-The Telegraph New Delhi: Five years after sequencing the pigeonpea genome, Indian scientists have identified Madhya Pradesh as the centre of origin of this nationwide staple legume and discovered genes they say will allow the expansion of pigeonpea cultivation. Scientists at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) near Hyderabad and their collaborators in Australia, China and the US yesterday announced the results of a new study that has traced...

-The Hindu Ties up with IIT-Kharagpur to gauge happiness levels Happiness, its pursuit and examining its essential nature have been considered the domain of philosophy, an ephemeral rather than tangible value. The Madhya Pradesh government, however, has tasked the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur with finding a quantifiable answer to that eternal question — what constitutes happiness and how happy are people really. The State government had, in July last year, set up the...

When it comes to child under-nutrition, the proportion of stunted and underweight children below 5 years has reduced in India during the last ten years. However, a rising trend has been observed in the prevalence of wasting among children below 5 years between the last two rounds of National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The recently released data from NFHS-4 indicates that the proportion of under 5 year children who are...

-The Times of India Cancer drugs, being the top focus for research and development, corner the lion's share of medicines launched globally, yet only a handful make it to developing countries like India. Only seven oncology drugs were introduced in India over five years (2010-2014), when nearly 50 breakthrough therapies were rolled out globally. The disparity in availability of oncology therapies becomes even more stark over a 10-year period (2006-2016), with not even...

-The Economic Times blog In December 1956, Zhou En Lai, the Chinese premier and, after Mao, the second mostpowerful man in China, created much consternation by refusing to leave his meeting at the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) office at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata. He was talking to Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, the founder of the institute, and one of the pioneers in the field of survey methods. Zhou was...