Two Earth-size planets spotted beyond solar system

New York: Scientists have found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star outside the solar system, an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.

The discovery shows that such planets exist and that they can be detected by the Kepler spacecraft, said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They're the smallest planets found so far that orbit a star resembling our sun.

Scientists are seeking Earth-sized planets as potential homes for extraterrestrial life, said Fressin, who reports the new findings in a paper published online yesterday by the journal Nature.

One planet's diameter is only 3 per cent larger than Earth's, while the other's diameter is about nine-tenths that of Earth. They appear to be rocky, like our planet.

But they are too hot to contain life as we know it, with calculated temperatures of about 1,400 degrees and 800 degrees Fahrenheit (760 Celsius and 425 Celsius), he said.

Source: The Indian Express, 21-12-2011

Delhi zoo adds new feature

New Delhi: As part of the new master plan, the 100-acre Delhi Zoo on Tuesday added a new feature in the form of an additional enclosure to house animals from Central India. Animals like the black buck, nilgai, sambar, spotted deer, barking deer and gaur have now been housed together for the benefit of visitors.

“This is the first time in the history of the zoo that such a grouping has been done. The decision was taken on the advice of the Central Zoo Authority. We hope the experiment will give additional information to visitors about the area from where these animals come,'' said a senior zoo officials.

“Initially we were apprehensive that the animals might start fighting among themselves, but we have noticed that they have grouped themselves and are grazing in different sections of the enclosure,'' added the official.

The zoo is home to over 1,000 animals, representing almost 130 species of animals and birds from around the world.

In keeping with the new master plan, the Delhi Zoo is undertaking an ambitious “renovation” plan, which is all set to change its face.

“We plan to have a butterfly park, an insectarium and an aquarium. The master plan aims to provide more space to the animals, bring about infrastructural improvements and make the place more educational for the visitors. There is also a plan to bring in different themes like peninsular India, central Indian highlands and Himalayan foothills,'' said a senior zoo official.

The zoo is seeking over Rs.100 crore from the Union Forests and Environment Ministry to implement the master plan and the survey work for the revamp began last year.

“As per the plan, visitors to the zoo will also be able to enjoy a walk-through aviary and a rainforest region. The idea is to provide a real-life experience to visitors. Better signages and information kiosks are also part of the plan. The master plan also envisages providing improved drainage and sewage. This measure is especially important during the monsoon season when flooding endangers the health of the zoo inmates,'' noted the official.

Source: The Hindu, 14-12-2011

Dried bamboo groves bring ominous portents

The dried bamboo groves inside the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary and the adjacent sanctuaries such as the Rajiv Gandhi National Park, Nagarhole, and the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka are posing a threat to the wildlife population of the Nilgiri Biosphere, a major tiger and elephant habitat.

The bamboo groves in the Wayanad forest are the mainstay of the herbivores in the Nilgiri Biosphere during summer. With the advent of the season, migration of wild animals starts from the adjacent sanctuaries in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to Wayanad owing to shortage of fodder and water there.

“This season may be a period of famine for wildlife, especially elephants, wild gaur, and other lower herbivores owing to the mass destruction of bamboo groves in the area,” forest officials said.

“Bamboo groves, which grow in 100 sq. km. of the 344.44 sq. km. of the sanctuary, have completely withered away except for a few patches after the gregarious flowering of the plants started in 2005,” K.K. Sunilkumar, Wildlife Warden, Wayanad sanctuary, told The Hindu.

Nearly 60,000 tonnes, worth Rs.4 crore, of it is extractable. But norms forbid the extraction of plants from the sanctuaries, sources said.

Moreover, posing a threat to the wildlife as well as the ecology of the Nilgiri Biosphere, it is reported that close to 25 per cent of the bamboo groves in the adjacent sanctuaries have bloomed since 2010 and the phenomenon is continuing.

Thorny bamboo (Bamboosa Bambos) is a monocarpic (flowering only once) plant belonging to the Poaceae family (grass family) and its flowering cycle varies from 30 to 34 years and 44 to 49 years, Ratheesh Narayanan, senior scientist, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Kalpetta, said.

Profuse natural regeneration occurs from seeds after gregarious flowering. Seeds have no dormancy and this helps germination under favourable conditions soon after seed fall, Mr. Narayanan said.

