Sunday, December 30, 2018

Bengal chemicals keen on resuming anti-snake venom serum production

Bengal chemicals and pharmaceuticals ltd(BCPL). which had forayed into anti-snake venom serum(ASVS) manufacturing India nearly half a century ago. It is keen to resume production of this lifesaving medication, shortage of which kills hundreds of people. ASV is an anti-dote to the snake venom action and is free in government hospitals. No records are available to pinpoint the exact year, but it is somewhere around 9020's. Its capacity was about one Lakh vials. The figures culled from several reports shows snake bite morbidity is high in the Indian subcontinent with over one million bites annually. Yet there are only a handful of Pharma companies making this.

Snake bite death : West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh reported 3252 deaths due to snake between 2013-15 and accounting for the highest number in death. Till 2006-07, BCPL manufactured ASVS in East Kolkata from its Maniktala unit. An erstwhile BCPL has return to profit and is now awaiting government nod to resume production of ASVS at Maniktala unit. This would need around rupees 30 crore capital expenditure and can generate a rupees 30 crore turn over with 4 lakhs vials capacity. It adopts the equine plasma method of making the ASVS which need horses.





Strength :It is a new method for saving life of people from snake bites. It reduces the death rate caused by snake bite. It generates high profit and turnover.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

India conducts its first major wind-solar hybrid auction

Hybrid is one in which solar and wind is generated together by placing solar modules and wind turbines alongside each other.
BE
NGALURU: Softbank-backed SB Energy and Gautam Adani led- Adani Green Energy have won 840 MW of the 1,200 MW put on sale at the first wind-solar hybrid auction.


SB Energy won 450 MW at Rs 2.67 per unit of electricity generated while Adani Green Energy won 390 MW at Rs 2.69 in the auction conducted by the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI).


Dust from Middle East affects Indian summer monsoon: Study

WASHINGTON: Dust and soot transported from the deserts of the Middle East settle on the snow cover of the Himalaya mountain range and affect the intensity of the summer monsoon in India, a study has found.

pangolin poaching

NEW DELHI: Animal protection bodies Monday asked the Centre to take strict measures to put an end to pangolin poaching after a video footage of the animal being brutally killed was captured by a researcher..

They said the footage, captured by World Animal Protection (WAP) and Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford (WildCRU), shows that not only is this a major conservation issue but also a devastating animal welfare concern.

The footage, taken as part of a two-year study, purportedly shows a pangolin being brutally killed for its body parts to be sold on the black market in Assam.

Monday, December 3, 2018

2.0 in real life

Hundreds of Birds Fall From the Sky During 5G Test in The Netherlands .I saw this video after I had seen the movie 2.0 by Shankar .This video is an eye opener for telecom giants coming up with higher frequency towers.

The radiation from cell phone towers impairs their natural sense of direction and end up landing somewhere ,and they die.This in turn affects the entire food chain and the pest or locusts which they feed on significantly increase causing damage to crops.This is a matter of serious concern since the whole food chain is affected.

