-TheWire.in All three winners argue that using randomised control trials can lead to better public policy interventions. New Delhi: The 2019 Nobel Prize for economics has been awarded to three economists who have focused on framing policies by first measuring the outcomes of alternative interventions on randomly chosen samples from a target population. Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer have all worked on using this method to argue that randomised control trials...

Sporadic natural events like floods and droughts have made headlines in recent times. An official report, which was released in April this year, among other things, shows that extreme weather events have taken a huge toll on both human and cattle lives, personal property and crops grown by farmers and farm workers. A chapter on extreme weather events and natural disasters in the report entitled EnviStats India 2019, Vol. I: Environment...

-Down to Earth The system, which tracks crop burning using satellite data, can also forecast air pollution levels for next 72 hours The Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) has launched an advanced Air Quality Early Warning System, which can predict places neighbouring Delhi that are likely to burn crop residue on a given day. The system, developed by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, under MoES, uses data of stubble burning incidents...

-The Hindu Zero Budget Natural Farming has no scientific validation and its inclusion into agricultural policy appears unwise Most criticisms of modern agricultural practices are criticisms of post-Liebig developments in agricultural science. It was after the pioneering work of Justus von Liebig and Friedrich Wöhler in organic chemistry in the 19th century that chemical fertilizers began to be used in agriculture. In the 20th century, the criticisms levelled against Green Revolution technologies...

-The Times of India BERHAMPUR (Odisha): Visually impaired Plus II students can look forward to Braille text books, as well as literary works in Odia, from the next academic year. The Red Cross Braille Press here — the state’s only Braille press, which has been supplying text books to schools for the past 33 years — will be able to print text books for Plus II students thanks to the installation...