Apr 2015

NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
15
THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015
Why skin is resistant to tearing
Songbird flies non-stop, 1,500 miles
The first direct observations of the micro-scale

mechanisms behind the ability of skin to resist tearing,
could lead to better artificial skin and flexible electronics.
It has been found that tiny blackpoll warblers

complete a non-stop flight from about 1,410 to
1,721 miles in just two to three days.
SNAPSHOTS
New source of methane
in Arctic discovered
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
anomalies, physics
Candidate malaria drug Penguin
beyond the Standard Model
may cure with single dose
SHUBASHREE DESIKAN
N. GOPAL RAJ
REUTERS
Researchers have found a new

source of methane for gas
hydrates ice-like substances in
sediment that trap methane in the
crystal structure of frozen water
in the Arctic Ocean.
Date syrup fights

bacterial infections
K.K. MUSTAFAH
Date syrup a liquid derived from

dates, shows antibacterial activity
against a number of diseasecausing bacteria, including
Staphylococcus aureus and
Escherichia coli.
Climate change effect

on marine ecosystems
AFP
A new study reports that marine

ecosystems can take thousands of
years to recover from climaterelated upheavals. Recovery from
climate change might take place
on a millennial scale.
ast year, AstraZeneca, the global drug

company, closed its
research centre in
Bengaluru. One of the legacies of the work carried out
there is the identification of a
novel candidate drug for malaria. In laboratory tests, this
molecule has shown that it
was fast acting and remained
in the blood for an extended
period of time, creating the
possibility of a single-dose
treatment, according to a paper published recently.
The project received the
backing of the Switzerlandbased nonprofit foundation,
Medicines for Malaria Venture. It also drew on the expertise of scientists with
another drug giant, GlaxoSmithKline, as well as researchers at Columbia and
Harvard universities in the
U.S.
The first step in a research
effort that lasted about three
and a half years was to screen
a library of half a million compounds that AstraZeneca
possessed. An automated
process rapidly tested these
molecules, looking for ones
that could kill the malaria
parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, at the stage in its complex lifecycle when it infects
red blood cells. P. falciparum
is responsible for causing the
most dangerous forms of
disease.
The most promising compound to emerge from this
quest, however, had poor solubility and also affected a
molecule involved in maintaining the hearts rhythmic
AP
A new study nds that resveratrol

an anti-inammatory agent
found in the skin of red grapes
can prevent inammation as well
as depression-related behaviours
in rodents.
Comet dust: Mercurys

invisible paint
hysicists at LHCb, an experiment at the Large

Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva dedicated to observing
the decay of B mesons, have
found an exciting and persistent discrepancy between the
experimental observations
and calculations based on the
standard theory. This is exciting because this discrepancy
could imply new physics, requiring going beyond what is
called the Standard Model of
particle physics. In other
words, this could mean that
there exist particles or symmetries, which have hitherto
not been observed.
The anomaly, as this discrepancy is called, is not staAn automated process looked for molecules that could kill the malaria parasite, tistically significant enough
to warrant a round of celePlasmodium falciparum, at the stage when it infects red blood cells. PHOTO: AFP
brations. However, it is persistent
enough
for
beating, according to a paper it was administered to mice not target this protein.
Moreover, when P. falcipa- experimentalists to roll up
about the work that was pub- infected by the parasite. Faslished this week in Nature ter reduction in the blood rum was exposed to the in- their sleeves and get to work
Communications.
parasite burden is essential to creasing concentrations of during the next run of the
Utilising chemistry and provide quick relief from clin- the drug, mutations that Large Hadron Collider, which
pharmacological knowledge, ical symptoms and to min- made the parasite resistant to is to begin soon.
this initial hit compounds imise the risk of emergence of its action arose only very
Among the first to suggest
structure was modified to re- drug resistance, the scien- infrequently.
looking for such an anomaly
duce its limitations and entists observed in the paper.
Tests were also carried out based on calculations is an Inhance desirable properties,
Based on levels of the mole- with a panel of over 1,900 P. dian group. The anomaly is
remarked Vasan K. Samban- cule in the blood of mice, rats falciparum parasites isolated seen in a certain class of dedamurthy, who was one of the and dogs given compound 12, from patients globally as well cays of B mesons through
senior scientists at AstraZe- scientists computed that in as laboratory strains display- rare, penguin processes.
necas Bengaluru centre in- humans a single dose of 260 ing varying forms of resist- Such an anomaly was first obvolved in the project and is a mg might be sufficient to ance to antimalarial agents served in 2013. This persisted
corresponding author of the maintain therapeutic blood currently in use and under and grew stronger on further
concentration for 4-5 days. development. None of the analysis of the data, as repaper.
In an iterative process, When given in combination parasites proved resistant to vealed by the LHCb earlier
some 1,000 compounds were with another drug, comcompound 12.
then synthesised in order to pound 12 is predicted to cure
Toxicity studies in rats and
identify lead molecules with patients following a single- tests in guinea pigs for cardiovascular effects showed that
the requisite levels of poten- dose treatment.
The drug appeared to tar- this candidate drug has good
cy, specificity as well as other
necessary
characteristics. get a protein secreted by the safety margins, the paper
One of the molecules com- parasite after it infected a red noted. Medicines for Malaria
pound 12 came out on top. blood cell and which was es- Venture was evaluating comCompound 12 showed that sential for its growth and de- pound 12 with further preit could rapidly kill blood velopment inside the cell. clinical safety studies, said
stages of P. falciparum when Other antimalarial drugs do Dr. Sambandamurthy.
K.S. RAJGOPAL
cientists have traced the

early onset and severity of
cardiomyopathy disease in a
South Indian family to novel
genetic mutations.
Cardiomyopathy is the disease of the heart muscle affecting its ability to contract
and expand and could eventually lead to heart failure.
The main types include dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and
restrictive cardiomyopathy.
In a paper published in a
recent issue of DNA and Cell
Biology by Deepa Selva Rani
et al from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology
(CCMB), it was mentioned
that mutations to sarcomeric
genes are the leading cause
for cardiomyopathies.
However, not many studies
have been carried out on Indian cardiomyopathy patients.
THE IMPLICATION: The discrepancy found could

mean that there exist particles or symmetries, which
have hitherto not been observed. PHOTO; REUTERS
this month. The anomaly
shows a statistical significance of only 3.7 sigma deviation. To establish that it is not
mere chance scientists need a
significance of at least 5 sigma
deviation (or a random
chance of less than one in a
million).
The LHCb specifically
looks at the angular distribution of particles coming from
the decay of the B meson
through a process in which
one of the components of the
meson, the beauty quark,
changes into a quark of a different flavour. Physicist Rahul Sinha of the Institute of
Mathematical
Sciences,
Chennai, and his collaborators were the first to point
out, in papers published in
1996 and 1999, that this was
the sector where such an
anomaly could be observed.
About the lack of conclu-
sive evidence, Prof. Sinha

says, The experimentally observed angular distributions
have been compared to the
ones computed approximately in the Standard Model. It is
possible that hadronic effects
are not accurately taken into
account, resulting in an improper conclusion about the
significance. One needs a
more reliable approach.
Apart from indicating the
importance of the decay
mode and angular observables to search for new physics, Prof. Sinha, Rusa Mandal
and Diganta Das had proposed a truly model-independent technique to search
for new physics in a recent
publication of the American
Physical Society. Now, they
are examining what the relation derived by them implies
for new physics using the full
LHC Run-I data set.
Unravelling the blood

rain mystery
Severe cardiac disease linked

to novel mutations
Y. MALLIKARJUN
Red grape component

can prevent depression
Sarcomeric genes code proteins that are essential for

contraction and expansion of
heart muscle.
In the study, one of the sarcomeric genes, alpha-tropomyosin (TPM1) was screened
for variants in 101 hypertrophic
cardiomyopathy(
HCM) patients and 147 dilated cardiomyopathy(DCM)
patients against 207 ethnically matched healthy controls
from South India. While 13
variants were detected in
TPM1, another mutationS215L (which was reported in
an earlier study by the same
group) was found in two unrelated individuals suffering
from HCM.
However, the onset of the
disease was early and the severity was greater in a younger 44-year-old individual
compared to the other patient, who was 65 years old.
The mutation was completely
absent in DCM patients and
controls.
Following this, the two individuals and their family

members were screened to
find if there were variations
in seven more sarcomeric
genes. Two novel mutations
in MYH7 gene were identified
exclusively in the 44-year-old
patient and his family
members.
The paper stated that the
thick filament mutations,
D896N and 1524K in the beta-myosin heavy chain were
novel.
According to Dr.Deepa, the
number of mutations was directly proportional to the severity of the disease.
She said the family also had
two cases of sudden cardiac
death. She said that sarcomeric genes were involved in
maintaining the heart muscle
structure and so far 11 sarcomeric genes were found to be
responsible for cardiomyopathies.
Dr.K. Thangaraj, another
author of the paper, said that
this was the first study in India to find TPM1 gene mutation
vis--vis
cardio
-myopathies.
He said it was very rare to
find two pathogenic mutations in a single individual.
Since marriage practices in
South India were known for
consanguineous nature, this
finding was not very
surprising.
The scientists also carried
out further bioinformatics,
biochemical and biophysical
studies in collaboration with
John A.Mercer from the National Centre for Biological
Sciences, TIFR, Bengaluru
and a few other institutions.
The study, which was published in the March, 2015 issue of the Journal of
Biological Chemistry, supported pathogenicity of the
mutations.
Dr. Thangaraj said the finding would help in early diagnosis and planning treatment
strategies for the disease.
recent study by Indian

and Austrian scientists
has led to the discovery of the
cause of the Blood Rain phenomenon to be dispersal of
spores of micro algae. Since
1896, reports have been coming in of sporadic instances of
red coloured rain over parts
of Kerala and Sri Lanka. The
latest one was in 2013 over
Kerala.
The rain colours red even
laundry left in the open to dry
and reminds one of human
blood. Many reasons were attributed to this mysterious
phenomenon some irrational like a divine spell, and
alien involvement. The Huffington Post reported in 2012
that this was caused by extraterrestrial life (aliens).
The recent study, published in the journal Phylogenetics and Evolutionary Biology,
confirmed that the red colour
in the rain was caused by the
presence of spores of a European species of green miTrentepohlia
croalgae,
annulata that was reported
previously only from Austria
a Central European country.
The study confirmed that
the blood rain is nothing but a
mechanism employed by this
alga to disperse its spores

(similar to plant seeds) to a
very large area at once, so that
algae can quickly colonize a
large area. The study revealed
that DNA sequence of this
species from Kerala and that
from Austria had very little
differences and they evolve
slowly, which suggests that
the alga got introduced from
Europe not very long ago.
The research confirmed the
likelihood that the introduction
happened
through
clouds over ocean a phenomenon of intercontinental
species dispersal previously
reported for bacteria and fungi, but first time for alga said
the lead author, Dr. Felix Bast
who works at the Central
University of Punjab.
Clouds over ocean dispersal is analogous to the intercontinental flights that we
take; spores of this alga from
Europe get transported to India via clouds that drift across
the Arabian Sea.
But if the spores travelled
across the Arabian Sea all the
way to Kerala and Sri Lanka,
why did the phenomenon not
occur in intermediate regions
like Gujarat, MP?
Answering this query, Dr.
Bast noted in an email to this
Correspondent: We don't
have any proof for this
"clouds over ocean" hypothe-
sis, but probability is high because this is how spores of

Trentepohlia get transported.
How exactly these lower
stratospheric clouds got into
Kerala remains unknown but
aerial route from Austria to
Kerala won't pass through
other states like Gujarat, MP
etc. It might be related to
monsoon as well, as Kerala is
the first state which the SW
monsoon strikes together
with Sri Lanka.
On how the spores get into
the clouds, Dr. Bast explains:
I would presume these
spores might have got transported to the clouds by wind.
We are planning to work with
atmospheric scientists to
sample
intercontinental
clouds to see what kind of organisms they transport.
Metagenetic analysis of air
from clouds using High Efficiency Particulate Air Filters
will be the ultimate proof, for
which I'll soon be applying for
research grant from Ministry
of Earth Sciences. He added
that this microalga is absolutely harmless, and the
blood rainwater is perfectly
potable, even for vegetarians.
The present study resulted in
an nternational collaborative
effort involving researchers
from India and Austria, supported in part by INSPIRE
Faculty Award.
Can radiation protection standards be based on best science?

The Linear No Threshold (LNT) hypothesis states that the response to radiation is proportional to dose without a threshold
REUTERS
Scientists have long puzzled over

Mercury's excessively dark
surface. New research in Nature
Geoscience suggests that carbon
from passing comets could be the
planet's mystery darkening agent.
DNA reveal insights

into Coast Redwoods
AP
Unlike most conifer trees, coast

redwoods can reproduce by
sprouting from cut stumps, fallen
logs, and roots. Patterns of the
tree clones show up in a new DNA
analysis method.
CM
YK
re the current radiation

protection
standards
based on best science? Can
we improve them now, by using
advanced
scientific
knowledge, tools and techniques which were not available two decades ago?
Too stringent radiation
protection standards will impose humongous expenditure
on society; too liberal standards may cause unacceptable health impact for the
population. Is it proper to
spend astronomical amounts
to reduce patently trivial radiation risks to still lower
values?
During the early years,
many who handled x-ray
equipment and radium carelessly died. Shortly after the
discovery of x rays and radium, scientists found that radiation can damage the skin.
The aim of the first radiation
protection standard was to
avoid obvious radiation injuries. Over the years, as more
information became available, the specialists lowered
the dose limits substantially
to the present values.

High level radiation exposures may cause cancer.
Scientists accepted a prudent approach to derive radiation protection standards
based on the Linear No
Threshold (LNT) hypothesis
which states that the response to radiation is proportional to dose without a
threshold.
LNT hypothesis is shaky in
the low dose region. That the
smallest dose may initiate
cancer is un-provable. This
led to needless controversies
even among scholarly bodies,
though workers have been
handling radiation sources
safely for over a century.
In a cell exposed to radiation, the precisely set cell
multiplication mechanism
may fail; it may multiply uncontrollably causing cancer.
Cell repair takes place at low
doses; but we are not sure
whether the repair will be
perfect or not.
Scientists have developed
micro-beams to study how
single cells behave when hit
Shortly after the discovery of x-rays and radium,

scientists found that radiation can damage the skin.
PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
by all types of radiation (alpha particles, electrons and

x-rays) of different energies.
They can now record a single
Double Strand Break (DSB) of
DNA. DSB may be important
in cancer induction.
Using these tools and techniques of unparalleled sensitivity, scientists unravelled
biological responses such as
bystander effects, adaptive
response, and genomic instability and challenged the no-
tion that cancer originates in

a single cell
Cells hit by radiation communicate with neighbouring
cells which are affected either
directly, or indirectly from
release of substances into
blood. We do not fully know
the importance of bystander
effects.
Scientists found that cells
exposed to low doses change
their response to a subsequent radiation exposure.
The adaptive response became controversial because

of the claim that it proves the
beneficial effects of low dose
radiation!
After getting hit by radiation, cells may divide and return to their normal state.
The cells formed after a few
divisions had abnormalities
in their chromosomes. This
genomic instability occurs
frequently.
Low dose research supported by US Department of
Energy during 1998-2008 revealed a lot; but was not
enough to arrive at more scientific standards.
In a review published in
Radiation Research (2013),
Drs W.F Morgan and W. J
Blair of Pacific North West
National Laboratory, U.S.
suggested that system biology approach may help to resolve the complex issues.
The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) arrived at
radiation risk estimates
based primarily on human
epidemiology; this includes
the effects, if any, of adaptive

response, bystander effects
and genomic instability in the
final outcome. They may not
influence radiation risk estimates. Thus the present
ICRP recommendations on
dose limits are based on
sound judgment, and are robust and pragmatic. All scholarly bodies agree that so far,
researchers did not find any
evidence for a threshold dose.
Many extensive studies of
tens of thousands of radiation
workers show that the impact, if any, of low dose exposures is acceptably low. In
spite of being the most studied agent, why public considers radiation differently?
When we use antibiotics,
we trust the tests done to
study them. We feel assured
that, when clinically indicated and the doses are right,
benefit far outweighs the possible harm. Scientists must
convince the public that radiation risks are better studied
than risks from drugs.
We need to educate the
public regarding the impor-
tance of acceptable levels of

risklevels that are believed
to include risks, but risks for
adverse effects that are so
small that one would not be
able to observe and measure
an excess of the effects with a
realistic study. Only then will
the fear and paranoia associated with radiation effects
gradually become less and
less...., Ian Douple, Associate
Chief of Research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hiroshima, proposed
in an e-mail response to this
writer.
That is the way forward.
Over emphasis on hormesis
and over simplification of
some observations by medical and nuclear enthusiasts
may not be appropriate. Not
yet. Low dose research must
continue. There are no short
cuts. Using the correct information, we disseminate, discerning public will make the
right choice.
K.S. PARTHASARATHY
Former Secretary, Atomic
Energy Regulatory Board
ksparth@yahoo.co.uk
ND-ND
16
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / AGRICULTURE
QUESTION CORNER
Sonar, radar
Why is sonar and not radar used in water for tracking
objects at greater depths? Can sonar be used for tracking
objects in air just as radar does?
GAURAV AWASTHI
New Delhi
Radar uses high frequency radio waves and microwaves
for communication whereas sonar uses high frequency
sound waves. Though the processes involved in both the
cases are same, there is a fundamental difference. Radio
waves are electromagnetic waves whereas sound waves are
mechanical waves. Energy loss of any wave in a medium
arises from two important factors namely, scattering and
absorption by the particles (atoms or molecules) present in
the medium.
In air, radar system sends radio waves and upon reflection from the target, the reflected radio waves will be
received. Since density of air is less, the absorption of radio
waves by air molecules is very less. But the absorption of
radio waves by sea water is very high especially at high
frequencies. This is because water molecules and electrically charged ions effectively absorb radio waves. For example, sea water can absorb almost 99 per cent of high
frequency radio waves within one metre length. Typically,
submarines are inside the sea by several kilometers which
makes it very difficult to communicate to them through
radio waves. Even if one can try to communicate by low
frequency (longer wavelength) radio waves, then the
length of the antenna would be of the order of few thousand
kilometres, which is practically not possible. Also, usage of
low frequency radio waves results in slower data transfer.
However being mechanical waves, sound waves can
propagate few hundreds of kilometers and water molecules
and ions cannot absorb much. For example, 10 kHz radio
wave can propagate only 6m inside sea whereas for the
same frequency a sound wave can travel 38 km. However,
the absorption of sound waves in air is very high when
compared to radio waves. For example, the intensity of
sound waves is 3,000 times reduced when compared with
sea water. Hence usage of sound waves in air is limited only
to short distances.
DR. K. SARAVANAKUMAR
Assistant Professor of Physics
Department of Physical Sciences
Bannari Amman Institute of Technology
Sathyamangalam, Tamil Nadu
This weeks questions

How can deep ocean organisms sustain the immense
water pressure while terrestrial organisms cannot?
Kishore Gorakshanath Kanade, New Delhi
Why is the epicentre of an earthquake always above the
focus, though energy released at focus can move in any
direction and reach any point on the crust?
Kumarpal, New Delhi
How do plants survive after shedding leaves?
Kalyan
How is artificial gravity produced as it is implemented in
the plot of the recent blockbuster movie Interstellar?
Santhosh Kumar R., Puducherry
Readers can send questions/answers on science and technology for the Question Corner
along with their names and address to the following email id:
questioncorner@thehindu.co.in or to The Editor, The Hindu (Science and Technology),
859-860, Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002.
CM
YK
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
FARMERS NOTEBOOK
Organic farming in mulberry

for sustainable silk production
Details of eco-friendly inputs are available on the website csrtimys.res.in
M.J. PRABU
ndiscriminate use of
chemical inputs is an
indeterminable setback to many industries
associated
with
agriculture.
Similarly is the case in sericulture. Mulberry, the food
plant of silkworm is a perennial crop and once planted
can be maintained for years
together without much
effort.
Production of quality
mulberry leaves is mandatory for the sericulture farmers to ensure healthy growth
of silkworms and better silk
thread harvest.
Therefore the agronomical practices such as application of fertilizers, weeding,
irrigation, plant protection
measures at bimonthly intervals after each leaf harvest are important for good
and healthy leaf production.
Indiscriminate use
Like in many crops, here
too chemical inputs are indiscriminately applied to
gain short term results.
In general one acre of
mulberry garden receives 1.5
metric tonne of fertilizers
and 12-15 sprays of toxic insecticides annually which
causes deleterious effects on
the beneficial organisms and
on silkworms, says Dr. V.
Sivaprasad, Director, Central Sericulture Research
and Training Institute, Central Silk Board, Mysore.
Though chemical farming
initially yields good results,
its negative impact on leaf
yield, quality and cocoon
productivity is pronounced
in a few years.
Therefore, promotion of
organic farming in sericulture is imperative to sustain
the industry and intensive
research on production of
SUSTAINING: Officials from the Central Silk Board inspecting an organically

grown mulberry garden. -PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
organic silk is in the pipeline,
he adds.
The institute has already
standardised application of a
number of organic inputs like
farmyard manure, compost,
vermicompost, and green manures ,and developed special
formulations of bio-fertilizers and foliar sprays to minimise the use of chemical
fertilizers and to organically
promote soil health in mulberry gardens.
Other methods
Other eco-friendly formulations like bionema and nemahari to control root knot
nematodes, chetak and navinya for management of root
rot disease and spraying
strong jets of water on mulberry garden are found effective to manage sucking pests
and are advised for farmers.
Similarly, thermal weeding
and black polythene mulching are also introduced to
avoid application of weedicides as well as to overcome
the labour scarcity problem
for manual weeding.
According to Dr. Sivaprasad, about 12-15 metric
tonnes of sericulture waste,
comprising silkworm litter,
unfed leftover mulberry leaves, soft twigs, farm weeds etc
are obtained from a hectare of
ical based farming frequently

met with crop failures and
their productivity remains
below 60kg.
Tamil Nadu is leading in
silk production mainly because of more adoption of organic farming practices,
explains N.Sakthivel, extension scientist, Central silk
Better than manure
board, Srivilliputtur.
This is nutritionally much
A technical bulletin titled
superior than farmyard ma- Organic farming in mulbernure. The technology for ry: Recent break through, for
composting sericulture waste the benefit of sericulture
is widely popularised by the farmers, field functionaries
and researchers has been
institute among growers.
Most of the farmers in dif- published by the board.
ferent parts of the state supplement
the
nutrient Website
The details of eco-friendly
requirement of their mulberry garden with the locally inputs of sericulture and the
available organic inputs like packages of organic farming
farmyard manures, com- are available on the website
posts, pressmud, poultry ma- csrtimys.res.in
nures, sheep and goat
For more information inmanures.
etrested farmers can contact
office of the Director, Central
Sheep penning
sericulture research and
Sheep penning is also a tra- training institute, Central silk
dition practised commonly in board, Manandavadi road,
Tamil Nadu for enhancing Srirampura, Mysore -570
soil fertility naturally.
008. Phone: 08212362757,
Organic farmers success- email: siva.nsso@gmail.com,
fully harvest cocoons all and csrtimys@gmail.com and
through the season and their Dr. N.Sakthivel, extension
average cocoon production is scientist, CSRTI, Srivilliputgreater than 80 kg per 100 tur, Tamil Nadu on email:
disease free laying while the sakthivelcsb@hotmail.com,
farmers who practice chem- mobile:9842761789.
mulberry garden annually,
from which the plant nutrients such as nitrogen (280300kg), phosphorous (90100kg) and potash (150200kg) as well as all essential
micro nutrients can be generated
when
properly
composted.
Use of sex pheromones

in IPM
males are trapped. Hence,
any attempt to suppress the
population by trapping males
ex pheromones are gener- would require a sufficient
ally produced by female number of trapped males so
insects to attract males of the that nearly all females would
same species for mating. In go unmated.
Integrated pest management,
pheromones are used in dif- Population density
ferent ways such as monitorTheoretical considerations
ing through trap catch, killing of mass-trapping males take
through mass trapping, mat- into account the density of
ing disruption and attracti- males in the population and
cide (lure and kill) methods.
the potential number of matings a male is able to secure in
Used for detection
its lifetime. If a male can mate
Pheromone traps in stored with ten females in a lifetime
insect management can be then up to 90 per cent of the
used to detect both the pres- male population can be
ence and the density of pests. trapped without affecting the
They are useful to define ar- number of mated females as
eas of pest infestation, partic- well as the subsequent larval
ularly where the overall generation.
distribution and life cycle are
The attracticide (or lure
poorly understood.
and kill) concept-based
Their purpose is to achieve method involves using a phea more accurate control and romone to lure insects to a
to limit the usage of insecti- specific point source or an arcides to only when strictly ea whereby they contact a
necessary. Pheromone traps toxicant which causes a rapid
are generally effective when kill or contamination with
pest numbers are very low some kind of pathogen.
and so they can be used qualIn the protection of stored
itatively to provide an early products there are many
warning of pest incidence.
promising results on the use
To successfully capture at- of the attracticide concept in
tracted pest insects, a trap has flour mills and confectionary
to be escape-proof, which can industries.
be achieved by a sticky sur(Dr. D. N. Kambrekar, Sciface to which the trapped in- entist Regional Agricultural
sects become irreversibly Research Station, UAS Camattached or by some kind of pus, Vijayapur (Karnatafunnel or pitfall systems.
ka)-586
101
Email:
In the case of female-pro- kambrekardn@uasd.in
duced sex pheromones only Phone: 08352-230568.)
D. N. KAMBREKAR
FARM QUERY
Casuarina seedlings
Can you guide me to somebody who can help me source
Casuarina seedlings for planting in my two acres near
Pudukottai, Tamil Nadu?
RAJ STEPHEN
Tamil Nadu
You can contact Mr. Dhanapathy a farmer from Pudukkottai for your requirements. Mr. G.S. Dhanapathy can be
reached at Bharathipuram ,1377, Kamban Nagar, Pudukkottai
622003, Vaithur Post, Tamil Nadu, mobile: 9443593339,
email:goshakthi@gmail.com, Phone: 04322-261139.
Readers are invited to send their queries with full postal address to Farm Queries, The Hindu,
Kasturi Buildings, 859/860, Anna Salai, Chennai 600002 or email to farmqueries@thehindu.co.in
ND-ND
14
BUSINESS
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
Debilitating effect
of silicosis
AARTI DHAR
recent report of the Rajasthan State Human

Rights Commission making
far-ranging
recommendations to check highly fatal and
debilitating silicosis, has once
again drawn attention towards the gravity of the situation and the urgent need to
take measures to prevent it.
Silicosis is a brotic lung
disorder caused by inhalation, retention and pulmonary reaction to crystalline
silica, as a result of exposure
during mining, stone crushing and quarrying activities.
The most common form of
silica is quartz. Exceptionally
high exposure of silica can
cause silicosis within a month
with a signicant impairment
of lungs within few years. The
major silicosis prone industries are: stone quarries and
crushers; quartz mining;
foundries; sand blasting; ceramics; gem cutting and polishing; slate and pencil;
construction; mining; and
glass manufacturing.
As per the report of Indian
Council for Medical Research
(1999), about 30 lakh workers
in India are at a high risk of
exposure to silica. Out of
these, 17 lakh are in mining/
quarrying activities, 6.3 lakh
in glass and mica industry
and 6.7 lakh in metals industry. In addition, 53 lakh construction workers are also at
the risk of silica exposure. Experts say this number could
be much more as detection is
low and is often diagnosed
and treated for tuberculosis
which aggravates the situation for the patients.
Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi
and Karnataka are some of
the worst affected States. The
potential victims are poor migrant workers employed as
casual labourers who suffer
or die for lack of specialised
treatment.
Way back in 2011, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) tabled a
Special report to Parliament
of India on silicosis rst of
CM
YK
its kind and said failure of

the government to provide
health facilities was a violation of human rights while
suggesting that the government should ensure health
care to all workers employed
at places prone to silica and
earmark adequate compensation to the families in the case
of death.
The NHRC is of the view
that the occupational hazard
of silicosis is preventable if
the working conditions are
property regulated and proper warning and protective
equipments are used. Once a
worker or any other person is
afflicted by silicosis it becomes a constitutional obligation on part of the State to
take appropriate short-term
and long-term measures from
the point of view of providing
medical facilities and rehabilitation of the victims, the report said.
The Commission has prepared a set of recommendations
for
prevention,
treatment and rehabilitation
of silicosis patients including
the use of modern technology
to prevent the disease, regular health check-ups for
workers whether regular,
contractual or daily wagers
at places where they are exposed to silica and even linking silica treatment with the
TB Control Programme.
In addition to suggesting
legislative protection for silicosis patients, the special report had also recommended
automatic compensation for
the victims and social security cover to those at risk. Further, it had called for
amending legal provisions
like the Mines Act, Factories
Act, Workman's Compensation Act and the ESI Act to
bring under their purview
those at risk of silicosis and
stricter implementation of
the existing laws.
However, there has been
very little implementation of
these recommendations as
well as the existing laws, both
at the Centre and the State
level, putting lakhs of workers employed in these hazardous jobs at risk.
QUESTION CORNER
FARMERS NOTEBOOK
Tree survival
Small growers join forces to

build their own warehouses
How do trees survive after shedding their leaves?

KALYAN
Certain plants are perennials and survive from year to year
by matching their growth to the progression of the seasons or
by suspending growth altogether during unfavourable times,
such as winter or a dry season.
The resting bud consists of a short axis, with the shoot apex
surrounded by modied unexpanded primordial leaves, which
protect the shoot apex having the shoot apical meristem,
especially from drying.
The cells in these leaves show marked frost resistance,
similar to that of the embryo of the seed. In the case of
herbaceous plants, the marked changes that occur during this
unfavourable season are dying back of aerial parts altogether,
leaving protected organs at or below the soil surface.
Many types of trees shed their leaves as a strategy to survive
harsh weather conditions. In temperate forests , trees shed
their leaves during autumn as cold weather approaches. In
tropical and subtropical forests, trees shed their leaves at the
onset of the dry season. Trees that lose all of their leaves for
part of the year are known as deciduoustrees.
Leaves are expensive organs for a tree to build and maintain. During winter (in cold climates) or the dry season (in
warmer climates) it becomes difficult for the tree to maintain
its water balance as there is less free water available in the soil.
It is thusdifficult for the tree to keep its leavesturgidand the
cells of the tissues in the leaves would become damaged by the
cold in temperate areas, or the heat in warmer areas. Instead
of remaining actively growing during this time of the year the
tree enters a dormant period.
Trees are adapted to the climate of the area where they
grow. They do not wait for their leaves to be damaged by the
harsh conditions of the winter or dry season. They prepare in
advance for the onset of the unfavourable season by getting
ready to lose their leaves.
Shedding leaves helps trees to conserve water andenergy.
This process is called abscission.
At the start of the abscission process, trees reabsorb valuable nutrients proteins and carbohydrates from their leaves
and store them for later use in their branches or roots. Thus
the leaf that is due to fall does not take these substances with it
and an important part of the materials necessary to form
leaves in the future is retained.Many types of trees shed their
leaves as a strategy to survive cold or dry weather and so leaf
shedding is a purposeful separation process and it will never
leave the pant to die.
S. PALANIAPPAN
Editor
Research Journal of Biological Sciences
J.J. College of Arts and Science (Autonomous)
Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu

Why does elephantiasis most often affect the legs?
Sapna Prasad, Chennai
Why does milk boiling in a milk cooker not overow?
George Philip, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh
Why do most of the clouds move from south to north
direction over our sub continent?
Maheshkumar T., Mulanur, Tamil Nadu
Members from the local self-help groups volunteered to work for free
M.J. PRABU
ermalam in Erode
district, Tamil Nadu, is covered by
thick reserve forests. Agriculture and livestock are the key livelihood
for the people there. The land
holding of each farmer is
about one to three acres of
dry land where cultivation
predominantly depends on
the monsoon. Maize is the
main crop grown extensively
apart from ragi, lablab, tapioca, black gram, horse gram
and french beans as minor
crops.
Like paddy in the delta regions, in this region, maize
was the major sustenance
crop and as usual marketing
the produce was a big
bottleneck.
Private lenders
The small farmers used to
borrow from moneylenders
at 3-5 per cent interest per
month for purchasing seeds
and fertilizers and the moneylenders usually arrived at
the farm during harvesting
season and took away from
the farmer a volume of produce equal to the loan principal and interest.
Being indebted, farmers
did not have much control
over the rates the moneylenders xed. Besides, the
moneylenders used their own
faulty weighing scales, says
Dr. P. Alagesan, Programme
Coordinator, Myrada ( Mysore Resettlement and Development
Agency),
Gobichettipalayam,
Tamil
Nadu.
Farmers therefore lost out
both on rates as well as the
weight of their produce. Since
they had no idea of the market availability or the prevailing rate for maize they did not
have much choice. Some of
GOOD IDEA: The model cut labour costs as farmers themselves brought in their
produce from their farms.- PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
them tried to market the produce themselves but the high
cost incurred on transportation (especially, since they
had small volumes each)
forced them to sell the maize
as soon as it was harvested.
And the market was a
buyers arena.
Traders offered low prices
for the produce taking advantage of the fact that the sellers
were not locals and had come
from faraway places. Farmers
were often forced to agree to
the buyers rates as they
wanted to go back home early
and there were costs involved
for storing their maize in
warehouses.
Not enough place

Stored grain also lost moisture and its quality deteriorated. There was not enough
place in Germalam to store all
the maize.
A decade back when this
problem was being discussed
among the local community
one of the ideas that emerged
was the construction of community warehouses in their
own areas.
Accordingly
they
approached Myrada institute in
their region to see whether
this was possible. Based on
the area of maize grown and
the number of farmers who
would directly benet from and unloading costs from the

this project, it was decided farm to warehouse are borne
that two warehouses could be by producers themselves.
constructed in two villages.
After deducting all the expenditures, the warehouse
Management
committee bank account curBoth the warehouses rently has a balance of about
would be managed by the self- Rs.30,000.
help groups in the respective
villages. Since it was commu- Governmental support
Based on the success of
nity managed and maize being a seasonal crop, both the these two warehouses the
warehouses did not require government has also come
forward to support setting up
year- round management.
The model cut labour of two more warehouses with
costs as farmers themselves active support from Myrada.
Presently the four warebrought in their produce
from their farms to the warehouses constructed by the
house. No full time staff was Myrada Germalam Project
required. Members from the have proved their worth and
local self-help groups volun- the government is rapidly
teered to work for free. replicating the programme.
Therefore the annual mainte- Apart from the three already
nance costs for the ware- supported by the governhouse was as low as Rs.1,000 ment, six more are being
mainly for whitewashing build in the Kadambur and
and cleaning and this was Thalavady hills in collaborapaid out of the warehouse action with the District Rural
Agency
count, explains Dr. Alagesan. Development
The warehouses charge dif- (DRDA).
For more information conferent rentals for those who
have contributed to its contact Dr. P. Alagesan, Prostruction chiey self-help gramme Coordinator, Krishi
Vigyan Kendra, Kalingiyam
groups and outsiders.
Gobichettipalayam,
The groups pay a rent of P.O.,
Rs.1 per bag stored per Erode district-638 453,
myradakvk@damonth. Other individuals pay Email:
Rs.1.50 per bag per month. No taone.in, azhagujanani@yamobile:
additional charges are levied hoo.com,
as the transportation, loading 09443897654.
ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
15
New hope for Alzheimer's
Carbon nanotube computing?
Scientists, using an animal model, have shown that

the drug Edaravone could alleviate the progressive
cognitive decits of Alzheimer's Disease.
Single-walled carbon nanotube composites have

correlation between concentration/viscosity/
conductivity and computational capability.
The use of shocking pictorial warnings turns the power of packaging on its head
A pictorial warning must shock

Tobacco packaging is the last vehicle
used by tobacco companies to
reinforce their brand
R. PRASAD
hat is the connection

between
a
scorpion, tobacco and cancer? Well, absolutely nothing. If
any, it is the crab that is an international symbol of cancer.
Yet, the previous government
chose the scorpion as one of the
pictorial warnings on tobacco
products!
Though the current controversy on pictorial warnings has
nally boiled down
to the size of the
warnings, size is just
one of the critical aspects. Even if the
Parliamentary Committee decides to
heed to the Prime Ministers order of bigger pictorial warnings,

the very purpose of pictorial
warnings can be undermined
and destroyed by choosing meaningless and ineffectual ones, as
the previous government did.
More graphic (and often
shocking) images are considered
to have a greater impact and to be
more likely to lead to behavioural
change, notes a WHO report.
In the UK, the most graphic
pictures that revealed the negative health impacts of smoking
received the most votes from the
people. Ditto in the case of Canada. Participants consistently expected or wanted to be shocked
by [health warning messages], or
emotionally affected in some
ways. Emotional impact of a
warning appeared to predict its
ability to inform and/or motivate
thoughts of quitting, notes a
2009 WHO report.
The positive effects of shocking images on tobacco users have
been well documented. Nearly
67 per cent of smokers in Brazil
and New Zealand and 44 per cent
in the case of Canada and Thailand wanted to quit smoking as a
result of graphic pictorial warnings.
Similarly, nearly 54 per cent
of people in Brazil and Thailand and 58 per cent in Canada changed their opinion
about the health consequences of smoking on see-
ing shocking pictorial warnings.

These were some of the ndings
of the WHO on the impact of
pictorial warnings on current
users.
Tobacco packaging is the last
vehicle used by tobacco companies to reinforce their brand,
make their products more appealing and entice new users to
start consuming tobacco. In the
process, they successfully distract consumers from the harsh
reality of the harmful effects of
tobacco on health.
The use of shocking pictorial
warnings thus turns the power of
packaging on its head. While negating the power of the tobacco
companies to reinforce and build
the brand, pictorial warnings
convey clear and immediate
message of the harmful effects
of tobacco consumption at a very
little or no cost to the government.
If pictorial warnings can create awareness of all the harmful
effects of tobacco consumption
even among a large chunk of the
educated population, the benets will be tremendously high in
the case of poor, illiterate people.
Tobacco companies are too
well aware of the huge adverse
effect of large, shocking pictorial
warnings on their bottom line.
And they will pull out all the
stops to dilute the amendment,
as was seen recently with the
MPs batting for the tobacco
ILLUSTRATION:
SATWIK GADE
Indian research on
smokeless tobacco,
bidi, pan masala
An Indian man prepares chewing tobacco, ghutka.

PHOTO: AFP
SNAPSHOTS
he recent controversy
about several members
of the Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation on Rules on the
Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act 2003 highlighted
how
nancial
interests of the members
outed ethical principles.
These gentlemen should
have resigned from the committee. They did not, and the
Prime Ministers office had
to take corrective action.
And they took liberties
with truth, which are now
published both in the official
government website and in
the press and media. The
chairman said: Bidis are
natural products (sic) and
are very small as compared
to cigarettes. As such, bidis
should not be compared
with cigarettes as far as rules
are concerned. Well, are
cigarettes made from natural products too? Another
said: there is very little tobacco in each bidi, hence the
harmful effects are nil as
compared to cigarettes and
chewing tobacco A third
SPEAKING OF SCIENCE
Fuel breakthrough for

hydrogen cars
Anaesthetics causing
climate change: study
How TB ravaged 18th

century Europe
said: what people nd in

Abu Dhabi does not apply to
India. There is no work done
in India to show that bidi and
smokeless tobacco (meaning
ghutka etc) cause cancer. A
fourth one knows some people who smoke 60 cigarettes
a day and are yet cancer-free.
Clearly, each one of these
statements is disingenuous.
I refer the reader to the comprehensive special section
on tobacco control, published in the Indian journal Current Science, Vol.96, no.10,
25 May 2009 available free
on the net. The article there
by Drs. C. Ray and P. C. Gupta (pp.1324-1334) cites as
many as 37 studies done by
Indians in India (out of a total of 65 references). So, to
say that there are no Indian
studies on bidi and smokeless tobacco use and their
health effects and cancer
connection is plain nonsense. The above review further points out the bidi
smoke contains many of the
same cancer causing chemicals as cigarette smoke, and
that bidi smoking generates
Internet-style LANs in
cerebral cortex of rats
Behind the picture

he controversy on Union
Health Ministrys decision, to defer the mandatory
display of large pictorial health
warnings (PHWs) on tobacco
packs, has mostly focused on
the conict of interest created
by a beedi industry owner inuencing the recommendation of the Parliamentary
Committee on Subordinate
Legislation. While this brings
tobacco industry inuence to
the forefront for public scrutiny, it is also necessary to highlight the need for effective
pictorial warnings.
The World Health Organisations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
(FCTC) came into force in
2005 and now has 180 countries as Parties to the treaty.
FCTC prescribes several measures for reduction of both demand and supply of tobacco.
An important demand reduction measure is the placement
of prominent health warnings
on all tobacco product packages, to caution current and potential users, on the harmful
effects of tobacco consumption. Elaborate guidelines
have been developed and
adopted by the Parties to
FCTC, including India, on
how these warnings should be
displayed as a combination of
pictures and text.
India passed its own legislation in 2003, to regulate all
tobacco products. This too has
a provision for health warnings which must be displayed
in a rotational series of different warnings. Under this provision, the Health Ministry
has to periodically issue notications on the nature of
warnings that must be displayed covering the size,
content and nature of display.
The intent of mandating
PHWs on tobacco product
packs is to communicate the
very real and horric health
risks of tobacco consumption,
to dissuade a user from continued or rst use of these
dangerous products. While
public education campaigns
also do that, the effect of see-
ing the graphic picture of tobacco related disease on a pack

which is personally handled is
stronger and immediate.
Warnings adopted by many
countries now depict scary
images of cancer, heart attack,
stroke, leg gangrene, respiratory failure, cataract, impotence and low birth weight or
stillbirth on tobacco packs.
These are indeed among the
dangerous effects on health, of
which most people are unaware. Now we know that tobacco consumption also
increases the risk of acquiring
and dying from TB and even of
developing diabetes. Warnings also convey the fact that
second hand smoke harms
loved family members.
The guidelines provided by
FCTC call for both prominent
surfaces of the pack to be covered by the warnings. It is recommended that over 50 per
cent of the area should be covered, though the minimum
mandated is 30 per cent. Several countries have opted for
PHWs which cover 80 per
cent or more. Australia introduced plain packaging, which
eliminates brand colours and
logos but only lists the brand
name in plain lettering. This
not only reduces the visual appeal of the pack but also highlights the pictorial warning.
Ireland and United Kingdom
have recently enacted similar
laws and New Zealand is likely
to follow soon.
The need for prominent
pictorial warnings is even
greater in India than in high
income countries, because the
largest segment of tobacco users in our country are poor
and have low levels of literacy.
Yet, the introduction of effective warnings on tobacco
similar or slightly higher nicotine levels in the blood

compared to conventional
cigarette smoking.
These data have been published in the report Bidi
Smoking and Public Health,
edited by P.C. Gupta and S.
Asma, submitted to the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, India in 2008 (ref.
21 and 22 in the above paper), and are freely accessible to all, including the
Subordinate
Committee
members, if only they had
tried. It is clear that the
Committee had members
whose business interests
have made them cancer-deniers (similar to the climate
change deniers of the U.S.).
Even as we concentrate on
tobacco smoking, let us not
forget smokeless tobacco
and pan masala, which too
are consumed by many as 45
per cent of Indians, namely,
almost every second Indian.

These are in the form of
snuff, chewing tobacco, tobacco leaf, gutkha, mawa,
and the like. Gutkha is basically a avoured and sweetened dry mixture of areca
nut (supari), catechu (kattha), slaked lime and tobacco. The same without the
tobacco is termed pan masala. Here again there is plenty
of Indian research done in
India (and in neighbouring
Sri Lanka) to link their continual use with what is referred to as oral submucosal
brosis or OSF.Even pan
masala and areca nut use is
worrisome. Drs. Kalpagam
Polasa,
B.
Sesikeran,
P.C.Gupta, Ranju Ralhan, A.
Mukherjee, B. J. Dave, Sabakhan, R. A. Bhisey are just
some researchers (I am missing out on many other
equally distinguished researchers, and apologise for
The Great Barrier Reef

can be restored fully
Working up a sweat: it
could save your life
Endangered tortoises
prefer invasive plants
is true, and as an occasional

use or as a social grace it
should be limited. The saving grace is in the practice of
offering or even consuming
it with betel leaf.
This is because the betel
leaf contains many compounds that tend to be not
only benecial but also some
molecules that are chemopreventive (work by Drs S.V.
Bhide and Colleagues at the
Cancer Res. Inst, Parel,
Mumbai) and antioxidants
(by Shetty and others as the
NITTE University, Mangalore) and others. We had
covered it in an earlier column in this newspaper (issue of November 4, 2010),
and the most recent review
on this issue comes from Drs
R. Toprani and D. Patel of
the HCG Cancer Centre, Ahmedabad, titled: Betel Leaf:
Revisiting the benets of an
ancient herb, in the South
Asian J. Cancer. p. 140-141,
2013. Next time when someone offers you Tambulam,
think about these.
D. BALASUBRAMANIAN
dbala@lvpei.org
New device separates

cancer cells from blood
Introduced plants make up

roughly half the diet of two subspecies of endangered Galapagos
tortoise. They seem to prefer
non-native to native plants, which
may nourish them in dry season.
REUTERS
AP
NISSAR AHMAD
packs of smoked and chewed

products has been slow and
stubbornly resisted by the tobacco industry. Initially, two
very feeble warnings were introduced, with a scarcely discernible spot in a Chest X-Ray
and cartoon of a scorpion, supposedly indicative of cancer.
Field studies showed that people did not understand what
they meant. The international
symbol is the crab and not the
scorpion!
More recently, stronger pictures have replaced those
comical attempts at subterfuge. However, the 40 per cent
display on only one surface
means the total display area is
only 20 per cent, falling short
of FCTCs minimum requirement. A larger warning, with
60 per cent picture and 25 per
cent text, has been proposed.
The Health Ministry now has
pre-tested larger warnings
and dummy packs have been
prepared even for conically
shaped beedi packets. The
new set was to be notied on
April 1, 2015. However, the
recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee halted
the notication.
The health risks, of active
and passive consumption of
tobacco, are well proven by
several scientic studies from
India and abroad. Even beedi
smoking has been shown to
increase the risk of cancer and
heart attacks.
Every tobacco user has the
right to be informed of the
health risks, so that an informed choice can be made. If
our policy makers are earnest
in their commitment to reduce tobacco consumption
and its harm to the Indian
people, as stated in the legislation passed unanimously by
the Parliament in 2003, they
should introduce effective
PHWs without delay or dilution. If cancer does not make a
pretty picture, neither does
political procrastination in
protecting people's health.
PROF. K. SRINATH REDDY
President, Public Health
Foundation of India, Delhi
If cancer does not

make a pretty picture,
neither does political
procrastination in
protecting people's
health
the lapse), and they have

produced a volume of literature on the constant use of
Pan masala, and supari (areca nut) and OSF. It starts as
intolerance to spicy food,
rigidity of lip and tongue,
hardening of the submucosal
bres, and whitening of the
area (leukoplasia). Two detailed reviews on the connection
between
the
continuous use of pan masala and OSF appear in (a) the
journal Mutagenesis, 2004
by Urmila Nair and others,
and (b) in Oral Oncology,
2006 by W.M. Tilakaratne
and others, both free on the
net. The most recent Indian
work on areca nut chewing
and OSF comes from R.
Anand and others in J. Cancer Res. Ther. 2014. Thus we
need to worry when a pan
masala king joins any panel
involved in restricting the
use of supari and gutkha.
That areca nut, used for
centuries in India and the
East, both as a health practice and as social courtesy
can have ill effects would
worry many readers. Sadly it
TO SAY THAT THERE ARE NO INDIAN

