Commentary

There is urgent need for the development and use of agricultural biotechnology in Africa to help to counter famine, environmental degradation and poverty. Africa must enthusiastically join the biotechnology revolution.

Scientific societies in the developing world must take a stake in their countries' future. They should be proactive in fostering a culture supportive of economic development driven by science and technology.

The number of scientists in the biomedical field is growing exponentially at rates that outstrip funding. The present system of short-term research grants, resulting in armies of postdocs without career prospects, must be changed.

Ergonomists have a say in the design of almost everything in the modern world, but there is little evidence that their methods actually work. Here is an evaluation of those methods and of the worth of ergonomics in design.

How should universities account for the money they receive from governments? The answer is not as simple as it may at first appear. There are valuable lessons that other countries can learn from the US experience.

Does society need protecting from scientific advances? Most emphatically not, so long as scientists themselves and their employers are committed to full disclosure of what they know.

There are strong political pressures to relax the scrutiny of suspected biological weapons activity in Iraq. But the experience of United Nations inspectors in the country points to significant dangers in such a policy.

The effective and equitable dissemination of climate forecasts is as important and challenging as their accuracy. During El Niño 1997-98, Peruvian fisheries showed the need to understand forecast use and all parties' interests.

Why did a light-hearted experiment attract so much attention from the media? The episode is an interesting lesson for those wanting to explain science to the wider public -- equations do not always scare people away.

In the wake of the tragic suicide of a US graduate student, research universities need to adopt a different system of monitoring the quality of graduate students' supervision. Anonymous evaluation could be the answer.

The green movement has an impressive history of drawing attention to environmental problems. But if these are to be solved it must be more closely engaged in forging partnerships with business and government.

Economists and ecologists misunderstand each other about the environment. Improving interdisciplinary communication should enable natural scientists to take economic analysis and prescriptions more seriously.

The global stockpile of separated plutonium is expensive and hazardous to reprocess, vulnerable to terrorist threat and disposal is costly. But there are apparently simple ways to reduce this problem.

It can be difficult to discuss ethical dilemmas in the academic environment. One way of doing it is through ‘science-in-fiction’. The following ‘science renga’ shows how this is done with virtually total anonymity.