The state is not serious about the need for a robust programme of elementary teacher education to realise the right to education. IN India today it is difficult to decide how the agenda for teacher education and its reform can be taken forward. The Right to Education will succeed only if teachers are able to work to ensure that all children do become educated by attending school; effectively, this means...

-The Times of India   Do not drink your bottle gourd ('lauki' in Hindi, and 'sorakaya' in Telugu) juice if it tastes bitter, it could kill you. This recommendation comes after some investigation by an experts' committee. The death of 59-year-old scientist, Sushil Kumar Saxena, a deputy secretary in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in New Delhi in June 2010, spurred an investigation into the effects of the consumption of...

The health ministry has erected bureaucratic hurdles against a bio-pesticide for mosquito control developed by Indian Researchers, denying it entry into the public health programme while accepting similar imported products, scientists and entrepreneurs have said. The bio-pesticide was developed at the Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) in Puducherry during the 1980s. It is a powder or spray formulation containing a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis that can kill the larvae of several...

Madhya Pradesh is betting cash incentives will curb population growth and improve the ‘life cycle’ of the girl child, but experts question the efficacy of such policies in addressing deep-rooted social prejudices Visitors trudging down the dusty village road are greeted by a giant billboard featuring a smiling Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, hugging two young girls. The tagline in Hindi reads: Gaon ki beti, kisse chhoti...

-Express News Service The Tuberculosis Research Centre (TRC) in the city, on Wednesday, announced that it had isolated a molecule that fights both tuberculosis and some strains of HIV. Researchers isolated the molecule from a marine microorganism Streptomyces sp found in soil collected near coral reefs off the Rameshwaram coast. They found that the molecule was effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes most forms of TB. The molecule also acts...