Feature Article

Water supply through gravity flow mechanism to rural homes, especially in tribal areas, can be regarded as a key component of rural development. A simple and sustainable concept, it has successfully provided a continuous water supply to rural villages. In gravity flow, water is harnessed by estimating the flow of its pressure from the water source and storing it in a water tank from where it is supplied to all households. Gram Vikas, a rural development organization in Orissa, uses this eco-friendly technology to help the people of tribal and rural areas.

Firms seek greener ethanol from wood chips and agricultural waste. Scientists and engineers are working on dozens of possible biofuel-processing routes, reports Charles Wyman, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Riverside, who is a founder of Mascoma Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., a leading developer of cellulosic ethanol processes.

The study was conducted in purposely selected Jhadol Panchayat Samiti in Udaipur district of Rajasthan. Four villages of Panchayat Samiti were selected on the basis of maximum work done in vermiculture by various organizations. The respondents were then selected from a list of vermicompost unit holders of each selected village by following the proportionate sampling procedure.

The present work studies gender participation in crop production and animal husbandry in the villages of Bundelkhand region in central India. 260 farmers were surveyed through open-ended questions but for detailed study 120 farmers (including 90 women) were involved from the two villages in Jhansi (U.P.) and members of 11 SHGs working on livelihood issues at community land in Chardwari area of Orchha, Tikamgarh (M.P.).

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems.

Technology policy lies at the core of the climate change challenge. Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.

Looking into the problem of NPS (Non-point sources) water pollution generated from agricultural activities, pollution prevention and pollution reduction initiatives, known as management measures are important. Use of the watershed approach is necessary to address water quality problems caused by NPS pollution. The watershed approach looks not only at a water body but also the entire area that drains into it.

With go-green as a password, the growing need for the green building must now become a palpable reality and a beginning is being made.

Attaching a 'floating' tree-ring chronology to ice core records that cover the abrupt Younger Dryas cold interval during the last glacial termination provides a better estimate of the onset and duration of the radiocarbon anomaly. The chronology suggests that marine records may be biased by changes in the concentration of radiocarbon in the ocean, which may affect the accuracy of a popular radiocarbon calibration program during this interval.

Destruction of the Earth's ozone shield due to the release of hydrogen sulphide and methane has been suggested as a cause of mass extinctions during periods of ocean anoxia over the past two billion years. This mechanism does not explain the end-Permian mass extinction, according to simulations with a two-dimensional atmospheric chemistry-transport model, which show that the ozone shield remains intact even with massive releases of hydrogen sulphide and methane.