Feature Article

Rapidly emerging insecticide resistance is creating an urgent need for new active ingredients to control the adult mosquitoes that vector malaria. Biopesticides based on the spores of entomopathogenic fungi have shown considerable promise by causing very substantial mortality within 7–14 days of exposure. This mortality will generate excellent malaria control if there is a high likelihood that mosquitoes contact fungi early in their adult lives.

The climate of the Indian Ocean is dominated by monsoon reversals, influencing hydrography and biogeochemistry of the Indian Ocean as well as land vegetation through changes in precipitation. During summer or southwest monsoon season, intense upwelling zones driven by Ekman spiral appear in the western and eastern parts of the Arabian Sea that enhance surface primary production and thus proliferation of distinct fauna and flora.

The gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite mission is mapping the earth’s gravity field with unprecedented accuracy of a few

Municipalities in rural areas collect garbage from houses and dump it in a low-lying marshy ground. After several years when this ground is completely

The Himalaya is experiencing rapid climate change that is likely to significantly impact local ecosystems, biodiversity, agriculture and human well-being. However, the scientific community has been slow to examine the extent and consequences of climate change. Local communities have been
coping with environmental change since millennia. Thus they often have considerable knowledge about environmental change and means to cope with its consequences. We (a) examined the perceptions of local communities about climate change and its impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, agri-

Heat stress is an important aspect in the lives of people working under exposed conditions for long hours. It is interesting to examine the impact of global warming on the occurrence of heat stress in India. This study uses India Meteorological Department (IMD) daily temperature gridded data to
investigate the changes in frequency and episodes of extreme temperature events in seven temperature homogenous regions and the country as a whole by applying the guidelines suggested by the World Meteorological Organization ‘Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices’. It is

As part of our environmental analysis of the Bharathapuzha river basin, southern India, we examined the trend of temperature in the basin for a period of 36 years (1969–2005). It shows an overall upward trend in annual and daily temperatures. The temperature during winter, and the southwest (SW)
and northeast (NE) monsoon also showed significant increase.

The diversity of opinions that debates about Bt brinjal have generated over the last year (for example, see refs 1–8) has contributed to the haziness of the future of the variety. This note attempts to collate the opinions of various scientists in the hope that some clarity may emerge if the different argu-
ments are presented in one place.

GM crops are being cultivated for the last 15 years in many countries and culminating in the last year, GM crops were planted in more than 1 billion hectares (b ha) by nearly 15 million farmers. In India, about 6.3 million farmers cultivated Bt cotton last year (http://www.isaaa.org) in more than 9 million hectares (m ha) for protection against the ravages of the most devastating cotton pest, the American bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera.