Feature Article

The quality of diets in rodent feeding trials is crucial. We describe the contamination with environmental pollutants of 13 laboratory rodent diets from 5 continents. Measurements were performed using accredited methodologies. All diets were contaminated with pesticides (1-6 out of 262 measured), heavy metals (2-3 out of 4, mostly lead and cadmium), PCDD/Fs (1-13 out of 17) and PCBs (5-15 out of 18). Out of 22 GMOs tested for, Rounduptolerant GMOs were the most frequently detected, constituting up to 48% of the diet.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is the major source of variability in winter atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere, with large impacts on temperature, precipitation and storm tracks, and therefore also on strategic sectors such as insurance, renewable energy production, crop yields and water management. Recent developments in dynamical methods offer promise to improve seasonal NAO predictions, but assessing potential predictability on multi-annual timescales requires documentation of past low-frequency variability in the NAO.

Researchers are racing to determine whether forests will continue to act as a brake on climate change by soaking up more carbon.

Sex determination in animals is amazingly plastic. Vertebrates display contrasting strategies ranging from complete genetic control of sex (genotypic sex determination) to environmentally determined sex (for example, temperature-dependent sex determination). Phylogenetic analyses suggest frequent evolutionary transitions between genotypic and temperature-dependent sex determination in environmentally sensitive lineages, including reptiles. These transitions are thought to involve a genotypic system becoming sensitive to temperature, with sex determined by gene–environment interactions.

The question of software patent and its patentability was discussed in June, 2014 by the Supreme Court of the United States of America (USA) in the case of Alice Corporation v CLS Bank International. It has become necessary to view the issue of software patent in a new light as it is observed that there is greater ambivalence in the law and practice of granting patent to computer implemented inventions.

Indigenous Technical Knowledge has been the key rescuer of the fishers and common people of Dhemaji district of Assam, India from frequent floods in the region every year. They utilize the existing resources with a sustainable eco-friendly approach towards disaster management and exploration of fisheries resources and co-exist with the usual floods in the region. This study was conducted in the region through PRA after interviewing 110 fishers of three most flood-prone development blocks of the district with the help of an interview questionnaire.

We briefly review the main aspects of leptogenesis, describing both the unflavoured and the flavoured versions of the N2-dominated scenario. A study of the success rates of both classes of models has been carried out. We comment on these results and discuss corrective effects to this simplest scenario. Focusing on the flavoured case, we consider the conditions required by strong thermal leptogenesis, where the final asymmetry is fully independent of the initial conditions.

Air pollution is a major concern of now days. It is caused by many gaseous as well as particulate pollutants. The ground level O3 and SPM (PM2.5) are the two essential sources which can fluctuates the quality of ambient air in the atmosphere. The diurnal average of O3 and PM2.5 of the year 2014 reflected the annual and seasonal variations throughout the year. The correlation between O3 and PM2.5 shows maximum fluctuating concentration in the month of December with positive correlation (r=0.1886).

Lakes have played an important role in the history of Bengaluru; these were the primary sources of drinking water and irrigation in the last two decades. Due to the boom in the IT and related sectors in the silicon valley of India, has created an acute stress on the natural resources and infrastructure of the city of Bangalore with exponential growth in population. Bandematta is located in southern part Bangalore metropolitan.

The study of heavy metal (HMs) contamination of environment is of great interest due to their serious health hazard. In this work, the contamination of tree leaves with the HMs in the most polluted industrial city, Korba, India is described. The leaves of common trees i.e. Azadirachta indica, Butea monosperma, Eucalyptus, Ficus religiosa, Mangifera indica and Tectona grandis were selected for assessment of the HMs contamination as bioindicator. The elevated concentration of HMs (i.e.