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Festival of Gold “Akshay Tritiya” By Dr Arvind Kumar The word ‘Akshaya Tritiya’ now a days quite famous, by advertisement media is particularly considered auspicious day for buying long term assets like gold and silver, including ornaments made of the same; diamond and other precious stones, and also considered to deal with the real estates. This year akshaya tritiya falls on 24th April 2012. Akshaya Tritiya, also known as Akha Teej is a Hindu and Jain holy day, that falls on the third Tithi(Lunar day) of Bright Half (Shukla Paksha) of the pan-Indian month of Vaishakha . As per Hindus, this day is ruled by god Vishnu , the preserver-god in the Hindu Trinity . It is also traditionally celebrated as the birthday of the Hindu sage Parashurama , the sixth Avatar (incarnation) of the god Vishnu. According to Hindu mythology , on this day the Treta Yuga began and the river Ganges , the most sacred river of India, descended to the earth from the heaven. Every year, Akshaya tritiy...

Earth Day 2012 Earth day Anthem There are many songs that are performed on Earth Day, that generally fall into two categories. The "Earth Day Anthem" below satisfies these requirements for a universal song associated with Earth Day. Ludwig van Beethoven's " Ode to Joy " melody is already the official anthem of the European Union (in that case purely instrumental without lyrics), the melody is widely recognized and easily performed, in the public domain, and originally composed for voice. “Joyful joyful we adore our Earth in all its wonderment Simple gifts of nature that all join into a paradise Now we must resolve to protect her Show her our love throughout all time With our gentle hand and touch We make our home a newborn world Now we must resolve to protect her Show her our love throughout all time With our gentle hand and touch We make our home a newborn world” Earth Day has been observed on 22nd April every year as an annual event celebrated aroun...

Marine Pollution By Dr Arvind Kumar In view of the growing marine pollution, the environmentalists are calling on European countries to achieve a minimum 50% reduction in marine waste as part of commitments they must make under EU law. EU countries have until July this year to announce measures they will take to cut plastics and other litter under the 4-year-old Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The directive also obliges member states to have monitoring programmes in place by mid-2014 as part of the broader effort to address fish and biodiversity loss. Brussels-based Seas at Risk and seven affiliated European conservation groups are calling on the countries to halve their waste by 2020. In a statement, Seas at Risk called the national action programmes due in July a “litmus test for political ambition” and urged governments to reduce debris by boosting incentives for plastics recycling, requiring ships to dispose all waste before leaving EU ports, and strengthening enforcem...

Global Ocean Temperatures Increased “Temperature is one of the most fundamental descriptors of the physical state of the ocean” , global temperature change is twice what scientists have observed for the past 50 years, suggesting the oceans have been warming for much longer than just a few decades. According to Mr. Roemmich and his team found that on average, global ocean temperatures increased by 0.59 degrees F (0.33 degrees C) in the upper ocean down to about 2,300 feet (700 meters). Scientists have determined that 90 per cent of the excess heat added to Earth’s climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans. Mr. Roemmich and his colleagues compared that temperature with data from the modern-day Argo project, which uses 3,500 free-drifting floats to measure the temperature and salinity, or salt content, of the world’s oceans every 10 days. It showed a 1.1-degree Fahrenheit (0.59-degree Celsius) rise in temperatures at the ocean’s surface over the last 135 yea...

Youth & Climate Change By Dr Arvind Kumar All of us are living in an era where environmental issues have loomed large and the ill-effects of environmental crisis are being experienced by all and sundry. Youth has key role in mitigating the adverse impact of climate change because the future belogs to the youth. It is expected that the number of youth living in developing countries will grow to 89 per cent by 2025. Half of the population of India is already under 25 years of age. Thus youth would be the largest human resource available in coming years. Concurrently, it would be the key agent for technological innovation, social change and ecological equilibrium. The youth is admittedly better equipped to create environmental awareness through social network sites and it has a resource to go global with ideas, concerns and innovations. Environmental problems should no longer be perceived as abstract concerns that can only be addressed by governments or businesses; it d...

