Does flushing out ageing cells from the body help in fighting old age? Dr. Satyajit Rath discusses with Newsclick the significance of the recent results of a team of gerontologists from Mayo Clinic and reported in the Nov. 2 issue of Nature.

D. Raghunandan of the All India Peoples' Science Network argues for an independent review of nuclear safety measures and audit said to be concluded by the Atomic Energy establishment of the Indian government. Protestors in Kudankulam and elsewhere are unwilling to trust the government's claims of safety of the nuclear reactors, because there is a large credibility gap. This can only be breached if an effort is made to bestow autonomy to the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and safety concerns after the Fukushima incident over nuclear energy are sufficiently allayed through independent review of the existing programme.

The debate around responsibility of the North and the South is still hot in the wake of climate change. Sivan Kartha, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), talks to Newsclick about sharing of finances and the larger politics involved.

Dr. Satyajith Rath, scientist at the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and a frequent contributor to Newsclick comments on the claims by scientists in the US about new findings on bacterium associating with an arsenic environment. He also answers questions on the nature of science research today in light of the controversy over the paper by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al. Various video images in this Newsclick presentation are courtesy NASA videos on Youtube.

So why is there a huge ruckus over an arsenic eating bacteria in Lake Mono, California? Not only the scientific world but the world's media has been an uproar over ever since Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues reported in Science online (Wolfe-Simon, F. et al. Science 2010) of a novel bacteria that appears to substitute phosphorous with arsenic in its DNA chain.

Former principal advisor (energy) to the Planning Commission, Surya Sethi comments on the recent CAG draft report on the Production Sharing Contract between the government and Reliance Industries Limited for exploration of gas in the Krishna Godavari Basin.

Many unsuspecting people in India, subject to clinical trials, have suffered fatalities. Newsclick examines this issue in the light of a government committee report on the HPV vaccine controversy. This Newsclick feature also follows up an earlier production on the HPV vaccine issue.