STAFF REPORTER

AGRO ISSUES Fertilisers-Assisting Productivity

The increased use of chemical fertilisers in India came with the advent of Green Revolution in the 1960s. Introduction of fertilisers helped greatly to increase the food production in the country in a time when the agricultural sector was failing - as a repercussion to natural disasters. However, the continuum of the large scale usage is raising concerns about judiciousness and efficacy of chemical fertilisers in the present context.

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INDIA'S OUTDOORS Down the Ages-Excavation Sites in Chhattisgarh

The State is taking a keen initiative to explore and excavate sites that hold historical importance and at the same time Chhattisgarh is practising conservation and preservation of several sites with valuable historical credentials.

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POLAR PERSPECTIVES Fortunes under the Sea

Oceans hold precious resources buried in seabeds and continental shelves. Despite legislations and international bodies upholding the Law of the Seas, fear about restrain of rights has begun to grow in developing nations with technologically advanced countries leading exploitation activities.

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POLAR PERSPECTIVES Fortunes under the Sea

Oceans hold precious resources buried in seabeds and continental shelves. Despite legislations and international bodies upholding the Law of the Seas, fear about restrain of rights has begun to grow in developing nations with technologically advanced countries leading exploitation activities.

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POLAR PERSPECTIVES Arctic Conventions

Arctic Conventions Climate change, the most significant stress on the Arctic is likely to impact the entire world as climate systems are all intricately linked. The essay attempts to understand the legal mechanisms that are functioning in the region dealing with the many uncertainties in the wake of a warming trend.

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POLAR PERSPECTIVES Antarctic Treaty System

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is a complex legal instrument that enlists measures in effect and its associated international instruments. Freedom of scientific research is enshrined in the Treaty and hence the ATS promotes free exchange of scientific information and mandates that observations from Antarctic must be made freely available.

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IN BRIEF Polar Roundup

Often termed as the barometer of world climate, the polar region is an area of active debate and research. A few updates on the research front are summarised here.

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EARTH CYCLES The Carbon Cycle

Carbon dioxide is the most available form of carbon for living organisms and the process by which it is cycled around the ecosystem, quickly or over million years is called the carbon cycle (Fig. 1). Although the amount of carbon dioxide we emit increases year by year, the rate at which the gas accumulates in the atmosphere has slowed. The increase in carbon dioxide has been caused by many factors, but principally through the burning of fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, and the manufacture of cement. Between them, these account for approximately 80 per cent of the 10 billion tons of carbon we release into the atmosphere each year.

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EARTH CYCLES The Nitrogen cycle

Nitrogen is an element vital to all life processes on Earth . It comprises of 78 per cent of the atmosphere, and is embedded in every living tissue. It is a component of amino acids, proteins and nucleic acids. With the exception of carbon, nitrogen is the most universal element of life.

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EARTH CYCLES Climate change and renewable energy

IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation, 2011. As emission rates substantially exceed natural removal rates, concentrations of CO2 will continue to increase, which will raise global mean temperature. In the absence of additional climate policies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007 that global average temperature will rise over this century by about 1.1°C to 6.4°C. This range variation arises from uncertainty about the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted in the future and from uncertainty about climate sensitivity.

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