YEAR-SCIENCE 2

The discovery, also reported by India's own moon impact
probe that had crashed onto the lunar surface in November last
year, had picked up strong signals of water particles on moon,
Madhavan Nair had said.
Indian scientists are now eyeing inter-planetary
explorations and research proposals for a possible Mars
mission have already being drafted. For the immediate future,
ISRO plans to land robots on moon during 2012-13 which would
carry out excavation and analysis of lunar soil and beam the
results back to the earth.
Indian researchers published nearly 30,000 papers in
international journals in 2007 as against a little over 16,000
in 2000, an increase of roughly 80 per cent in seven years.
"The trends are good. In science publication, India has
the second highest growth rate after China," Thirumalachari
Ramasami, secretary in the Department of Science and
Technology, told PTI.
However, in absolute terms, India's output is only about
half that of the UK, Germany, China or Japan.
"Papers by Indian scientists are being published in
leading science journals almost every month. This is an
encouraging trend," said Samir Brahmachari, Director General
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). MORE PTI