Remembering Dr. B. R. Ambedkar By Dr Arvind Kumar 14th April marks the Birth Anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Father of the Indian Constitution. Popularly known as Babasaheb Ambedkar, he was an eminent jurist, a revolutionary social thinker and a charismatic leader of the masses. As the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, Ambedkar imbued the nation’s founding document with visionary prescience. Ambedkar’s life was a tribute to the nation’s founding vision of inclusion and secularism for he fought throughout his life against social evils like untouchablity. He ably campaigned for the rights of the Dalits and other socially backward classes. For his extraordinary breadth of vision and erudition, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru appointed Dr. Ambedkar as the nation’s first Law Minister. Ambedkar was born on 14 April 1891 in Madhya Pradesh and subsequently his family to Satara in Maharashtra. Ambedkar’s early experiences were life changing and would later influe...

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre By Dr Arvind Kumar 13th April 2012, this year marks the 93rd Anniversary of the 1919 Amritsar massacre, also known alternately as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre: for after the Jallianwala Bagh in the northern Indian city of Amritsar where, on April 13, 1919 (which happened to be ' Baisakhi' one of Punjab's largest religious festivals) fifty British Indian Army soldiers, commanded by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, began shooting at an unarmed gathering of men, women and children without warning. The shooting lasted for ten to fifteen minutes, until ammunition ran out. Dyer ordered soldiers to reload their rifles several times and they were ordered to shoot to kill. Official British Raj sources estimated the fatalities at 379, and with 1,100 wounded. Civil Surgeon Dr Smith indicated that there were 1,526 casualities. However, the casualty number quoted by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with roughly 1,000 killedHunter Commis...

Baisakhi Festival Baisakhi Festival falls on the first day of Vaisakh month (April-May) according to Nanakshahi or Sikh Calendar. For this reason, Baisakhi is also popularly known as Vaisakhi. According to English calendar, the date of Baisakhi corresponds to April 13 every year and April 14 once in every 36 years. This difference in Baisakhi dates is due to the fact that day of Baisakhi is reckoned according to solar calendar and not the lunar calendar. The auspicious date of Baisakhi is celebrated all over India under different names and different set of rituals and celebrations. The festival is celebrated as Rongali Bihu in Assam, Naba Barsha in West Bengal and Tripura, Puthandu (Tamil New Year) in Tamil Nadu, Vishu in Kerala, and Maha Vishuba Sankranti in Orissa. In Sikhism, Basakhi is one of the most significant festivals commemorating the establishment of the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699 by the 10th Sikh Guru, Guru Gobid Singh. To mark the celebrations, devotees attend...

Feeding the World By Dr Arvind Kumar With upwards of two billion extra mouths to feed in the coming decades, food security has become a mantra in debates throughout the globe. The UN estimates one-in-seven people do not have enough food to eat today, and analysts say nourishing the anticipated 9 billion earthlings by mid-century poses a clear challenge – especially for finding a balance between production and the ecology. According to Joachim Lammel, a lead researcher for the Norwegian-based Yara fertiliser company, “The solution is beyond individual companies, it’s probably even beyond individual countries. It’s not a question of lack of technical knowledge, it’s absolutely doable. But it requires that more focus and attention is put behind this challenge. Machinery, nutrients, pesticides and irrigation technology helped feed the post-war baby boom, and continuing advances could lift yields in parts of the world expecting the biggest population growth in this century, namely ...

Ensuring Sustainable Prosperity The Worldwatch Institute in its latest release State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, which is the 29th in a series that Worldwatch began in 1984, stresses that we must act quickly to redefine our understanding of the "good life" and redouble our efforts to make that life sustainable. It further observes that over the last five decades, the world's middle and upper classes have more than doubled their consumption levels, and an additional 1 to 2 billion people globally aspire to join the consumer class. The planet cannot maintain such increases in resource demand without serious consequences for both people and ecosystems. Worldwatch Senior Researcher Michael Renner, co-director of State of the World 2012, says, "The Industrial Revolution gave birth to an economic growth model rooted in structures, behaviors, and activities that are patently unsustainable. Mounting ecosystem stress and resource pressures...

World Health Day 2012 World Health Day is celebrated on 7 April to mark the anniversary of the founding of WHO in 1948. Each year a theme is selected for World Health Day that highlights a priority area of concern for WHO. World Health Day is a global campaign, inviting everyone – from global leaders to the public in all countries – to focus on a single health challenge with global impact. The WHO organizes international, regional and local events on the Day related to a particular theme. Resources provided continue beyond 7 April, that is, the designated day for celebrating the World Health Day. The topic of World Health Day in 2012 is Ageing and health with the theme "Good health adds life to years". The focus is how good health throughout life can help older men and women lead full and productive lives and be a resource for their families and communities. World Health Day is acknowledged by various governments and non-governmental organizations with interests in publ...

