In News 
Is there a toxic waste site in your community?
The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) is a pioneer in working to solve some of New York's worst environmental problems.  It has unveiled a new interactive mapping website in association with Community Mapping Assistance Project (CMAP) at http://www.nypirg.org where New Yorkers can search for toxic contaminated sites in their communities, obtain information about the types of contaminants at the site, and find out about possible health threats. Citizens can also identify which state legislators represent each Superfund site, and then email Governor George Pataki and the legislators directly from the website. NYPIRG has been working to replenish the State's Superfund, which is used to finance the cleanup of toxic waste sites. NYPIRG is focused on protecting air quality through state and federal campaigns to reduce pollutants that contribute to global warming and through litigation to enforce the Clean Air Act. NYPIRG works to protect New York City's watershed areas to safeguard the drinking water of millions of New Yorkers. Also, NYPIRG works with breast cancer activists and public health experts to require industry to eliminate toxic chemical hazards, particularly pesticides.
Visit: http://www.nypirg.org
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NASA building spacecraft for cosmic collision
NASA has authorised building the Deep Impact spacecraft for a mission that will launch an impactor into a comet in a spectacular space collision to be broadcast live back to earth. Deep Impact will be launched in January 2004 and will near the Tempel 1 comet in July 2005, US Space Agency spokesman Don Savage said. The mission will have two spacecraft: a flyby spacecraft and a 350-kilogram copper mass impactor spacecraft. Once it is close enough to Tempel 1, the flyby probe will launch the impactor, which will slam into the comet at a speed of 36,000 kilometres per hour. The collision will create a spectacular football field-sized crater seven stories deep. The flyby craft, equipped with cameras, will transmit the show to Earth in near real-time and broadcast it lived on television, NASA said. The collision is scheduled for July 4, 2005 - US Independence Day. The flyby craft will take pictures and measure the composition of the gas and ice expelled outward by the impact, and the composition of the comet rocks. The mission has a $ 279 million price tag and is designed to learn about the comet's composition, structure, and how its interior differs from its surface. Comets are made up of ice and dust, primitive debris from 4.5 billion years ago, the earliest and coldest formation period of the solar system.
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Online courts service in south China
The courts in China's southernmost province, Hainan, launched an online service Saturday at the website www.hicourt.gov.cn, offering a variety of information. Notices and ruling writs issued by courts, and brief introductions about judges are available on the website, said a spokesman for the Hainan Higher People's Court. The website is a new channel for the public to communicate with courts in the province. People can lodge their suggestions and comments on the work of the courts or file complaints about the courts on the website, said the spokesman. Information on laws and regulations is also available on the website. The number of ruling writs available on the website totals 2, 000, and the total content available exceeds 10 million Chinese- characters.
Source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200105/28/eng20010528_71183.html
Asian countfies are most polluted: Survey
Asia's poorer and most populous countries China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia are perceived to be the most polluted, while Singapore, Malaysia and Japan are the cleanest, a regional survey showed. Pollution, which covers the quality of air and water, noise levels and traffic congestion, has been singled out as the biggest complaint among expatriates living in Asia, according to the latest survey by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd (PERC).In the survey, PERC asked expatriates living in 12 Asian countries and territories to rate the quality of air and water, noise as well as traffic.
Ratings for each category were averaged into an overall grading scale from zero to 10, where zero was the best and 10 the worst. India emerged the worst overall with a score of 8.31. It was followed by China with 8.03, Vietnam with 7.63, the Philippines with 7.55, Indonesia with 7.33 and Hong Kong with 7.28.
India's major cities have among the highest levels of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. A fifth of its urban households have no access to safe drinking water, just 23 per cent have toilets and only 48 per cent have sanitation coverage.
"Air pollution is generally considered to be the biggest single environmental problem in Asia, while traffic congestion is another headache throughout the region," PERC said. "The perception of water and noise pollution is more mixed." Noting that China and more recently India have been seeing faster economic growth, PERC said such expansion has been carried out without effective environmental programmes. This "raises the very real question of how sustainable the economic development of these giants of Asia can be in the medium term," it said.a
Source: Agenices/Singapore The Pioneer, 28 May 2001
Make your houses safe from earthquakes
Very little has been done to make earthquake-resistant buildings in Delhi even though the Capital falls in a highly seismic region. It is, however, possible to take remedial measures and make your houses comparatively safe. Earthquake engineering expert Professor Anand Swarup Arya, currently working on guidelines for the common man to assess the safety of a building, holds hope for all those who want to make their houses a safer place to live in. "It is possible for people to assess whether their buildings are safe. If safety measures are not there, then suitable retro-fitting can be done by spending just a fraction of the building's cost. If the cost of construction is Rs 5 lakh, then retro-fitting can be done by spending around Rs 20000," Arya, who headed the Earthquake Engineering department of Roorkee University for a number of years, said.