STUDIES ON BIDI, SMOKELESS TOBACCO
USE AND THEIR ILL EFFECTS IS NONSENSE
Leading coral reef scientists say

Australia could restore the Great
Barrier Reef to its former glory.
They argue that all the stressors
on the Reef need to be reduced
for it to recover.
Anaesthetic gases used to carry

out smooth surgeries are
accumulating in the Earths
atmosphere, where they are
contributing to climate change, a
new study has warned.
Samples from mummies in a

200-year-old crypt in Hungary
have revealed that infections by
multiple strains of tuberculosis
gripped 18th century Europe when
the disease was at its peak.
companies.
The government had increased the taxes on tobacco
products and listed out a few
measures in a draft Bill to curb
consumption prohibiting the
sale of the products to those under 21 years, prohibiting the sale
of cigarettes/bidis in loose, banning the display of tobacco products at outlets, and banning the
use of brand name of tobacco
products to promote non-tobacco products. But it is only in the
case of pictorial warning that
there has been a reaction by the
MPs, who are acting on behalf of
the tobacco companies.
The reasons are quite obvious.
Except in prohibiting the use of
tobacco brand names to promote non-tobacco products and
increasing the excise duty on tobacco products, none of the other measures listed in the draft
Bill by the government can ever
be effectively enforced. Even in
the case of taxes, the hike was
limited to cigarettes and chewing tobacco (smokeless tobacco)
and bidis were exempted from it.
This is despite the fact that nearly 85 per cent of smokers in India consumed bidis.
Even in the case of cigarettes,
the net negative effect of tax hike
on consumption will be very
limited. Since there are four different cigarette lengths sold in
the country, consumers can always switch over to smaller
length cigarettes and thus escape the brunt of the tax hike.
Also, the hike is not linked to
ination and, hence, the increased tax will, in due course,
be insignicant.
But, it is completely different
in the case of pictorial warnings.
They will turn out to be the biggest deterrent in the case of children and young, new users, and
current users are very likely to
reduce consumption and even
quit smoking.
An October 21, 2014 editorial
in The Hindu had noted: How
well the government resists such
pressure [to dilute the amendment] will show how determined it is to win the war against
tobacco. Since one million people in India die each year because of tobacco use, the
government should not sacrice
proven and obvious health benets at the altar of commercial
advantage.
AP
AFP
Unlike other hydrogen fuel

production methods that rely on
highly processed sugars, a team
used the husks and stalks of corn
plants, cutting expense and
making fuel a local enterprise.
CM
YK
SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA.
For years, scientists focused on

what could be seen the rat
brains lobes, grooves and folds.
Now, they've discovered local
area networks (LANs) of neurons
nested into one another.
AP
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Physical activity that makes you

puff and sweat is key to avoiding
an early death, a large study has
found. Vigorous activity led to 9 to
13 per cent lower mortality,
compared with moderate activity.
Scientists, including one of Indianorigin, have developed a low-cost

device that uses sound to
separate circulating cancer cells
from blood samples for diagnostic,
prognosis and treatment.
ND-ND
14
BUSINESS
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
Stock pile-up puts sugar industry in a fix

N. Anand
CHENNAI: The sugar industry is
facing the worst-ever nancial crisis due to pile-up of

surplus sugar of 90 lakh
tonnes, said Indian Sugar
Mills Association (ISMA), Director General Abinash
Verma.
For the last ve years, India
carried forward surplus sugar, he said. By the end of the
current sugar season in Sep-
tember, the country would

end up with a surplus of 90
lakh tonnes, 30 lakh tonnes
more than the normal stock
required at the beginning of
the next season.
A stock of 90 lakh tonnes
would roughly translate into
locking of working capital of
Rs.27,000 crore borrowed at
an interest rate of 14-16 per
cent. Hence, the Centre
should rationalise the cane
pricing policy across the

FARMERS NOTEBOOK
QUESTION CORNER
Smart technologies for water

management in crops
The sensors are priced at Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 3,000 in the market
M.J. PRABU
PHOTO: C. RATHEESH KUMAR
Wind direction
Why do most of the clouds move from south to north
direction over our subcontinent?
MAHESHKUMAR T.,
Mulanur, Tamil Nadu
Clouds usually move according to the wind pattern.
Wind is caused due to difference in temperatures and
pressures which may be affected by various factors. Movement of wind is a very complex phenomenon affected by
latitude, proximity of water bodies, sea shore and land
undulations. It is also affected by the rotation of the Earth.
Wind blows from points of high pressures to low pressure points. Wind caused due to difference in temperatures
is known as convection current. Wind moves from warmer
regions near the Earth surface to higher up colder regions.
Where the land mass is surrounded by sea water, air near
land surface is warmer and moves up. To replace the air
mass, wind blows from sea to the land mass. This is also
known as breeze. Then there is global movement of wind.
Earth regions near the equator get maximum heat energy from the sun. This causes air to rise up vertically near
the equator. To replace, cold wind blows from higher latitude regions. There are also seasonal variations in the
direction of wind due to tilt of the Earth, which further
makes the phenomenon more complex.
In our subcontinent, the southern regions are surrounded by sea water which causes the wind to move from sea to
the land mass i.e. from south to north. The direction changes as the seasons change.
RASHMI JAIN
Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh

How do non-green coloured leaves in a plant
photosynthesise?
Himanshu Rajmani, New Delhi
What harm, if any, does inhaling the stinky air in public
toilets do to us?
Sukh Simran Singh Gandam, Phagwara, Punjab
How do tears form when we get emotional?
Janani, Chennai
Why don't animals get schizophrenia and how come
human beings do?
T.V. Jayaprakash, Palakkad, Kerala
CM
YK
rrigation projects have

always been part of the
top agenda in any government policy. Each
administration has always
introduced something new
for its part on the water
issue.
Irrigation projects are
like bank ATMs. One knows
how much water is being released from reservoirs but
does not know how each
drop is being distributed or
utilised. It is similar to people remembering how much
money they draw from an
ATM, but dont keep tag on
how each rupee is spent. The
interest shown in creating
infrastructure is not shown
in management of water resources. Without monitoring
water
use,
its
management is not possible, says Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar
Reddy, Coordinator, ClimaAdapt Project, Walamtari, Andhra Pradesh.
Two states
Walamtari is a government organisation in Hyderabad serving farmers of
both Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh States.
Presently they are working on low cost sensors for
water use efficiency, soil
moisture and environmental
parameters, through a project called ClimaAdapt, supported by the Norwegian
Government.
Unlike in olden days, today several smart technologies like sensors are
available to monitor water
resources distribution and
utilisation. The cost of monitoring water usage with the
aid of these technologies is
more reliable and convenient as compared to human
resources engaged for monitoring, says Mr. Bhaskar
SMART TECHNOLOGY: Once every two to three hours information is sent to the
farmers mobile as a message. - PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Reddy. All the farmer needs
to do is to buy and install one
or two sensors in his eld and
irrigation outlets in the elds
for measuring water ow, soil
moisture, temperature and
relative humidity in the atmosphere. Once every two to
three hours information on
the above is sent to the farmers mobile as a message.
Project
As part of a project to popularise it and bring awareness
among farmers Walamtari set
up sensors for measuring water use in paddy crops in the
eld of a beneciary farmer
Mr. K. Prabhakar from Kondrapole village, Miryalaguda,
Nalgonda
District,
Telangana.
Mr. Prabhakar, had been
cultivating the paddy crop for
the last 30 years in about two
hectares. He was utilising water
without
any
measurement.
I used to worry when
there was no water standing
in the eld. I was given training and also taken for an exposure visit on alternate
wetting and drying (AWD)
method in paddy by Walam-
tari. Through them I learnt

that there was no need to
keep the paddy eld always
ooded with water. The water
level can be allowed to even
recede 15 cm below the surface. This will not affect crop
yield. There is a saving of 30
to 40 per cent water by this
method.
And also the crop production is high as the roots penetrate deeper with receding
water and there are more tillers and increase in paddy
yield. The crop also stands
well. Although all sensors are
installed in the eld openly,
none of the sensors was damaged or lost due to theft he
says.
Information timings
Today, after setting up the
sensors in his eld, Mr. Prabhakar is able to get information every three hours on his
mobile about the water ow,
air temperature, soil moisture etc on his mobile phone.
With these systems in
place he is able to schedule
his cropping pattern as per
the requirement.
Mr. Prabhakar was asked to
speak to other farmers in his
region about his experience

and hearing him, farmers
growing chillies and cotton
have come forward to try and
use this technique.
Cost
Some farmers expressed
that they were also willing to
buy these sensors on their
own for irrigation management. Sensors are priced at
Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 3,000.
Being a Government organisation, it does not market
sensors commercially. At present a farmer cannot buy directly from us, but we can
guide them to the right place
from where they can purchase, says Mr. Sai.
Though this is a new concept in an area that already
faces several problems, the
need of the hour is for farmers across the country to become aware about this
concept and try them
personally.
For more information coninterested farmers contact
Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, Coordinator, ClimaAdapt Project,
Walamtari,
email:
saibhaskarnaka@gmail.com,
Mobile:09676799191.
country. It should also purchase the 25-30 lakh tonnes

of sugar at an average cost
that would fetch a cash ow of
around Rs.7,000 crore to the
mills, which could be used to
clear cane arrears.
According to him, there
was a mismatch in cane prices
paid to farmers and the realisation (sale) price of sugar.
While the average cost of sugarcane
production
was
around Rs.1,900 per tonne,
the Centre xed the fair and

remunerative
price
at
Rs.2,200 per tonne. Some
State governments, however,
xed higher prices for sugar
cane.
While prices of products
are determined by the market
forces, the input costs are determined by the government.
We should have the freedom
to decide on the cane quantity
to be sourced or the price at
which it is sourced, he said.
Management practices
for mango malformation
overcrowded due to larger
owers. They continue to
grow and remain as black
ango malformation is a masses of dry tissue during
fungal disease. It was summer but some of them
reported for the rst time continue to grow till the next
season.
from Darbhanga, Bihar.
The disease is more in
northwest than in the north- Management
Diseased plants should
east and South India.
Malformation is one of the be destroyed. Use disease free
most important problems of planting material
Scion sticks from infectmango and a serious threat.
This disorder is widespread ed trees should not be used.
As soon as the disease
in owers and vegetative
shoots.
appears, the affected termiBroadly three distinct nals along with the basal 15types of symptoms are there. 20 cm healthy portion should
These are vegetative malfor- be removed or pruned and
mation and oral malforma- burnt.
tion. Later, these were
If more than 25 per cent
grouped under two broad cat- affected plants, de-blossomegories that is vegetative and ing at bud burst stage should
oral malformation.
be done to delay the owering.
Commonly found
Spraying of Planox (200
Vegetative Malformation ppm) during the rst week of
(VM) is more commonly October followed by deblosfound on young seedlings. soming at bud burst stage is
The seedlings produce small recommended.
shootlets bearing small scaly
A single foliar application
leaves with a bunch like ap- of 1,000 ppm cobalt sulphate
pearance on the shoot apex. prior to ower bud differenSeedling remains stunted and tiation successfully reduce
die while those getting infect- the oral malformation.
(Dr. Utpal Dey, research
ed later resume normal
scientist, Mob: 8119934883,
growth.
utpalFloral malformation (FM) email:
is the malformation of pan- dey86@gmail.com and Dr.
icles. The severity of malfor- Anup Das (ARS), Senior Scimation may vary on the same entist (Agronomy), Division
shoot from light to medium of Natural Resource Manageor heavy malformation of ment, ICAR Research Companicles. Heavily malformed plex for NEH Region, Umiam
panicles are compact and - 793 103, Meghalaya)
ANUP DAS
& UTPAL DEY
FARM QUERY
Tomato cultivation
I have about 65 cents of land and am interested in growing
vegetables which can be remunerative. Is it possible?
SUBHADRA
Kerala
Mr. Narasimha Reddy near Tirupathi, Andhra Pradesh has
planted tomato crop in his 0.75 acres. He spent Rs. 60,000 and
harvested 30 tonnes getting a net prot of Rs.70,000 in three
months. To know more contact Mr. C.Manohar, Programme
Coordinator, RASS-Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Vanasthali, Karakambadi Post, Renigunta Mandal, Mobile: 09441532150, mail
id: arkvk@yahoo.co.in, Tirupati Chittoor district, A.P.
ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
15
Pain-free blood tests
Ultra-fast light-to-electricity conversion
Researchers are perfecting a device the size of a

pingpong ball that extracts a small blood sample
while held against the skin for two minutes.
Researchers have developed a graphene-based

photodetector capable of converting absorbed light
into an electrical voltage at ultrafast timescales.
Emissions from biomass

burning cross the Himalayas
SNAPSHOTS
Robot cleans hospital
rooms with UV light
The pollutants on the northern slopes peaked during pre-monsoon
The culprit
Half of pregnant women

in India anaemic: study
The organic acids present

in the aerosols serve as a
unique ngerprint in identifying the source of pollution.
In this case, the dicarboxylic
acids served as a ngerprint.
Though dicarboxylic acids
can be produced by biomass
burning, vehicular exhausts
and
cooking
(primary
source), as well as atmospheric photooxidation (secondary
source), the researchers were
able to pinpoint the source as
biomass burning.
Agricultural burning and forest fires along the southern foothills and the
Indo-Gangetic Plain peak during the pre-monsoon period. PHOTO: K.R. DEEPAK
Levoglucosan is a specic
marker of biomass burning
it is produced through the
pyrolysis of cellulose during
the combustion process, Dr.
Cong notes. Another unique
marker of biomass burning is
the water-soluble potassium.
Both the markers showed
strong positive correlation
with dicarboxylic acids thereby conrming biomass burning as the source of pollution.
Though the pollutants
were found to reach the
northern slopes of the Himalayas during all the seasons
pre-monsoon,
monsoon,
post-monsoon and winter
seasons the amount of
aerosol found peaked during
pre-monsoon. This, according to them, is one more indicator of biomass burning as
the source.
Agricultural burning and
forest res along the southern Himalayan foothills and

the Indo-Gangetic Plain reach a high during the premonsoon period. That probably is the reason why the
amount of biomass burning
marker found peaked during
the pre-monsoon time.
Dr. Cong attributes the local topographic relief of the
Himalayas playing an important role in allowing the pollutants
to
cross
the
mountains and reach the
northern slopes.
The up-valley wind during
daytime, being maximum in
the afternoon, helps in pushing the pollutants to higher
altitude. On the northern
slopes, a down-valley wind is
prevalent during the same
time. The combination of the
up-valley wind in the southern slopes and down-valley
M. SRINATH
Half of the pregnant women and

74 percent of children under five
in India are anaemic, a
malnutrition mapping project that
includes data of 40 indicators
from more than 30 countries
stated yesterday.
AFP
Using satellite data, a team has

found that South east Iceland is
underlain by continental crust. It
found that the accepted theory,
that Iceland consists only of very
thick oceanic crust, is incorrect.
Meteorites key to the

story of Earth's layers
A new analysis of the chemical

make-up of meteorites has helped
scientists work out when the
Earth formed its layers. The
Earth's first crust was formed 4.5
billion years ago.
Pears as a part of a diet

to manage diabetes
NISSAR AHMAD
In vitro (test tube) experiments

by researchers provided
metabolic insights into how two
varieties of pears could play a role
to better manage early stage
diabetes and hypertension.
CM
YK
esearchers of the Rosetta