But, protection from fire and grazing is essential for proper establishment of seedlings, he added.

Fire incidents have been comparatively low in the sanctuary for the past two years following summer rain and the conservation measures implemented by the Forest Department. But, combustible materials have accumulated in the sanctuary this year and a spark may cause an uncontrollable disaster, the sources added.

Meanwhile, dearth of funds for implementing conservation measures inside the sanctuary, after the Union Ministry drastically cut the funds in the current fiscal, is a major concern.

The Central government is yet to allot any funds for implementing forest fire protection measures in the sanctuary so far, the sources added.

Farmers adjacent to the sanctuary fear that destruction of the bamboo groves may worsen the increasing man-animal conflict in the district.

Source: The Hindu, December 16, 2011

Migratory birds arrive in Kerala

One of the clear signs that winter has set in the northern hemisphere is the arrival of migratory birds in their thousands to tropical India to escape the winter-related problems at homeland. Kerala has many such terrestrial and wetland winter resorts for them and the feathered guests have already checked in to all of them.

The arrival has been traditionally abrupt. Especially, the wetlands and its surroundings are one fine morning suddenly teeming with birds that were not there the previous day. Bird watchers say that the migratory birds usually arrive during the night following certain cues that are part of their genetic heritage.

By the time they have reached their Kerala destinations, they would have flown thousands of kilometres over many countries. They return to their homes to breed when they get the instinctive message that spring has arrived there. Till then there are expatriates of sorts here enjoying the warmth of the Kerala.

According to P.O. Nameer, associate professor (forestry) of the Kerala Agriculture University, about 152 species of migratory birds sojourn in Kerala. They include about 80 species of water birds. Professor Nameer, who is also the State coordinator of the International Bird Conservation Network (ICBN), said that none of the migratory birds breed during this sojourn.

He said that these birds come from the Eurasia region. They are mainly from Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and other area north of the Himalayan regions. Some of the birds are also from the Himalayan region. As part of the global process, survey of the migratory birds at the winter resorts will begin in January.

Prof. Nameer said that given the flock strengths that have arrived, there appears to be not much of a fluctuation in the population of these birds compared to last year. Even the arrivals last year was more or less on par with the previous year. It shows protection and conservation awareness is appreciably strong, he said.

Travancore Natural History Society coordinator, H. Charan said that some of the important wetland destinations of the migratory birds in Kerala are Vellayani, Ashtamudi, Sasthamcotta, Vembanad-Kuttanad belt, the charcoal fields of Thrissur, Bharathapuzha belt, Kadalundi, Kattamballi in Kannur, the Kawaikayal of Kasargode and the Neeleshwaram Thaikadappuram.

The migratory species arriving include godwits, terns, ospreys, golden plovers, pratincoles, several species of ducks and waders like sandpipers and plovers. The counting of the birds will be conducted by the Asian Wetland Bird Survey with support from the ICBN under supervisions of the Bombay Natural History Society.

Source: The Hindu December 7, 2011

Use of microalgae helps in controlling pollution

To its votaries, tiny organisms known as microalgae could hold answers to some intractable problems. That includes curbing carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming and reducing the burden of industrial effluents.

“We can change trash into gold” and safeguard human existence on the planet, exclaimed Ji-Won Yang of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea.

Microalgae, like plants, are capable of photosynthesis, using the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar.

In a talk at the International Conference on New Horizons in Biotechnology held in Thiruvananthapuram recently, Prof. Yang spoke of his team's efforts at treating municipal wastewater using the single-celled green alga, Chlorella vulgaris.

Such wastewater contained plenty of organic compounds and nutrients to sustain the organism. The oils that then accumulated in the cells could be harvested and turned into biodiesel.

It was found that untreated wastewater gave the best algal growth. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in the wastewater could be acting as growth enhancers, he noted.

In Taiwan, a group is seeking reduce emissions from a steel plant by turning the carbon dioxide it belches out into a resource for growing C. vulgaris. The alga could then be turned animal and aquaculture feed.

A mutant strain of the alga had been isolated that could tolerate the elevated temperatures that resulted from bubbling the steel plant's flue gas through the medium in which the organism was growing, according to Jo-Shu Chang, deputy-director of the Centre for Bioscience and Biotechnology at the National Cheng Kung University.