Ageing Nuclear Plants Dr Arvind Kumar In the aftermath of Fukushima tragedy, triggered on 11 March 2011, that left 19,000 people dead or missing, the IAEA has raised serious safety concerns on global ageing nuclear plants, in a recently released report. According to the report, eighty percent of the world's nuclear power plants are more than 20 years old and many operators have begun programs, or expressed an intention, to run reactors beyond their planned design lifetimes. The IAEA report observes: “There are growing expectations that older nuclear reactors should meet enhanced safety objectives, closer to that of recent or future reactor designs. There is a concern about the ability of the ageing nuclear fleet to fulfill these expectations. It is reported that about 70% of the world's 254 research reactors have been in operation for over 30 years ‘with many of them exceeding their original design life.’ Despite the disaster in Fukushima, countries such as China and Indi...

“Your whole day goes just planning how you’ll get water,” Mrs. Sharma, a homemaker in a middle-class neighborhood of capital, rises at 6:30 a.m. and begins fretting about water. It is a rare morning when water trickles through the pipes. More often, not a drop will come. So Mrs. Sharma will have to call a private water tanker, wait for it to show up, call again, wait some more and worry about whether enough buckets are filled in the bathroom in case no water arrives.this is the usual morning of many Delhi households. In Delhi Yamuna enters still relatively clean from its 246-mile descent from atop the Himalayas, the city’s public water agency, the New Delhi Jal Board, extracts 229 million gallons every day from the river, its largest single source of drinking water. As the Yamuna leaves the city, it becomes the principal drain for New Delhi’s waste. Residents pour 950 million gallons of sewage into the river each day. The river becomes a noxious black thread. Clumps of raw sewage f...

Perils of Ocean Acidification By Dr Arvind kUmar The findings of a recemtly published research, undertaken by a group of researchers from the United States and four other countries, reinforce warnings from many climate scientists that the world's oceans, a vital source of fish food protein, may be turning acidic faster today from human CO ₂ emissions than they did during four major episodes of animal and plant extinctions in the last 300 million years, when natural surges of CO ₂ , probably from catastrophic volcanic eruptions or meteor strikes, sent global temperatures soaring. The researchers reviewed existing evidence on the impact of changes in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ), the main global warming gas, from decades of research on fossilized remains and other evidence from Earth's geologic record. The scientific findings suggest that acidification is now happening at least 10 times more quickly than during PETM, raising "the possibility t...

Ramnavami Ramnavami is dedicated to the memory of Lord Rama. It occurs on the ninth day (navami). The festival commemorates the birth of Rama who is remembered for his preperous and righteous reign. Ram Navami also known as Sri Rama Navami is a Hindu festival . Ram is the 7th incarnation of the Dashavatara of Vishnu . Years later Lord Rama was married to Sita on the Vivaha Panchami . The sacred marriage of Devi Sita with Lord Rama was held on Margashirsha Shukla Panchami as per Valmiki Ramayana. The SreeRama Navami festival falls in the Shukla Paksha on the Navami , the ninth day of the month of Chaitra in the Hindu calendar . Thus it is also known as Chaitra Masa Suklapaksha Navami, and marks the end of the nine-day Chaitra - Navratri celebrations. There is some link between Lord Rama and Sun Worship. The Sun is considered to be the progenitor of Rama's dynasty, which is called the Sun dynasty (Raghukula or Raghuvamsa, Raghu means Sun and Kula or Vamsa mean familial d...

Prevention of Blindness By Dr Arvind Kumar 1st April inaugurates the commencemnt of the prevention of blindness week to be observed from 1 to 7 April by the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness-India (NSPB-I) and its State and district branches. According to broad estimates, India had 7 million blind people. As per criteria to assess blindness adopted by the Government of India, nearly 15 million were blind according to the 2001 Census. Of them, 2.70 lakh were children aged less than 16. Over 50 per cent of blindness could be prevented in children. In many cases, impairment of vision was preventable or curable. There is lack of knowledge about proper nutrition and hygiene. An estimated 456 million people of India's total population require vision correction (spectacles, contact lenses or refractive surgery) to be able to see and function for learning, work and life in general. Twenty six million people are blind or vision impaired due to eye disease. A further 133...