Washington, October 11 : Transparency in politics can increase corruption rather than decrease it, according to a new study.

Viviana Stechina, an expert from Uppsala University in Sweden, studied why corruption among the political elite was more extensive in Argentina than in Chile during the Nineties.

In her comparison, she focused on the rules of the game of politics, and on the actions of the political elite in situations that offer many incentives and opportunities for corruption.

After deeply investigating several privatisation processes in the two countries, she identified the institutional circumstances that heightened or reduced the risk of elite corruption.

Washington, Oct. 11 : A professor of history and director of American Studies at Temple University, Bryant Simon, has said that there are some obvious similarities and differences between today’s crisis and the Great Depression of the 1920s and early 1930s.

But the one key difference, said Simon, is that society in the 1930s was better organized, and social groups -- such as labor and even small business groups -- were better able to push back against Congress.

“First, both were triggered by speculation, unregulated financial markets, and a failure of confidence. FDR closed the banks to restore credit,” said Simon.

Washington, Oct 10: Scientists are working on using cellulose to power microbial fuel cells, in which bacteria digest plant waste matter to create electricity directly.

These fuel cells could be used to charge batteries or power electrical devices.

Others are considering drawing power from microbes digesting human waste at wastewater treatment plants or manure from feedlot lagoons.

“Basically, we’re converting cellulose into a different energy source than ethanol,” said John Regan of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Washington, Oct 10 : Four months after going through a successful hand transplant - 35 years after amputation in an industrial accident - a man has shown an emerging sense of touch - a development that could be seen in the former "hand area" of his brain.

The finding was made by a University of Oregon neuroscientist.

The 54-year-old man lost his limb 35 years ago in an industrial accident when he was just 19 and received the transplant in December 2006.

However, the finding is currently limited to the man''s right palm of a donated hand, which was attached along with major nerves, bones, tendons, and muscle, in a surgery by Kleinert, Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center of Louisville, Ken.

Washington, Oct. 10: Pakistan is alarmingly teetering towards becoming a failed state and is still the most dangerous place in the world, says an Indian-American expert in an article for the Washington Post.

According to Sumit Ganguly, Director of Research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University and an Adjunct Fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy, Pakistan is in even scarier shape than most of the so-called experts are willing to admit.