Eco-tourism project at Konni to get a facelift

PATHANAMTHITTA: The eco-tourism project launched by the Forest Department at Konni four years ago is to get a facelift with the department deciding to launch the second phase of the project.

Official sources told The Hindu on Saturday that steps would be taken to set up a children's park and butterfly park at the elephant camp.

Construction of a compound wall, proper lighting of the elephant camp, streamlining elephant safari with a view to attracting more tourists are the other thrust areas in the second phase.

The eco-tourism project, developed jointly by the departments of Forests and Tourism, at the nine-acre elephant camp was launched in January 2007, making it a base station facilitating various eco-tourism activities in the region.

Source :- The Hindu May 30, 2011

The camp at present houses modern elephant shelters, elephant kraal, photo gallery, biogas plant, retiring rooms for mahouts, and shops selling forest produce.

Absence of entertainment facilities for children and ‘lack' of entrepreneurship on the part of the authorities seem to have affected the prospects of the park.

Butterfly park

The butterfly park will have a polycarbonate dome suitably designed for weather control.

According to the sources, the park will be home to hundreds of colourful butterflies, including rare species, especially at a time when the butterfly population is under threat due to depleting green cover.

Certain species of butterflies are on the verge of extinction and the proposed park has got much significance in this context.

Conservatory

A conservatory, museum, and an audio-visual room aimed at creating awareness among the visitors of biodiversity and a breeding house displaying metamorphosis of a butterfly will be the major attractions.

The department is planning to convert an old inspection bungalow on the banks of the Achencoil river in the forests at Naduvathumoozhy into a heritage interpretation centre as part of the eco-tourism project.

Elephant ride

Though the camp houses five elephants, the department has been conducting the elephant ride using a female elephant, Priyadarshni.

Tree-top huts have been planned at the elephant camp to lure more tourists as part of the second phase of the project. This is besides the proposals for jungle treks, rock climbing and river rafting.

Construction of an open-air theatre and a pond for bathing the captive elephants are the other schemes to be implemented at the camp.

Earth's inner core melting'

Washington: The inner core of the Earth, which is believed to be growing about one millimetre per year, may be melting, scientists have claimed.

According to researchers at the University of Leeds in England, this melting could actually be linked to activity on the Earth's surface and the findings could help explain how the core generates the planet's magnetic field.

The 2,400km wide inner core which is a ball of solid iron about the same size of the moon is surrounded by an outer core made up mostly of liquid iron-nickel alloy, a highly viscous mantle layer and, topping it off, a solid crust that forms the surface of the planet.

As the Earth cools from the inside out, it is believed that the molten outer core is slowly freezing, leading the inner core to grow at a rate of about one millimetre per year.

"The standard view has been that the inner core is freezing all over and growing, but it appears that there are regions where the core is actually melting," said Sebastian Rost, a seismologist who led the research.

Source: The Indian Express. 19-05-2011

Milky Way 'in mid-life crisis'

Washington: Our Milky Way is suffering from a mid-life crisis and will slow down its production of stars over the next billion years, say planetary scientists.

Galaxies typically fall into one of two categories – energetic blue galaxies that form new stars at an impressive rate, or lethargic red galaxies which are slowly dying. But, a team at Swinburne University of Technology has shown our own Milky Way galaxy is neither of these. Rather it is a rare "green valley" galaxy that is half way between a youthful blue galaxy and a geriatric red one.

This is the first time that the scientists have compared both the colour and the star formation rate of the Milky Way to that of other galaxies in the Universe, the 'Astrophysical Journal' reported.


"Determining the state of our own galaxy while we're stuck inside it is very difficult to do. The phrase 'it's hard to see the forest for the trees' really rings true here," Dr Darren Croton, who led the team, said.

Source: The Indian Express. 26-05-2011

Moon may have as much water as earth has: study

London: The moon’s interior may contain 100 times more water than previously thought, perhaps as much as the Earth’s interior has, a new study has claimed.
Scientists have recently discovered water in moon, which was long thought to be a dusty and dry place, after examining lunar rocks brought to Earth in 1972 by the final manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17.

