Each computer leaves a toxic trail

>> Computers, the hub of modern business and lifestyle, are considered to be the vanguard of clean technology that has freed us from the use of paper and unnecessary transportation. By default, the industry that produces computer is also perceived to be clean. However, a un study reveals that each computer at its birth uses at least 240 kg fossil fuels, 22 kg of chemicals and 1.5 tonnes of water-more than the weight of a rhinoceros

>> Behind every sleek global brand of digital desire, farmers and residents around component plants face the severe effects of toxic residue from the manufacturing plants in hich they are produced

>> The three major sectors of this industry are:
* Printed wiring board (pwb) manufacture
* Semiconductor chip manufacture
* Component assembly: facilities involved in the assembly of computers and other electrical devices

>> Far away from the glitzy headquarters of these brands, pwbs are largely produced in China and Thailand, while semiconductor chips are produced in Mexico and Phillipines

>> A chip of 2 grammes uses 30 kg of materials, including water, a large part of which is turned into highly toxic waste

>> Input for pwbs:
* Copper compound, flame retardants (tetrabromobisphenol), photoinitiators (thioxanthones)
* Epoxy resins, formaldehyde, chelating chemicals (a chelate is composed of a metal ion and a chelating agent.


A substance whose molecules can form several bonds to a single metal ion)
* Metallic solders (lead-tin or lead-free alloys, nickel, gold)

>> Input for semiconductors:
* Silicon, gallium, germanium, hafnium
* Hydrogen peroxide, nitric acid, sulphuric acid
* Arsenic, boron, antimony, phosphorous

>> Wastes impact groundwater:
* A pwb facility in Thailand contained chlorinated volatile organic chemicals, a group of chemicals widely used as solvents and reported as contaminants in groundwater
* Nonylphenol ethoxylate and a range of nonylphenols, persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances, used as surfactants, were found at a Mexican site


Waste and its health impact (common to pwbs, semiconductors and component assembly)

>> Polybrominated diphenyl ethers, widely used as brominated flame-retardants: endocrine disruptors, interfere with growth hormones and sexual development, affect immune system

>> Phthalates, widely used as plasticisers (softeners) in plastics: They are found in air and dust and are toxic. Affects liver and kidney at higher doses. Runs the risk of affecting food chain through crops. Also affects proteome formation and physiology and morphology of some crops during growth

>> Chlorinated solvents: Carcinogenic, affects central nervous system, liver and kidney. Affects skin, eyes, mucous membrane

>> High levels of heavy metals such as copper and nickel: pwb manufacturing processes use water-soluble copper compounds that can have serious impact on aquatic organisms and reduction in growth and fertility rates as well as increased morality. Some nickel compounds are toxic. They can have gastrointestinal and cardiac effects.

About 5 per cent of the population are nickel sensitive and can suffer at far lower doses. Some nickel compounds are carcinogenic as well.

(Source: Cutting Edge Contamination, Greenpeace, February 2007)

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300:Movie Review

300, a movie full of action sequences, a story of Spartians who faces a very big army of Persians to save there land and there prestige with only a army of 300 peoples.The movie is all about your determination and how you can face a very big problem with a big determination.The movie dont have any part where you will feel bore, or it feel slow to you.And i didnt find any area to point out its defaults, since everything is superb but yes its not for those peoples who cant see too much of blood on screen so they can just ignore it.Its loaded with lots of action scenes and multimedia effects, those are really awesome.So if till you didnt watch it then you must go to your nearest theatre.And atleast i can assure you that you will not feel that i had wasted my time and money both.

Rating: Excellent

Another big, fat paycheck on its way

Never mind inflation. India is still the hottest job market in the Asia-Pacific region, with salaries in key sectors expected to rise by 14.5 per cent on an average in the month, according to a survey by global consulting firm Hewitt Associates. That is just a notch above the 14.4 per cent average rise in 2006, but will mark the fifth year of double-digit increases.

Banking and finance, insurance, hospitality, telecommunications and engineering sectors are expected to fuel the northward trend of salaries in 2007, while IT- enabled service sectors are relatively less hot. The health care, pharmaceutical and electronic/electrical industries are among those expected to see the lowest raises among the sectors covered.

