Typical agriculture sectors like animal production and processing, aquaculture and its processing, and fruit and vegetable processing, can be water-intensive and generate complex and sometimes severe pollution. Controlling pollution hinges on knowing its quantity (wastewater and solid waste volume) and characteristics (major pollutants and their concentration range, nature of wastes, …
In what he calls an attempt to convert "default into advantage". Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management,Gujarat, has initiated a project to map the soil microbial diversity in the state. "There is no genetic map of microbial diversity in the world of even a small area," he claims. …
NOTWITHSTANDING the curbs imposed by the European Union (EU) on the fishing of endangered stocks in European waters, cod stocks in the North Sea am on the verge of extinction. Scientists of the Scottish Office's Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen, UK, believe that the EU's attempts to reduce the total allowable …
Aqua farmers in the country are oscillating between despair and hope. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court (SC) dashed their hopes when it dismissed petitions seeking a review of its December 1996 judgement ordering closure of aqua farms in the coastal zone. Owners of over 2,000 aqua farms as …
Woodcutters operating in the Apyterewa indigenous area in the Para state are luring local Parakana Indians into facilitating smuggling mahogany. Carlos Fausto, an expert from the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, said that the crisis has been denied by the ministry of justice which has done nothing to mitigate …
Reuters, the information agency, is considering legal action against the British government after the latter blocked a computerised prescription system to be marketed by the company. Healthplus, the system, allows family doctors to use computers for transferring prescriptions to pharmacists, saving both time and paperwork. The department of health recently …
france is in the midst of another nuclear controversy. Barely four months after creating an international outrage by carrying out nuclear tests in the south Pacific waters, it is facing new allegations over the proposed shipment of radioactive wastes to Japan through the Pacific Ocean. Greenpeace (gp), the international environmental …
Fishing ministers of the European Union (EU) arrived at a consensus end 1996, which was marked by constant bickering over fishing quotas. After a debate on proposals made by the European Commis-sion (EC), ministers agreed to make moderate cuts in fish catch quotas for 1997. "The reductions were not that …
the Aral Sea, formerly the world's fourth-largest inland sea with an area of 65,000 sq km may not die after all ( Down To Earth, Vol 4, No 12). Kazakh fisherfolk believe that a 16-km-long dam built across Aral Sea, mainly separating Aral Sea Minor (northern part of the Sea) …
Why are fisherfolk vehemently opposed to foreign deep-sea fishing vessels? There are 25,000 deep-sea fishing vessels all over the world. Many of these are now partially or totally idle because they have depleted marine resources worldwide. How many of the 25,000 industrial fishing vessels are operating in India? There are …
LUSH green backwaters dotting a verdant undulating landscape along a north-south 560 km-coastal strip sporting a chain of lagoons - that is nature's gift to Kerala. These backwaters (dammed or still water beside streams and fed by the back flow) many of which are connected to the sea have played …
TRUCK manufacturers in UK never had it so good. And all it took for their trucks to sell like never before were new EU guidelines on noise and emission requirements in commercial vehicles weighing more than 3.5 tonnes. The new guidelines - Euro 2 - came into effect on all …
EVEN as fish catches across the world continue to decrease, in the European Union (EU), no great effort seems to be put into conserving the species. A concerned Emma Bonino, the EU fisheries commissioner, had proposed that a 40 per cent decrease in fish catches be observed, but this has …
FISHING nets could trap and kill porpoises that venture near the shore in search of a fish dinner. Such an occurrence was getting rather common along the shores of New England in the us. To stem this, wildlife scientists, environmentalists, engineers and fisherfolk got together to find a technical solution …
The sea of Senegal is bearing the brunt of overfishing and pollution. The fishing policy of the European Union has worsened the problem of overfishing in these waters. The eu trawlers are crowding the African coastal waters and fishing them empty. The European fish market gets 50 per cent of …
There are still many countries, mainly in Africa, where more than 30 per cent of women give birth to their first child before the age of 18. The maternal death rate is three times higher for teenage mothers than for women in the age group of 20-29. Teenage pregnancy also …
Studies by researchers at the Oregon State University, US, have shown that exposure to UV-B radiation is killing the eggs of some amphibian species. As a result, two species of amphibians
It is known that female catfishes attach their mouths to the anal region of the males during spawning. The significance of this bizarre trait has been discovered by some Japanese scientists from the laboratory of Animal Sociology at the Osaka City University. They have found that the sperm on being …
Wood can now be produced from waste. The UK's Save Wood Products Limited has come up with a product called durawood that combines the properties of wood and plastic. Derived from recycled polystyrene packaging waste, the product bears the aesthetic and physical properties of wood and the durability of plastic. …
