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Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

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Impose heavy penalty for burning agricultural waste, says Economic Survey

AGRICULTURAL WASTE-Economic surveyNews

  • Economic Survey said heavy penalties should be imposed for burning agricultural waste, and more incentive for farmers is needed to prevent alarmingly poor air quality in Delhi-NCR and adjoining areas.

Beyond News

  • Besides, implementation of congestion pricing, expansion of public buses, phasing out of old vehicles as also coordination across agencies and governments can prevent the city turning into a gas chamber, especially during winters, the survey noted.
  • Citing various reports according to which Delhi accounts for one of the unhealthiest cities in the world in terms of air pollution, the survey said effective actions suggested by National Green Tribunal, the Supreme Court and others call for strict enforcement through heavy penalties on agricultural waste burning and incentive payments to farmers.
  • The survey noted that some 35 million tonnes of rice paddy in three adjoining states (Punjab, Haryana and Western UP) are burnt in late October, whose plumes drift eastward, and seasonal load from other sources, including fire crackers during Diwali are top reasons for Delhi’s poor air quality.
  • Besides, vehicular emissions add about 23-28 per cent from trucks, buses, cars, three-wheelers and two-wheelers.

Solutions

  • Suggesting ways to curb air pollution, the survey called for use of technologies to convert agricultural waste into usable concentrated fodder or bio-fuels, development and implementation of business models with private sector and communities and incentives for shifting to non-paddy crops, among others.

Bus-sized dinosaur fossil dug up in Egyptian desert

News:

  • Scientists have unearthed in a Sahara Desert oasis in Egypt fossils of a long-necked, four-legged, school bus-sized dinosaur that lived roughly 80 million years ago, a discovery that sheds light on a mysterious time period in the history of dinosaurs in Africa.

Mansourasaurus:

  • Researchers said that the plant-eating Cretaceous Period dinosaur, named Mansourasaurus shahinae, was nearly 33 feet, weighed 5,000 kg and was a member of a group called titanosaurs that included Earth’s largest-ever land animals.
  • Like many titanosaurs, Mansourasaurus boasted bony plates called osteoderms embedded in its skin.
  • Mansourasaurus, which lived near the shore of the ancient ocean that preceded the Mediterranean Sea, is one of the very few dinosaurs known from the last 15 million years of the Mesozoic Era, or age of dinosaurs, on mainland Africa.
  • Madagascar had a separate geologic history.
  • The scientists recovered parts of its skull, lower jaw, neck and back vertebrae, ribs, shoulder and forelimb, back foot and osteoderms.
  • This, in turn, demonstrates for the first time that at least some dinosaurs could move between North Africa and southern Europe at the end of the Mesozoic, and runs counter to long-standing hypotheses that have argued that Africas dinosaur faunas were isolated from others during this time.

Coral reefs get sick from plastic waste: study

OCEAN PLASTIC-Coral reefsNews

  • Billions of bits of plastic waste are entangled in corals and sickening reefs from Thailand to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Beyond News

  • The trash is another pressure on corals, already suffering from over-fishing, rising temperatures caused by climate change and other pollution.
  • Numbers would rise by 40 percent by 2025 as marine pollution gets steadily worse. The plastic increases the likelihood of disease about 20 times, to 89 percent for corals in contact with plastics from four percent in comparable areas with none.
  • Trash may damage the tiny coral animals that build reefs, making them more vulnerable to illness. And bits of plastic may act as rafts for harmful microbes in the oceans.
  • Scientists were shocked to find plastic even in remote reefs.
  • The link between disease and plastic may well apply to other reefs such as in the Caribbean and off Africa, and may be harming other life on the ocean floor such as sponges or kelp, Lamb said.
  • The presence of plastics seemed especially to aggravate some common coral afflictions, such as skeletal eroding band disease.
  • The scientists urged tougher restrictions on plastic waste. In December, almost 200 nations agreed to limit plastic pollution of the oceans, warning that it could outweigh all fish by 2030.

Railways decides to run cleaner and faster trains.

Indian railway issues

News

  • The Railways is learnt to have tasked officials in the Research Designs & Standards Organisation and coach production units with the mission of developing new design coaches that will be faster, reliable and comfortable to the passengers.

Beyond News

  • With complaints pouring in on poor maintenance of toilets, water scarcity and jerk/vibration on trains, including the new design Linke Hoffman Busch (LHB) rakes, researchers and engineers have been told to develop new design coaches that can run at higher speed for longer duration at a lower maintenance cost.
  • The Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai manufactures the LHB coaches which are facing complaints of jerks and vibration while in motion.
  • Senior officials of the Railway Board also expressed concern over complaints relating to cleanliness, amenities, safety and riding comfort.
  • The Railways is set to install CCTV cameras, LED/LCD destination boards and fire/smoke detection gadgets on trains.
  • To address complaints of water scarcity in trains and at railway stations, sufficient funds would be allocated for quick watering arrangements.
  • On the freight side, focus would be on providing better quality wagons and special commodity coaches for enhanced loading and higher speed potential.

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