Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
SATELLITE imagery suggests that there should be a large reservoir -- most probably an artificial one -- buried southwest of Dholavira. One of the best cultivated fields in the locality is contiguous to this area. Surplus water from within the city walls must have been escaping into this field. Interestingly, …
WHEN undercover agents from the Indian branch of Trade Record Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC) captured 475 kg of tiger bone and 13 pelts in 1993, they exposed more than an international poaching operation. There, for the entire world to see, lay the shattered truth about Project …
But all this will change. The concepts of the padvi and the oti will have to be abandoned and baithaks will no longer be a dominant feature. There will be hardly any space for sleeping or cooking. Baburao Umte of Killari village says, "We used to keep our livestock and …
HUNDREDS of tin sheds catch the eye as you drive down the narrow roads in Ausa taluka in the Latur district of Maharashtra. Coming up next to the sheds are long rows of one- or two-bedroomed houses -- the spanking new, permanent dwellings for those dislocated by last year's earthquake. …
FOR the past 10 years, over 12,000 inhabitants of Meethapur village on Delhi's Badarpur border have been racked with cough and breathing problems that often degenerate into asthma and tuberculosis. The Batra Hospital & Medical Research Centre (BHMRC) -- which caters to Meethapur in the absence of closer medicare centres …
DESPERATE to conserve energy, the West Bengal government is planning to follow Kerala in making energy audits compulsory for industries. According to government estimates, by 1996-97, power supply during peak hours will fall short by 20 per cent and total energy by 10 per cent. A high-level technical committee, constituted …
Cold start A 10-YEAR old controversy about whether a nuclear reprocessing plant in northwest England was responsible for a high occurrence of leukaemia reported in the area has been finally laid to rest. The English High Court recently ruled that there was not enough evidence to implicate the company -- …
MORE than 400 saw mills in Orissa, out of 600, may be closed if the Orissa Saw Mill and Saw Pit Act, 1990 -- which disallows the existence or operation of such units within 10 km of a forest -- is carried through. Although the Act was framed in 1990, …
WHAT on earth is beauty? Recent research shows that people -- Caucasian and Mongoloid alike -- prefer faces with features and shapes far removed from the average (Nature, Vol 368, No 6468). This finding challenges an earlier hypothesis that linked beauty, or attractiveness, to a composite of the average facial …
A PROPOSED dam in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, has raised a storm of protest, reports Dewi Sartika. The hydro-electric project is to be sited at Lore Lindu National Park, in Donggala Regency, about 200 km from Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi. Conservationists fear that the project will endanger the area's …
THE controversial tilapia, a fast-breeding African fish, has been surreptitiously used by a company near Madras for pollution control experiments, despite a ban. Although the Union department of biotechnology had initially permitted the introduction of tilapia for pollution control and funded experimental projects that used them, it has been subsequently …
A COMPOUND derived from the female sex hormone oestrogen has been found effective at suppressing tumour growth, without the horrendous side-effects that normally accompany anti-cancer drugs. Theodore Fotsis of Children's University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany, and his collaborators found that 2-methoxyoestradiol, formed in the body on the breakdown of oestrogen, …
THE expansion plans of Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Paper Ltd (TNPL), funded by the World Bank (WB) to the tune of $75 million, has rung alarm bells in environmental quarters. J Paul Bhaskar, chairperson of the Dindigul-based Bhagwati Environment Development Institute (BEDI), has appealed to WB to consider the ecological …
USING a decoy to confuse the enemy is a splendidly effective way to save your skin. Scientists have recently discovered that an Australian shrub called Hakea trifurcata produces leaves that impeccably imitate its fruit to confuse the white-tailed black cockatoo, a voracious consumer of its fruit (Nature, Vol 368, No …
THE 7th Parliamentary committee report on the working of the department of ocean development (DOD) has found that the department "is not geared up to meet the challenges of our times" and has recommended that it should be wound up and replaced by an ocean agency under the chairpersonship of …
SWELLING concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are threatening the diversity of tree life on Earth, say 2 US ecologists (Science, Vol 263, No 5149). O L Phillips of the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA, and the late A H Gentry (1945-1993) analysed independent surveys of tropical forests worldwide and …
KOREAN condoms, preferred by the World Health Organisation over the Indian Nirodh, have turned out to be too big to be of any use in the country. The Korean condoms, larger by 3 cm and wider by 1 cm than Nirodh, were distributed free in red light areas, making a …
A NEW batch of occupants has moved into Biosphere 2 -- the glass and steel structure enclosing 3 ha in Oracle, Arizona, where scientists are trying to create a miniature earth complete with rain forests, savannahs, a marsh and an "ocean" (Nature, Vol 368, No 6467). Unlike the earlier occupants, …
THE endangered lion-tailed macaque has become the mascot of the environmental agitation against the Sharavathy Tail Race Hydroelectric Project in Karnataka. Concerned about its negative impact on local biodiversity, environmentalists like Kusuma Sorab, G S Bhat, Ranganath and Mahabaleshwar have been agitating against the project ever since it was mooted. …
IN THE first occurrence of its kind in a wild species, scientists report that fruit bats males (Dyacopterus spadiceus) occasionally lactate. Till now, this oddity was seen only in humans and domesticated animals (Nature, Vol 367, No 6465). Jennifer A Brunton and Thomas H Kunz of Boston University and their …
