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, …
Pakistan's fishing industry is in the doldrums following arrest orders for illegal migrants. The Karachi Fishing Boat and Trawlers Owners Group (KFBTOG) warns that unless the crackdown on Bengali migrant workers ceases, there could be severe repercussions on the fishing industry. Normally, annual foreign exchange worth Rs 5 billion is …
China now wants to ensure birth of only healthy babies. It has adopted a law on Maternal and Infant Health Care, designed to "improve the quality of births". The law aims to upgrade maternity and child health facilities. It envisages pre-marital check-ups. If the results are unsatisfactory, the couple would …
The proposed Arun III dam in Nepal has come under fire. The World Bank's newly established investigation panel, which deals with complaints from people adversely affected by the Bank's projects, has received a formal complaint -- its first -- on the dam. A group of NGOs in Nepal charge the …
Singapore has finally found a way to clean up its "wet markets", the bazaars selling fresh meat, fish and poultry. They are named so because their floors are perpetually slippery with offal and blood, fish scales, and water. The government has been tearing its hair out, but it could do …
AS MORE and, more North Americans fall victim to the myriad charms of a personal computer and avail of on-line consumer information services, electronic companies in the us are rushing to find a place in cyberspace. There are already 60 million users of home computers in North America and the …
Civil war in Rwanda has claimed 500,000 lives, but it has spared 60 rare gorillas in the Virunga mountains, a big draw for tourists in the past 15 years. A recent census has accounted for all but 2 of the creatures. Of Rwanda's 650 mountain gorillas, a third live in …
Recent protests by villagers of Puddukottai, Thanjavur and Nagapattinam districts in Tamil Nadu, against mushrooming shrimp farms near their settlements, have forced the state government to establish a high-powered committee to come up with regulatory safeguards for aquaculture enterprises. The committee comprises officials of the departments of revenue, fisheries, rural …
By harvesting the world's first crop of genetically-engineered wheat, the Swiss-owned Ciba Seeds has shown that scientists can alter the characteristics of important cereals reliably, by giving them genes from other species. Within a few years, the work is expected to result in new wheat varieties with increased resistance to …
Indian fisherfolk are up in arms against the foreign trawlers that have been permitted to fish in India's coastal waters by the Indian government. The leaders of fisherfolk associations from 9 maritime states have threatened to go on an indefinite strike from November 23 and prevent foreign fishing trawlers from …
The Bay of Biscay was turned into a battleground as Spanish fishermen snipped the nets of 3 Cornish boats in the first week of August, claiming that they exceeded the European Community length limits of 2.5 km. Skirmishes also took place between French and Spanish fishermen. Meanwhile, Rainbow Warrior, the …
The Other Wealth (63 mins, directed by Sudipto Sen), described by its producer, Mise-en-Scene, as "a tale of magic wetlands, its people and their technology", is about an outstanding example of waste water and solid water recycling. But a distracting technique, of long sequences without commentary or music, goes against …
ENVIRONMENTAL groups in the country took resort to the law after the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) failed to prevent the Orissa government from going ahead with the controversial fishing jetty project at Talchua in the Bhitarkanika wildlife sanctuary. Recently, in response to a petition by the World …
NEC Corp, the Tokyo-based electronics concern, plans to dazzle consumers with a 256-megabyte flash memory chip. This "next generation" device, which will be 16 times as powerful as those now in the market, has the potential to beat the conventional dynamic random access memory chips hands down, says nec vice-president …
The Barents Sea recently became the epicentre of a major showdown between Norway and Iceland. In a dramatic assertion of their country's fishing rights in the area, Norwegian coastguard vessels cut free the nets of 4 Icelandic trawlers and fired a warning shot at another off Spitsbergen island. Although the …
OVERTURNING traditional theories on the natural production of methane, a major component of natural gas, a team of US researchers now says that metals such as nickel and vanadium present in the sedimentary rocks where natural gas is formed, facilitate methane formation. Till recently, it was widely believed that methane …
The local fishing community around Chilika continues being terrorised by a mafia bent on silencing popular discontent against the infiltration of outsiders out to mint gold by farming prawn in the lake, Asia's largest brackish water lagoon. The Orissa government has yet to show an inclination to protect the people's …
SCIENTISTS have established beyond doubt the efficacy of inorganic fertilisers in helping mop up oil spills, an idea suggested over 2 decades ago. Although nitrogen and phosphorus fertilisers had been shown to encourage, in the laboratory, the action of microorganisms capable of breaking down oil, the technique when applied to …
INTERPOL, the international police body, has declared war against perpetrators of "crime against children". For the first time it has included the issues of child pornography, sex tourism, prostitution and the sale of minors in its international agenda. The organisation aims to "expand the exchange of information", says Anne Kristin …
RUSSIAN archaeologist Yuri A Mochanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences claims that he dug up in Siberia stone tools resembling those found in Africa. They are 3 million years old, suggesting a Russian genesis for Homo erectus (Science, Vol 263, No 5147). Although the tools have been dated at …
"GOING green" has turned out to be a risky proposition for paper producers in Europe, who have invested heavily in a pioneering technology that is totally chlorine free, in a bid to please their environment-conscious customers. Chlorine, normally used as a bleaching agent, is also a heavy polluter, adding toxic …
