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This paper discusses emerging demographic patterns and its opportunities and challenges for India. It investigates the specificities in the demographic transition in terms of various demographic parameters and the lack of homogeneity in the transition across states in the country. It presents some opportunities that can arise from having demographic changes, particularly the demographic dividend and interstate migration to overcome labor shortage in some parts. At the same time, there are serious challenges in the form of enhancing human capital development, addressing the issue of skewed sex ratio, and the possible rise in social and political unrest and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article informs that for 130 years scholars have struggled to decipher the Indus script. Now, in a proposal with broad academic and political implications, a brash outsider claims that such efforts are doomed to failure because the Indus symbols are not writing. That claim is part of a bitter clash among academics, as well as between Western scientists and Indian nationalists, over the nature of the Indus society, a clash that has led to shouting matches and death threats. But the provocative proposal, summed up in a paper published online last week, is winning adherents within the small community of Indus scholars who say it is time to rethink an enigmatic society that spanned a vast area in today's Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, the largest civilization of its day. INSETS: Splendid Sewers, But Little Sculpture;Outsider Revels in Breaking Academic Taboos.

The article discusses predatory open access publishing which masquerade as legitimate scientific publications but publish papers with little or no peer review, while charging authors hefty fees. Topics addressed include remarks from K. VijayRaghavan, secretary of India's Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in New Delhi, information on a study conducted by Gopalakrishnan Saroja Seethapathy and colleagues on Indian first authors from journals flagged as predatory by library scientist Jeffrey Beall.

The article reports on the science exhibition in 14-car-long Science Express train that will travel more than 55 cities throughout India. A globe that part of the exhibit will show different peoples of the world speaking their native tongues if the button is pressed by participants. Meanwhile, the train is chock-full of multimedia exhibits covering topics about black holes and European Organization for Nuclear Research's (CERN) search for the Higgs boson. In addition, it has a hands-on laboratory for experiments such as mixing cement or separating chemicals with paper chromatography.

Reports on the alleged plagiarism committed by a senior University leader in India and his student claiming to be the original authors of a paper published in the March 2002 issue of the journal 'European Physics Letters.' Similarity of the paper with an original paper that appeared in the October 15, 1996 issue of 'Physical Review'; Subject of both the papers.

The article reports that Pattium Chiranjeevi, an Indian chemistry professor at Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) in Tirupati, India, has been punished for committing a series of high-profile scientific misconduct cases in stem cell biology and physics. The investigation conducted by the university panel regarding the 13 papers written by Chiranjeevi concluded that the latter has been involved in unethical and fraud practices in plagiarizing data from an analytical chemistry journal. As a result, Chiranjeevi did not receive funding from the government agency. Currently, the university has declared that Chiranjeevi cannot hold an administrative position or teach students.

The human tragedy caused by the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake (momentmagnitude 9.3) on 26 December 2004 and its companion Nias earthquake(moment magnitude 8.7) on 28 March 2005 is difficult to comprehend.These earthquakes, the largest in 40 years, have also left seismologistssearching for the words and tools to describe the enormity of thegeological processes involved. Four papers in this issue discuss aspectsof a rupture process of surprising complexity, the first such event totest the sensitivity and range of many new technologies. A surprisingfeature of the earthquake is that after the initial rapid rupture,subsequent slip of the plate interface occurred with decreasing speedtoward the north. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors opine regarding the development of research institutes in developing countries and the need for cultural changes that encourage research innovations and collaboration. For reference, the authors note a relevant policy paper in the issue. India's efforts to attract young native biological scientists back to the country to participate in life-science research is discussed.

This article presents an abstract of the comments made by the authors on the paper "The Great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake of 26 December 2004," by Thorne Lay, Hiroo Kanamori, and others that was published in the May 20, 2005 issue of the periodical "Science." Lay and others estimated a 600-km length for the tsunami source region. Adding tide-gauge data from Paradip, the northernmost of the Indian east-coast stations and therefore the most critical constraint on the northern extent of the source, they estimate that its length was greater by ∼30%.

The article focuses on a Web resources, Forum on Science and Technology for Sustainability, sponsored by Harvard University. The site rounds up a host of papers, online books and reports touching on everything from biobased fuels to wind energy in India. An events calendar tracks important conferences and workshops. In the commentary section, guest contributors sound off on topics from how to measure sustainability to biotechnology's role in promoting it.

In an unusual cooperative step, India and Bangladesh have embarked on a joint census of the Royal Bengal tigers that inhabit the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarban. The main census tool will be the collecting of pugmarks, plaster casts and paper tracings of tiger footprints in the mud that are supposed to reveal the age, weight and sex of animals. Many wildlife biologists claim that pugmarks are unreliable and should be replaced by other sampling methods, such as camera traps. Some 460 foresters and wildlife experts are participating in the weeklong census, funded by $120,000 from United Nations Development Programme.

This article reports that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was represented at the recent annual meetings of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) and the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). John Benjamin Leake, a science educator at the University of Missouri-Columbia, was the AAAS delegate at the 39th annual session of the SLAAS, December 12 to 16, 1983 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Leake presented both popular and specialized lectures and his wife, Bonnie Bourne, presented a paper. The meeting, which had as its theme "Science Education," was attended by representatives of scientific associations from Australia, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union, as well as the United States. Henry R. Bungay, professor of chemical and environmental engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and his wife, Mary Lou Bungay, attended the 71st session of the ISCA near Ranchi, India, January 3 to 8, 1984. The theme of the meeting, which was attended by more than 3000 scientists from India and abroad, was "Quality Science-Ends and Means."

Presents findings from a study which suggests that Indian biomedical scientists are focusing on the diseases of the affluent at the expense of their own country's health problems. Study looked at the topics of over 1000 papers published by Indian biomedical doctors between 1987 and 1994; Most common subjects relating to cancer, cardiovascular disease, and tropical diseases; The fact that Indian biomedical research suffers from general low quality.