Chandigarh Punjab pollution control board (PPCB) has slapped notices on 54 government and private hospitals for violation of various norms for managing and handling bio-medical waste. Teams of the nodal agency conducted raids throughout the state and found that a large number of hospitals have been violating pollution control norms. …
For green cause: Bangalore, Brikesh Singh knows all about scaling great heights to protect environment. Be it the UK Parliament or trees on the sides of Sankey Tank Bund Road – thankfully spared by the axes of the city corporation – he had used his skill to climb buildings and …
The grievance redressal mechanism proposed in the draft food security bill could be used for lodging complaints and also monitoring of schemes of similar nature both run by the Centre or the state. The draft bill proposes creation of a multi-layer grievance redressal mechanism comprising of a district grievance redressal …
On the morning of June 13, 2011, Sukhdev Sahoo of Nuagaon in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district woke up in horror. The state administration had demolished his betel farm. The betel vines were in the way of India’s largest foreign direct investment: the US $12 billion POSCO project. Sahoo was threatened: “If …
Over a year ago, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) undertook an exercise to assess pollution levels in some of the highly polluted industrial areas of India. It then released a list of 43 most polluted areas, terming them critically polluted, and imposed a moratorium on their expansion. …
On the night of March 7, a thick pall of smoke enveloped Kudikadu village near Cuddalore. It made people ill; over 120 persons had to be hospitalised after they complained of nausea, giddiness and eye irritation. The white smoke was bromine gas and its source: pharma company Shasun Pharmaceuticals, which …
Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of …
The people of Chepdu village in Pindar valley treasure the fair held every June in memory of an army man from the region who was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra. This year, however, his widow Bimla Joshi has cancelled it. She cannot accept Rs 3 lakh that the Satluj Jal …
Former chief minister of Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi, recovering from a historic drubbing in the recent assembly polls, might find solace in the superlative his home constituency earned during the election. Kilvelur assembly constituency in Nagapattinam district has recorded the highest turnout of women voters in the state—95.57 per cent. …
HealthDirty truth If you stop your children from eating mud, read this. Craving for earth—geophagy—can be one of the natural ways to protect stomach against pathogens. After studying 480 reports and analysing theories that geophagy is driven by hunger and for nutrients in the soil like iron, zinc or calcium …
IT IS standard practice in most Indian hospitals to recommend a physical regime consisting of yoga and gentle exercises to patients undergoing cancer treatment. There has been an understanding that yoga improves physical function and emotional wellbeing as chemotherapy—the commonly used treatment for cancer—causes fatigue and weakens the immune system. …
THE spectre of superbug still hangs heavily on the residents of Delhi. To make matters worse, another study conducted in the capital has found that cholera bacteria might also be becoming resistant to drugs. Similar results were found in a study conducted at Solapur district of Maharashtra. The studies found …
REMOVAL of organic toxins from groundwater requires chemical additives, which are expensive and environmentally hazardous. Now researchers at the University of Kentucky in the UK have developed a novel technique to break down such contaminants. The new purification system uses two highly porous membranes to generate purifying hydroxyl radicals. Till …
MOSQUITOES rely on chemical cues such as smell of human breath, sweat and skin to get to a potential prey. This olfactory pathway has spawned several research papers. The latest comes from scientists led by Anandasankar Ray from the University of California, USA. They have discovered chemicals which can prevent …
CUMIN or jeera, extensively used in Indian cuisine, is known to possess antiparasitic and antimicrobial properties. It is also used to cure fever and as a painkiller. One of the variants of cumin, bitter cumin (kalijiri), has been studied for its antianalgesic and astringent properties. It is a dried seed …
RESEARCH suggests that habitat loss, thought to be a major threat to amphibians across the world, might in some cases be protecting them from a deadly fungus. Amphibian species, which include frogs, toads and salamanders, have dwindled at an alarming rate since 1980s; a third of the world’s amphibian species …
IN WHAT can pave the way for obesity treatment, scientists have decoded a key mechanism through which insulin controls a part of brain that manages body’s energy balance. They have shown how insulin in the satiety centre of the brain—known as the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH)—can lead to obesity. VMH controls …
It’s a bit of Iraq and Afghanistan out there on the Internet. Just like the invasion of Iraq was lies, deceit and regime change as George W Bush chased illusory weapons of mass destruction in that hapless country, on the Internet, too, there is an element of fabrication and duplicity …
If you happen to see a swarm of butterflies flying above the terrace of your office in the crowded Bengaluru city, count yourself lucky. You are witness to the largest annual butterfly migration in southern India. Every year between October and December, swarms of Dark Blue Tiger and Double Branded …
Corruption seems to have become a much maligned word of late. Rightly so. It’s not just fresh from the oven scams like those related to the Commonwealth Games, Indian Premier League (IPL) or 2G spectrum that are getting media attention. Old cases like those pertaining to the Bhopal gas tragedy …