Banking and finance has displaced insurance as the hottest category, with an anticipated increase of 16.5 per cent in salaries, although down from 17percent in 2006. Insurance employees are expected to get 16.1 per cent raises, compared to 17.1 per cent last year. Telecom is hotter at 15.7 percent compared 15.1 percent last yea r.

Notably, IT and IT-enabled services like business process outsourcing and call centres —have been edged out of the top five category by hospitality and restaurants where the expected rise in salaries is 15.5 percent.

Locally owned organizations are awarding higher salary increases than multinationals in India. In 2006, local companies saw an overall salary increase of 14.9 per cent while foreign-owned organizations raised their salary bill by 14.3 percent.

Source:Hindustan Times
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Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, born on March 14, 1879 at Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany. We know about his valued contribution to Physics and that E= mc2 got him the Nobel Prize in 1921. But, most of us remain oblivious to the fact that this day marks the 120th birth anniversary of Albert Einstein.

In 1999 Time magazine named Einstein the “Person of the Century”. Four of Einstein’s publications in 1905 radically changed the way physicists viewed the world. They are together known as the Annus Mirabilis Papers (Annus mirabilis meaning “wonderful year” in Latin).

According to wikipedia.org, in 1924, Indian Physicist Satyendra Nath Bose sent a statistical model to Einstein. This model proposed that light could be understood as a gas. Consequently, Einstein published the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomena.

When Einstein died in 1955 of internal bleeding, the Princeton Hospital pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed Einstein’s brain for preservation, in hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent. Today, after52 years of his death, Einstein still lives as the 2001 aestroid Einstein, as the chemical element 99 einsteinium and as the Einstein, a unit used in photochemistry.


Source: HT Horizon
Compiled By: Saurav Chakraborty

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Wet March sets a record, chills Delhi

This is the wettest March Delhi has seen in the past five years. The city has recorded 43 mm of rainfall so far this month, breaking the previous record of 34 mm in March 2005. On Monday, it rained for the second consecutive day bringing down the maximum temperature to 21.3 degree Celsius, nine degrees below normal. Between 8.30a.m. and 5.30p.m., it rained 17 mm. Later, some areas witnessed a hailstorm.

“All of north India is witnessing these severe conditions,” said S. Khindri, a meteorological expert formerly with the Indian Air Force. It has grown extremely cold in places like Katra and Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir, following heavy rain and snowfall. Five pilgrims to Vaishno Devi died due to the cold on Monday.

Noted economist and a former RBI director S.S. John said the rain was bad news for farmers. “The mustard crop will be severly affected and there could be an impact on the wheat crop too,” he said.

J.S.Samra, director, Indian Council for Agricultural Research, blamed the change in climate pattern over the past 10 years upon greenhouse gas emission.

Source: Hindustan Times

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La Nina may replace El Nino in Pacific

The La Nina weather anomaly may form in the equatorial Pacific in the next two to three months, possibly increasing the risks for more hurricanes later this year in the Atlantic. “A transition to La Nina conditions is possible during the next two to three months,” the U.S. Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said in its monthly update on Thursday.

It also said the El Nino weather pattern, whose wind shear ripped apart and reduced the amount of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean in 2006, has disappeared. Typically, El Nino causes rampant flooding in Peru and Ecuador while causing searing drought in Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines among other countries.

La Nina usually has the opposite effect, and U.S. government forecasters have warned it may cause a higher than normal number of hurricanes. For Instance, with El Nino running at full bore last year, only nine named storms formed in the Atlantic. That was much lower than the record 28 storms in 2005 that included monster storms like Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma which ravaged the US Gulf Coast and caused billions of dollars worth of damage.

The prediction center said warm sea surface temperatures that accompanied the last El Nino fell rapidly last December and January. “These trends in surface and subsurface ocean temperatures indicate that the warm (El Nino) episode has ended and that conditions are becoming favorable for La Nina to develop,” it said. Some of the computer forecast models “indicate a rapid transition to La Nina conditions during March-May 2007,” the center added.

The more famous El Nino is an anomaly that results in an abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific, wreaking havoc in weather patterns from Latin America to Asia. Literally, it means “little boy” in Spanish and was called El Nino by Latin American anchovy fisherman in the 19th century who first noticed it usually peaked during the Christmas season.

The last La Nina occurred from 1998 to 2001, leading to drought across much of the western United States.

Source: Reuters
Compiled By: Saurav Chakraborty

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