Mission have made a sensational discovery the
comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may not have a
magnetic eld.
This discovery is important
because it calls into question
some of the theories of formation of structures, such as
our solar system, in which
magnetic eld is crucial to the
formation of clumps of matter which later grew to become large celestial bodies.
When the Rosetta mission
arrived at its destination,
oating in sync with the
comet 67P, it dropped a lander, Philae, which contained
instruments for measuring
various parameters on the
comet, including its magnetic
eld. Philae was supposed to
anchor itself, by means of
some harpoons, to the surface
of the comet on landing.
However, this mechanism
failed, and it bounced off the
surface a couple of times to
land some distance away, following a complex path.
This turned out to be scientically benecial to the scientists who were looking at
wind in the northern slopes

allows the accumulation of
aerosol on the glacier surfaces.
Acting as efficient channels of south-to-north air
ow, the mountain valleys
could allow the air pollutants
to easily penetrate throughout the Himalayas, the authors write.
Regardless of where the
pollutants come from, the
study has provided compelling evidence that they are due
to biomass burning. We must
step up the global effort to
drastically cut down biomass
burning as much as we can,
Veerabhadran Ramanathan, R. PRASAD
an atmospheric scientist at
the Scripps Institution of
or the rst time ever, sciOceanography in La Jolla,
entists have unassailable,
California, who is unconnected with the study, told Na- experimental evidence on
what causes the popping
ture.
sound that is heard when
knuckles are cracked. Formation of a cavity within the synovial uid, a slippery
substance that lubricates the
joints, has been found to be
tion of the species was in the cause.
random mating; overall, a low
The nding puts to rest a
genetic differentiation exist- 44-year-old perception that
ed among the mackerel pop- the sound is produced when
ulations distributed along the gas-lled bubbles within the
Indian mainland.
synovial uid suddenly burst.
The assessment of genetic
The results of a study by
variability of a sh species is Gregory Kawchuk from Uniimportant for the manage- versity of Alberta, Canada
ment of its wild genetic re- and others are published tosources. Most species are day in the journal PLOS ONE.
composed of populations, al- Dr. Kawchuk is the rst auso called genetic stocks, be- thor of the paper.
The nding conrms a 1947
tween which limited gene
ow occurs. These popula- study by J.B. Roston and R
tions maintain their genetic Wheeler Haines of St Thomakeup or characteristics mass Hospital Medical
distinct from other popula- School, London who detions of the same species due scribed the origin of joint
to genetic variation within cracking. Unfortunately, a
the
species,
explained 1971 study countered the
study by stating that the
researchers.
The genetic proling of the sound was produced when a
species is essential to assess cavity or bubble bursts.
The current study found
the stock, evolve sheries
management methods in- that when joint surfaces sudcluding the preservation of denly separate due to distracgenetic diversity and sustain- tion force (or pulling force)
ability of the regional sher- and there is less amount of
synovial uid to ll the sudies, say scientists.
The sh is commonly denly expanded joint volume.
found in warm shallow wa- As a result, a cavity or bubble
ters along the coasts of the is formed. The creation of this
Indian and West Pacic bubble is what produced the
oceans, and their surround- popping sound.
The joints between ten ning seas. It contributed an average 8.8 per cent of the total gers and the palm (metocarmarine sh production in the pophaangeal) of a volunteer
country. Its average annual were stretched and the events
catch was estimated to be studied using a cine MRI. No
0.27 million tonnes, accord- bubble was found prior to the
application of the force but
ing to available data.
POSER: The finding questions some of the theories of

formation of celestial bodies. PHOTO: REUTERS
the magnetometer measurements from Philae and from
the Rosetta spacecraft. They
could collect precise magnetic eld measurements at the
four points where Philae
made contact and at a range
of heights.
The strength of the magnetic elds measured did not
increase systematically as the
point of observation moved
closer to the comets nucleus.
This rules out the possibility
that the nucleus of the comet
carries any magnetism.
Instead, the observed value
is consistent with there being
an external source of magnetism, namely the solar wind

and interplanetary magnetic
eld near the comet nucleus.
These ndings of Philae were
complemented by measurements made by Rosetta at the
same time, thereby adding
weight to the conclusions.
These results were published in the recent edition of
the journal Science by HansUlrich Auster et al,. Dr. Auster is the lead author from the
Institut fr Geophysik und
extraterrestrische
Physik,
Technische
Universitt
Braunschweig, Germany.
How knuckle cracking

produces popping sound
F
Genetic profiling of Indian Mackerel

K.S. SUDHI
Piece of continental
crust under Iceland
SHUBASHREE DESIKAN
R. PRASAD
ontrary to the general
assumption
that the southern
C. VENKATACHALAPATHY
slopes of the HimaA Star Wars-style robot that uses
layas act as a barrier and efultraviolet light can kill up to 70
fectively
block
the
per cent of bacteria in hospital
transportation of pollutants
rooms in just 12 minutes,
from India and other parts of
according to a new study by an
South Asia, a study published
Indian-origin scientist.
a couple of days ago in the
Nature Group journal Scientic Reports nds sound eviHow green tea, apples dence to prove otherwise.
Aerosols have been found
could protect health
to rise and cross the entire
range of the Himalayas. So
much so that studies conducted in the northern slope
of the Himalayas at an elevation of 4,276 MSL could nd
markers distinctive of pollution arising from India and
other regions of South Asia.
Local meteorological conditions and regional atmospheric ow process have
been the two major factors
N. RAJESH
enabling the pollutants to
Researchers have found how
cross over, notes Zhiyuan
polyphenols in green tea and
Cong, the rst author of the
apples affect a key signalling
paper from the Institute of
molecule, which could explain how Tibetan Research, Chinese Apolyphenol-rich foods reduce risks cademy of Sciences, Beijing.
of chronic diseases.
Rosetta mission: comet

67P may not be magnetised
he Indian Mackerel,
which sh lovers across
the country relish, shares the
same genetic prole except
those caught from Andaman
waters, it has been found.
The shes collected from
Andaman waters were found
to be genetically distinctive
from those caught from the
Indian mainland. However,
there was little genetic differentiation between the sh
caught from across India.
These were some of the results of one of the biggest
studies on an Indian sh species for genetic stock identication.
The genetic proling was
carried out by researchers of
the Central Marine Fish Research Institute (CMFRI),
Kochi and the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Research
(NBFGR), Kochi regional
centre.
The study formed part of
the Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem (BOBLME)
Project, supported by the
Food and Agriculture Organization. Researchers from
India, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand
are working together in the
project.
Besides other things, the
LESS VARIABILITY: Overall, a low genetic

differentiation existed among the mackerel
populations distributed along the Indian
mainland. PHOTO: AFP
NBFGR had developed fourteen microsatellite loci. The
genetic analysis was carried
out on these samples using
the microsatellite primers.
The Indian Mackerel
Rastrelliger kanagurta is an
important food sh commonly consumed in South and
Southeast Asian countries.
Though the trans-boundary
species is harvested by different nations, its population genetics is relatively unknown
to the scientic world.
Of the 3,100 samples collected from across the eight
countries, nearly 800 were

from India. The Indian samples were collected from
Mumbai, Mangalore, Calicut,
Kochi, Tuticorin, Nagapatnam, Kakinada, Paradeep and
Port Blair.
Molecular identity of all
three species of mackerels
Rastrelliger kanagurta, Rastrelliger faugni and Rastrel
liger
brachysoma
distributed along Indian waters were also evaluated using
DNA barcodes.
The preliminary data analysis revealed that the popula-
The sound is produced by the formation of a bubble

and not by the bursting of a bubble.
only after the cracking sound
was heard. This conrmed
that the sound was produced
not by the bursting of a bubble but by the formation of a
bubble. The duration of
cracking was found to be extremely short less than 310
milliseconds.
The scientists found that
only a single bubble was
formed, which varied in size,
shape and location. A bubble
so formed did not disappear
immediately after it was
formed but persisted even after the sound was heard.
According to the scientists
the creation of a bubble is in
line with tribonucleation a
process where opposing surfaces resist separation until a
critical point where they separate rapidly resulting in vapour cavities that do not
collapse instantaneously.
They found that every
stage of the cracking sequence followed the sequence described by Roston
and Haines.
The authors note that in
the beginning, the distraction

force results in only minimal
joint separation due to viscous attraction between joint
surfaces. But when the pulling force applied becomes
more, the adhesive force is
overcome and a rapid separation of joint surfaces results.
When this happens, there is
less amount of synovial uid
to ll the increased space. As a
result, there is a drop in uid
pressure and the gas dissolved in the uid is released.
The gas so released produces
the cavity or bubble.
Though Roston and Haines
had correctly explained every
stage prior to bubble creation
that ultimately led to sound
production, they were unable
to be emphatic due to a technical limitation they had
used only serial radiographs.
Hence, they could not see the
cavity formation during
sound production but could
only see the lack of bubble
prior to sound production
and its presence after knuckle
cracking.
Susanta Lahiri, a co-creator of element 117, awarded Hevesy Medal

P
rofessor Susanta Lahiri,

Chemical Sciences Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, received
the Hevesy Medal Award
2015, on April 12 at the Tenth
International Conference on
Methods and Applications of
Radio-analytical Chemistry
for his outstanding contributions to heavy ion induced radioisotope production, tracer
packet technique, converter
targets, and green chemistry.
The other person to also
win the award this year is
Professor Kattesh V. Katti of
the Cedntre for Radiological
Research, University of Missouri, Columia.
This premier international
award named after George de
HEVESY, the 1943- Chemistry Nobel Laureate, for his
work on the use of isotopes as
tracers in the study of chem-
ical processes, is given to an

individual in recognition of
excellence through outstanding, sustained career achievements in the elds of pure as
well as applied nuclear and
radiochemistry, in particular
applications to nuclear analytical chemistry."
Prof. Lahiri, also a professor at Homi Bhabha National
Institute, published nearly
180 papers in peer-reviewed
journals such as Physical Review. He is a co-creator of super heavy element 117 (The
Hindu, May 7, 2014)
In its tribute to Prof. Lahiri, the April 2015 issue of the
CERN COURIER, an international journal of high-energy
physics wrote: Lahiri is recognised for a rich career during which he has developed
and maintained active international collaborations with
Susanta Lahiri of the Saha Institute of Nuclear

Physics, Kolkata, received the award on April 12,
2015. PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
leading physics and chemistry institutes, including
CERN, notably for the development of high-power targets
in the EURISOL Design
Study and the LIEBE test
project at ISOLDE, and in re-
search on radiopharmaceuticals
and
superheavy
elements.
According to Dr. K.L. Ramakumar, Director, Radiochemistry and Isotope Group,
BARC, Prof. Lahiris associ-
ation with research activities

in radio-analytical chemistry
has profound signicance in
terms of realising no-carrier
added separation of high specic activity radiotracers for
clinical applications.
The single-minded dedication and unwavering selfbelief borne out of sustained
years of continuous research
in the frontier areas of nuclear and radiochemistry contributed to his prowess and
standing in the subject, Ramakumar added.
But how and why did Lahiri
take radio-analytical chemistry as his chosen eld?
I had a passion for nuclear
science when I was studying
for my MSc. and when I was
selected in SINP for pursuing
PhD degree. I met a wonderful supervisor, Prof. N.R. Das
[and] that took me here, he
responded to this writers email query.

Lahiri and his team made
nano particles of gold by a
low-cost technique that requires the least amount of
chemicals. It is truly a green
chemistry project.
In the process, they used
minuscule amount of radioactivity which triggers radiolysis, which like a chain
reaction, expands the radiolysis, and ultimately nano particles are formed.
Alchemists dreamt to convert lead cheaply into gold.
Modern-day alchemists like
Lahiri used multi-milliondollar-particle accelerators
to produce trace amounts of
mercury, thallium, lead, bismuth and polonium as carrier-free radio-nuclides by
irradiating gold targets with
certain lithium and carbon
ions.
Lahiri and his co workers
produced a tracer packet
containing carrier-free radiotracers of manganese, copper,
zinc gadolinium, germanium,
arsenic and selenium for further studies of essential micro nutrient elements by
irradiating thick cobalt foils
in accelerators with specic
isotopes oxygen, lithium and
carbon ions.
Prof. Lahiri pointed out
that except one study (which
was carried out in CERN under our leadership) all others
were done in India using the
accelerator
facilities
at
BARC-TIFR Pelletron and
Variable Energy Cyclotron
Centre.
K.S. PARTHASARATHY
Former Secretary, Atomic
Energy Regulatory Board
ksparth@yahoo.co.uk
ND-ND
14
BUSINESS
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
QUESTION CORNER
FARMERS NOTEBOOK
Tear formation
Handy cycle weeder for

small farmers
How do tears form when we get emotional?

JANANI
Chennai
Tears are produced in the lacrimal glands from where
they ow through the excretory ducts into the space between the eyeball and the lids. The para-sympathetic
branch of the autonomic nervous system controls the lacrimal glands through both the nicotonic and muscarinic
receptors. When these receptors are activated, the lacrimal
gland is stimulated to produce tears.
Tears serve many functions. Firstly they keep the outer
surface of the eye ball lubricated and dust free. Such tears
are known as basal tears. Tears also have antibodies that
defend against pathogenic microbes, and enzymes which
also contribute to destroying any bacteria the eye encounters as a part of the immune system.
Tears also come out, as a reex action when some foreign
substance such as tiny insects or onion vapour hits the
eyes. These unwanted substances are washed out by tears.
Such tears are known as reex tears.
It is seen that tears also come out when a person is
emotionally charged with anger or joy or grief. Tears
brought about by emotions have a different chemical composition than those for lubrication. Emotional tears contain more of the protein-based hormones than basal or
reex tears.
When a person is emotionally charged, it activates the
hypothalamus an important region in the hind side of
brain. The hypothalamus has a degree of control over the
autonomic system which attributes to production of tears
when a person is emotionally high. Such emotion tears help
ush out the extra proteins formed when the body is under
stress.
If the chemicals associated with stress did not discharge
at all, they would build up to toxic levels that could weaken
the body's immune system and other biological processes.
That is why a person feels stress free after he has cried. One
major stress hormone released from the body via tears,
prolactin, is found in much higher concentration in womens bodies than in mens. This explains why women produce tears at the drop of a hat.
It is interesting to note that all animals secrete irritant
tears, and some secrete them in greater volumes than
human beings. In fact sea animals and birds rely most
heavily on tears for removing salts from their bodies.When
there is excessive production of tears, the excess quantity
ows to the nasolacrimal tear ducts next to the bridge of
nose. From there, they are channeled into the nasal cavity.
If there are too many tears, they will overow the lower eye
lid and run down the cheeks.
S.P.S. JAIN
Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh

Even after shutting down PCs and laptops how does the
time and date get updated?
Snekhalatha
Why are certain medicines in tablets form and certain
other medicines in capsules form?
T.N. Sama Rao, Thiruninravur, Tamil Nadu
CM
YK
Though it can be used for any crop it is best suited for

