<strong>Knowledge Galleria Magica</strong>

ambikajha

Jul 1

The earth's polluted environment

Our beautiful sun-bright ecosystem is being systematically damaged by industrial pollution channeled into rivers like the Ganga and Yamuna, nuclear wastes from atomic plants routed into the world's oceans and poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide mixed with the ozonosphere. Tropical rainforests and green pastures are disappearing under the pressure of a proliferating population. Dams are being built over the rivers like the Narmada to change nature's well balanced surface equations between the flora and fauna and sloping mountainous terrain is being converted into mini oceans to supply electricity to the ever starving industrial stomach of our age. Elephants, tigers, wild rhinos of South Africa and many other forest creatures have become endangered species. Consumerism has created a garbage glut in the world. Consumers in industrialized countries throw out staggering amounts of refuse like cartons, butts of cigarettes, polythene bags and plastic containers which mix with the waters of rivers and oceans and fertile crop-yielding soil of the earth. Each consumer throws out nearly 1.5 kg of refuse each day and most of it pollutes the water he drinks and the air he breathes. On the landmass eco destroying monsters are deforestation, dams constructed to generate electricity and serve irrigational facilities and soot and toxic gases, creating the greenhouse effect. Some environmentalists blame the world's population of cattle for most of the ecological ills. These creatures whom we feed and fatten to get their meat, spoil streams and underground aquifers. Tropical rain forests are turning into pastures for these gluttonous herds. In Saharan Africa the burgeoning population of cattle is denuding arid lands of fertile vegetation. In the Netherlands the population of pigs poses a major ecological threat. Their manure defiles water supply with excessive nitrates and acidifies local soils. Building dams over rivers is like clotting the blood of nature and stopping its pulse beat. Scientists have proved that dams and embankments cause more floods and damage than good. Flooding is a boon of nature. It cleanses and renews river basins, expanding feeding and breeding grounds of plants, fish, birds and wildlife and spreads fresh layers of fertile silt from which we get bumper crops. The Japanese solution to environmental hazards is burning, burying, reducing and recycling waste products. Every Japanese community makes use of incinerators for garbage disposal. In the US, more than 2000 garbage burning plants work day and night in addition to 125 large incinerators. Another Japanese solution is aquaculture which they have introduced in their industries to keep them clean. An Italian chemical giant has manufactured a plastic substitute which reduces the greenhouse effect.

Knowledge and Organization

Actually besides the God-given natural ability to think, two more things are necessary in order to think effectively. These are knowledge and organization. The reason you can't think clearly about certain problems is that you do not have enough relevant knowledge or experience pertaining to them. If you have no knowledge of a subject you have no starting point for your thoughts or you will think from a wrong premise and of course think incorrectly. Since thought is the 'go' sign for action, it seems likely that you will act incorrectly and do the wrong thing. Your relevant knowledge can only be acquired through experience from society in general, from listening to others and from reading. One good way of being interested in others is to stop thinking of yourself so much. Listen a little more than you talk and you may learn something. Another way of acquiring knowledge is to read with your mind instead of only with your eyes. The salesman who wants to have a ready answer for any argument must know his product inside out. He makes it a business to learn all he can about it. The executive who has a reputation for always coming up with good practical ideas at the conference table may appear to be pulling these ideas out of the air but nothing could be further from the truth. He has probably spent a good deal of time studying all the problems that may come up. He is not the type who shuts off his thinking ability the moment he leaves his office. He does research into his business, he is genuinely interested in it. There you have some work cut out for you. If you want to think clearly and effectively about your own line of endeavors, learn all you can about it. After you have obtained relevant knowledge of a subject and you never can stop learning you know you must be able to organize your thoughts. Organization is as essential for clear thinking as it is for anything else. Don't mistake daydreaming for thinking. If you haven't spent a lot of time and effort practicing how to concentrate it is very easy to fall into the habit of daydreaming. This is simply because it takes concentration to keep your thoughts heading straight for a goal. A thought must lead to some action and daydreaming rarely does. You won't have to do concentration exercises for years before you can crystallize your thinking. This sounds like a simple idea, I know but don't sell it short. The next time you are trying to reach some sort of a solution or round out an idea or create or invent and you haven't got very far just thinking about it, try writing your thoughts.

