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
It has stopped getting better. In the past five years, economic and financial instability, low commodity prices, falling levels of aid, widespread civil wars and steady population growth have meant
In its trade war with America over bananas, the European Union has professed to a modern day Robin Hood. It claims to steal from rich American multinationals to give to poor African, Caribbean and
Barely a year ago, Florida brought in an anti-smoking campaign not only aimed at teenagers, but also run by them. It has been so successful, health officials say, that it has led to a 10% drop in
Cuban farmers were hard hit when Soviet aid ended. Farming practice was much like that of Eastern Europe. Fuel, machines, pesticides and fertilisers came from the Soviet block. When the Soviet aid
The people who put organically grown food on to American tables sold a record $5 billion-worth of their produce in 1997 and could push that up to over $6 billion last year. But organic farmers still
Teddy Goldsmith has dedicated his own life, soul-and a considerable chunk of the family fortune-to developing the ecology and green movements. He founded the Ecologist magazine in 1969, which has
Advances in both science and social attitudes could lead to novel treatments for drug and alcohol addiction. Consider acamprosate, a new drug made by Merck Lipha, a company based in Lyons, France.
Over the past two decades, colonisation of the cerrados (savannahs) of Mato Grosso has turned Rondonopolis into Brazil's largest source of soya and cotton, and big producer of rice, maize and sugar.
Chun Ning Lau and Alexey Bezryadin, who work in Michael Tinkham's laboratory in Harvard University, have created the world's thinnest metallic wires-less than ten nanometres in diameter. That means
It will doubtless come as something of a shock to discover that mobile telephones might be good for you. But the most recent research, by Alan Preece of Bristol University and his colleagues, could