M.J. PRABU
eeds are the

biggest problem in crop
production.
Nearly 30 to 50 per cent of
yield loss is due to weeds.
These unwanted plants remove nearly 25 to 60 per
cent of nutrients from the
soil making them unavailable for plants and also act as
host for several pests and
infestations.
Weed management is a big
problem mainly because of
labour shortage. Agricultural activity in India is largely
labour based and shortage of
manual labour has a direct
impact on crop production.
So what is the option?
Small sized weeding machines, which are priced affordably and easy to use are a
good solution.
AFFORDABLE RATE: The weeder can penetrate the

soil to a depth of 2-2.5 cm.- PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
ed in a vegetable eld of a
farmer, followed by frequent
visits by the KVK team to access and record data on weed
menace, time taken by the device for weeding, and yield.
Farmers using this device expressed their satisfaction that
the weeder was well suited for
those whose land holding was
two acres or less.
Best suited
Though it can be used for
any crop it is best suited for
vegetables since the space between plants is more for operating this device.
The weeder can penetrate
the soil to a depth of 2-2.5 cm.
It can be used for weeding 1 to
J. JAYARAJ
& M. KALYANASUNDARAM
he mango fruit y is believed to be the single

largest crop damager in India.
It accounts for about 27 per
vegetables
cent of harvesting loss. The
way around. Here 80 percent ies attack semi ripe and maof our farmers are small and ture fruits during the months
marginal growers with small of April and May. Other fruits
land holdings divided by like guava, citrus, plum,
bunds on all four sides mak- peach, sapota, loquot, etc are
ing it difficult to use big ma- also susceptible to this pest
chines for any operations. attack.
Also the hiring charges per
Damage is caused both by
day are quite heavy and may adults and maggots. Adult fenot be feasible for a small male punctures the rind of
farmer. For such people this near ripe fruits with its neetype of machine may be use- dle like ovipositor and lays
ful, says Mr. Mallikarjuna.
eggs.
Easy to operate
Tarabalu Krishi Vigyan
Kendra in Davanagere recently introduced a cycle
weeder for farmers in the region, priced at an affordable
rate, and easy to operate for
removing weeds, according
to Mr. B.O.Mallikarjuna,
specialist at the institute.
In the training, we had
demonstrated the use of this
device for weeding different
crops. After the training programme, selected farmers
were given the weeder for
use in their own farms under
our technical guidance.
We suggested to farmers
that it can be used for all the
crops like groundnut, sunower, maize and vegetables
with the spacing of 30-40 cm
between the lines and 15 -20
cm within the plants, says
Dr. T.N. Devaraja, Programme Coordinator.
As a trial, the weeding
technology was demonstrat-
Managing fruit fly

in mango
1.5 acre in a day and can be

either operated by a single
person or/and also attached
to bullocks. It is ideal to use
this device after 15-20 days of
planting the crops in the main
eld.
Previously manual labourers were used for weeding
work. The main problem with
labourers is that many of
them were inefficient and demanded high wages during
planting, weeding or harvesting time.
Hiring charges
Unlike foreign countries,
where hundreds of acres are
available without any borders, in India it is the other
Beneciary
Maggots
Mr. Renukarya, a retired

agriculture scientist who has
been using this device says:
I have been using this machine and nd it benecial as
I dont need to depend on external man power for operating it. I think this is the best
technology for future agriculture when land holdings are
reducing in size.
The population is increasing day by day but not the
land and there will be more
fragmented lands in future
and this type of device will be
very suitable for small
farmers.
The legless yellowish maggots after hatching bore and

feed on fruit pulp and on maturity come out of the fruit,
drop on the ground and pupate deep under the soil. Thus
the maggots destroy the pulp
making it foul smelling and
discoloured. Infested fruits
develop brown rotten patches
on them and fall to the
ground ultimately.
Operation
The machine operates efficiently when the eld is irigated for the device to pull
out the weeds. Farmers
should note that the eld
must not be hard since it
would be difficult to use the
device.
Taralabalu KVK is popularizing this technology in and
around their region. The
weeders are priced at Rs.
2,000 to Rs. 2,500 a piece.
Those interested contact
Dr. T.N. Devaraja, Programme Co ordinator, Taralabalu KVK, Davanagere - 577
004, Phone: 08192-263462,
Mobile: 09449856876, email:
dvgtkvk@yahoo.com, website: www.taralabalukvk.com
and Mr. Renukarya at
09900110947.
Management
Collect the fallen infested fruits and dispose them by
dumping and burying in 60
cm deep pits.
Plough the interspaces in
the orchard during summer
to expose y puparia to kill

them under hot sun rays.
Timely harvest of mature
fruits should be done and the
fruits may be treated with hot
water for one hour at 48 degree celcius.
Install methyl eugenol
traps at 6 nos./acre
Adopt male annihilation
technique of using bait traps
with 100 ml of 0.1per cent
methyl eugenol (1ml/lit) and
0.05 per cent malathion
50EC (1ml/lit) taken in 250
ml capacity wide mouthed
bottles tted with hanging
devices.
Another poison bait may
be prepared by adding 100g of
jaggery and 2ml of decamethrin 2.8EC in 1 lit of water and
sprayed on the tree trunks at
weekly interval. The bait
could be sprayed on the nearby hedges and vegetation.
Spray deltamethrin
0.025 per cent thrice at least
15 days interval commencing
45 days after fruit set.
Spraying of 0.03 per cent
dimethoate up to two weeks
period to picking the fruits is
also effective.
(Dr. J. Jayaraj, Professor
and Dr. M. Kalyanasundaram, Professor and Head, Department of Entomology
Agricultural College and
Research Institute, Madurai
625 104, Phone No. 04522422956, extn.214, email:
agentomac@tnau.ac.in)
FARM QUERY
Moringa seedlings
Is there any genune contact from where I can procure Moringa
seedlings for planting in my 12 acres?
J. DHANDAPANI
, Tamil Nadu
You can contact Mr. K. P. M. Sadaiyandi, Karthikeyan moringa nursery in Dindugal, Tamil Nadu. Seedlings are produced
in large scale commercially and sold at a rate of Rs.40 each to
farmers of Dindugal, Theni, Salem and Madurai. The farmer
produces at least 12,000 seedlings a year generating a revenue
of Rs. 4 lakhs from selling them alone. Mr. Sadaiyandi can be
reached at Karthikeyan Moringa Nursery, Pallapatti (P.O), Pin
-624 201 Nilakottai taluk, Dindugal district. Tamil Nadu, mobile: 9791374087 and 9865078101.
ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
15
Atomic clock gets better all the time
Major breakthrough in smoking cessation
The latest modication of a record-setting strontium

atomic clock ensures the clock would neither gain
nor lose one second in some 15 billion years.
In a promising breakthrough, circuitry in the brain

causing the increased anxiety felt during withdrawal
from nicotine addiction has been identied.
SNAPSHOTS
Insects inspire next
generation hearing aids
25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope

It has brought about a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe
R. PRASAD
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
A revolutionary insect-inspired
microphone that can locate
sounds and eliminate background
noise is set to change modern-day
hearing aid systems. It is similar
to the ear of an insect.
Improving management
of causes of blindness
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
New technology can improve the

treatment of the leading causes of
blindness. Optical coherence
tomography angiography could
largely replace current dye-based
angiography for these diseases.
Higher satiating yogurt

with more protein
he Hubble Space
Telescope a joint
venture
between
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)
was launched in its orbit 552
km above Earth on April 24,
1990 by the space shuttle Discovery. It has provided
breathtaking images, produced fundamental discoveries and brought about a
paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe.
Hubble has unlocked the
wonders of the universe and
placed our world into a context of 100 billion stars in 100
billion galaxies.
If the spotting of the Hubble variable number one, or
V1 star in 1923 in the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy
permanently altered the
course of modern astronomy,
the Hubble Telescope has
done it even more dramatically.
The Hubble, which has so
far travelled more than 3 billion miles, has made more
than 1.2 million observations
since 1990 by completing an
orbit around the Earth every
97 minutes at a speed of about
8 km per second.
A household name today, it
was an instrument that
much of the astronomical
community didnt want!
Worse, it almost turned out to
be a dud soon after the
launch.
Catastrophic
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
A new yogurt with high protein

content and higher satiating
capacity has been developed,
opening up an alternative in new
nutritional control strategies.
Protein creates a satiating effect.
Two effective ways to

treat childhood obesity
The bad news came a few

weeks after its launch. The
very rst image taken by it
was fuzzy. The primary mirror of the telescope had a aw
called spherical aberration.
We put a telescope in
space and it could hardly see.
I felt terrible. I felt like a dog
wouldnt take a bone from
me, Jean Olivier, former
Hubble chief engineer told
Nature.
Theyve had 10 years to
put this together. Theyve
spent $2.8bn to be able to get
it right and now we nd that
the Hubble Telescopes got a
cataract, Barbara Mikulski
roared at the time, The Independent recalled in a recent
Major achievements by
Hubble Telescope
Twinkle twinT
kle little star, how I wonder what you are
he words
To mark the 25th anniversary, a snapshot of the famous Pillars of Creation

in the Eagle Nebula was retaken 19 years after the original image was taken
in 1995. PHOTO: AP
article. Ms. Mikulski was a senior U.S. senator who fought
hard to get NASA the funding
for the development of the
telescope.
Though there was no way
to rectify the problem from
the Earth, scientists found a
way to x it placing small
and carefully designed mirrors in front of the original
Hubble instruments, much
like placing eyeglasses to restore the vision.
In December 1993, seven
astronauts spacewalked from
the shuttle Endeavour to x
the telescope in space, a mission that was never attempted before. Only the rst image
from the corrected telescope
could tell if the problem was
indeed rectied.
We were all huddled
around a little screen, waiting
for the rst image to come
down. It probably only took
ve seconds but it seemed
like six hours.
First we saw a little dot in
the centre, but it was a really
well-focused dot. And then
we saw the faint stars. You
just knew, right then, that we

had nailed it. The trouble
with Hubble was over, Edward Weiler, former Hubble
chief engineer told Nature.
And months after it was repaired, the Hubble recorded
the rst major celestial event
the comet Shoemaker-Levy
9 breaking into fragments
and plunging into Jupiter.
The 1993 mission to x the
spherical aberration problem
was only the rst of the ve
missions to service the instrument. Subsequent servicing missions to repair the
telescope and to upgrade it
occurred in February 1997,
December 1999, March 2002
and May 2009.
During the 1997 service
mission, a spectrograph and
an infrared camera were added to the telescope. In 1999,
an emergency mission was
undertaken to repair three of
the six gyroscopes. Gyroscopes keep the telescope
pointing correctly. The 2002
mission was to replace a camera and solar panels and nally the 2009 mission was to
install a new spectrograph

and camera (Wide Field Camera 3). Since its launch, astronauts have also replaced the
mechanical tape recorders
with solid-state memory
drives, and upgraded the solar arrays.
With its higher resolution
and larger eld of view, the
Wide Field Camera 3 provides the telescope greater
power to image the Universe.
Today, the Hubble Telescope
has the ability to see in multiple wavelengths near-infrared, visible light and
near-ultraviolet.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, a
snapshot of the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle
Nebula was taken last year.
The rst time the Pillars of
Creation was snapped was in
1995. Hubbles instruments
that have been upgraded during the 19 years after the original image was taken helped
astronomers see more details
in the image than was previously possible.
may have
seeded the dreams of many
children of becoming astronomers, but the twinkling of a
star is ultimately a bane for
astronomers. Stars twinkle
because of disturbances in
our atmosphere, and this effect blurs the images of celestial objects. From the time
astronomers began to use
photographs,
they
had
wished they could place a telescope in space, in order to
gaze upon the universe unhindered by the veil of the
atmosphere.
And that wish came true
twenty-ve years ago with the
launch of the Hubble Space
Telescope (HST). With its
2.4m diameter mirror, this
telescope has observed the
universe in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet, visible to infrared, and has
changed the way astronomers
view the universe.
One of the rst achievements of HST was to determine the rate at which our
universe has been expanding.
This requires an accurate
measurement of the distances of far away galaxies, which
is almost impossible with
ground-based
telescopes.
This was one of the key projects of the telescope, and it
was aptly named after Edwin
Hubble, the discoverer of the
expansion of the universe.
The observations with HST
settled the rate of expansion
within ten per cent accuracy,
ushering a new age in astronomy a quarter century ago.
The clear images taken
with HST also helped to pinpoint distant supernovae of a
special type that astronomers
use to measure distances.
This allowed the astronomers
to measure the distances of
even more distant galaxies, or
equivalently peer back further in the history of the universe. This led to the
momentous discovery that
our universe is not only expanding, but also accelerating. No one knows yet why it
One of the first achievements was to determine the

rate of expansion of the universe. PHOTO: PTI
does so, and it is a discovery
that will haunt astronomers
for some time to come.
The crash landing of the
comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on
Jupiter gave a unique photoop for HST in 1994. It was the
rst time a collision of a
comet with Jupiter was studied in detail, a process that is
supposed to occur once every
few centuries. Another interesting discovery made by
HST (last month, in March
2015) in our solar system is
that of a subsurface ocean in
Ganymede, a Jovian satellite.
Then in 1996, it was used to
take a long exposure photograph of the universe through
a hole in our Galaxy (Milky
Way). The HST was pointed
at a direction in the constellation of Great Bear for ten days
at a stretch, and produced a
photograph of numerous galaxies, among which there
were some that existed in the
very rst billion years of the
universe.
It told us how the process
of star formation in galaxies
rst increased and then
waned in the last few billion
years or so. Astronomers are
still trying to understand this
evolution. Why did not the
galaxies form stars in one
bright display and then
plunge into darkness? Why
did the stars form in a regulated manner over a long
stretch of time?
Another revolutionary discovery in astronomy that
HST helped to make was that
almost every galaxy contains
a black hole in its centre. It

also appears that the black
hole mass is intimately connected to the galaxy mass.
The question that lurks behind this connection is this:
does the black hole form rst
and x the mass of the galaxy
that should form around it, or
is it the other way around? Or
perhaps the black hole and
the galaxy grow together, although no one has any detailed idea how that could
happen. Observations with
HST were crucial in this discovery because of its ability to
measure the speed of gas near
the centres of galaxies.
Coming back to the twinkling stars, one of the holy
grails of modern astronomy is
to understand the processes
of the birth of stars. In this
regard, the clarity of HST images and its ability to image in
infrared wavelengths has
helped astronomers to discover some crucial phases in
newly born stars. It appears
that the birth of stars is
marked by a lot of violence, of
gas being thrown out at great
speed, sometimes in the form
of jets. Technology has advanced in the last quarter
century with which ground
based telescopes can compete
with HST in some aspects, although not all. But HST has
created a legacy in astronomy, and science in general,
that would be hard to beat
even in the near future.
BIMAN B. NATH
Raman Research Institute,
Bengaluru
Hubble: towards resolving Making eco-friendly toilets

the age of the universe
MOHIT M. RAO
SHUBASHREE DESIKAN
NAGARA GOPAL
A study found two protocols for

the treatment of childhood
obesity successful in limiting
one-year weight gain in obese
kids. Both use IT to provide
clinicians up-to-date guidelines.
Getting a better grasp

of primate grip
SHASHI ASHIWAL
In a new study, a research team

found that even the oldest known
human ancestors may have had
precision grip capabilities
comparable to modern humans,
including A. afarensis.
A sensor system foils

drunken driving
M. SARAVANAN
A series of sensors placed on the

steering wheel, the shift lever and
seat, detect through sweat if the
driver is intoxicated, and if the
result is positive the motor is
disabled, preventing the individual
from driving.
CM
YK
ccurately measuring the

