Part of my online life includes editorial duties at ResearchBlogging.org, where I serve as the Social Sciences Editor. Each Thursday, I pick notable posts on research in anthropology, philosophy, social science, and research to share on the ResearchBlogging.org News site. To help highlight this writing, I also share my selections here on AiP. This week [...]

At first (and probably second) glance you wouldn’t think that tigers and kiwis have all that much in common. Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) live in India and the surrounding countries, where the predators can weigh more than 220 kilograms. Little spotted kiwi (Apteryx owenii) live exclusively in New Zealand, where the flightless birds weigh [...]

Primates that spend their entire lives in trees tend not to survive after those trees are cut down. Sadly, that’s what’s happening in northeast India, where the forest habitats for one of the world’s rarest apes are rapidly disappearing. The western hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) has lost an estimated 90 percent of its population over [...]

In 1877 a British lieutenant colonel and naturalist named R.H. Beddome looked under a rock in the Indian state of Orissa and discovered a new gecko species. That was the last time it was ever seen. Until now. After more than 135 years, the Jeypore ground gecko (Geckoella Jeyporensis) has been rediscovered by a team [...]

In 2010 a black rhinoceros female named Phila survived two separate and brutal attempts on her life. In the first, poachers used a helicopter to attack the private game reserve where she lived in South Africa. Another rhino died in the assault. Phila escaped with two gunshot wounds. She was lucky, but her ordeal was [...]

When I last wrote about Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) this past December, the species was in pretty dire straits. A contagious cancer known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD) had, at that point, wiped out at least 70 percent of devils in the wild, forcing scientists to resort to captive breeding, a sperm bank and [...]

This week’s blackouts in India have been blamed at least in part on the lack of rain during the annual monsoon season, which hindered hydropower production and increased the demand for electricity for use in agricultural irrigation. But the unusually dry year has also had at least one positive effect: it has helped to boost [...]

They are mostly forgotten today, but Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) once roamed in vast numbers across the Indian subcontinent, Mediterranean and Middle East until overhunting brought them to within a hair’s breadth of extinction. By 1907, when an Indian prince finally banned hunting and protected the last lions, only 13 members of the subspecies [...]

Human greed is being blamed for the near-extinction of the spectacularly spiral-horned markhor (Capra falconeri cashmiriensis) in the northern Indian state Jammu and Kashmir. The critically endangered goat has faced years of population decline from illegal trophy hunting, competition with livestock for habitat and other man-made threats. The subspecies is now down to its last [...]

India’s leopards are dying at a rate of at least one per day, according to a report released this week by the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI). At least half of those deaths have been caused by poachers seeking the big cats’ valuable skins, claws and other body parts. Leopards (Panthera pardus), which live [...]

For centuries the tribal Nyishi people in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh have worn the magnificent beaks of hornbill birds as a part of their traditional headgear, called pudum, which are considered a sign of manhood and tribal identity. Hornbills are the state birds of Arunachal Pradesh, but overhunting for pudum threatened all five [...]

Every day, at least 400 million Indians lack access to electricity. Another nearly 700 million Indians joined their fellows in energy poverty over the course of the last few days, or roughly 10 percent of the world’s population. Oddly enough, some of the formerly energy poor—rural villagers throughout the subcontinent—found themselves better off than their [...]

Diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other afflictions that once primarily plagued wealthier, western countries are now accelerating in poorer nations. A new study reveals that risk factors for heart disease in Indian cities are now more prevalent than they are in the U.S. or Western Europe per capita. And with a population of more than [...]

Poor sanitation can foster transmission of all sorts of nasty bacterial bugs. But a new study has found that among common bacteria, antibiotic resistance is brewing in the New Delhi water supply—and spreading in at least 20 strains, including some that cause dysentery and cholera. Genetic adaptations that help bacteria combat pharmaceutical assaults give strains [...]

The U.S. launched this week a historic program to advance clean energy in India—where simply moving the 40 percent of the South Asian nation’s citizens who still burn coal, dung or wood to electricity could deliver major improvements for development, clean air and climate. Last week, it was a similar historic program to advance clean [...]

Just a few weeks ago, I flew into India to join other new media specialists and journalists with the International Reporting Project to examine issues of child survival and health. (Before I continue, I simply must extend thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for providing a portion of the IRP funding to make [...]

I am writing this to you from New Delhi, India as I am here with the International Reporting Project as a New Media Specialist! We have been in the crowded, bustling, port city of Mumbai, the central city of Nagpur (home of several tiger refuges), the rural village area of Gadchiroli, and finally to the [...]

Back in October, I opened my email to find an interesting invitation for me to apply for a trip to India as part of a special International Reporting Project bloggers’ trip focusing on child survival and related issues of health and development. The trip described in full “The trip will focus on issues of child [...]