https://youtu.be/ah8Bpg6ep1k

Tamil Nadu order to close Sterlite plant against natural justice: NGT panel

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) said the Tamil Nadu government’s order to shut down Sterlite Industries’ copper plant in Thoothukudi could not be upheld, according to media reports. The sealing of the Vedanta Ltd-owned copper smelting plant without a notice was against “natural justice”, the tribunal stated citing the report of a three-member expert committee headed by former Meghalaya High Court Chief Justice Tarun Agarwal. Calling it a “favorable development”, Vedanta counsel and Supreme Court Senior Advocate Ariama Sundaram said the committee has also suggested constant monitoring of groundwater and “will also adhere to all suggested norms. The developments are being seen as a setback for the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Khazhagam government. The ToI report quoted a source in environmental non-government organization Poovulagin Nanbargal as saying that the state acted in haste despite Opposition parties urging for fool-proof action. The ruling party denied the charge though. The court will hear the matter again December 7, when both parties would be able to put forth their submissions. Little was discussed on whether the plant was polluting and violated environmental norms.  The Thoothukudi plant was widely opposed by locals as well as the wider civil society. Protests were ongoing this year, seeking the closure of the plant. On May 22—the 100th day of the protests—the police opened fire, killing 13 demonstrators and drawing national and international focus on the issue. Six days later, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), ordered that the plant is shut and power supply be disconnected. Vedanta approached the NGT to stay the TNPCB order and settle the matter. The state approached the Supreme Court questioning the NGT accepting Vedanta’s challenge to its order, but the apex court dismissed the review petition. Apart from the case at the NGT, the matter is also being heard at the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court. Sterlite Copper's survival despite being shut down five times in the past two decades owes much to India's malleable regulatory authorities. Earlier, the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) conducted multiple studies on the environmental impact of the plant and brought out detailed reports in 1998, 1999, 2003,2005 and 2011. Though the first report was highly critical of Sterlite, the organization’s stance soon changed. These were used in a case filed in the Madras HC in 1996. In 2010, the court ordered for the plant’s closure but it was stayed by the Supreme Court. Eventually, due to another clean chit by NEERI in its final report, the apex court didn’t uphold the HC order and let the company go with an Rs 100-crore fine.   

Land degradation makes containing floods and droughts tough

Around 91 million hectares in India is degraded land. This constitutes almost 28 percent of the geographical area of the country, according to a new draft report on land degradation prepared by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) in Hyderabad. The report finds eight different processes by which land degradation takes place—water erosion, wind erosion, waterlogging, salinization/alkalization, acidification, glacial erosion, anthropogenic changes, and others. These processes are further divided into different ways that they can happen. Most of the degradation of land has happened because of water erosion which makes up more than half (55 percent) of the total degraded area. This is followed by wind erosion which constitutes 15 percent of land degradation. Among states, Rajasthan has the largest area of degraded land at 18 million hectares followed by Maharashtra. Some of the states have a high percentage of their areas covered by degraded land. For example, Uttar Pradesh has more than 53 percent of its area covered with degraded land while Rajasthan comes a close second at 52. Surprisingly, the northeastern states also have large parts of their total land area under degradation. Most of the northeastern states suffer from acidification of their soil which reduces their productivity. Acidification takes place when the pH balance of the soil shifts towards acidic due to an excessive presence of hydrogen ions. States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh suffer from waterlogging, especially during floods. Eighteen Indian states have experienced minor to severe floods in 2018. The worst was in Kerala in August which caused a damage of anywhere between 30,000 to 40,000 crores, according to various estimates by the Kerala government, the World Bank and the KPMG. The major reason for all these flooding events was intense rainfall over a short span of time and this was highlighted by experts and the media. In the case of Kerala, mismanagement of dams and reservoirs had also come into play. But, there was another reason for these events which has not been highlighted much by the media—degradation of land and land use change. When there is a heavy downpour of water over land that is already degraded then flooding becomes more severe. It also increases the possibilities of flash floods and landslides. The land degradation report shows that many of the flood-affected states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan also have large tracts of degraded land. While Rajasthan accounts for 20 percent of the degraded land in the country, Maharashtra has 12 percent of degraded land. In the flood-affected states of Maharashtra and Odisha, the major cause of land degradation was water erosion. Floods are one of the major causes of water erosion which means that floods would further induce more floods. At the time of floods when rains batter the earth’s surface where it has been degraded, most of the water flows into the water bodies and becomes surface run-off. This, in turn, leads to low retention of moisture in the soil which leads to droughts. Ten Indian states have either declared a drought or are in the process of doing so. Eight of these drought-affected states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Assam had earlier suffered from floods. In some instances, the same districts that were flooded before will now be suffering a dry season. In the context of risk management in the case of floods and droughts these factors also need to be accounted for. In fact “soil moisture retention and surface runoff along with precipitation and evapotranspiration are the major factors that will help us understand the impacts of climate change at the local level”, K J Ramesh, director general of the India Meteorological Department said.


Bengal chemicals keen on resuming anti-snake venom serum production

Bengal chemicals and pharmaceuticals ltd(BCPL). which had forayed into anti-snake venom serum(ASVS) manufacturing India nearly half a ce...