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Reduced to its essence, China and other developing nations want infusions of both capital and technology from the developed world to help them cut emissions.

BRICs is an acronym that refers to the fast growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

An international research consortium has been formed to create the most detailed and medically useful picture to date of human genetic variation. The 1000 Genomes Project will involve sequencing the genomes of at least a thousand people from around the world. The project will receive major support from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England, the Beijing Genomics Institute Shenzhen in China and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

From the start of the 21st century, a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of "gold farming": the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows. It is the first example of a likely future development trend in online employment. It is also one of a few emerging examples in developing countries of "liminal ICT work"; jobs associated with digital technologies that are around or just below the threshold of what is deemed socially-acceptable and/or formally-legal.

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say that emerging giants like China and India must also step up to the plate and take quantifiable action. Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with global warming's inevitable impacts.

It is now recognised that the developed world is struggling to meet its carbon-reduction targets, while emissions by China and India have soared. Meanwhile, signs suggest that the climate is even more sensitive to atmospheric CO2 levels than was previously thought.

The International HapMap Project is a partnership of scientists and funding agencies from Canada, China, Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States to develop a public resource that will help researchers find genes associated with human disease and response to pharmaceuticals.