Hubble constant (H0),
the initial rate of expansion of
the universe, from which one
can determine the age of the
universe is a major preoccupation of astronomers.
One of the key projects of
the Hubble Space Telescopes
(HST) was the determination
of H0 more accurately. In the
1970s, and up to the time the
HST was launched, there
were two groups that projected competing values for H0,
one of which was almost
twice the other.
The role of the Hubble
Space Telescope was to resolve this difference.
The HST launch, in 1990,
came as a breath of fresh air.
In fact, the HST was instrumental in democratising cutting edge astronomy. The
HST allowed, and even encouraged younger scientists
to lead interesting projects,
says Dr Arunav Kundu, Associate professor in Tata Institute
of
Fundamental
Research, Mumbai.
When the HST started
work, two groups, led by Allan
Sandage and Gerard de Vaucouleurs, respectively, had
calculated values for H0 that
differed nearly by a factor of
two.
The Sandage group said it
was about 55 km per sec per
million-parsecs and the de
Vacouleurs group said it was
100 km per second per million-parsecs. (A parsec is 3.1
light years.) It was hard to resolve this difference due to
unavailability of data.
In this particular situation, the understanding of
what data existed was incomplete and subject to interpretation about how to ll in the
gaps. There were different
A NEW ERA: The Hubble Telescope has narrowed

down the difference between the values put forth by
the two groups. PHOTO: AP
routes to the answer but it
was hard with limited data to
show which methods had
smaller uncertainties, Abhijit Saha of Astronomer, National Optical Astronomy
Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, explained in an email to
this Correspondent. Dr. Saha
has been involved in many
key HST projects to measure
H0.
To calculate H0, one needed to know the distances of
faraway galaxies. Before the
HST, the maximum distances
that could be directly measured were about a few million light years.
From these, one had to use
other yardsticks to infer the
distances from earth to distant galaxies (known as secondary distance indicators).
The answers that one got
were heavily method-dependent.
Also within the measurable
distance, there were only a
few galaxies to compare.
When the Hubble Space Telescope came into the picture,
the distance to which one
could directly measure in-
creased 10 times. A 1,000

times bigger volume for exploring suitable galaxies to
calibrate secondary distance
indicators, says Dr Saha.
The Hubble Telescope has
been able to narrow down the
difference between the values
put forth by the two groups to
about 20 per cent.
A value of H0 =74 +/- 3 km
per second per million parsec
is most quoted today. But the
Sandage and Tammann group
still favour a lower value of
H0 = 62 +/- 6 km per second
per million parsec.
The HST was able to observe what are known as Cepheids (bright variable stars)
in order to estimate the secondary distance indicators,
mainly because it had higher
resolution than much larger
ground-based telescopes.
The HST resolves out the
background better than any
other telescope. This is why
you can study Cepheids in
more distant galaxies using
the HST, and why it has been
crucial to establishing the
Hubble constant, says Dr
Kundu.
hile thousands of toilets prop up across the

country, there has been little
attention given to an environmentally-friendly set up.The
low-cost toilets being built
rely entirely on a refuse-collection pit a design that
ends up leaching nitrates into
the groundwater below.
Researchers at the Centre
for Sustainable Technologies
at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have
developed a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) toilet
which uses a mixture of sand
and bentonite clay. The clay
regulates the ow of leachates by swelling when in
contact with water.
The study which was
published recently in the
Journal of Water, Sanitation

and Hygiene for Development shows the barrier reducing nitrate concentration
by 66 per cent within 12 hours
and nearly 94 per cent within
a day.
Denitrifying bacteria
Sudhakar M. Rao, lead author of the study, says the
mixture of sand (95 per cent)
and bentonite clay (5 per
cent) ensures a suitable anaerobic environment for denitrifying bacteria which convert nitrates into gaseous
nitrogen compounds.
The importance of curbing
leachates was demonstrated
in a 2013 study of Mulbagal
town in Karnataka by Prof.
Rao. The seepage of untreated water into groundwater
resulted in an average nitrate
concentration of 148 mg per
can even react with amines to

form carcinogenic nitrosamines.
The researchers have taken
the results into a cost-effective workable set-up: a top
nearly 1 metre-thick gravel
layer below the pit-base followed by a 32 cm-thick sand
layer and a bottom 20 cmthick layer of sand plus clay. A
perforated vent pipe allows
gas bubbles to escape.
While the study demonstrates the potential of the
Unlike current toilets,
mixture, Prof. Rao is aware of
the toilet developed by
the need to develop mixtures
IISc regulates the flow
that can be locally sourced.
of leachates.
Bentonite is not easily avail PHOTO: M. KARUNAKARAN
able in rural areas or small
towns. Instead, we have delitre, which was more than cided to use a mixture of cow
three times greater than the dung and sand (1:1 ratio) that
permissible limit. When con- can be equally effective, he
sumed in large quantities, ni- said. His team has received
trites can cause anaemia and funding for pilot trials.
Capsicum for controlling diabetes, obesity

Y.MALLIKARJUN
s growing incidence of
lifestyle-induced Diabesity continues to pose a
major challenge for health experts and affected individuals
alike, here is some good news
on diet-based management of
diabetes and obesity.
Scientists at the CSIR- Indian Institute of Chemical
Technology (IICT) have analysed green, yellow and red
bell peppers for their anti-hyperglycaemic and anti-hyperlipidemic effect and found
encouraging results.
In particular, they studied
the impact of the bell peppers, popularly known as capsicum, on nutrition digestive
enzymescarbohydrate
cleaving enzyme alpha- glucosidase and lipid-slicing enzyme pancreatic lipase.
Normally, carbohydrates are
broken down into disaccha-
Yellow capsicum slows

down digestion of
carbohydrates and lipids.
PHOTO: M. SRINATH
rides and ultimately into glucose by the activity of alpha

-glucosidase enzyme present
in the intestinal wall while
pancreatic lipase converts
lipid into fatty acids.
Interestingly, the scientists
found that yellow and red bell
peppers slowed down digestion of carbohydrates and lip-
ids. The research work was

published recently online in
Natural Products Research.
It was found that yellow
capsicum signicantly inhibited the activity of alpha- glucosidase and lipase enzyme as
compared to green capsicum.
The inhibition was almost
double than that of green capsicum, said lead author and
Senior Principal Scientist, Dr.
Ashok Kumar Tiwari.
He said that once the digestion of carbohydrates and lipids get slow down, the
concentration of glucose and
lipids in the blood would be
less and as a result the chances of developing hyperglycaemia and hyperlipidemia
would be reduced.
Yellow capsicum would
naturally be a better option
than green capsicum, he
added.
As regards red capsicum, it
was found that lipase inhibiting activity was equivalent
to that of yellow capsicum,

but the inhibition of glucosidase was almost on par with
green capsicum.
Dr. Tiwari said yellow and
red capsicums were more effective than green capsicum
due to the presence of oligomerised anthocyanins. They
were better inhibitors than
pro-anthocyanins found in
green capsicum.
He suggested eating yellow
and red capsicum in raw form
as salad before the main
course.
Pointing out that hyperglycemia and hyperlipidemia induce oxidative stress, he said
yellow and red capsicums
possess better anti-oxidative
activity than green variety.
Oxidative stress gives raise to
free radicals which damage
biomolecules and has been
implicated in many diseases,
including diabetic complications, cardiovascular diseases
and cancer.
ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI
14
THE HINDU
Discovering Earth's nearest neighbours
A new way to measure neutrino mass
A planetary system orbiting a nearby star that is only

54 light-years away has been found. The planets orbit
their star closer than Mercury orbits the sun.
A spectroscopic method allows measurement of

the energy of single electrons, providing a new
way to measure the mass of the neutrino.
Himalayas: next major quake Making buildings

may be west of the recent one earthquake-safe
A
SNAPSHOTS
First proton collisions
at LHC in early June
Stress loading could have occurred further west of the main quakes focus
R. PRASAD
AFP
First collisions of protons at the

Large Hadron Collider should start
in the first or second week of
June. It will take only one
significant deviation in the data to
change everything to new physics.
Whitening Arctic Ocean

will not restore climate
n future, if any
earthquake were
to happen along
the Himalayas, it
may happen further west of
the focus of the main April 25
quake, said Dr. R.K. Chadha,
Chief Scientist at the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute.
That is because the 7.8
magnitude April 25 quake
was caused by a unidirectional fracture. From the focus of
the earthquake, the fault
propagated in a nearly west to
east direction thereby releasing the energy that was stored
for many decades.
While stress unloading has
taken place from nearly west
to east of the focus of the
main quake, stress loading
could have occurred further
west of the focus of the main
quake.
A case in point
AP
There is a proposal to artificially

whiten the surface of the Arctic
Ocean to increase the reflection
of the Sun's energy into space and
restore sea ice. But this would not
result in substantial cooling.
Microbial habitat found

under Antarctica
The December 24, 2004

Sumatra earthquake that
caused the killer tsunami
waves was also caused by a
unidirectional fracture that
propagated in a south to
north direction. As a result of
the unidirectional fault propagation, stress was unloaded
in the northern direction and
stress loading occurred south
of the focus of the main Sumatra earthquake. This
caused the March 28, 2005
earthquake of 8.7 magnitude
in the Nias Island, some 300
km south of Sumatra, he
said.
Thrust faulting
AP
Many view Antarctica as a frozen

wasteland. Turns out there are
hidden interconnected lakes
underneath its dry valleys that
could sustain life and shed light on
ancient climate change.
Unmasking the secrets

of Mercury, in colour
The April 25, 2015 quake

was caused by thrust faulting
on or near the main frontal
thrust where the Indian
plate is pushed under the
Eurasian plate. According to
the U.S. Geological Survey,
Since the soil at Kathmandu valley is soft and liquefies easily, the seismic
waves get amplified, thereby amplifying the ground motion. PHOTO: REUTERS
from the epicentre of the
earthquake, nearly 80 km to
the northwest of the Nepalese
capital of Kathmandu, the India plate is converging with
the Eurasian plate at a rate of
4.5-5 cm per year.
About 3 cm of the Indian
plate movement is accommodated in the Himalayan collision zone and the remaining
is accommodated along the
east-west strike-slip faults in
the Tibet region. As a result,
earthquakes caused by thrust
fault in the Himalayan region
occur along the strike-slip
fault in an east-west direction.
Any quake will cause displacement either in a vertical
or horizontal direction. We
dont know for sure the
amount of displacement
caused by this earthquake,
said Dr. Chadha, but for an
earthquake of 7.8 magnitude
[revised value], the displacement can be 1 to 2 metres
along the fault. The quake
was on a thrust fault and so
most of the displacement will
be in a vertical direction.
According to Colin Stark at
the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory, Columbia, 1-10
feet of India had slipped
northward underneath Nepal.
The U.S. Geological Survey
has revised the depth of the
focus to around 15 km. Explaining why the focus of the
earthquake cannot be a couple of kilometres deep as initially put out, he said the
magnitude of an earthquake
has a relationship with the
volume of crust. Hence, the
focus of the quake has to be
10-15 km deep as a large volume of crust is needed for a
7.8 magnitude quake.
Amplification of waves
Nepal is situated on an ancient lakebed and hence the
soil at Kathmandu valley is
soft and liquees easily.
Unlike a rocky terrain where
the seismic waves travelling
with great velocity can have
very good transmission, a terrain with sediments can am-
REUTERS
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the

first to orbit the planet Mercury
and its scientific instruments and
radio science investigations are
unraveling the evolution of the
solar system's innermost planet.
Parrotfish critical to
coral island building
plify the seismic waves,

thereby
amplifying
the
ground motion.
A continental-continental
plate collision will necessarily produce shallow-focus
earthquakes (less than 70
km) as continental plates are
less dense than oceanic plates
and both the plates have the
same density. However, when
two ocean plates collide, both
the plates will go down to
form a trench, like in the case
of the Mariana Trench in the
Pacic Ocean.
Both the ocean plates will
go down because of the role of
gravity, Dr. Chadha said. In
the case of two colliding continental plates, gravity is not
that intense.
In the case of a continental
plate colliding with an oceanic plate, the oceanic plate subducts under the continental
plate as it is heavier than the
continental plate. In general,
the focus of most of the earthquakes in subduction zones is
intermediate (70-300 km) to
deep (300-600 km).
Chikungunya vaccine shows promise

R. PRASAD
n experimental chikungunya vaccine to induce

neutralising immune responses to kill the viruses
once they enter the body has
shown promise in mice.
Mice vaccinated with the
vaccine were partially protected even when they were
infected with a high dose of
chikungunya virus. In nature,
the viral load will be much
lower when it is transmitted
by a mosquito. In all probability, the protective effect of the
vaccine may be sufficient to
protect against a mosquito
derived infection.
The prophylactic ability of
the vaccine can be enhanced
if it is used with an appropriate adjuvant (a compound
that can increase the immune
response). Currently, no vaccine is commercially available against chikungunya. The
results were published a few
days ago in the journal PLOS
Neglected Diseases.
The chikungunya virus
(CHIKV) is transmitted by
Aedes mosquitoes and causes
an infection in humans
known as chikungunya fever.
The disease causes fever and
severe joint pain; the joint
Mice vaccinated with the vaccine were partially

protected even when they were infected with a high
dose of chikungunya virus. PHOTO: AP
pain can last for a few months
and in some cases for up to
several years. India is one of
the worst affected countries.
The chikungunya virus has
two surface proteins E1 and
E2. While E1 is a fusion protein, E2 very likely plays a
role in binding the virus with
receptors seen on human
cells. The E2 has three domains A, B, and C. Of the
three, the domain C is not accessible to antibodies and of
little use in vaccine development. To produce a protein
vaccine, researchers at PaulEhrlich-Institut,
Langen,
Germany, selected different
areas in domain A and B and
stitched them together.
After producing them in E.

coli and purifying them,
mice were immunised with
these protein fragments.
Their ability to produce neutralising antibodies in mice
was studied post injection.
Of the many protein fragments studied, the sAB+
proved to be the most efficient in producing neutralising
antibodies.
The
researchers also generated a
recombinant Modied Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) using
the sAB+ construct.
The MVA is a vector that is
used to carry the molecule of
interest (which in this case is
a protein) into the body of
mice/humans. The MVA
vectors were used in the AIDS

vaccine trail carried out at the
Chennai-based National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis.
Besides the recombinant
protein sAB+ vaccine, two different vaccine combinations
were tested MVA-CHIKVsAB+ and/or recombinant
protein sAB+. The mice were
then infected with the wildtype chikungunya virus two
weeks after the nal dose of
the vaccine.
The recombinant protein
vaccine showed greater reactivation compared with the
recombinant MVA vaccine.
Not surprisingly, vaccination
using the recombinant protein vaccine markedly reduced the viral load after the
mice were infected with chikungunya virus.
The recombinant MVA
vaccine did not show any signicant protection when
used alone or in combination
with the recombinant protein.
The researchers say that
since the mice were infected
with a very high dose of chikungunya virus, the protective effect of the recombinant
protein vaccine may be sufficient to protect against a
mosquito derived infection.
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Parrotfish grind up coral during

feeding, and after digesting the
edible content, excrete the rest
as sand, a proportion of which can
then be transported to adjacent
island shorelines.
Pollution linked to
lower birth weight
Chennai-made pheromone traps for

fruit fly come to Maldives rescue
K.S. SUDHI
AP
Women who were pregnant during

the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when
pollution was cut, gave birth to
children with higher birth weights
than those who were pregnant
before and after the games.
CM
YK
nvasive species specialists

from the Asia-Pacic Forest Invasive Species Network
(APFISN), based at Kerala
Forest Research Institute,
Peechi, Thrissur, are reaching
out to Sh. Feevah Island of
Maldives to save its farming
from a fruit y attack.
Experts, who have identied the pest as Batocera invadens, the oriental fruit y,
are planning to ship around
400 pheromone lure traps to
the atoll from Chennai to
contain the attack.
The officials of the Fisheries and Agricultural Ministry
of Maldives had recently approached the APFISN, a
cooperative alliance of the 33

member countries in the
Asia- Pacic Forestry Commission, a statutory body of
the Food and Agriculture Organisation, for containing the
attack. Mangoes and water
apples farmed there were
widely damaged in the attack.
The traps marketed by a
Chennai rm have a trap container and a compatible lure
dispenser to attract and entrap the ies. Methyl Eugenol, an insect pheromone, is
used to lure fruit ies that attack mango, guava and other
tree fruits.
The males of many fruit y
species, said T.V. Sajeev, APFISN coordinator, are strongly attracted to pheromones.
The volatiles in the trap,

which would last up to 50
days, attract the males, which
are eventually trapped and
killed thus denying the females the chance to mate.
The female ies are the
ones who bore the fruits to lay
eggs, which eventually destroy the fruits. The breeding
population of the ies could
be effectively controlled using such traps, he explained.
T. Jiji, Professor of Entomology, College of Agriculture,
Vellayani,
Thiruvananthapuram, said
fruit y attack was rst reported in India three decades
ago.
The Kerala Agriculture
University had developed an
eco-friendly Integrated Pest

