A tough balancing act: The new bitter North-South divide in India’s sugar industry
Cane-starved southern mills want duty-free raw sugar imports, which the industry particularly in UP is bound to resist
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/a-tough-balancing-act-the-new-bitter-north-south-divide-sugar-imports-4810667/
The Trump discontinuity
His new Afghan strategy could be a game-changer for South Asia. There is an opportunity for India
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-trump-discontinuity-us-president-policy-on-afghanistan-4810529/
And the war goes on
(Donald Trump’s plan for Afghanistanis still too short on specifics )
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/and-the-war-goes-on/article19549318.ece
Understanding work
In a timely initiative, a global commission is to look at the changing dynamics of work
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/understanding-work/article19549335.ece
A bilateral investment treaty (BIT) of critique
The Srikrishna committee has lost an opportunity to push for the recalibration of the Indian BIT regime
The recent report of the Justice B.N. Srikrishna committee, constituted to prepare a road map to make India a hub of international arbitration, has recommended many changes in Indian arbitration law and institutional mechanisms to promote arbitration in India.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/a-bit-of-critique/article19549324.ece
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/moss-serves-as-a-cheap-pollution-monitor/article19547104.ece
source: Delicate mosses found on rocks and trees
in cities around the world could prove a low-cost way to monitor urban
pollution | Photo Credit: S.S. Kumar
The bioindicator responds to pollution by changing shape, density or disappearing, allowing scientists to calculate atmospheric alterations
Delicate
mosses found on rocks and trees in cities around the world can be used
to measure the impact of atmospheric change and could prove a low-cost
way to monitor urban pollution, according to Japanese scientists.
The
“bioindicator” responds to pollution or drought-stress by changing
shape, density or disappearing, allowing scientists to calculate
atmospheric alterations, said Yoshitaka Oishi, associate professor at
Fukui Prefectural University.
“This method is very cost effective
and important for getting information about atmospheric conditions,”
Oishi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone.
“Mosses
are a common plant in all cities so we can use this method in many
countries ... they have a big potential to be bioindicators,” said
Oishi, who analysed nearly 50 types of moss for the study.
Oishi
said humid cities where moss thrives could benefit most from using
bryophytes – a collective term for mosses, hornworts and liverworts – as
bioindicators, adding moss could be monitored in its natural
environment or cultivated for analysis.
Effect of nitrogen pollution
In
a research paper published in the Landscape and Urban Planning journal,
Oishi and a colleague described how they studied the effect of nitrogen
pollution, air quality and drought-stress on moss found over a 3km
square (1.9 mile) area in Hachioji City in northwestern Tokyo.
The
study showed severe drought-stress tended to occur in areas with high
levels of nitrogen pollution, which it said raised concerns over the
impact on health and biodiversity.
However, the scientists could
not effectively measure air purity which affects the number of moss
types as pollution levels in the sample area were not high enough, said
Oishi.
“If the air pollution is severe, the purity is also
evaluated by moss ... the change of the moss is very diverse according
to the environmental problem,” said Oishi.
Bioindicators such as
mosses - which generally absorb water and nutrients from their immediate
environments - were often cheaper to use than other methods of
environmental evaluation, and can also reflect changes to ecosystems,
said the scientists.
Out on several LIMBS
A Legal Information Management & Briefing System can help reduce government litigation
National Litigation Policy (NLP) in 2010 and need for evolving new litigation policy
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/out-on-several-limbs-4810603/
Internet shaming?
We live in fear of online mobs
Internet shaming spreads everywhere and lives forever. We need a way to fight it
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/G9yQa7U42iZeeJUhpyLBfJ/We-live-in-fear-of-online-mobs.html
The Bright Side of Internet Shaming
It's become so common that it might soon begin to lose its impact
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-bright-side-of-internet-shaming/
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