Now, researchers from Case Western Reserve University who analysed the volcanic samples of the ancient lunar crust believe there could be 100 times more water than previously thought, the Daily Mail reported.

In fact, the measured quantities, could be as high as the water contained in the Earth’s upper mantle -- the viscous layer of semi-molten rock that lies just beneath this planet’s crust, the scientists said.

If this is the case, it challenges a long-held theory about the moon’s formation. Most experts believe a huge impact early in Earth’s history ejected material into space that became the moon.

Source: The Indian Express. 27-05-2011

Age, gender affect chances to quit smoking

A study has found that place where you live, your age and whether you're male or female all affect your chances of giving up smoking.
The study, commissioned by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and undertaken by the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS), reviewed published studies from between 1990 and 2007 to establish success rates for the NHS smoking cessation services.
It found that older smokers are more likely than young smokers to successfully quit, some men appear to be more successful at quitting than women despite the fact that more women attend the smoking cessation services, and more disadvantaged groups face greater challenges when giving up smoking.
The findings support other international research that also suggested that while women are highly motivated to quit smoking, men may be more likely to succeed when they access services to help them stop.

Source: The Indian Express. 28-05-2011

Small pox virus may become poor man's atom bomb

Bangalore: The resolution by the World Health Organization (WHO) to hold on to the two last known remaining stocks of the smallpox virus for "crucial research" raises the spectre of bioterrorism, warns a leading Indian virologist.
"If the destruction is delayed indefinitely, the synthesis and preparation of small pox virus as a bio-weapon, by a non-superpower would increase and it may truly become a poor man's atom bomb," says Kalyan Banerjee, former director of the National Institute of Virology in Pune.

The World Health Assembly-WHO's decision-making body-announced Tuesday that it would defer until 2014 any decision on the destruction of the two remaining stocks of the virus since "crucial research" based on the virus remains to be completed.

After smallpox was officially eradicated in 1980, all countries were asked to surrender their stocks of the virus to the WHO to prevent accidental release. Currently the virus is held at two WHO-sanctioned repositories - the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and a Russian facility in Koltsovo in Siberia.

The debate over whether or not to destroy these two last samples had been going on since 1980. But the WHO has constantly been postponing the date of destruction under pressure from the United States and Russia that wanted to retain the samples until the needed research was complete to develop new drugs and vaccines to counter a potential bioterror attack.

"In my opinion, the world will gain much more by destroying the last traces of the virus than by keeping it," said Banerjee who himself was former member of a WHO advisory committee on smallpox research and now a committee adviser.

"The arguments tendered in favour of retaining the virus appear to be unconvincing," he told IANS. "To put it bluntly, it is the same logic, by which the superpowers continue the possession of the nuclear weapons; they wish to hold on to the smallpox virus as a super bio-weapon."

"The research is being drawn on and on, but research cannot be made a tool or apology for the indefinite retention of the virus," Banerjee said.

The existing vaccine (the classical Lister strain) has a proven record of preventing the spread of the virus and curtailing the epidemic and even if they develop a new vaccine, it cannot be used in the case of emergency, he said. And no live variola virus is necessary to develop new drugs since such studies can be done with monkeypox or mousepox viruses which belong to the same family of variola virus which causes smallpox.

According to Banerjee, the smallpox researchers wished to sequence one strain each of "variola major" and "variola minor" essentially for archival purposes. "But now more than 40 strains have been fully sequenced and if I am correct it is planned to sequence all the strains. The researchers wish to go on and on (without end)."

Another leading Indian virologist agrees. As far as smallpox virus is concerned, "I think we know enough and, all in all, I am in favour of first evolving rules and then destroying (the virus stocks)," said Jacob John at the Christian Medical College in Vellore.

Banerjee argues that continued retention of the smallpox virus no longer serves any essential public health purpose. "As today, the likelihood of small pox virus as a bio weapon by a non-superpower is nil. The destruction of the virus at CDC or Russia would definitely reduce any chance of any mischief by mischief makers. Immediate destruction of the small pox virus is the best policy."

"I firmly believe that not only the small pox virus stocks but also infected materials (like blood, tissues, tissue culture fluids, etc) which have been generated through several years of experimentation should also be destroyed," he said.