Management system including pheromone traps. Over 2
lakh such kits, which have a
success rate of around 90 per
cent, have been distributed in
Kerala since 2008, Dr. Jiji
said.
G. Suja, Assistant Professor, Onattukara Regional
Agricultural Research Station
of the University, at Kayamkulam in Alappuzha, pointed
out that pheromone traps
could also be used to control
pest attack in vegetables, paddy and coconut. Banana traps
using banana, jaggery and two
drops of pesticides for trapping female fruit ies have also been developed by the
university, said Ms. Suja.
s science stands now, predicting the precise location, time and magnitude of
earthquakes is not possible.
However, the regions that are
more vulnerable to quakes
are well known. Much like the
subduction zone off Sumatra,
the Himalayan belt, in particular, is a seismically active region. As recently witnessed in
Nepal and parts of India, the
7.8 magnitude earthquake
ended up killing thousands of
people. The culprit was unsafe buildings. After all,
earthquakes do not kill, unsafe buildings do.
The extent of damage to
buildings depends not only
on the magnitude of the
earthquake, but also on the
type of construction practice
followed in a particular region or country. For example,
an earthquake in Tokyo or
Los Angeles may result in
damage of only a few buildings because strict construction regulations are adopted.
But a similar earthquake may
be catastrophic in Mumbai or
Delhi, in terms of buildings
damaged and lives lost, because the building design and
construction practices are
not adequately regulated.
There is much we can do to
protect our buildings and
thus save lives. It is possible
today to assess the vulnerability of any building to earthquake,
and,
wherever
possible, to undertake retrot
measures to make it safe.
When
an
earthquake
strikes, the ground shakes violently, depending on several
factors like the magnitude,
the depth of the focus and the
nature of soil. In some rare
cases involving sandy soils in
the presence of ground water,
the soil can suddenly behave
like quicksand causing buildings to sink or tilt and collapse. In such regions,
buildings should be either
supported on pile foundations resting on hard strata or
should be constructed after
suitable ground improvement measures are undertaken.
In hilly terrains (as in the
Himalayan regions), landslides are likely to be triggered,
bringing
down
buildings located on the unstable slopes. Slope stabilising measures can help to
some extent to arrest the
damage.
Even if the soil and foundations in a structure are safe,
collapse of a building can occur if it does not have adequate strength to resist the
horizontal forces that are
generated during an earth-
Buildings raised on stilts with no walls in the

ground storey are more likely to
collapse. PHOTO: REUTERS
quake. Also, there should be
adequate ductility, which is
the ability of the structure to
deform without collapsing
during the earthquake. For
this, it is important to ensure
that the connections at the
various interfaces of building
components remain intact
during the shaking.
The seismic forces generated increase with the mass and
the height of the building.
Therefore, it is desirable to
adopt light-weight materials
and low-rise structures in
highly earthquake-prone regions, unless they are properly designed, detailed and
constructed, based on the
prevailing standards.
Most of the construction in
India are non-engineered
and built in masonry. Often,
the connections between the
roof and the walls, and between cross-walls, are weak,
rendering such buildings vulnerable to collapse.
There are recommendations available in our national
codes on providing seismicresistant features in such
buildings such as providing
small reinforced concrete
bands in the walls at the
plinth, lintel (above the windows and doors) and roof levels, and various other
measures to tie the components of the building together. These measures ensure
that integrity is preserved
during ground shaking. The
concrete bands should be
horizontally
continuous
throughout the walls to help
in tying the components of
the building together. It is also important to ensure that
the materials used (such as
brick and mortar) as well as
construction
practices,
should be of good quality.
Retrotting old buildings
that donothave such concrete bands isalsopossible.
Ferrocement bands and embedded metal strips that run
across the walls (horizontally
and vertically) can preserve
the integrity of the buildings
to a large extent.
In the case of modern

buildings, which are framed
(comprising a skeleton of columns and beams, typically
made of reinforced concrete)
or having shear walls, it is
possible to ensure safety
against collapse through
proper structural design and
detailing, to achieve the desired strength and ductility.
There should be adequate
number of frames in the two
perpendicular directions in
plan. The frames should be
more-or-less symmetrically
distributed to minimise
twisting of the building.
Unlike buildings that have
a basement, those built on
stilts with no walls in the
ground storey are more
likely to collapse, as evidenced during the 2001 Gujarat
earthquake.
The
structural instability is triggered by yielding in the
ground storey columns, causing the upper storeys to come
crashing down. In this case,
the vertical walls of the building do not reach the ground;
they suddenly end at the rst
oor of the building.
As a result, a sudden discontinuity in mass and stiffness of the walls arises
leading to a concentration of
stresses in the ground oor
columns. The embedded steel
in the column yields at the
beam-column junction in the
ground storey causing the
whole building to collapse
technically called a pancake
collapse.
Buildings on stilts need to
be specially designed. Columns in the stilts should be
stronger and stiffer than
those in the rest of the building to take the additional
stress introduced by the stilt
construction.
Thus, we can safeguard the
lives of our people by adopting proper building design
and construction practices.
AMLAN K. SENGUPTA
and DEVDAS MENON
Professors, Department of
Civil Engineering,
IIT Madras
Tracking Ebola virus genomes

with ultra-small device
W
hen poor countries,

with limited infrastructure, experience disease
outbreaks as happened with
Ebola in West Africa a device about the size of a small
chocolate bar could offer a
way to sequence the genomes
of viruses and other pathogens right in those countries.
The device, MinION, has
been developed by Oxford
Nanopore Technologies, a
U.K. based company, and utilises a proprietary method for
doing the sequencing.
During a talk at the Molecular Virology Meeting that
took place in Thiruvananthapuram recently, Thomas
Hoenen, a postdoctoral researcher with the Laboratory
of Virology at NIAD, in the
U.S., gave a quick glimpse of
using the device to sequence
Ebola virus genomes in Liberia, one of the West African
countries badly hit by the current outbreak.
Such genome sequence information was very important for a number of reasons,
he pointed out. Molecular diagnostic techniques used
nowadays relied on detecting
telltale genetic signatures of
the virus. So it was necessary
to check whether those genetic markers continued to
hold good. Moreover, some
Ebola therapeutics currently
being tested were aimed at
counteracting specic viral
genes.
Besides, getting the viral
genome sequences teaches
us a lot of virus evolution during this outbreak, which is re-
Thomas Hoenen with the Laboratory of Virology at

NIAD, U.S., says the device works well even in very
primitive conditions. PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
ally unprecedented in its
length, he said.
However, there were only
limited genome sequences
available from the current
Ebola outbreak. A major reason for this was that it was
extremely politically and logistically challenging to
bring patient samples out of
the affected countries to laboratories where the virus
could be sequenced.
So we decided to try the
other way round. But the
challenges involved in bringing available sequencing machine into Ebola-affected
countries and getting them
working there were formidable, remarked Dr. Hoenen.
More or less by coincidence, when we were looking
on the Internet [for] what
else is out there, we stumbled
upon this very new technology, which is not yet commercially available. MinION
is an incredibly small device and also very simple to
use. The device, along with all
the chemicals and materials
needed for it, can easily be

brought into a country by a
single person just using
checked luggage on a commercial airplane, he said.
Earlier this year, he took
the MinION, along with its
necessary paraphernalia, to
Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. I then spent about two
and a half week testing this
technology, sequencing viruses found in 15 samples taken from patients.
As a paper about the viruses sequenced there is being
prepared for publication in a
journal, Dr. Hoenen gave few
details about what he found.
The bottom line is that this
technology works extremely
well, even in the very primitive conditions that we had
in Liberia, he noted.
A key motivation for eld
testing MinION was to have a
technology that can be very
rapidly taken into countries
affected by future disease
outbreaks, Dr. Hoenen later
told me.
N. GOPAL RAJ
ND-ND
NOIDA/DELHI
THE HINDU
FARMERS NOTEBOOK
QUESTION CORNER
Eco-friendly technologies fetch

better results in rice production
More than 100 growers participated in the demonstrations
M.J. PRABU
PHOTO: S. HARPAL SINGH
Photosynthesis
How do non-green coloured leaves in a plant
photosynthesise?
HIMANSHU RAJMANI
New Delhi
We all know that most plants are green. This green
colour is caused by the presence of green chlorophyll pigments found in the leaves which are involved in photosynthesis. These pigments capture light energy from the sun
which is used to fuel photosynthesis. Plants need photosynthesis to make energy in the form of sugars.
Even the green leaves often contain non-green pigments, such as carotenoids and xamthophylls, in addition
to green chlorophylls in the plastids of their cells. There are
many plants with non-green leaves in which anthocyanins
the purple cytoplasmic pigments that are present in such
large amount which can mask the green colour of the
chlorophyll and make the plant appear purple. But the
photosynthesis is still happening underneath. This is because of the presence of chlorophyll pigments. Even in
chlorophyll there are different kinds based on molecular
structure and wavelength absorption. Only those plants
which have Chlorophyll-a (Ch-a) can do photosynthesis as
only Ch-a in the reaction centre of photo-system is involved in the transfer of light energy into chemical energy,
the essential process of light reaction of photosynthesis.
Carotenoids and xanthophylls have only accessory and
protective functions: they help harvest the light energy and
pass it to Chlorophyll-a, they help dissipate the excess light
and they quench reactive oxygen species and hence they
have antioxidant, protective function.
This is the case found in non-green algae which synthesis their food by doing photosynthesis. In addition to
the principle pigments, the non-green algae contain Chlorophyll-a in their chromatophores.
There are a few hundred parasitic plant species that lack
chlorophyll so their stems are usually white or yellow. They
either lack leaves or have rudimentary leaves. Examples
include dodder and Rafflesia.
S. PALANIAPPAN
Editor, Research Journal of Biological Sciences
J.J. College of Arts and Science (Autonomous)
Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu
CM
uttanad, referred
to as rice granary
of Kerala, forms a
unique ecologically fragile bio-geographical
unit that is located mostly in
Alappuzha district in Kerala.
The vulnerability of the
system is attributed to the
problems of water logging
and soil acidity along with
climatic variations. Crop
damage due to summer rains
and flood during monsoon in
the low lying fields called padasekharams are quite common.
This uniqueness in bio-geography and associated social factors and institutions
has earned it a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System (GIAHS) status
by FAO in 2013.
Unique place
The heritage status also
strives for ecological restoration and sustainable development
of
the
water-logged system which
is under increasing stress
due to environmental pollution caused by indiscriminate use of chemical
fertilizers and chemicals,
says Dr. P. Muralidharan, senior scientist and programme coordinator at the
institute.
To address these problems, demonstrations were
conducted in Alappuzha
hosted by Central Plantation
Crops Research Institute
(CPCRI) in Muttar village of
Veliyanad block under the
National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture
(NICRA) project for four
successive
crops
from
2011-2015.
Farmers were encouraged
to take up demonstration
packages on optimization of
Tomato cultivation under

fertigation method
P.S.SUDHAKAR
& S.SREENIVASULU
omato is one of the major

crops cultivated in Chinnagottigallu mandal of Chittoor district, A.P. It is
cultivated in an area of 267
hectares with average yield of
45-55 tonnes per hectare.
The crop is cultivated
throughout the year under
drip irrigation system. Even
though drip system is adopted, some farmers are using
fertilizer doses indiscriminately through soil application for crop production.
Some of them are applying
excessive dose of water soluble fertilizers along with drip
irrigation as recommended
by local private companies.
Cultivation cost
PACKAGE: Farmers were able to harvest six to seven tonnes of paddy from a
hectare. PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
seed rate and plant population through the use of drum
seeder, site specific acidity
-nutrient
management
(SSNM) based on soil, testing,
and eco-friendly pest and disease management and placement of trichocards for the
control of major pests.
Area covered
More than 100 farmers
participated in these demonstrations which covered an
area of 74.2 hectare over four
years.
Through regular field visits, farmer field schools, and
interactions the crop situation from sowing to harvesting
was
monitored
continuously.
According to Dr. Muralidharan, by using paddy seeder
(drum seeder) the seed requirement came down to 30
kg from of 100-120 kg a hectare thus reducing the cost on
seed purchase to almost 25
per cent.
Since the seeds were sown
in uniform lines, plant population was optimum, the
number of productive tillers
was high and good aeration in

the crop stand which resulted
in reduced susceptibility of
pests and diseases.
Further the plants had
strong root anchorage in the
soil which helped them survive lodging during harvesting stage due to summer
showers and wind.
Another point is the time
taken for harvest by the combined harvester was reduced
by 40-50 per cent due to the
uniform population and nonlodging feature achieved by
drum seeding.
All these factors put together reduced the cost of
cultivation by about 10-20
per cent, says Mr. M.S.Rajeev, specialist at the Kendra.
No pests
Farmers were able to harvest the crop without using
any chemicals. There were no
pest or disease incidences in
these plots and farmers were
satisfied with the methods
used.
Usage of chemical pesticides and fungicides reduced
by 90 per cent and those who
regularly used plant protection chemicals, the amount

spent for pesticides and fungicides reduced to 50 per cent
compared to the previous
crop, according to him.
Better yield
While the traditional
broadcast crop yielded an average five to six tonnes per
hectare, by adopting this
package of technologies farmers could harvest six to seven
tonnes per hectare with reduced inputs.
The better yield and reduced cultivation cost led to
an overall net profit of minimum Rs.12,500 per hectare.
Beneficiary farmers acted as
master farmers to spread this
package of technologies to
others of the adjoining
villages.
For further details interested farmers can contact Dr.
P.Muralidharan, programme
coordinator
on
mobile:
09496167382 and Mr. S. Rajeev, specialist, email: mailto:
kvkalapuzha@gmail.com,
mobile:
09446282080,
phone:0479-2449268.
15
As a consequence, cost of
cultivation has been increasing indirectly with heavy doses of fertilizers since farmers
are investing more either for
daily application of water soluble fertilizers through drip
irrigation or for soil application of complex fertilizers.
In such conditions, tomato
crop sometimes could not assure guaranteed profit to the
farmers due to downfall of
market prices especially at
the time of market glut.
Frontline demonstrations
on fertigation in tomato has
been undertaken by RASS-
Krishi vigyan Kendra in different villages of Chinnagottigallu

mandal
under
NABARD lead crops project
with an objective of enhancing crop productivity with
lower doses of fertilizers.
This technological intervention has brought about
not only considerable reduction in cost of cultivation with
lower doses of fertilizers and
but also led to higher crop
yields.
Intervention
As a latest technological intervention, fertigation schedule with 50 per cent
recommended doses of fertilizers was demonstrated in a
large scale adoption. KVK has
given water soluble fertilizers
such as 50kg urea, 25kg multi-k and 25kg calcium nitrate
free of cost for demonstration
purpose.
Technical knowhow was also provided on foliar application of micronutrients, IPM
practices (yellow sticky traps,
trap crop, border crop).
Result a 33.3 per cent yield
increase was obtained in the
demonstration plot saving
about Rs.1,37,500 on expense
on inputs.
(Mr. P.S.Sudhakar and Mr.
S.Sreenivasulu, both subject
matter specialists, Horticulture, RASS-KVK, Tirupati,
mobile: 9908836684, email:
rasskvk@gmail.com)
FARM QUERY
Machine for onions

Is there any machine available for planting onion bulbs?
K. SHARMA
Varanasi
Mr. Pandharinath Sarjerao More, a farmer in Ahmednagar,
Maharashtra has developed a tractor drawn onion transplanter that performs three functions at a time transplanting,
applying fertilizers, and digging irrigation channels. The machine also sows seeds of cereals and pulses. For details readers
can contact him at Sangavi Bhusar, Kopargaon Ahmednagar,
Maharashtra 423602, phones: 02423-262070, 202070, mobiles: 9881269253 and 9420748253.
ND-ND

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THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015

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tion that cancer originates in

The adaptive response became controversial because

the effects, if any, of adaptive

tance of acceptable levels of

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / AGRICULTURE

This weeks questions

Organic farming in mulberry

SUSTAINING: Officials from the Central Silk Board inspecting an organically

ical based farming frequently

THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015

Use of sex pheromones

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2015

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / AGRICULTURE

recent report of the Rajasthan State Human

its kind and said failure of

Small growers join forces to

How do trees survive after shedding their leaves?

This weeks questions

Not enough place

would directly benet from and unloading costs from the

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2015

New hope for Alzheimer's

Carbon nanotube computing?

Scientists, using an animal model, have shown that

Single-walled carbon nanotube composites have

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

A pictorial warning must shock

hat is the connection

heed to the Prime Ministers order of bigger pictorial warnings,