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Green India Mission revamped
The government has unveiled an updated National Mission for Green India, aiming to restore degraded forest ecosystems in the Western Ghats, the Himalayas and the Aravalli mountain range.
The updated mission document, launched on the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, also focuses on greening the arid regions of northwest India.
In its first phase, the mission aimed at improving ecosystem services in 10 million hectares of land, increase forest-based livelihood income of around three million forest dependent households and enhance Co2 sequestration by 50 to 60 MT in the year 2020.
The mission's interventions began in 2015-16 and around 11.22 million hectares were brought under plantations by 2020–21.
The government said the new phase of the mission will work towards creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, a key commitment made by India under the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
One of the eight components of India's National Action Plan on Climate Change launched in 2008, the updated mission aims to restore the ecologically critical Aravalli hills, which stretch 700 kilometre from Gujarat to Delhi.
One of the world's oldest mountain ranges, the Aravallis play a key role in sustaining natural resources but face threats from deforestation, mining and construction. This has led to desertification, declining rainfall and groundwater depletion. The mission also aims to restore and protect the Western Ghats, one of the world's 34 biodiversity hotspots. Stretching 1,600 km from Gujarat to Tamil Nadu, the Ghats are home to rich plant and animal life, absorbing up to 10 per cent of India's greenhouse gas emissions.
The mission will also focus on restoring degraded Himalayan slopes by planting native species to stop soil erosion, control landslides and improve rainwater harvesting. It will employ methods like gully plugging and contour trenching to stabilize slopes.
In the Northeast, the mission seeks to address shifting (jhum) cultivation through respectful, locally appropriate technologies.
It will also promote seabuckthorn plantations in suitable areas of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Sikkim to enhance ecological health and local livelihoods.
The mission further aims to tackle soil erosion in the arid regions of northwest India, where fertile land is turning barren due to wind, overgrazing, poor land management, and loss of vegetation.
AI will reduce corporate workforce in next few years, says Amazon CEO
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative artificial intelligence will reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years as the online giant begins to increase its usage of the technology. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said in a message to employees. The executive said that Amazon has more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure is a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.
Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the e-commerce company's AI plans.
Earlier this month Amazon announced that it was planning to invest $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Amazon has also invested more heavily in AI. In November the company said that it was investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. Two months earlier chipmaker Intel said that its foundry business would make some custom artificial intelligence chips for Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon's cloud computing unit and a main driver of its artificial intelligence ambitions.
Detecting prediabetes through ultrasound of thigh, shoulder muscles
An ultrasound of one's thigh or shoulder muscle could help detect insulin resistance, a stage that often precedes prediabetes, a study suggests.
Ultrasounds of muscles of 25 patients -- who were also checked for insulin resistance -- showed that their muscles appear "unusually bright", lead author Steven Soliman, director of musculoskeletal radiology fellowship at the University of Michigan, US, said.
"We found it interesting that most of these patients (with bright ultrasound images) have type 2 diabetes. Seeing this pattern, we often thought, 'This patient must have diabetes'," Soliman said.
"More importantly, many were unaware of their condition until we verified with their electronic records and confirmed with their bloodwork that they indeed had type 2 diabetes or prediabetes," the lead author added.
For this study, published in the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine, the team analysed 300 images of the participants' ultrasound and found an increased brightness or 'muscle echo intensity', which suggests that the quality of muscle has changed due to increased fat. Eight participants had insulin resistance, and seven had "impaired insulin sensitivity".
Initial findings from a muscle biopsy also suggested that the bright ultrasound images may indicate an excess accumulation of fat and possibly fibrosis, potentially affecting muscle health and function, the researchers said.
The study, therefore, highlights the potential of an ultrasound of muscles — a non-invasive procedure — in predicting the development of prediabetes or diabetes earlier than current diagnostic methods, they added.
An elevated muscle echo intensity was seen in patients not diagnosed with prediabetes or diabetes. Some of them showed an increased muscle echo intensity before their blood test revealed a higher HbA1c — a measure of average blood sugar levels over the last two to three months, the researchers said.
The result suggested that bright ultrasound images can hint at -- but not measure -- insulin resistance, the researchers said and added that they were recruiting more participants to understand this aspect better.
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