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- Earth's protective ozone layer is finally healing from damage caused by aerosol sprays and coolants, a new United Nations report has said.
- The ozone layer had been thinning since the late 1970s. Scientists raised the alarm and ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out worldwide.
- As a result, the upper ozone layer above the northern hemisphere should be completely repaired in the 2030s and the gaping Antarctic ozone hole should disappear in the 2060s, according to a scientific assessment released Monday at a conference in Quito, Ecuador.
- The southern hemisphere lags a bit and its ozone layer should be healed by mid-century. "It's really good news," said report co-chairman Paul Newman, chief Earth scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre.
- "If ozone-depleting substances had continued to increase, we would have seen huge effects. We stopped that." High in the atmosphere, ozone shields earth from ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer, crop damage and other problems.
- Use of man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which release chlorine and bromine, began eating away at the ozone.
- In 1987, countries around the world agreed in the Montreal Protocol to phase out CFCs and businesses came up with replacements for spray cans and other uses.
- At its worst in the late 1990s, about 10 per cent of the upper ozone layer was depleted, said Newman.
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- Bill Gates thinks toilets are a serious business, and he’s betting big that a reinvention of this most essential of conveniences can save half a million lives and deliver $200 billion-plus in savings
- The billionaire philanthropist, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $200 million over seven years funding sanitation research, showcased some 20 novel toilet and sludge-processing designs that eliminate harmful pathogens and convert bodily waste into clean water and fertilizer.
- “The technologies you’ll see here are the most significant advances in sanitation in nearly 200 years,” Gates, 63, told the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing on 6Nov.
- Holding a beaker of human excreta that, Gates said, contained as many as 200 trillion rotavirus cells, 20 billion Shigella bacteria, and 100,000 parasitic worm eggs, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder explained to a 400-strong crowd that new approaches for sterilizing human waste may help end almost 500,000 infant deaths and save $233 billion annually in costs linked to diarrhea, cholera and other diseases caused by poor water, sanitation and hygiene.
- One approach from the California Institute of Technology that Gates said he finds “super interesting” integrates an electrochemical reactor to break down water and human waste into fertilizer and hydrogen, which can be stored in hydrogen fuel cells as energy.
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- Buried in the Arabian desert’s sand are clues to the peninsula’s wetter, greener past. Fossils from long-extinct elephants, antelope and jaguars paint a prehistoric scene not of a barren wasteland but of a flourishing savanna sprinkled with watering holes.
- Now, scientists have found what they think is evidence of the activities of early human relatives, who lived in this ancient landscape some 300,000 to 500,000 years ago.
- If the findings are confirmed, the stone flakes and butchered animal bones the researchers uncovered would be evidence that early hominins extinct members of the genus Homo but most likely not of our species were present in the Arabian Peninsula at least 100,000 years earlier than previously known.
- The findings, published 5Nov. in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, also suggest early hominins did not need any special evolutionary adaptations before they ventured out from the grasslands of Africa and into the wilds of Arabia.
- “As the savanna expanded, so did humans of this period,” said Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and an author on the paper.
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- Exposure to sources of outdoor pollution such as vehicle exhausts, and industrial emissions can increase a child's risk of developing autism spectrum disorder by up to 78 per cent, a study has warned.
- The research followed children in Shanghai from birth to three years to understand the effect of exposure to fine particles (PM2.5).
- The study included 124 ASD children and 1,240 healthy children in stages over a nine-year period, examining the association between air pollution and ASD.
- The study, published in the journal Environment International, is first to examine the effects of long-term exposure of air pollution on ASD during the early life of children in a developing country, adding to previous studies that have already linked prenatal air pollution exposure to ASD in children.
- "The causes of autism are complex and not fully understood, but environmental factors are increasingly recognised in addition to genetic and other factors," said Zhiling Guo, from Chinese Academy of Sciences.
- "The developing brains of young children are more vulnerable to toxic exposures in the environment and several studies have suggested this could impact brain function and the immune system," Guo said.
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- World Bank has signed an agreement with the government of India and government of Andhra Pradesh to extend a loan of $172.2 million (Rs 1,257 crore) to help turn farming in Andhra a financially viable activity.
- The program, the Andhra Pradesh Integrated Irrigation and Agriculture Transformation Project (APIIATP) will benefit two lakh families of poor and marginalised farmers, agro-entrepreneurs, women and other vulnerable groups.
- The APIIATP program will be implemented in rural areas largely dependent upon rain-fed agriculture and help strengthen the resilience of poor and marginalised farmers against adverse climate events through improved access to irrigation, drought seed varieties, and post-harvest technology.
- These initiatives were aimed at improving soil health, water-use efficiency, and crop productivity.
- The project covers 1,000 small-scale community-based irrigation systems spread over an area of 90,000 hectares in over 1,000 villages spread across 12 climate vulnerable districts of Andhra Pradesh.
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- With fewer predators, raptor numbers plummeted and lizard populations rose in Chalkewadi plateauThere’s a new super-predator in Maharashtra’s Chalkewadi plateau.
- With their constantly-whirring blades, wind turbines have decreased birds of prey here, finds a study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on November 5.
- It also proves, for the first time, that the ramifications of wind farms run much deeper across the food chain: superb fan-throated lizards small, colourful reptiles that the birds prey on increased in number and showed altered behaviour, physiology and even less-flamboyant body colours.
- Wind farms arrived in Chalkewadi almost 20 years ago and Professor Maria Thaker (Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science) and her team studied their impact on the local ecosystem between 2012 and 2014.
- Comparing raptor and lizard numbers in six areas with and without wind turbines, they found that wind farms had one-fourth the number of birds of prey (including eagles and kites) and showed lower predatory bird activity.
- But the impacts didn’t end there. With fewer predators, lizard numbers shot up to almost three times more in wind farms. And these reptiles showed marked changes in behaviour.
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- India has been elected as a Member of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Council for another 4-year term (2019-2022), Union Communications Minister Manoj said on 6 Nov.
- The elections to the Council were held during the ongoing ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 at Dubai, UAE.
- By securing 165 votes, India ranked third among the 13 countries elected to the Council from the Asia-Australasia region, and eighth among the 48 countries elected to the Council globally
- The ITU has 193 member states who elect representatives to the Council, according to statement here.
- Commenting on this development, Mr Sinha said, "We are delighted to see India as a member of the ITU Council once again.
- This is a recognition of the role our country plays in the area of Telecom and ICT on the global stage".
- India has been an active member of the ITU since 1869, earnestly supporting the development and propagation of telecom in the global community of nations.
- The country has been a regular member of the ITU Council since 1952, and has played an important role in harmonising the contributions of member States from the region, always respecting the principles of equality and consensus-building.
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- Angad Vir Singh Bajwa shot to a gold with a world record score in the men's skeet final of the 8th Asian Shotgun Championship, becoming the first Indian skeet shooter to win a continental or world level event.
- Angad shot a perfect 60 out of 60 in the final round to claim top spot ahead of China's Di Jin who shot 58. UAE's Saeed Al Maktoum won bronze with a score of 46.
- Angad shot 121 out of 125 in qualification to be tied at second position with three other shooters. Di Jin shot 124 to top the qualification round. Angad then went into a shoot-off to determine the minor positions and shot 15 targets to Al Maktoum's 16 to be placed third.
- Local shooter Saad Habib missed his sixth shoot-off target to qualify fourth while Kuwait's three time World Champion and Rio Olympics Bronze medalist Abdullah Alrashidi qualified fifth with a score of 120.
- In the finals, Angad shot like a man possessed and delivered on the promise he has been showing for years, with a perfect 60 out of 60 to snuff out a world class field.
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