Feature Article

Preliminary results of the 2011 census released recently by the Government of India show that the current population is higher than the earlier projections. As the requirement of water chiefly depends upon population, earlier estimates have been revised in view of the revised population projections. Initiatives to overcome the impending water scarcity have also been suggested.

The international community is stumbling in its efforts to find a middle path to a greener planet. Less than a year remains, when nations will converge in Rio de Janeiro to renew their vow towards sustainable development and a greener economy. The UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, popularly known as Rio+20, will not only review achievements and failures since the Earth Summit of 1992 held in this same city but will also need to provide a road-map for sustainable development. But a recent round of negotiations in New York in May 2011 was nothing but a squabble.

The Supreme Court has delivered an important judgement for people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. It has cleared way for displaced families to receive minimum two hectares (ha) of land under the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) Policy of Madhya Pradesh government. The oustees had already got a cash compensation in lieu of the land. But it rejected a plea seeking two ha of land for the landless.

A controversy has sparked between non-profit Greenpeace and the Indian Association of Biotech led Enterprise–Agriculture Group (ABLE-AG) over the use of glyphosate in the country.

A scientific study on the cry1Ac gene has turned controversial, dividing Indian scientists on what appears to be a fundamental issue related to the gene drawn from the naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. The paper, which was put out by a clutch of scientists including the high-profile Deepak Pental, who recently demitted office as vice chancellor of the University of Delhi, states that expression of the cry1Ac gene in cotton and tobacco is detrimental to growth and development of these plants.

Climate-change wrangling in Australia has descended into death threats and extreme insults. The science is being drowned out.

Dust is all that's needed to plunge the world into an ice age. When blown into the sea, the iron it contains can fertilise plankton growth on a scale large enough to cause global temperatures to drop. The finding adds support to the idea of staving off climate change by simulating the effects of dust - perhaps by sprinkling the oceans with iron filings.

Some claim climate change will destroy our species; now it seems it also helped forge it. The rapid fluctuations in temperature that characterised the global climate between 2 and 3 million years ago coincided with a golden age in human evolution.

People guzzling concoctions of worms to relieve their immune disorders are inspiring scientists to take parasite therapy seriously.