-The Hindu Use of contraceptives on the rise, rural-urban gap narrowing, finds analysis of NFHS-5 The latest data from the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5) provides evidence of an uptake in the use of modern contraceptives in rural and urban areas, an improvement in family planning demands being met, and a decline in the average number of children borne by a woman, and prove that the country’s population is stabilising and fears...

-Down to Earth Most insects are not harmful but beneficial to humans; without them, nature will lose its balance Any small creature with six jointed legs and a body divided into three parts namely head, thorax and abdomen is known as an ‘insect’. They have wings, two antennae and an exoskeleton. Ants, bees and flies are insects. ‘Entomology’ is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. There may be as many as...

-The New Indian Express While the state now has a TFR of 3, as compared to the last survey when it stood at 3.4, Kerala and Goa are among 8 states where the sex ratio at birth has worsened. NEW DELHI: Even as the Centre has expressed its intent of adopting measures to control population growth, the total fertility rate in a large part of the country has shown a considerable fall...

-The Indian Express Centre must make transparent efforts to push exports consistently and not follow the stop-go policy emanating from price controls for the Indian consumer market. The flashpoint between the agitating farmers and the central government is essentially rooted in the mismatch between the supply and demand for the wheat crop in India. The genesis of the current state of affairs stems from policies initiated over half a century ago when...

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which was released on July 6th (observed as World Zoonoses Day by research institutions and non-governmental organisations across the globe) this year, says that around 60 percent of known infectious diseases in humans are estimated to have an animal origin. Likewise, almost three-fourth of all new and emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic i.e. these diseases...