at Dona Paula in Goa oceanographers were contemplating plans to measure coastal pH along the entire Indian coastline.

MUCH has been talked about how climate change poses risk to ecosystems and individual species. But no one has analysed how global warming will affect the genetic diversity hidden within the species.