The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
TWENTY European countries recently signed a treaty which effectively bans human cloning. They signed the first international convention to control research into human genetic engineering and cloning at the Convention on Human Rights and Bio-medicine in Oviedo, Spain. The accord prohibits the use of genetic engineering techniques for anything other …
Web of physics The discovery of a leptoquark in a particle accelerator in Germany has created ripples in the world of particle physics. "If the existence of the new particle is confirmed by further experiments, it could be on par with the discovery of the electron or DNA", says one …
WITH a view to conserving the diverse habitats of the world, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) launched a campaign in 100 countries on April 5. The Global 200 campaign aims at preserving 232 places thought to be representative of the remaining ecosystems in the world by the year …
THE effect of dams on surrounding ecosystems could be traced even to the seas which receive the waters of dammed rivers. According to researchers from the University of Hamburg and the Baltic Research Institute in Rostock, both in Germany, the Iron Gates dam on the Danube river has transformed the …
A gyroplane (a flying machine balanced and supported by rapidly rotating horizontal or slightly inclined blades) said to be capable of flying non-stop around the world at 800 kmph has been developed in the US. Texas-based Jay Carter says his Cartercopter, fitted with two rotors and a modified racing- car …
P N BHAGWATI DIRECT judicial activism is not a good idea. When it comes to environment, I do not think that the courts are equipped to deal with environmental issues. They do not have the expertise, the material on the basis of which they can judge the effects of what …
I am not at all unhappy to see H D Deve Gowda go. The manner in which his coalition partner, the Congress, turned against him is, maybe, debatable. But his performance as a leader who should have thought of economic development as a holistic issue, taking environment, poverty and equity …
Teetotallers, who miss out the benefits of red wine need not lose heart. According to Normal Williams and his group from the Papworth Hospital near Cambridge, an alcohol-free powder of red wine is just as effective against heart disease by preventing the arteries from collecting deposits of the dangerous low …
the unique biological heritage of the Galapagos islands would soon disappear if illegal fishing continues in their waters. Commercial fishing fleets from mainland Ecuador, the us and the Far East continue to fish in the Galapagos marine reserve despite an official ban. According to Jack Grove, a fish biologist and …
Researchers from Brazil have just reported that skin flakes in the hair of children with dandruff provide a comfortable refuge for house-dust mites, which trigger allergic responses that can cause asthma. Charles Naspitz and his colleagues from the paediatrics department of Federal University of Sao Paulo have collected through a …
muynak, a small town lying about 1,000 km west of the Uzbek capital Tashkent, bears testimony to one of the worst ecological disasters in the world - the shrinking of the Aral Sea. Once a green, bustling seaport, it has been reduced to a salty desert. The leaders of five …
governments today manage a natural resource by first nationalising it and then creating a bureaucracy to handle it. But the method that was used in the past is precisely what all modern environmental economists are advocating, which is letting the people manage their natural resources and giving them the right …
the Silver Lake on the outskirts of Bitterfeld, a major industrial town in Saxony-Anhalt, gives proof of the extent of damage caused by polluting industries in the former eastern Germany. The water in the lake is shallow and filthy with no green vegetation growing near it. The ground around the …
with over 100 million people worldwide, who are officially certified by doctors as obese (body mass index of over 30), management of body weight is as much a nightmare for physicians as it is a challenge for medical scientists. The phenomenal ability of the human body to store fat, an …
An allocation of Rs 15.5 million has been made by the government of Sri Lanka to rehabilitate 93 minor irrigation projects in the Attanagalla electorate. A team of technical officers headed by the western provincial minister of irrigation, Sarath Keerthiratna, visited prospective areas in Attanagalla. He was surveying field canals …
On the Comptroller and Auditor General's (cag) report tabled in the Karnataka Assembly in 1996, which identified 10,888 polluting industries in the state (till March 1995): In 1992, some of the industries were exempted (from seeking environmental clearance), under the exempted category of non-polluting industries, which meant that we could …
bioindicators such as trees take note of many changes in the environment and will thus soon become valuable recorders of contamination, very convenient for environmental monitoring, reports D K Pandey et al of the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh. Tree bark remains in the environment for many years. …
another addition to the list of products harmful to the ozone layer is the Concorde, the supersonic aircraft. Research shows that the trail of invisible fog of sulphuric acid left by a Concorde may be depleting the ozone layer far faster than climatologists had expected. David Fahey of the us …
• Plants control air pollution by taking in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen. A peepal tree with a crown spread of 162 sq km releases 1,712 kg of oxygen and absorbs 2,252 kg of CO 2 per hour.• Trees not only mechanically stop smoke …
