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Nuclear liability rules ultra vires
- the crucial rule restricting the liability of supplier to just five years in case of an accident is ultra vires and invalid.
- The United States, France and Russia — the major equipment suppliers for India's nuclear power plants — had all protested the unlimited liability period mentioned in the Act.
- None has publicly commented after the detailed rules restricting the liability period under the operator's right of recourse to five years were notified.
- this rule could be successfully challenged in courts is likely to lead to renewed anxiety among the three suppliers as well as the Government of India just when it thought it had addressed the concerns of the suppliers.
- Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for Nuclear Damage was inconsistent with the Indian law
- Rule 24 is unduly restrictive as it limits the amount which can be claimed by exercise of the right of recourse to the extent of the operator's liability or the value of the contract, whichever is less.
- Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC), which sets parameters on a nuclear operator's financial liability, at the IAEA in Vienna.
- The international convention provides for compensation in case of trans-national implications of a nuclear accident and has been signed by 14 countries, including India.
- However, only four countries - the US, Argentina, Morocco and Romania - have ratified the Convention so far.
- Upon entry into force, the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage would establish a uniform global legal regime for compensation to victims in the event of a nuclear accident.
- The CSC provides for establishment of an international fund to increase the amount available to compensate victims and allows for compensating civil damage occurring within a state's exclusive economic zone, including loss of tourism or fisheries-related income.
- It also sets parameters on a nuclear operator´s financial liability, time limits governing possible legal action, requires that nuclear operators maintain insurance or other financial security measures and provides for a single competent court to hear claims.
- According to IAEA, all countries are free to participate in the Convention regardless of their involvement in existing nuclear liability conventions or the presence of nuclear installations on their territories.
- Adopted on 12 September 1997
Common medical test postponed to 2013-14
- With several States seeking exemption from the common entrance test for under graduate medical courses, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday announced postponement of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) to 2013-14.
- it would now conduct the All India Pre-Medical/Pre-Dental Entrance Examination only for the 15 per cent of all-India quota seats.
India source for U.S. execution drug?
- When Indian pharmaceutical company Kayem dispatched stocks of sodium thiopental to the U.S. early this year, they thought it was a golden chance to bring in good business and build a reputation.
- When we learnt it was being used for execution in U.S. prisons it was a total bouncer.
- The medicine is being used in large parts of the world for medicinal purposes, but in the U.S. it is being diverted for executions
- This “misuse” of the drug, its shortage in the U.S. and attempts by the country to obtain the drug from various European nations has given rise to a body of controversy that soon threatens to engulf the Indian pharmaceutical industry
- Thiopental is an ultra-short-acting barbiturate and has been used commonly in the induction phase of general anesthesia.
- Following intravenous injection the drug rapidly reaches the brain and causes unconsciousness within 30–45 seconds.
- A normal dose of thiopental (usually 4–6 mg/kg) given to a pregnant woman for operative delivery (caesarian section) rapidly makes her unconscious, but the baby in her uterus remains conscious. However, larger or repeated doses can depress the baby.
- In addition to anesthesia induction, thiopental was historically used to induce medical comas. It has now been superseded by drugs such as propofol.
- Thiopental is used intravenously for the purposes of euthanasia.
- Along with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, thiopental is used in 34 states of the U.S. to execute prisoners by lethal injection.
“State-of-the-art technologies required to counter bio-terror”
- Scientists from 10 laboratories, including the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE), Gwalior, are working on an ambitious, Rs. 300-crore project, to develop technologies for detection and protection against Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) agents.
- Bio-terrorism was the number one threat among chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons.
Use of microalgae helps in controlling pollution
- To its votaries, tiny organisms known as microalgae could hold answers to some intractable problems. That includes curbing carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming and reducing the burden of industrial effluents.
- Microalgae, like plants, are capable of photosynthesis, using the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar.
- treating municipal wastewater using the single-celled green alga, Chlorella vulgaris.
- Such wastewater contained plenty of organic compounds and nutrients to sustain the organism.
- The oils that then accumulated in the cells could be harvested and turned into biodiesel.
- Nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in the wastewater could be acting as growth enhancers
- Simultaneously, the levels of nitrogen oxides could also be drastically cut and that of sulphur oxides considerably reduced.
- A pilot plant based on the alga had been established at a plant of the China Steel Corporation
- Algae can be a very effective and economical way of dealing with industrial effluents
- An added bonus was that the company was able harvest and sell some of the alga as a biofertiliser and aquaculture feed.
Body language modulates the accompanying spoken word
- People use gestures and body movements as they talk.
- Non-verbal behaviour of this kind modulates the accompanying spoken word. It can supplement and enhance the meaning of the spoken word, and contribute nuances.
- A newer development here is the introduction of what are known as “self-animated avatars”.
- In these, the participants are asked to wear virtual reality suits (which can track and reproduce body motion) and interact with others.
- Virtual environment helps but does not replace reality. It can however be used for medical training, urban planning and telecommunications.
- Note that the body is biology while animated avatar is artifice. When body language becomes an important component of inter-personal communication, it should then have a biological, evolutionary basis.
- That it is so is clear when we look at a human baby. She/he starts gesturing for communication at around the age of 9 months. Not only does she gesture for her needs but also to communicate what interests her. And there is a positive relation between parent gesture and child gesture.
- Gesture-based communications are quite common in other primates such as orangutans and chimpanzees, which cannot speak but use a variety of hand, feet and limb gestures to communicate among themselves and also with their human care-takers.
'Merging tsunami' amplified Japan carnage
- The massive tsunami generated by the March 2011 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan was a "merging tsunami" — a type of tsunami long thought to exist, but seen now for the first time
- The fronts merged to form a single, double-high wave far out at sea. This wave was capable of traveling long distances without losing power. Ocean ridges and undersea mountain chains pushed the waves together along certain directions from the tsunami's origin.
- "It was a one-in-10-million chance that we were able to observe this double wave with satellites,"
- Researchers have suspected for decades that such 'merging tsunamis' might have been responsible for the 1960 Chilean tsunami that killed about 200 people in Japan and Hawaii, but nobody had definitively observed a merging tsunami until now
- The researchers think ridges and undersea mountain chains on the ocean floor deflected parts of the initial tsunami wave away from each other to form independent jets shooting off in different directions, each with its own wave front.
Solar storms could sandblast the moon
- Solar storms and associated Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can significantly erode the lunar surface
- This could also cause atmospheric loss for Mars.
- A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a massive burst of solar wind, other light isotope plasma, and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona or being released into space.
- Coronal mass ejections release huge quantities of matter and electromagnetic radiation into space above the sun's surface
- It is associated with enormous changes and disturbances in the coronal magnetic field.
- When the ejection is directed towards the Earth and reaches it as an interplanetary CME (ICME), the shock wave of the traveling mass of Solar Energetic Particles causes a geomagnetic storm that may disrupt the Earth's magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side magnetic tail.
Rice as a source of foetal arsenic exposure
- Scientists from 10 laboratories, including the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE), Gwalior, are working on an ambitious, Rs. 300-crore project, to develop technologies for detection and protection against Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) agents.
- bio-terrorism was the number one threat among chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons.
