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| SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY |
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Microbes to clean up toxic wastes and oil slick
Burj Dubai overtakes Taipei 101
THIS UNIVERSE
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Microbes to clean up toxic wastes and oil slick
While
many of the microbes have been found responsible for causing a variety of diseases and spreading pollution, some strains of beneficial microbes are endowed with the potentials to clean up waste sites and gobble up oil slicks. As it is the oil slick pollution, especially during the transportation and refining of crude oil, continues to be a serious environmental issue. It is in the fitness of things that for many years now, researchers around the world have been demonstrating the potential of a variety of microbes in cleaning up toxic wastes and oil slicks with a high degree of efficiency. For instance, an Indian born scientist working for an environmental research centre in South Australia points out that microbes found in wastes sites in Australia have been found to be capable of withstanding lethal soil and water cocktails, created by waste petroleum and breaking them down so that they would not threaten humans.
“We have isolated bacteria which can live on those waste compounds,” said the researcher Megha Mallavarapu working for an environmental research group in South Australia. Giving details, he said that the genetically altered bacterial strains with vastly enhanced capability are in a position to break down the toxic sludge faster and with a higher degree of efficiency. However, he drove home the point that there is “off the shelf, blanket” solution for treating contaminated site. Depending upon the composition of these toxic sites, specific types of bacteria need to be identified with an emphasis on enhancing their capability. Nearer home, Dr Banwarilal, a researcher working for the New Delhi-based TERI(The Energy and Resources Institute) has successfully developed a oil slick eating cocktail of bacterial microbes. The potential of this microbial bioremediation technology has successfully been demonstrated in various parts of India. According to Dr Banwarilal, the development of this innovative microbial cocktail was a challenging process that involved the identification and testing of more than 100 types of microbes from oil spills and oil fields in Gujarat, Assam and Godavari basin. Before developing the microbial cocktail,the safety and efficiency of the individual bacterial variety was thoroughly tested under varying environmental conditions. Interestingly, this microbial cocktail can degrade all the four types of crude oil fractions—saturated hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, sulphur and nitrogen containing fractions and asphalts and resins. The cocktail degrades these fractions into carbon dioxide and water. This technology was tested for the first time in Mathura oil refinery near Agra. Since there was no oil spill, it was tried on an oil sludge which is nothing but higher fraction with more carbon chains. To begin with ,the cocktail was tried on 50 tonnes of sludge which was cleared in less than two months. In the next step one hundred tonnes of sludge was cleared in six months. Subsequently, the technology was tried successfully in Baruni oil refinery. Banwarilal says that the efficiency of the cocktail was subsequently enhanced with the addition of one more bacterial strain. This fortified cocktail can consume higher density sulphur fractions. |
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Burj Dubai overtakes Taipei 101
Taipei 101, the tallest building of the world, has lost its title very soon. Burj Dubai, a multipurpose tower under construction in Dubai has already crossed its height of 507.3 metres and stands taller. It was on July 21, 2007 that Burj Dubai left Taipei undersized. On September 27, it stood at 570 metres! And that is not the end. Ultimately, it has to go up to 643 metres.
It was in January, 2004 that excavations were started for Burj Dubai. Skidmore, Owings and Merril, the Chicago-based engineers, designed the tower. A look at the design tells that care has been taken to make it safe against heavy windloads and seismic loads laying rest to a theory brewing up in some parts of the world that skyscrapers induce earthquakes. Burj Dubai drives home the message that with safety precautions taken, no skyscraper induces any earthquake and is itself safe against it. Pile foundations were found best and most suitable for Burj Dubai. Depth of piles has been kept as 50 metres. At Ropar, for 220-metre-high RCC chimney, we had provided piles 15 metre deep. Thus, for a height of 643 metres, 50 metre depth of piles is genuine. Area of the pile cap has been kept as 7500 sq. metres i.e. about 3/4th of a hectare! Till date, 3.20 lakh cubic metres of RCC have been laid in position using 63000 tonnes of steel. Most amazing feat of construction of Burj Dubai is that the concrete has been pumped to a height of 564 metres. This is again a world record in itself. Using placer booms of such a long length to place concrete at plus half kilometre above the ground is something hard to believe. Of course, concrete pumps are now finding extensive use in construction of high-rise buildings but pushing the concrete against gravity through a vertical pipe for half a kilometre height is an awesome feat. Functionally, Burj Dubai shall house offices, shopping centres, residences and a big hotel. Number of floors is still undecided, lying somewhere between 150 and 190. First 37 floors will have a hotel decorated by world famous fashion designer Armani. Next 65 floors will have residential apartments. Further floors will house corporate offices. In addition, one floor will have a large swimming pool and two floors above 100th level will have observation galleries. Overall cost of Burj Dubai is going to be Rs 21,000 crore. |
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Trends
Big chunks of a moon that was smashed long ago perhaps by a comet have been detected in Saturn's outermost ring, shedding light on the formation of the planet's grand ring system, scientists said on Wednesday.
A camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted wakes ahead of and trailing behind these fragments, where other ring material has been affected by the gravitational forces exerted by the pieces, they said. The rings encircling Saturn are one of the most dramatic features of the solar system. The other gaseous planets in the solar system — Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune — also are encircled by rings, but they are not as spectacular. —Reuters
Optimism area of brain A person's optimism in the future seems to be controlled by a small front part of the mid-brain, according to a study that used brain imaging. That area deep behind the eyes activates when people think good thoughts about what might happen in the future. The more optimistic a person is, the brighter the area showed up in brain scans, the scientists reported in a small study published online Thursday in the journal Nature. That same part of the brain, called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), seems to malfunction in people suffering depression, said the study co-authors. Researchers gave 15 people functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while they thought about future possibilities. — AP
Get that sleep A few nights without sleep can not only make people tired and emotional, but may actually put the brain into a primitive "fight or flight" state, researchers said on Wednesday. Brain images of otherwise healthy men and women showed two full days without sleep seemed to rewire their brains, re-directing activity from the calming and rational prefrontal cortex to the "fear center" — the amygdala. "It's almost as though, without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity, in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses," said Matthew Walker of the University of California Berkeley, who led the study. — Reuters
Maori head The Normandy museum only wanted to do what was right: It offered to return a preserved, tattooed Maori head to New Zealand, an attempt to restore dignity to human remains that were long put on display as an exotic curiosity. Instead, authorities in the Normandy city of Rouen got a scolding from the culture minister for not checking with national authorities first. A Rouen administrative court ruled Wednesday that, pending a decision later this year, the Maori head must remain in France. For years, New Zealand has sought the return of mummified Maori heads and other remains, many of which were collected by Westerners in a grisly exchange for weapons and other goods. — AP |
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THIS UNIVERSE
You have to realise that the importance of oxygen for supporting a fire is due to the fact that we have an abundance of materials that have carbon and hydrogen as their components. These elements are found in all vegetation, in wood, in coal and in oil. Oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere. When temperature is raised, through lighting a matchstick, a lightning strike, a spark or any other means these materials and oxygen combine to produce energy. If such materials were absent oxygen itself will not produce fire. But we know that energy is produced in other reactions, chemical and not chemical. Solar energy is not produced chemically but through nuclear reactions in which lighter elements combine to produce heavier elements. In fact it is now known that elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are also produced in the solar furnace, deep inside the sun. This is also true of all other elements. Sun like stars are responsible for the production of most of the elements we know. This happens in various phases of evolution of the stars. Most of the reactions that do this are exothermic, in the sense that they also produce energy. Yes, oxygen exists in the sun but is not primarily responsible for the solar flares that emanate from its surface. These fires have a different origin and a different nature. Hair and nails are formed of dead cells, but both keep growing. Why? The hair and the nails are made of dead cells. This means that these cells cannot exchange information. That is why you do not feel any pain when you cut your hair or trim your nails. That is the reason that horse's hoofs allow them to run on stony rough surfaces without being hurt or the claws of some animals, or beaks of birds and the horns of deer provide such useful appendages. The hair of a beautiful girl makes her more beautiful and the hair on the body of sheep keeps it insulated from the environment and, when shorn, allows us to make woollen clothes. Invention of the possibility of hair and nails was an intriguing and useful outcome of evolution. But these dead parts must also arise from locations that are alive. In the case of nails, say on our fingers and toes, the insensitive part we see, and sometimes apply nail polish to, is called the nail plate. This plate is coupled to the skin at the bottom. This is called the nail bed. There is a matrix, a hidden part of the nail where the growth takes place. Nails do not grow at the end but from this matrix under the skin of the finger. This is called the cuticle. If you put a mark on your nail with indelible ink, you would see this mark travelling towards the end as time passes. The nail plate, even though made of dead cells, is continuously renewed at the rate of about a millimeter a week. Hair is somewhat similar. The growth is at the follicles under the skin. The dead cells keep being added and the hair grows long. Both, the hair and the nails are made of dense, compacted proteins.
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