Reply affidavit on behalf of the Central Ground Water Board in the matter of Suo Moto case titled "Haryana 60.48% groundwater over exploited Kurukshetra worst Jhajjar best says" appearing in the Tribune, January 8, 2025. The CGWA report, May 3, 2025 addresses the issue of groundwater exploitation and violation of …
A sustained 30-year old battle has resulted in the tired but indefatigable Chileans claiming a resounding victory over the Mediterranean fruitfly which caused so much damage to the Chilean economy. The consequences of the fruitfly's menace led to other nations boycotting Chilean agricultural produce. The Chilean war included such tactics …
Manufacturers today are looking for ways to pack in more data in laser discs. But the most commonly used lasers emit red light which has a longer wavelength compared to blue light. Attempts to make a blue semiconductor laser have so far not been very successful. Now, a team of …
The origin of magnetic fields associated with galaxies is still a matter of debate. One theory attributes it to a dynamo-like mechanism in rhe galaxies, while the other contends that the dynamo is long dead and the magnetic field is constant. Both the theories are based on magneto-hydrodynamics which says …
Scientists have started using virtual reality (VR) methods for various psychiatric therapies. Proposed by Hans Sieburg, a professor of psychiatry and mathematics at the University of California at San Diego, US, VR cures are being hatched for sex offenders, acrophobia (morbid fear of heights) and flying-phobia. Doctors report maximum success …
The present generation of supercomputers has been using custombuilt processors which are very difficult to maintain. Now, if the Accelerated Strate~c Computing lnitiative, a US department of energy-funded project is successful, this may become a thing of the past. The project envisages building a massive computer using high performance microprocessors …
IN WHAT could be a dream come true for farmers, especially from poor countries, scientists have announced that they are just a, step away from creating a maize plant that can be planted year after year without using a new seed. Five years and a study of 50,000 plants later, …
FIVE years ago, I was cultivating a local variety of cotton and produced 1.8 tormes (t). The cost incurred was Rs 2,000 and one could earn a profit of Rs 8,000. But soon after I chose to use a hybrid variety, the yields and profits began sliding down and costs …
Ensuring food security for the future billions will tax the environment dearly. Already, one billion ha of arable land in the developing world is moderately to severely degraded, and another nine million ha more or less beyond redemption. Since agricultural land cannot be expanded, productivity is riding piggyback on increased …
WHILE the debate on global warming -continues, the detection of an astounding 45 per cent depletion of the mone layer, over an area stretching froth Greenland to western Siberia, gives atmospheric scientists MoTe woorries. The discovery was repwted by the World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agetcy, in Geilmeva, Switzerland, …
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 …
XENOTRANSPLANTS - animal to human transplants - have won ethical approval after the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, set up to debate medical morality, gave its go-ahead. However, while xenotransplants are in principle an ethical way of dealing with the shortage of human organs for transplant, one "should proceed with caution, …
The South Pole is given to changing its location every year, making the exact pinpointing ofits site, a difficult job. But, with the "advent of the Global Positioning System -the satellite based navigation system - the positioning of this southern- most point on the earth has been made easier (New …
Scientists are now working towards developing efficient vaccines out of 'complements', proteins which safeguard against disease-causing pathogens (New Scientist, Vo1149, No 2014). Douglas Fearon and his team at the University of Cambridge, UK, and immunologists from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, US, are experimenting with the complement protein C3. …
Most DNA particles are said to be 'characterised' -that is, they code for a specific protein or possess regulatory properties. However, certain uncharacterised material in the form of short DNA sequences are also carried to the new organism in the course of the transfer of DNA from one organism to …
The talk of the town at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas early this year was Motorola's new StarTac mini cellular phone, stated to be the smallest and highest cell phone in the world to date. Like something from a "Mission: Impossible" catalogue, the device is almost like a …
An enzyme called RuBisCo might help scientists from Japan's Research Institute for Innovative Technology for the Earth and the Shizouka Perfectural University in realising their dream of making plants grow in dry climates (New Scientist, Vo1149, No 2013). In hot climates, plants lose water molecules every time they 'fIX' carbon …
AN ASSESSMENT was made by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently on several Asia- Pacific countries. Despite three decades of impressive economic growth when food production doubled in this region, hunger, malnutrition and related cases claim several thousand lives everyday. It also reveals that although India could generate more …
A POSSIBLE lowering of the hazards posed by the use of lead has come about with, the first international agreement on measures to reduce its use. At a two-day meeting in Paris in the last week of February at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 26 nations have …
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 …
China's space programme received a setback with the explosion of a Loug March 313 rocket carrying a us satellite, Intelsat 708. China suspended all satellite launches' after the blast, which killed four people. The suspension is likely to delay the launch of two satellites, Dongfang 3 for China and the …
