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Saturday, October 30, 2010

India Nepal ink pact to boost cooperation in education sector

India and Nepal have inked a pact to boost cooperation in the education sector as New Delhi pledged to provide Rs 25 million to improve infrastructure in one of the oldest institutions in the country's eastern Taplejung district.

An MoU was inked between the Embassy of India and the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction, Ilam district, Friday for providing assistance for the construction of two separate hostels for boys and girls.
New Delhi's financial grant of Rs 25 million for the construction of hostels of Shri Sinam Higher Secondary School comes under Nepal-India Economic Cooperation.


Established in 1950 as a primary school and later upgraded as higher secondary school in 2001, the school is one of the oldest educational institutions in Nepal.


The new infrastructures would cater to the educational need of over 1,200 students, about half of them girls, according to an Indian Embassy press release.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Zebras from Germany for zoos in Karna

The Zoo Authority of Karnataka is trying to purchase zebras from Germany for two zoos in the state, a top official said today.

"We are trying to buy two pairs of zebras from the international market in Germany, one pair each for Bannerghatta Biological Park and one pair for Mysore zoo", M N Jayakumar, Member Secretary of ZAK, told reporters today.

Bannerghatta Park does not have any zebra while the Mysore zoo has five zebras.

ZAK is also receiving two Asiatic lions from Rajasthan.

"Since we do not have any Asiatic lions and have only African lions, we are getting two from from Jungadh in Rajasthan", he said.

On the revenue earned by BBP, which get about a lakh visitors in a month, he said "revenues have improved with the now 50:50 sharing between Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) and BBP. It was earlier 60:40.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Moon has water, and its own water cycle

A year after announcing the discovery of water molecules on the moon, NASA scientists have now said the earth's satellite is not only rich in useful materials, it has a water cycle of its own.
 
In fact, new studies suggest that there is a lot more water on the moon than earlier thought.
The new data uncovered by NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO found evidence that the lunar soil within shadowy craters is rich in useful materials, and the moon is chemically active and has a water cycle.
Scientists also confirmed the water was in the form of mostly pure ice crystals in some places.
The results are featured in six papers published in the 22nd October issue of Science.
"NASA has convincingly confirmed the presence of water ice and characterised its patchy distribution in permanently shadowed regions of the moon," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The twin impacts of LCROSS and a companion rocket stage in the moon's Cabeus crater on 9th October, 2009, lifted a plume of material that might not have seen direct sunlight for billions of years.

As the plume traveled nearly 10 miles above the rim of Cabeus, instruments aboard LCROSS and LRO made observations of the crater and debris and vapour clouds.

After the impacts, grains of mostly pure water ice were lofted into the sunlight in the vacuum of space, NASA said.

"Seeing mostly pure water ice grains in the plume means water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"Also, the diversity and abundance of certain materials called volatiles in the plume, suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadow," he said.

Volatiles are compounds that freeze and are trapped in the cold lunar craters and vaporise when warmed by the sun.

The existence of mostly pure water ice could mean future human explorers would not have to retrieve the water out of the soil in order to use it for valuable life support resources.

In addition, an abundant presence of hydrogen gas, ammonia and methane could be exploited to produce fuel, it said.

Scientists believe the water and mix of volatiles that were detected could be the remnants of a comet impact.

According to scientists, these volatile chemical by-products are also evidence of a cycle through which water ice reacts with lunar soil grains.

NASA said by understanding the processes and environments that determine where water ice will be, how water was delivered to the moon and its active water cycle, future mission planners might be better able to determine which locations will have easily-accessible water.