Source: Decan Herald, 29-05-2011

Indian jasmine may be next-generation painkiller

New Delhi: Familiar garden plant crepe jasmine, whose flowers are widely used as offerings in poojas and other religious ceremonies, harbours a compound in its stem that has the potential to turn the medical world around.

A team of US scientists has artificially synthesised a compound in bulk quantity originally isolated from the bark of crepe jasmine in 2004.

Preliminary analysis carried out in the laboratory showed that the plant-derived compound, conolidine, has significant pain-relieving properties, which are as good as morphine but without its adverse effects.

The initial results are very encouraging. However, elaborate clinical evaluation spanning over 10-15 years is required before the molecule enters the drug market. “We are actively pursuing seasoned pharmaceutical partners to begin the process,” Glenn C Micalizio, one of the lead scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, Florida, told Deccan Herald.

If the molecule lives up to its potential in clinical evaluations and trials over time, it can turn out to be a blockbuster drug as pain treatments represent a huge slice of the global pharmaceutical market with annual sales running into billions of dollars. A new pain-killer would certainly become a big player.

Even though crape jasmine is used in traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic and Thai medicines, this is for the first time scientists are able to produce it in bulk quantity by a chemical process. The availability would ensure detailed testing of its biological properties, the team reported in the latest issue of Nature Chemistry.

In various models of pain studied in the laboratory using mouse, the synthetic compound performed spectacularly, suppressing acute pain and inflammatory-derived pain, two key measures of efficacy.

The synthetic molecule passed easily through the blood-brain barrier, and stay at relatively high concentrations up to four hours after injection in the brain and blood, which is a testimony to its potency.

While Morphine and its derivatives (opioid analgesics) remain the most widely used pain-killers, they are clinically problematic because of their side effects, ranging from addiction, tolerance, depression of breathing, nausea and chronic constipation.
The absence of side effects, however, is acting as a double-edged sword.
"The lack of side effects makes it a very good candidate for development. If there were side effects, they might provide additional clues as to how the compound works at the molecular level," said Scripps professor Laura Bohn who did pharmacological evaluation.
Because of the side-effects, identification of effective non-opioid analgesics to replace the existing drugs remains an active area of scientific pursuit.

“We are at the very beginning of analysing the potential value of conolidine as a therapeutic. Further studies will be needed to evaluate its broad profile as a potential therapeutic agent,” Micalizio said.

Source: Decan Herald, 29-05-2011

Biodiversity

Source: Mathrubhoomi,27-05-2011

Source: Mathrubhoomi, 26-05-2011

Giant African snails invade Konni

PATHANAMTHITTA: With the onset of summer rain, the giant African snail menace has become a major environmental as well as health and hygiene problem at Konni and surrounding areas.

The fast multiplication of snails has become a major problem facing the villagers residing in the forest fringes of Pathanamthitta district.

The worst-affected areas are wards 11, 12, 14, 16 and 17 in Konni panchayat. These creatures creep into houses to feed on cement and lime as they require large amount of calcium. They also feed on vegetation posing threat to forest environs.

The snails even creep into kitchens and rooms. The menace is fast spreading to the adjoining panchayats.

Experts say snails cannot survive in hot climate, especially above 30 degree centigrade.

Burrows on trees and rocks are the day-time hideout of these creatures. Their movement in clusters, riding on each other's back, has become a common scene during night in the infested areas.

The Konni grama panchayat and the Kudumbasree self-help group had jointly launched a snail eradication campaign in the panchayat on Thursday. Members of the team sprinkle common salt and spray a liquid mixture of tobacco, copper sulphate, and salt at their hideouts for mass eradication. The snails killed thus are buried in different localities.

Villagers said the snails were found perching on giant coconut trees to feed on tender palm leaves. They also feed on tender leaves of papaya, tapioca, banana trees and all sorts of vegetable during night, ultimately destroying the farm.

The eradication drive would continue, the panchayat authorities said.

It is believed that African snails had reached Konni along with timber consignments from Malaysia as early as 2005.

Source: The Hindu May 01, 2011