Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Given the enormous popularity of the periodic table in chemistry, doesn't it make sense to build a periodic table for biology? Pawan Kumar Dhar visualises the anatomy, the potential pay-offs and the constraints of this novel idea.
Mendel's laws of inheritance were zoom-in-zoom-out. They were not designed to describe the evolution of information in the intermediate layers between genotype and phenotype. What kind of preparation is needed to discover laws in these layers of biology? Pawan Kumar Dhar explores.
"Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality": George Santayana. Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju and Giridhar Madras give a counterpoint arguing that an increase in quantity will lead to an increase in quality in Indian science.
Years of neglect have brought the post-doctoral culture in India to near extinction despite the country's economic progress and enhanced scientific funding. Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju and Arindam Ghosh argue in favour of revitalising this essential area of scientific activity.
A critical deficiency in India's current scientific establishment is the dearth of credible administrators, who can rise to the challenges that confront her educational and research institutions today, says Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju.
India's apex scientific research body is facing flak after questionably hiring and firing an expatriate scientist. Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju ponders over CSIR's policy on such recruitments.
As the world remembers the father of the Green Revolution Norman Borlaug, India's leading agricultural scientist Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan says his pledge to make hunger history must be taken to its logical conclusion. Only that would be a fitting tribute to the famine fighter.
Amidst the raging debate over the success of India's 1998 nuclear tests in Pokhran, former BARC scientist Nataraja Sarma fires another salvo – that its 'fizzling out' had been chronicled many years earlier by scientific bodies in India, US and the UK.
As faculty members of the Indian Institutes of Technology across the country go on leave to protest against the Indian government's Sixth Pay Commission, Aditya Mittal gives an insider's analysis of what these recommendations could mean.
Why is 'innovation' suddenly so hot? And where does India stand in the global race to embrace inclusive innovation? Raghunath Anant Mashelkar analyses the trend and suggests ways to make the most of it.
After three decades at the University of Hyderabad followed by his move to the Indian Institute of Science last month, Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju prescribes mega doses of 'democracy' to bring life back into India's ailing University system.
Their new method to produce beta cells in the laboratory might just be the next big step in the hunt for a cure for diabetes, say Anandwardhan Awadhoot Hardikar and David Tosh.
Pune's Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) turned 20 on December 29, 2008. Director Naresh Dadhich reflects on the milestones achieved and future plans.
