Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
COME May and it is din-creating time for frogs. The month heralds the breeding season which lasts till August. At times, noise levels call be so high that it makes one suspect if the frogs are taking part in a competition to test their ability to croak loud and long. …
IN A life span of 60-70 years, a turtle may travel thousands of kilometers from its birthplace, but it always finds its way back to the same spot or someplace close to it, whenever it lays eggs. This intriguing and unerring instinct is now being attributed to the fact that …
OZONE levels have been depleting at the average annual rate of 4.3 per cent every decade in the Northern Hemisphere, and a slightly lower 4.1 per cent in the Southern Hemisphere, since 1979. These figures were disclosed by Rumen Bojkov of the World Meteorological Organization (wmo) in Geneva, Switzerland. The …
In a span of five years, Dutch sci4ntists R Hoekstra, C Elij and others at the Delft-based Institute of Applied Physics, have developed a spectrometer called the global ozone monitoring experiment (GOME). A spectrometer is a spectroscope equipped with a photoelectric photdAeter to measure radiant intensities at various wavelengths. GOME, …
Corning Incorporated of the US has introduced an automobile pollution-control system aimed at controlling cold start emissions. These emissions spew hydrocarbons in the first few minutes after starting the engine and before the catalytic converter becomes hot enough to operate. Cold start emissions account for 70-80 per cent of the …
The Panay cloudrunner -a rodent- like nocturnal mammal -previously unknown to science, has been discovered in the island of Panay in the central Philippines. The arboreal rodent which has been assigned the scientific name of Crateromys heaneyi, was discovered by local residents. The animal sports a chubby, masked face; small …
SCIENTISTS from the Natural Environment Resource Council (NERC'S), Institute of Terrestrial Ecology at Banchory, and the department of zoology at the University of Aberdeen - both in Scotland - have embarked on a novel method to study population ecology. The programme called Molecular Genetics in Ecology (MGE) Initiative, Uses DNA …
METAL foundries pollute the atmosphere by throwing up dust and giving off bad ~dour. While the former is easy to remedy, the latter poses a challenge. The vat-shaped biofilters designed to solve the problem are filled with moistened wood chips inoculated with bacteria. The air from the exhaust flows via …
Scientists from the Universities of Udine and Padova in Italy, and the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia, have observed a rather interesting habit among the European variety of toads called Bufo bufo and South American cane toads: they prefer the use of their right forelimbs. When …
Designers at the Building Research Establishment of Hertfordshire in the UK have carried the notion of environment consciousness right down to the foundations of buildings. Crushed concrete is being used in the construction of the Energy Efficient Office of the Future in Hertfordshire. The remains of the demolition of a …
The Denakil desert of Eritrea in Africa has turned out to be another exploration site for human fossils. In December last year, a team of Eritrean and Italian scientists led by Ernesto Abbate from the University of Florence in Italy, recovered well- preserved parts of a two-million- year-old human fossil …
JOHN Van der Sande, professor of material science at the MIT and his team are using a new technique to compile information on all types of soot. This knowledge will be used to detect the exact sources of pollution. The library of sootprints will be based on the molecular structure …
IN-A bid to crack the elusive ways of the giant squid, the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) under the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, us, is mounting a giant expedition in the south Pacific near New Zealand, to study the creature in its natural habitat. Marine biologists from New Zealand …
A RECENT expedition to New Jersey organised by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US, returned with a sizable haul from the fossilised world. The team led by David Grimaldi uncovered one of the richest deposits of amber ever found. The deposits found in central New Jersey …
Like ants and termites, bees too are known to follow a fixed path whenever they are on the move. Entomologists S A Cameron and J B Whitfield studied the Bombus tranversalis species of humble bee in the Amazonian rainforests. Worker bees - in order to obtain material to build a …
The latest progress reported in the quest for a toxic waste-free environment comes from researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US (Alternatives Journal. Vo122. No 1). Chemist Michael Hoffman and his colleagues have used high frequency ultrasound waves to break down samples of several toxic chemicals. Tiny …
The Australia-based Scholar Incineration Company, has developed a three-stage incineration process to destroy biomedical waste completely (Vatis Update. Vo15, No 11). The first sta&e; involves burning wastes by a process cailed 'excess air combustion'. The toxic gases thus produced are fed into a second chamber where temperatures exceed 1,000
THE record highs of summer, this past, year in the us, could be attributed to the phenomenon of global warming. But what about the blizzard of 1996 which lashed throughout northeastern us, depositing more than 50 cm of snow in most areas, dipping mercury levels and paralysing normal life? The …
A 1992 SURVEY carried out by the Vietnamese ministry of forestry and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the Vu Quang Nature Reserve in central Vietnam,, led to the discovery of the unique creature. The animal could not be clearly identified as being either wild cattle or an …
Spirogyra along with another algal species Cladophora, disrupts normal aquatic life and forces municipalities to spend enormous sums on declogging water bodies (Frontiers -Newsletter of the National Science Foundation. December. 1995). R Jan Stevenson of the University of Louisville in Kentucky. US. has reiterated the wisdom of following nature's ways. …
