And they are exacerbated by bad management, says Simon Long AS IT SCOURS the universe for signs of extraterrestrial life, NASA has a motto-cum-mission-statement: “Follow the water”. About 70% of the human
Until now, those who have lost their sense of touch have just had to live with the problem, trying instead to become more aware of their surroundings using the senses that remain. James Collins, a
Minimising the environmental damage that new roads cause is generally regarded as a good thing. But to do that, it helps to understand just how roads cause the damage of which they are accused. In
Six weeks after the the Ganges and other rivers flowing into Bangladesh burst their banks, the government is grappling with a disaster whose size it failed to acknowledge until the homes, livestock
How people remember things, why some things are more memorable than others, and how memory might be improved, are slowly being cleared up : a
politics, water and poverty : In the past, drought in Brazil meant starvation for people and animals alike. This year no one should die, officials say, thanks to a relief operation which, after a
Portable electronic devices require better memories. To make them, engineers are drawing inspiration from computing's earliest days : a
The tale of shrimping in the Gulf of Mexico, which streches from Texas to Florida, is not a happy one. Too many boats, too many empty nets. The shrimpers have resonded by harvesting shrimps that are
The timber industry is turning over a new new leaf. These days, environmentalists are not the only one who are proclaiming the importance of protecting trees. From forestry companies to superstores,
A fresh debate on euthanasia has bubbled up in France since, a fortnight ago, a nurse in a hospital near Paris was put on trial for helping patients to die. French law, as almost everywhere else in
A winter storm knocks down 1,400 power pylons, 3,000 kilometres of transmission lines and leaves more than 3m people shivering in the dark, some for as long as a month. A humbling experience one
