Feature Article

Skin cancer is extremely common, and melanoma causes about 80% of skin cancer deaths. In fact, melanoma kills over 50 thousand people around the world each year, and these numbers are rising. Clearly, standard treatments are not effectively treating melanoma, and alternative therapies are needed to address this problem. Hibiscus tea has been noted to have medicinal properties, including anticancer effects.

Original Source

The cryosphere constitutes an important subset of the hydrosphere. The Himalayan cryosphere is a significant contributor to the hydrological budget of a large river system such as the Ganges. Basic data on the cryosphere in the Himalaya is inadequate and also has large uncertainties. The data on glacial melt component in the Himalayan rivers of India also shows high variability.

RNA silencing is an adaptive, inducible antiviral defence mechanism in the host against invading viruses. The adaptive antiviral function is characterized by the formation of virus-derived small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) during viral infection. As a counter defense strategy, a number of plant viruses evolve viral suppressors to target antiviral silencing.

The west coast of Korean Peninsula is an area where casualties and property damages by meteo-tsunamis from the Yellow Sea have been reported. A case in point is the event with an estimated maximum amplitude of 240 cm in Yeonggwang (YG) on 31 March 2007. Many studies have been carried out since then in Korea. These researches focused primarily on the oceanographic aspects (e.g., the resonance between the atmosphere and ocean). They wanted to calculate the resonance effects by the propagation velocity and direction of meteo-tsunami.

To determine the contribution of Orientia tsutsugamushi, the agent of scrub typhus, as a cause of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) in Assam, India, researchers conducted a retrospective study of hospital patients with symptoms of AES during 2013–2015. Our findings suggest that O. tsutsugamushi infection leads to AES and the resulting illness and death.

Original Source

The electric field and Maxwell current density measured below 32 small isolated thunderstorms over Pune (India) have been analyzed here. These data clearly show the presence of 10 out of 32 thunderstorms with inverted polarity charge structure. Values of Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) on thunderstorm days taken from MODIS show that all the thunderstorms with inverted polarity occurred on days with significantly higher AOD compared to normal polarity thunderstorms. The peak flash rate did not show significant difference between normal polarity thunderstorms and inverted polarity thunderstorms.

The impact of projected climate change on groundnut (cv. Robut 33-1 and GG-2) yield have been studied for Anand station of middle Gujarat Agro-climatic region using PRECIS output of AR 2 Rscenario and base line data. Yield simulation study was performed by PNUTGRO (DSSAT v4.5) model. The field experiment data on groundnut cv. Robut 33-1 and GG-2 during the years 2008 to 2011 have been used to calibrate and validate the model. The weather condition as projected by AR 2R scenario (2070-2100) showed that there will be 13.7% higher rainfall as compared to base line (1961-90).

Among the extreme weather events hailstorm in recent past caused significant crop damage across the country. In 2014 and 2015 unseasonal rains and hailstorms during March and April damaged rabi crops as well as horticultural crops extensively in many parts of the country.

The forecast for 655 districts and 6500 blocks had been prepared and implemented on 1P st P June, 2014. The procedure for getting forecast for the districts and blocks in India including altitude corrections is based upon regular (0.25 × 0.25) grid output from the T-574 Model and output from 9 km WRF model.

The rainfed areas receive mean annual precipitation in range of 500-1500 mm with high degree of variability and are beset with problems of mid-season drought and associated impacts on the crop productivity. In this paper, analysis of weekly, monthly, annual rainfall and weekly rainfall probabilities in relation to crop productivity has been carried out for all the stations of the study area in West Bengal where rain-fed agriculture is predominant.