German-aided project on climate change in Nagaland

A German development bank and Nagaland government have signed an agreement to raise adaptive capacity of rural people in the face of climate changes.

As part of the climate change adaptation (CCA) project in the North-East, the German government-owned development bank, Reconstruction Credit Institute (KfW) on Tuesday signed the ‘minutes of meeting” (MoM) with the Nagaland government for implementation of the programme.Before signing the MoM a KfW mission team visited various parts of the state for three days and held meetings with officials from various departments, including the State Task Force on Climate Change, a state official said here.

Dr. Marcus Stewen, senior project manager of KfW signed the document on behalf of the German bank while Chief Secretary Lalthara signed for Nagaland in the latter’s office in presence of additional chief secretary and development commissioner Alemtemshi Jamir and other senior government officials.

The KfW (German financial cooperation programme) will be implemented involving various government agencies, including Nagaland Environment Programme through Economic Development (NEPED) and NGOs, through micro-level planning and execution of livelihood programmes keeping in mind the challenges of climate change.The programme, which is likely to take off by early 2012, is intended to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of rural people in Nagaland in the face of climate change and variability, the official said. 

Brought to you by

Traffic Pulse

Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Faster_cancer_prognosis_courtesy_IISc_and_Apple-nid-70421-cid--sid-.html

Indian satellite to check greenhouse gas, aerosol emissions

Bangalore: At a time when the whole world is clamoring for new solutions to prevent global warming, India has announced that it will launch a dedicated satellite in 2012 to monitor greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions which are considered to be major contributors to global warming.

Delivering the 'Satish Dhawan memorial lecture' at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Indian Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said, "In addition to a dedicated satellite to check greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions, we will have a dedicated forestry satellite in 2013 for real-time monitoring of both deforestation and afforestation across the country." 

Forging a close relationship with the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the ministry is co-financing the setting up of the National Institute of Climate and Environment Studies in Bangalore.

'We are also working with ISRO's space application centre in Ahemdabad in modelling and monitoring the health of the Himalayan glaciers as the space agency is an integral part of our climate science and climate change negotiations team,' Ramesh said in his lecture 'The Two Cultures Revisited: Some Reflections on The Environment Development Debate in India'.

Noting that there was no system of green accounting in the country to convert Gross Domestic Product (GDP) into Green Domestic Product and reflect the use of precious depleting natural resources, Ramesh stressed upon the need to develop a robust system to report both the domestic products.

"My ministry is making efforts to have a system of Green National Accounting by 2015 because if we can report both the GDPs, we will have a better picture of the trade-offs involved in the process of economic growth," Ramesh pointed out.

Pleading to consider environmental issues as public health issues, the minister said the debate between environment and development would subside if environment control was seen as a public health enhancing intervention.

"We are in the process of setting up a National Environmental Protection Authority as a permanent body to appraise projects and monitor compliance as part of environmental governance," he added. 

Brought to you by

Traffic Pulse

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100421111353.htm

Soon, computers to run on heat, rather than electricity

Computers may soon be able to recycle part of their own waste heat, using a material being studied by researchers.The material is a semiconductor called gallium manganese arsenide.

Researchers at the Ohio State University describe the detection of an effect that converts heat into a quantum mechanical phenomenon -- known as spin -- in a semiconductor.Once developed, the effect could enable integrated circuits that run on heat, rather than electricity.This research merges two cutting-edge technologies: thermo-electricity and spintronics, explained team leaders Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology, and Roberto Myers of the Ohio State University.Myers and Heremans have been trying to combine spintronics with thermo-electronics -- that is, devices that convert heat to electricity.

“Spintronics is considered as a possible basis for new computers in part because the technology is claimed to produce no heat. Our measurements shed light on the thermodynamics of spintronics, and may help address the validity of this claim,” Nature quoted Heremans as saying.In one possible use of thermo-spintronics, a device could sit atop a traditional microprocessor, and siphon waste heat away to run additional memory or computation.The researchers studied how heat can be converted to spin polarization-an effect called the spin-Seebeck effect. Researchers at Tohoku University first identified it. 

Those researchers detected the effect in a piece of metal, rather than a semiconductor.The new measurements, carried out by team member Christopher Jaworski have provided the first independent verification of the effect in a semiconductor material called gallium manganese arsenide. Samples of this material were carefully prepared into thin single-crystal films by collaborators Shawn Mack and David Awschalom at the University of California, who also assisted with interpretation of the results.

In the experiment, they heated one side of the sample, and then measured the orientations of spins on the hot side and the cool side. On the hot side, the electrons were oriented in the spin-up direction, and on the cool side, they were spin-down.The researchers also discovered, to their own surprise, that two pieces of the material do not need to be physically connected for the effect to propagate from one to the other.

“We figured that each piece would have its own distribution of spin-up and spin-down electrons.

“Instead, one side of the first piece was spin up, and the far side of the second piece was spin down. The effect somehow crossed the gap,” said Myers.Despite these new experiments, the origin of the spin-Seebeck effect remains a mystery.The findings were published in the journal Nature Materials. 

Brought to you by

Traffic Pulse

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Faster_cancer_prognosis_courtesy_IISc_and_Apple-nid-70421-cid--sid-.html