National Highways

National Highways(NH) connect all the major cities. Though they constitute only about 2% of the total road length of India they carry more than 40% of the total traffic in India. There are 77 national highways in India. These are the primary road grids and are the direct responsibility of the Central Government. The development of National Highways in the country aims towards providing hassle-free transport and it is a priority of the government of India. In fact an official of The National Highway Authority of India(NHAI) claims that a lot has been achieved in terms of the addition to the national highway system. In the past, only 50 km were added in an entire year. Today about 10 kms are being added every single day especially with developmental works progressing rapidly in the Golden Quadrilateral. Isn't that just fantastic?State Highways(SH)are the main arteries of commercial and passenger transport in the individual states. They connect every town with the state capital, the national highways and other commercially important centers. The development and maintenance of the state highway is under the jurisdiction of the respective state governments. 70% of the state highways are single-lane roads of which 2,300 km of roads are unsurfaced. /funds for the construction and maintenance of the state highways are raised through state allocation and loans by financial institutions.

The splendor of Sikkim

Sikkim is one of the most precious jewels in India's tiara of Himalayan hill stations stretching from Kashmir in the north to Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast. The world's third highest peak and Sikkim's guardian deity, Kanchenjunga at 28,216 ft. dominates the landscape with it's sparkling brilliance against a sapphire blue sky. It is a memorable experience to view the peak from Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim located at 1780 mt. Early at dawn, the peak is veiled in a soft pink mist and slowly as the sun rises the golden rays unveil the beauteous face of the mountain in it's pristine splendor. Locally known as Dzonga, Kanchenjunga is more like a God who watches over the land and brings peace and prosperity around. To reach Gangtok the best way is to take a flight to Bag Dogra and then drive up in a car. If one is traveling in the months of October-November when the monsoon clouds have receded the skyline is clear and one may be fortunate enough to see the snow clad Himalayan range.

Machines that think

Science fiction abounds with horror stories of computers seizing control of operators, programmers and eventually the world. This implies the presence of intelligence, the ability to think. As yet, human intelligence remains on a higher level, superior to artificial intelligence but the latest generation of computers being developed might soon blur the clear distinction between the speed 'slaves' of today and the perfect system that is the human brain. The very heart of a computer, the central processing unit(CPU) can handle only one operation at a time. Each operation is processed completely before the next can commence. The present fourth-generation computers with extremely large storage or memory capabilities rely on very large-scale integration(VLSI) for compactness and reliability. The new breed of computers, the fifth generation will represent an enormous leap forwards in 3 ways. Firstly, even more VLSI will mean virtually unlimited storage and handling capabilities. Secondly memories will be redesigned and present day programming languages will have to be reassessed in the light of superior alternation. Indeed, one aim of fifth-generation computer research is to build a system with which the programmer or operator can communicate in conversational English. Already prototypes of these CPUs have been produced at research establishments in the USA, Europe, Japan. Called Dataflow machines they use a small number of independent CPUs embedded in a communication network. At Britain's Imperial College, the ALICE project is building parallel machines compatible with various programming languages including a parallel version of PROLOG. Basically there are two different approaches to the problem of making a computer perform intelligently. The first called the engineering approach is to break down a complicated problem into many small steps each of which can be handled easily by a computer.

Fossils

Scientists who study the rocks, minerals, landforms and the history of the earth can tell what kind of plants and animals lived on the earth a long time ago. These scientists are called geologists. One way that they are able to do this is by the study of fossils. Fossils may be the actual remains of plants or animals, impressions of them in rock or the tracks of animals as they walked or crawled. Most fossils are formed in the waters covering the continental shelves, in warm, shallow inland seas and in large swamps that covered large parts of the land in post geological time. When the animals of these waters die, their remains are deposited on the floor of the water body where the fleshy part of the animal decays. The skeleton portion of the body is partially replaced by minerals and other sediments. If this takes place in just the right manner, a fossil is formed. Since rock sediments are involved in the formation of fossils, it is not surprising that one finds many fossils. It is not surprising that one finds many fossils in sedimentary rock layers. Plant fossils are found in the areas that were once swamps. There are 4 principle kinds of fossils, original remains, replaced remains, molds and casts and impressions.

1.Original Remains

In some instances fossils represent the actual remains of plants and animals. On the shores of the Baltic Sea in Europe, insects of millions of years have been found perfectly preserved in the harder resin of pine trees upon which they crawled. This hardened resin is called AMBER. Another of the original remains may be found at Rancho Brea near Los Angeles, California where there are asphalt pits containing the bones of thousands of animals. They were caught while looking for water or trying to cross the oil-covered lakes of asphalt. As they cried out in their death struggle, their enemies were attracted to the sticky mass and also trapped. Then the bodies sank down into the asphalt. Many fossils no longer contain the original matter of which they were made although they may look unchanged. Groundwater may replace the lime shells and bones with such hard minerals as silicon and iron pyrite. The petrified trees of Arizona are an example of this formation. They were formed when groundwater slowly replaced the decaying wood of these buried trees with silica. Sometimes all of the plants and animals had disappeared except for the carbon in it's body. In this way carbon films of leaves, jellyfish, worms and a few reptiles have been preserved.

