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, …
TWO mathematicians from Dublin's Trinity College have found a new solution to the age-old conundrum of how to pack a given space without wasting it. They have designed an object that has broken a 107-year-old record for the most efficient filler of 3-dimensional space. The problem of finding identical objects, …
Despite the $900 million settlement won by the Alaskan administration after the Exxon oil spill on March 24, 1989, residents of Cordova are still up in arms for a fair court hearing. The Cordova fisherfolk blame the oil spill for a sharp drop in salmon catches over the past two …
NOT ONLY are chubby babies adorable, scientists now say they are less prone during adulthood to disorders such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Recent studies indicate that the nutritional status of the developing foetus and that of the infant in the early stages of growth have an …
RECONCILING the provision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and farmers' rights is legally impossible, admits GATT chief Peter Sutherland in a recent article published in the Indian media. Farmers' traditional rights include their rights to use part of their harvest as seeds for the next season …
HOW did humans acquire intelligence? Two competing theories have attracted a lot of attention. One holds that the complex social relations among higher primates provided a key driving force; the other asserts that it was the complexities involved in obtaining food. Recent evidence indicates both pressures may have been equally …
THOUGH floods cannot be wished away, they could soon be whisked away. A group of British computer experts is trying to model river flows so as to predict the best way to control flooding (New Scientist, Vol 141, No 1907). When a river spills over its sides, some of the …
A CHEMICAL used originally to kill bacteria in drinking water is now proving extremely effective as a male contraceptive. S K Guha, who is a professor at the biomedical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, both in Delhi, and his …
AN AQUATIC army of American origin has invaded the Black Sea and is wreaking havoc on the fisheries there. Small jellyfish-like, tentacled creatures called ctenophores arrived there in 1982, hiding in the ballast waters of a ship travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. They lay low and reproduced, emerging in full …
CHINA and the US have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enforce the UN ban on drift-net fishing in the North Pacific. The MOU is the first of its kind since the ban came into force on January 1, 1993. China has agreed to allow the US coast guard …
THE BANGLADESH government has said the ecosystem in the southwestern part of the country is threatened by the excessive diversion of water from the Ganga at the Farakka barrage, 19.2 km from its border, writes Mustafa Kamal Majumder in a Panos report. The spokespersons say the flow of the river …
MORE THAN 36 tonnes of highly toxic chemicals are stored even after their date of expiry in the godowns of the Agriculture Inputs Corp at Amlekhgunj, in central Nepal. The Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) says these pesticides were supposed to be burnt in the kiln of the Hetauda …
WITH SUPPORT from the Ethiopian government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are implementing programmes to create environmental awareness among the people to counter deforestation that has reached crisis proportions in the mountainous country. The central Ethiopian highlands, which support more than 78 per cent of the population, have been virtually deforested by …
POLITICAL support for expensive scientific projects, plagued as they are by cost overruns, is dwindling in the US because with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the defence applications of space research are now less urgent. Besides, US scientists have suggested -- for the first time in modern memory -- …
THE PROPOSED North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico was dealt a stiff blow by a court judgement requiring the US government to file an environmental impact statement on the effects of the accord, before it comes into force on January 1, 1994. The suit …
SCIENTISTS of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries have recommended exchanging the germplasm of fruit, vegetables and potatoes; trials of popular potato varieties in different parts of the SAARC region, and organising training programmes on potato breeding. At a meeting on horticulture held recently in Shimla, the scientists …
TECHNOLOGY evolves so fast that the shelf life of job skills now rarely exceed 10 years. Automation and rationalisation have pushed entire categories of manufacturing operations, such as machine tools, away from the Western labour market. All over the developed world, companies are being forced to get more work out …
DESPITE the International Whaling Commission turning down in May a request by Norway and Japan to lift its ban on whaling, Norway has announced its intention to resume commercial whaling soon (Down To Earth, June 15, 1993). Responding to the IWC decision, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland said it …
THE NILE delta lies trapped between a dammed Nile and a rapacious sea that is constantly threatening to swallow it up. The death of the delta, which constitutes two-thirds of Egypt's habitable land, will be catastrophic because with 1.33 million births every year, Egypt's dependence on the river and its …
A PLANT indigenous to Ethiopia and whose berries have been used traditionally as a shampoo and laundry soap could attract a huge market in the West. The berries of the plant, called endod (Phytolacca dodecandra), are deadly to zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha), a snail species that carry the parasite that …
THE CITY of Bangalore may go the Delhi way -- at least in the area of pollution. The garden city's administration is on the warpath to make Bangalore a "noiseless," pollution-free city, unlike the capital, where 30 per cent of the population suffers respiratory disorders and thousands of vehicles belch …
