The world's first electronic book on agriculture, The Agronomy and Economy of Important Tree Crops of the Developing World, compiled by K P Prabhakaran Nair, has been chosen to be kept in the British Library in London and the Congressional State Library in Washington. The Elsevier Academic Press-Macmillan combined, a major publisher in science, had commissioned Professor K P Prabhakaran Nair to compile the electronic book, which took him nearly five...

Greenhouse gas emissions from rich countries fell a record 7 per cent in 2009 because of the recession, but the cut was entirely nullified by steep increases from fast-growing China and India, according to one of Europe's leading scientific research groups. Overall, this meant annual global climate emissions remained steady for the first time since 1992, says the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which drew on energy-use data from the U.S. government,...

Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative illicit businesses in Europe, according to a United Nations report launched today at an event where Spain became the first country on the continent to join the UN Blue Heart Campaign against trafficking in people. The report Trafficking in persons to Europe for sexual exploitation, issued by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), shows that criminal groups make around $3 billion per...

GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Novartis have taken the top three spots again on the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies on how readily they make their products available to the world's poor. It was the second time the rankings, which were created in 2008, have been issued. This time, 95 per cent of the brand-name companies approached by the Dutch foundation that started the index agreed to provide information;...

Warmer nights may spoil the aroma of basmati and cause the rice to become sticky when cooked, scientists have warned after a study of how climate change may affect the quality of rice. Field experiments by scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, suggest that high temperatures could hurt the quality of rice through loss of aroma and changes in starch leading to higher stickiness. Several previous studies have...