-Outlook Chennai: As political parties in Tamil Nadu strongly protested the "wrong" depiction of Nadar community in a CBSE textbook, the Centre today assured it would look into the issue and do the needful. The assurance was given by HRD Minister M M Pallam Raju to his party colleague and Shipping Minister G K Vasan when the latter met him to discuss the issue. Raju said he was holding discussions with officials to...

-The New York Times blog You could be pardoned for thinking that light pollution is someone’s idea of a Diwali joke. With concerns about rising air pollution hanging over India’s capital like the thick blanket of smog that appeared a few weeks ago and activists against noise pollution jostling to be heard over the burst of holiday firecrackers, the relatively benign problem of light pollution may not seem too Important. But astronomers in...

-The Times of India Denials notwithstanding, the government indeed has been considering the idea of turning the Comptroller and Auditor General into a multi-member body as minister of state in Prime Minister's Office V Narayanaswamy said last week. Although the government had dropped the idea of turning the CAG into a multi-member body, agreeing with the federal auditor that the existing structure with a singular head was fine, it dusted off the...

-The Hindu A drastic reduction in efficacy seen in the infants during the one-year follow-up period The results of the Phase III trial of the malaria vaccine RTS,S/AS01 are greatly disappointing. The efficacy of the vaccine in preventing clinical and severe malaria in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks is much less than what was expected. In fact, the level of protection offered is nearly half of what was reported last year...

-Frontline There are no effective vaccines against Japanese encephalitis, but its spread can be controlled in India through vector management.  JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS, or JE, has become endemic in many parts of the country, occurring repeatedly in epidemic form in many of them—for instance, in parts of Gorakhpur in northern Uttar Pradesh. One can expect JE-type epidemics year after year in States where prolonged drought-like conditions are followed by heavy monsoons. This leads to...