Using the alga in this manner could halve the carbon dioxide in the flue gas. Simultaneously, the levels of nitrogen oxides could also be drastically cut and that of sulphur oxides considerably reduced.

A pilot plant based on the alga had been established at a plant of the China Steel Corporation, he said.

Both Prof. Yang and Prof. Chang, however, pointed out that technological breakthroughs were needed to bring down the cost of harvesting and processing microalgae.

Algae can be a very effective and economical way of dealing with industrial effluents, according to V. Sivasubramanian, Director of the Vivekananda Institute of Algal Technology in Chennai.

He gave the example of a company based in Ranipet in Tamil Nadu that was producing alginate, a compound with a variety of applications from food to textiles. The effluent from the production process was highly acidic. To meet pollution control norms, the effluent was earlier being neutralised with sodium hydroxide. The large quantities of sludge that resulted had then to be disposed in a secured landfill.

It had been possible to engineer a treatment process to efficiently carry out the neutralisation by providing suitable conditions for a blue green alga, Chroococcus turgidus, to grow in the effluent. As the alga grew, it reduced the acidity of the effluent. This algal strain had been isolated from the effluent itself.

The remediation plant had been working well for over five years, producing negligible quantities of sludge and saving money that had earlier been spent on sodium hydroxide.

An added bonus

An added bonus was that the company was able harvest and sell some of the alga as a biofertiliser and aquaculture feed.

In the case of another company in Ranipet, this time producing chemicals used in leather processing, the microalga Chlorella vulgaris had been successfully employed to reduce the load of heavy metals, such as copper, zinc, chromium, nickel, cadmium and lead, in the effluent.

Once again, the strain of C. vulgaris used for this purpose had been isolated from the effluent itself, he said.

Source:The Hindu December 8, 2011

Migratory birds declining, government monitoring habitat

New Delhi: The population of endangered migratory bird species is either decreasing or stable, but the central government is working to protect them during their sojourn, says Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan.

The number of migratory birds arriving in India depends on various factors, including habitat quality, preference and human disturbances along their migratory routes, Ms. Natarajan said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

However, as per the latest Asian Waterbird Census coordinated by the Wetlands International, the population of threatened migratory birds in the entire flyway region, which includes Central Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asian republics, Iran, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the Indian subcontinent, is either decreasing or stable.

Ms. Natarajan said the central government is providing financial and technical assistance to specialised institutions like the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) for conducting studies to monitor the populations of important bird species and their habitat.

WII, BNHS and SACON are monitoring migratory birds in the Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur in Rajasthan. BNHS is also working in Point Calimere in Andhra Pradesh.

In Himachal Pradesh’s Pong Dam wetlands, one of the largest manmade wetlands in northern India, the BNHS is tracking the migratory routes of the barheaded goose and some duck species through satellite.

A study on the status of trans-Himalayan and Himalayan birds, including migratory ones, is being conducted by the WII.

Crossing national and international boundaries, millions of migratory birds descend in India to avoid the extreme winter chill in their native habitats.

According to “Handbook on Indian Wetland Birds and their Conservation”, written by scientists of the Dehradun-based Zoological Survey of India, of the 1,230 species found in the Indian subcontinent, nearly 350 are migrants.

The most abundant winter migrants to the Indian subcontinent are ducks and geese. Both constitute about 85 per cent of the population.

The book says the birds go by celestial navigation. The birds possess sensory objects that can trace the waves generated by earth’s magnetic field. The migration starts when the winds are favourable, mostly at dusk.

Source: The Hindu, 30-11-2011

World's heaviest insect weighs 3 times more than mouse

London: A giant insect, which weighs three times more than a mouse and eats carrots, has been recorded as the heaviest insect in the world.

A nature-lover Mark Moffett from Colorado, America, revealed that he spent two days tracking down the giant weta on a remote island in New Zealand, and got it to eat a carrot out of his hand.

Moffett’s finding makes it the world’s biggest insect in terms of weight, which at 71g is heavier than a sparrow and three times that of a mouse.

The 53-year-old former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and has now been declared the largest ever found.

The cricket-like creature has a wing span of seven inches and is only found on Little Barrier Island, in New Zealand, the Daily Mail reported.

There are 70 other types of smaller weta found throughout the country.

The giants of the species were wiped off the mainland by rats accidentally introduced by Europeans.

Source: The Indian Express, 2-12-2011