2.Molds and Castes

Sometimes a fossil shell or bone is completely dissolved out of the rock in which it was preserved. This leaves a hollow mold which shows only what the shape of the fossil had been. The filling of such a mold with new mineral material may produce a cast of the original fossil plant or animal. Molds and casts of shellfish are common fossils. The molds of ferns, leaves and fish are also found in many rocks.

3.Impressions

Impressions found in the muds and sands of floodplains and deltas by moving animals may be preserved when the sediments become rock. In shales and sandstones geologists have found the footprints of dinosaurs, the traits of ancient worms and many other impressions of things that lived in the past.

4.Index fossils

A large majority of fossils are found in deposits of sediment carried by water. After a long time this sediment changes to rock. Sedimentary rocks are found in layers. These layers of rock and the fossils in them can be used to trace the history of the earth and it's living things. Geologists know that different layers of rock were formed at different layers of rock at different times. Of course, the oldest layers were formed first, the newest ones last and the others in the ages between. By studying the fossils in the different layers of rock from the oldest to the newest, one can see many changes that have occurred in living plants and animals. Some kinds of fossils appear in several different layers while other kinds are found only in layers formed during a certain time in the earth's history. When geologists find a layer of rock with these fossils in it, they can tell not only which layer it is but also about when it is formed. Fossils help geologists separate the history of the earth into various divisions of time. These fossils are called index fossils because they help correlate the geological histories of the different continents.

Wild Himalayan havens

I have visited over 100 places, away from tourist traps over the past two decades. Yet I feel my travels have not even begun. I have not even experienced a fragment of the natural bounty we Indians are fortunate to possess. In truth India is many countries rolled up in one. Not because of it's size but it's diversity. Cold deserts and frozen, snowbound mountains, sweeping windswept coastlines, dripping rainforests arid scrublands fading into sandy deserts, islands in the sun where travelers can walk under shady green canopies or dive beneath azure, glassy blue waters. Himalayan havens in Kashmir, Ladakh, Garhwal, Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are all dotted with sanctuaries and national parks of indescribable beauty. Such remote wilderness protects the vast bulk of our water sources and have been revered for centuries. Apart from ancient civilizations and cultures, these biodiversity vaults harbor black bears, pheasants, deer and carnivores all of which cling to a fertile existence in a world decorated by orchids and towering peaks. These are also places where people can discover themselves. There is something humbling about nature. Even as the deep sea or a towering mountain or even a complex rainforest forces humility upon you, nature manages to leave you with your ego intact. No one in their right mind can seriously contemplate being in 'competition' with anything so perfect and all encompassing. In fact I smile inwardly when I hear people talk of 'conquering' mountains. The mountain actually lets you climb it. If it was less 'benevolent' you would be dead. On the other hand if you respect it's power and tread lightly upon it's earth the Himalayas will protect you and deliver to you the satisfaction of being cocooned in pure nature. Take my word for it. Almost anywhere you go, the traditional hospitality of the hill people will ensure that you obtain a hot meal, a friendly welcome and a piece to rest a tired body for the night. All you need to pack is humility, essential trust and low key demands along with a good pair of walking boots and a sleeping bag. It is surprisingly easy to visit untrodden trails without it costing an arm and a leg, provided one does not fall prey to the enticing promise of 5 star facilities. These promise physical comfort at steep prices but the cost paid by the environments in which such facilities are located is incalculable. Besides the sanitized options available take most of the organic pleasure away from most destinations. At the foothills of the Himalayas are located tiger reserves such as Dudhwa and Corbett, the land of roar and trumpet. Such forests provide us with a glimpse of prehistory. Undisturbed for ages nature manages the grasslands glades and water course in the virgin wilderness with magnificent efficiency. Trees fruit in sequence so that animals are never short of food. Water is abundant even when sources outside the forest dry up, underlining the intricate connection between natural vegetation and the hydrological cycle. Higher up are alpine forests such as the Great Himalayan National Park, accessible from Kullu, which clothe the Sainj and Tirthan valleys. These trekking trips are not for the faint-hearted or frail of foot. One of my abiding sorrows is the fact that Kashmir's Happy Valley has been so traumatized the past few years. I have often walked 2000 mts to the famous oak forests of the Dachigam Sanctuary near Srinagar. Home of the last surviving herds of Hangul deer it seems difficult to imagine that so much blood has been shed in the beautiful Kashmir valley and I worry now about the fate of Kashmir's endangered wildlife. I have also walked the alpine forests of Overa near Pahalgam and watched whitecapped Redstarts build nests over swift flowing rivers. If our cities were managed with even a fraction of the efficiency of a forest, disease, congestion and filth would become things of the past.

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