Certain criteria have to be followed while assessing whether the houses are earthquake resistant, Brick and mortar buildings should not be more than four storeys high. A building more than two storeys should have vertical reinforcement in all corners of the rooms, right from the foundation to the roof. These guidelines apply to most buildings in Delhi where 86 per cent of the constructions are brick and mortar made. Large buildings should not be L-shaped or U-shaped. All buildings should have seismic bands at the plinth level, doors, windows and lintel level. If the roof is sloping then bands shold be provided at the roof level too, he explained.
Bricks must be of good quality. The ratio of cement and sand should not be less than 1:6 Proper soil investigations should be done. If the soil is loose and the water table is within a depth of eight metres, then the soil will liquefy during seismic upheavals. If the mortar quality is poor then retro-fitting will be expensive and will cost up to 15 per cent of the cost of construction, Dr Arya said. For new constructions, the additional cost will not be more than 2 to 6 per cent of the total cost of the building, he said. "If the building you live in does not meet the above criteria then retro-fitting should be done, which will cost 6 to 12 per cent more depending on the quality of construction." The professor said.
Dr. Arya is currently heading the committee on earthquake code for buildings, set up by the Bureau of Indian Standards.
Arsenic runs through this Indian river
Geologists call it arsenic, chemists term it heavy metal, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is more direct and, perhaps, closer to the truth: it calls the mineral compound a ‘violent poison.’ Call it by any name, what remains unchanged is that arsenic is being blamed for contaminating the waters of the Damodar river of eastern India, a source of water and life to thousands. The arsenic is laced in the coal that’s available in abundance on the banks of the river, which originates from Mahuamilan 25 kms from here and flows on to the Bay of Bengal. Coal mining here is an activity that dates back to British rule and the late nineteenth century.
These days, the public sector Central Coalfields Ltd has a dozen odd mine projects located on both banks of the Damodar. Though CCL officials deny arsenic contamination, CCL personnel, be it the Chief General Manager or the peon, drink water purified by Geolite or Aquaguard filters. But most of people residing in the locality draw water from the Damodar for their sustenance. ‘‘The presence of arsenic and lead was above tolerance level in the sediments and below tolerance level in the surface water of the river Damodar,’’ says the study.
Among the ailments slow and steady arsenic poisoning causes is dermatitis, eczema, ulceration and pigmentation of skin and cancer. Doctors at the CCL-run hospital who have treated 1,826 patients till May 24 this year, said three out of five patients suffered either from dermatitis, eczema, scabies or gastroentritis. S. Samanta, CCL’s Deputy Superintending Engineer (Environment), admits: ‘‘The overburden was dumped on the bank to create an embankment in order to prevent the Damodar waters from gushing into the mine. Eventually, this may have become a source of water pollution as the rain water carried with it the over burden and its toxic elements into the Damodar river.’’
Source: Indian Express, 28 May 2001
Online training portal from India CompuMaster
India CompuMaster Ltd (ICM), Hyderabad based offshore development and training centre of the US-based CompuMaster Inc, has unveiled its online software training portal called Software Package Online Training (SPOT). Announcing the launch of the portal, the ICM Managing Director, Mr K. Prabhakara Rao, said that SPOT was the result of the company's expertise in training and development.
The courses being offered through SPOT as a package includes introduction to computers and Windows, C, C++, Unix, SQL Server, Visual Basic, VC++ and Java. According to Mr Rao, the company would shortly offer higher-end courses such as ASP, JSP, EJB and XML through SPOT.
ICM is offering these courses at a cost of Rs 1,500 per student per annum through group registration scheme and at Rs 2,500 per individual for individual registration. The company also offers to load the entire package on the server and provide computer-based training to those colleges and institutions which do not have Internet access. ICM proposes to provide through its portal a host of other features such as career counselling, personality development, mock interviews, demos of real-time projects and communication skills.
Source: http://www.hindubusinessline.com/ew/stories/0128a151.htm
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