| 
Study to locate oil resources in Kerala-Konkan basin
- Efforts to locate oil in the Kerala-Konkan offshore basin may have failed so far, but the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) appears not about to give up.
- The hydrocarbon potential of the Kerala-Konkan offshore basin extending from Goa in the north to Cape Comorin in the south, is of the order of 660 million tonnes, according to ONGC estimates. But 15 exploratory wells drilled in the basin so far have not yielded oil in commercial quantities.
- Oil exploration encounters a difficulty in the basin because of the thick basalt layer that masks deeper seismic events below.
- The petroleum system in the basin, including the hydrocarbon kitchen area, migration path and entrapment has not been established so far.
- The proposed fluid inclusion study to be carried out at Centre for Earth Science Studies (CESS) involves micro-level analysis of the palaeo fluids trapped inside mineral crystals present in the sediment fill of the Mumbai and Kerala basins.
- The National Facility for Fluid Inclusion Research coming up on the CESS campus will have a sophisticated laboratory equipped with a Laser Raman Spectroscope.
- In India, Fluid Inclusion Technique (FIT) is yet to find a place in hydrocarbon exploration activities.
- “The study will provide valuable data about the temperature, salinity, pressure, and composition of fluids that have migrated through the basin in the geological past, information that is of fundamental importance to the hydrocarbon exploration and production industry in the Kerala Basin, which, so far, is designated as ‘dry' in terms of oil findings,”
- “The fluid inclusion studies in the Mumbai and Kerala-Konkan basins can be extended to Kutch Basin and Ratnagiri where hydrocarbon findings need to be converted for commercially exploitable discoveries,”
Stricter mobile radiation norms
- Come September 1, 2012, India will have stricter regulations to check electromagnetic radiation emission from mobile phones, a step that would address health concerns and also streamline the handset manufacturing industry.
- The new regulations are mainly those being practised in the U.S. and European nations that mandate all mobile phone manufacturers to comply with a specific absorption rate (SAR is a measure of the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the human body while using a mobile phone) so that radiation does not affect human health.
- The company will also have to mention SAR value clearly on handsets to make customers aware of it.
- DoT formed an inter-ministerial committee that recommended that mobile handsets should have SAR value of 1.6 Watts per kilogram averaged over a six-minute period and taken over a volume containing a mass of one gram of human tissue.
Update to focus on multi-modal management of rectal cancer
- The leading cancers among men are
- lung (incidence of 12 per lakh of population) and
- stomach (11 per lakh)
while among women they are- breast (29 per lakh) and
- cervical cancer (18 per lakh)
- Though, historically, surgery was the standard treatment for "rectal cancer", the rapid progress in medical research, advances in protocols and a better understanding of tumour behaviour has reshaped cancer therapy involving sub-specialities including
- radio-therapy,
- chemotherapy,
- radiology,
- pathology and
- psycho-oncology.
This has produced improved survival and quality of life, besides reducing treatment-related adverse effects
