Reports

Hi-tech times call for hi-tech solutions. That's the impression one would get from Bosch's innovations that are geared towards minimising road accidents in the country. Its Smart Emergency Crash Notification (sECN) app can provide rapid assistance to motorists involved in collisions. The company is also working on its Bosch Accident Research Project to collate and analyse accident data. That's because official statistics in India are not sufficient enough for analyses of traffic safety-related...

The Global Decade for Road Safety is in its fifth year, but things remain as dismal and bloody they were. Experts believe that the focus needs a paradigm shift from 'what can be done' to 'who ought to do what' for things to change. With some 15 agencies/departments/ministries being involved in the process for instance in a place like Karnataka, the time has come for a wholesome sectoral and planning integration. The need of the hour is one of evidence-driven approaches, says G Gururaj of NIMHANs...

There are many reasons why Bangalore remains the startup capital of India. And one of those is that the young here are workaholics, and the lines between their personal and professional lives are blurring fast. Market expansion advisory firm Zinnov has come up with numbers that, the organisation contends, point to this trend. About 49 per cent of respondents to a recent Zinnov study in the 21-30 age bracket use tablets for work. This is reckoned to be signify a younger generation that is leaning...

Flouting of environmental norms and forest laws in the construction of irrigation projects in Karnataka are now going the mini-hydel projects way. The Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) is organising a public hearing for this irrigation scheme long after the project was completed for all practical purposes. And that too without an environment clearance from the Centre. It's not as complicated as it may sound. Proponents of any project of a particular scale are supposed to start work...

Flu's getting scarier by the day. Three-quarters of people infected with seasonal flu and swine flu in recent years have shown no symptoms. In other words, in today's world you might be down with influenza till the end, but show no symptom of it. In any case, for instance, not everyone with flu will have fever. Researchers analysed data gathered in England during the winter flu seasons between 2006 and 2011, including the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic, and found that one in five of the...

The drop in the value of the rupee has not been auguring well for Indians. During 2013, travellers from India paid more for their hotel rooms as the drop in value of the rupee made traveling abroad more expensive. In fact, Indian travellers paid more for hotel rooms in three out of every four destinations abroad, according to latest Hotels.com Hotel Price Index (HPI). On the other hand, global travellers on an average paid 2 per cent more on hotels in India in 2013 as compared to 2012 (a...

This comes as a spanner in the works of those working night and day to evolve policies and mechanisms to arrest climate change. The implementation of climate engineering technologies as a last ditch effort to combat the escalating effects of climate change could, in fact, make things worse, assert a team of researchers. This comes as a spanner in the works of those working night and day to evolve policies and mechanisms to arrest climate change. The implementation of climate engineering...

Raja Sonu’s eyes well up when he recollects the trying days and inhuman conditions under which his father would grovel in a dark, dingy room, trying to handcraft pieces of jewellery. His old man couldn’t see the son grow up – and try his own hands at jewellery; he succumbed to the working conditions. Such were the conditions under which artisans worked at jewellery workshops in Kolkata that Raja’s mother never wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps. But he did, and ended up in far-away...

The organisation of political power within and between nations and citizens if failing miserably to protect the public's health. Not that you didn't suspect it. But this time there is corroboration, and it comes in the form of findings of a new Commission from The Lancet and the University of Oslo. These power asymmetries, together with the piecemeal way that global decisionmaking has developed since World War II, are having a disastrous effect on human health, say the report's authors. The fact...

The rash of rapes and cases of molesations in the country continue to paint India as among the worst countries for women to live in, but research finds it otherwise. The incidence of sexual violence in India and Bangladesh are among the lowest in the world. It is, not surprisingly, the bloodiest in central sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, one in 14 women (7.2 per cent) aged 15 years or older report being sexually assaulted by someone other than an intimate partner at least once in their lives...