The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has published the R&D; Roadmap for Green Hydrogen Ecosystem in India. This document was published on 13th October, 2023. One of the central pillars of the National Green Hydrogen Mission is the establishment of a supportive research and innovation ecosystem for green hydrogen …
C M Ketkar Neem Mission 471 Shanwar Peth Pune 411 030 The Editor Neem Newsletter Division of Agricultural Chemicals Indian Agricultural Research Institute New Delhi 110 012 T S Subramaniam Conference Secretariat World Neem Conference Agricultural Research Centre International Business ITC (Seventh floor) Amrutha Topaz Somajiguda Hyderabad 500 482 Defence …
THE CREDIT for spreading the message of the wondrous properties of the neem goes to Chandrashekhar Mahadeo Ketkar, whose interest in the tree was piqued when he visited the quality control laboratory in Pune of the All India Non-edible Oil Industry Association to get some soil samples analysed. Association secretary …
THERE is widespread belief that global warming will melt the polar ice caps and submerge large areas of inhabited lands. But a review of the latest scientific research published in New Scientist (Vol 135 No 1833) points to a totally opposite possibility. Says Garry Davidson of the geology department at …
BEANS are one of the few crops grown for beauty as well as nutrition. Archaeologists in South America have excavated beautiful, multicoloured bean seeds buried with Indians 10,000 years ago. Analysis showed the Indians ate only fresh, young bean pods and seeds. Pottery, which made boiling beans possible, began only …
A GOOD night's sleep does wonders -- but not because it rests the tired brain as it has been proved that sleep is yet another form of mental activity. Scientists still have to identify the basic brain mechanism that brings about sleep and wakefulness or the real function of sleep, …
BELIEVE it or not, water that most people take for granted, is the most researched of liquids and scientists are still trying to determine why it is so fluid and why it has the extraordinary capacity of absorbing heat as its temperature rises. The answer probably lies in water's molecular …
"A plant in the backyard has no value," says an Indian proverb. This attitude, which has been the bane of Indian society -- and that of the nations of the South -- repeatedly tends to overlook the traditional in pursuit of the modern. These societies often forget that modern technology, …
THE DISCOVERY that bird brains call appreciate the finer nuances of music has a learn of scientists harmonising at Rockefeller University in New York. The scientists, led 13, Claudio Mello, have identified a Aile in song- birds that responds to music made by other birds. Scientists studying canaries and zebra …
Seed companies are beating a path to the office of a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, entranced by the commercial prospects of his discovery of a single gene that could greatly improve the quality of proteins in plants. In a major breakthrough, Asis Datta, professor of molecular …
Environment ministry guidelines state that many of the adverse impacts of thermal plants can be foreseen and minimised through judicious siting, preventive and control measures and effective environmental management. The ministry has been trying to impose very strict emission controls and other standards to mitigate the environmental problems of power …
STATIC library budgets in India and soaring printing costs abroad have drastically reduced the inflow of foreign science and technology (S & T) journals. Indian institutions subscribe to less than 20 per cent of the 60,000 S & T journals published the world over. The number has dropped alarmingly -- …
WHEN animals live in groups, many paradoxes occur that are hard to explain within the framework of the classical Darwinian theory of natural selection. For example, a honey-bee spends its entire life working selflessly for the welfare of its queen mother and thousands of its sibling larvae. In 1964, scientist …
The results of a study on the fishery, biology, exploitation and mortality of hilsa shad (Hisa ilishu) are presented. The average annual landing of Hilsa ilisha for 1979 - 88 was 5710 tonnes forming 0.4% of the total landings. The major craft and gears and the contributions of different states …
JOHN BURDON Sanderson Haldane, who was born November 5, 1892, is remembered today mainly for developing a quantitative theory of evolution. He was also a superb populariser of science, a strong believer in rationality and a Marxist. Exuberantly boyish in many ways, he was also kind and gentle. When Haldane …
INDIAN scientists are seeking solutions to such persistent problems as population, disease, hunger and pollution in a new clutch of technologies, collectively called biotechnology, which makes use of living organisms and their components -- genes, cells, proteins and enzymes -- to produce desired products. Research in this field is coordinated …
SCIENTISTS at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow and the Indian Institute of Tropical Botany in Pune have found growth rings of tropical trees such as teak (Tectona grandis) and tun (Cedrela toona) can be used to reconstruct the climate, especially the vagaries of the monsoon, in the …
BIRD-WATCHERS, studying the mating habits of different species since the early 1970s, are discovering that faithlessness is common and most birds fancy a romp outside their nest. The cuckoo's waywardness is well-known, but this is so even among birds hitherto thought to be monogamous, such as the guillemot (Uria aalgae), …
A VULTURE is really a stork and albatrosses belong to the same super-family as the flightless penguins. This is what US ornithologists, Charles Sibley, Jon Ahlquist and Burt Monroe have concluded in their recent rearrangement of traditional classification, based on a controversial new technique developed by them known as DNA-DNA …
INDIAN scientists rank among the 10 most prolific producers of scientific papers in the world; yet their research is among the least cited in international scientific and technological literature. This dismal finding is contained in a paper published in the Journal of Industrial and Scientific Research (Vol 51, No 2) …
A biodegradable enzyme that can replace two conventional agents now used to de-hair animal skins for leather manufacture has been produced by the Madras-based Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI). Christened Clarizyme, the enzyme is extracted from a fungus, Aspergillus sp. It has several advantages over the conventional agents, calcium oxide …
