SciDev.Net

This non-profit organisation aims to develop sustainable ecological farming in Africa and India. ICRISAT's mission is "to help empower 600 million poor people to overcome hunger, poverty and a degraded environment in the dry tropics through better agriculture".

ICRISAT's BioPower initiative aims to ensure that bioenergy research benefits the poor. Its activities include analysing bioenergy trends and understanding their repercussions for the poor, and enabling governments to formulate pro-bioenergy policies that benefit poor people.

The centre is a WHO collaborating centre for research and training in the control of cardiovascular disease, and also prevention and rehabilitation for patients in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

The centre strongly advocates evidence-based health policies as the only way to promote health. Its focus on prevention led to the Isfahan Health Heart Programme, a community programme to promote healthier lifestyles to prevent non-communicable diseases.

The IAS was established in 1986 on the recommendation of the OIC Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH). IAS's stated mission is to "provide an institutional set up for the utilisation of Science and Technology for the development of Islamic countries and humanity at large".

Headquartered in Amman, Jordan, the IAS attempts to serve as a consultative organisation of OIC member countries on matters relating to science and technology; initiate cooperative scientific and technological programmes and activities in science and technology; encourage and promote research on major problems facing OIC member countries; formulate standards of scientific performance and attainment, and to award prizes and honours for outstanding scientific achievements to centres of excellence in all science and technology disciplines.

This site is maintained by the Kenya Meteorological Department and contains short term weather forecasts, seasonal forecasts, and agro-meteorological data.  Other climatological data is available from the website upon request.

KAM, run by the Knowledge for Development group at the World Bank, is an interactive benchmarking tool that allows countries to measure their success in creating a knowledge-based economy. KAM uses 81 structural and qualitative variables to describe 132 countries' performance on four key aspects of a knowledge economy: incentive and institutional regimes, education, innovation, and information and communications technologies. These variables help show how well an economy is using knowledge to fuel its socio-economic development.

Policymakers and science and development analysts will find KAM useful for creating interactive scorecards, generating indices, monitoring national performances over time and making inter-country comparisons.

The school is an international postgraduate centre of excellence, devoted to research, education and training, and consultancy, with a focus on malaria. The website details the courses and programmes it offers, and has comprehensive coverage of all aspects of attending the school. There are extensive links, including health information for travelling abroad.

This LSHTM centre collaborates on projects with the WHO and is the hub for several projects on the health effects of climate change. There is little in the way of background information but the site distils the key points and offers summaries of its own research.

One project looks at the global burden of disease associated with climate change, another is doing a multi-sectoral assessment of the worldwide impact of climate change. LSHTM researchers have published extensively on health and climate change — they were among the first in the world to do so — and the site contains a useful list of these publications.

This global non-profit organisation established by PATH (the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health) develops and tests potential malaria vaccines. The website contains background information on its malaria vaccine programme, including fact sheets, project and strategy outlines, interviews, and extensive links to other vaccine and malaria-related organisations.

This non-profit organisation funds and coordinates the development of effective and affordable anti-malarial drugs through public-private partnerships. Partners include public health institutions, academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies, and the World Health Organization's Roll Back Malaria partnership. The website contains relevant news, information and links relating to its wide-ranging project portfolio.

MODIS is a key instrument aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites that is often used in disaster management for mapping anything from vegetation to floods or fires. It collects data in 36 spectral bands, twice a day.

The MODIS website publishes technical specifications of the instrument, provides access to data, processed products andf maps. It also hosts a large collection of MODIS images from across the world.

The National Academy of Sciences of Bolivia is a public, autonomous institution,dedicated to the promotion of science through research.  And fostering science, technology and innovation through its different institutes and affiliated organizations.