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 …
ALTHOUGH every city has its pockets of affluence, there is no guarantee that all its residents can get a square meal a day. On the other hand, there is wanton waste of food -- mainly by hotels, restaurants and flight caterers. In the US, a study estimates 137 million tonnes …
DESPITE India's centuries-old tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, the country is missing out entirely on the Western world's multi-billion-dollar drive for plant-derived drugs and "natural" cures. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a survey in the US indicated a total market of some $13.7 billion (about Rs 42,500 crore) …
BIPUL Adak is a puzzled man. "Why does the government flout its own rules?" he asks of the move to set up a thermal power plant on rich, fertile agricultural land near Calcutta. Disregarding environmental guidelines, the West Bengal government allowed the privately owned Calcutta Electric Supply Corp (CESC) to …
SCIENTISTS have found that several sheep in south India, which were thought to be suffering from rinderpest are actually infected with peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a new viral disease hitherto thought to be restricted to West Africa. Rinderpest usually afflicts Indian cattle, wild Indian bison and smaller ruminants such …
ASPIRING doctors, watch out. A 1,600 per cent hike in medical education fees is in the air. The Union ministry of health (MOH), in a bid to recover a part of its expenses, is considering allowing medical colleges to raise fees from the negligible Rs 300 or so a year …
ARTHUR Nonomura, an American scientist-turned-farmer, may usher in another green revolution with his discovery that methanol (or methyl alcohol), traditionally thought to be toxic to plants, can stimulate crop growth in hot and dry regions. "I think it's going to save the world," says Andrew Benson of Scripps Institution of …
FOREST degradation around a Nepali mountain village has been reversed in a span of 10 years despite an annual population growth rate of 2.5 per cent. In 1980, grazing and fodder collection was a major cause of degradation in Bhogteni, a village in the hills of central Nepal. However, in …
Anybody wanting information about Indian medicinal plants will soon be able to get it at the push of a button. Work on a multidisciplinary, computerised databank, Inmedplan (Indian Medicinal Plants National Network of Distribution of Databases), has started and is due to go on-line by the end of the year. …
ELECTRICITY may soon be used to clean up chemical-contaminated soils using a new technology, which has been developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The technology, which is expected to be put on trial by the end of next year, will cost about $25 per tonne. Current …
SUFFERING from chronic asthma? Try swallowing a live fish and you may never wheeze again. For more than 150 years now, thousands of people have been gathering once every year in a bylane in the old city of Hyderabad, to avail of a secret herbal medicine that is placed inside …
The Calcutta Port Trust (CPT) has jumped onto the bandwagon of real-estate developers that are grabbing the few urban green spaces left in the city. CPT, which claims ownership of land on the banks of the Hooghly and also vast stretches of wetlands around the river, has ambitious multistoreyed building …
MILK PRODUCERS in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiri district have designed a portable, insulated biogas plant that produces enough gas for three hours of cooking per day. The one cubic metre capacity prototype, developed by the Nilgiri District Cooperative Milk Producer's Union, is a miniature of the now-famous, floating-dome type of biogas …
NEXT TIME you liberally smear suntan lotion on your body and linger too long in the sun, beware: Sunscreens are not sunproof, say scientists. According to US epidemiologists Cedric and Frank Garland, though the lavish use of sun lotions blocks out the most damaging sun rays and prevents sunburn, it …
ALCOHOLIC mothers whose babies suffer from foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) have a great deal for which to answer. Not only are such babies prone to mental retardation, but they rarely improve intellectually, even with careful parenting and education (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8850). Hans-Ludwig Spohr and his colleagues at …
KHEJRI (Prosopis cineraria) is nature's best gift to the farmers of Rajasthan and Haryana for it not only thrives in drought conditions and in poor soils, but also encourages the growth of crops planted near it if its lateral roots are pruned (Changing Villages, Vol 12, No 1). Scientists at …
EVER SINCE man realised that sex is not limited to procreation, he has experimented with various concoctions to increase his libido. For scientists, however, aphrodisiacs such as ginseng and the Spanish fly have been little more than objects of ridicule. But now a traditional Indian sex vitaliser called Ipomea digitata …
UK CHANCELLOR Kenneth Clarke blocked renewed moves to impose an energy tax at a meeting of European Community finance ministers in Luxembourg in June. Clarke maintained his predecessor had done enough to curb carbon emissions through the proposed imposition of VAT (value-added tax) on domestic fuel and the commitment to …
AFTER the pollution rights auction held earlier this year (Down To Earth, May 15, 1993), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) now plans to develop a market in recyclable materials. CBOT will develop an electronic bulletin board on which bids for reusable wastes can be displayed. The exchange will initially …
A RICE shortage is imminent by the turn of the century because of paucity of funds and a declining interest in projects to improve yields, says Gurdev Khush of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. Recession-hit Western donors are considering cutting aid to IRRI and passing on …
THE JAPANESE pharmaceutical industry will shrink by 10 per cent in three years because of government plans to tighten price controls, say analysts. Drug manufacturers in Japan usually offset price cuts by increases in volume, as the process of drug dispensation in the country offered doctors the incentive to prescribe …
