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Status of Water Resources in Mizoram:
Institutions and Management Practices
-- Samrat Goswami and Sriparna Guha
Water management is very much guided by the water institutions in a country and even in a state. The role of management is particularly important in a state which is relatively less developed in its natural resources. In a state like Mizoram, water management is sufficiently guided by the availability of and demand for water. The present paper is a modest attempt to study the water management practices prevailing in Mizoram on the basis of the supply of and demand for water, using available secondary data. The paper finds that Mizoram has a complex coexistence of government-led, individual family-managed and private vendor-supplied water management system, unable to take care of proper water conservation. The reasons are more of institutional than of physical. The paper argues for more government monitoring at all levels, community participation and rainwater harvesting at village level, more watershed management projects, and for all these, arrangements of more funds. Focus should be on the strengths of the existing institutions, and more research should be directed towards finding out a proper combination of existing institutions according to their strength to make water management more effective. Demand management should also be focused for collective action at community or village level. NGOs have a significant role to play in effective water management in the state.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A Study of Air Pollution Around a Fertilizer Plant
-- P Manivannan and S S Jayachandran
Fertilizer factories use Low Sulphur Heavy Stock (LSHS) as one of the raw materials for production of urea. Pollutants such as oxides of sulphur, SO2, H2S, ammonia, and CO evolve at various stages of production. The pollutants present in atmospheric air can be instantly measured using various types of dragger tubes. The concentration of pollutants in off gases can be determined by weighted average method. The extent of pollution by CO, NOX, and oxides of sulphur, H2S and ammonia inside a fertilizer plant has been estimated using both methods. The details are presented in this paper.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Biosorption of Chromium (VI) from Aqueous Solution
by Using Natural Filamentous Algae
-- Ch V Siva Kumar, Garima Kumar, Chandrakala Gunturu, Abhisek Bagchi,
Sharad Pandey and Meera Indracanti
This paper determines the effect of powdered natural filamentous algae in the biosorption of heavy metal ion hexavalent chromium (VI) from aqueous solution. Cr (VI) is a highly toxic metal ion reported as a major pollutant content from various manufacturing industries. Over other wastewater treatment processes, biosorption is the most effective and economical for removal of Cr (VI) from aqueous solution. Effective absorption of Cr (VI) from aqueous solution using natural filamentous algal biomass was studied at various pH, contact time, optimum dosage, and initial concentration of adsorbate. The biosorptive ability of biosorbent was reliant on the pH of the biosorbate, with pH 2 being most favorable. Results were analyzed by the Freundlich and Langmuir isotherm equation and the determined characteristic parameter for adsorption isotherm was 17.24 mg/g at pH 2 and temperature 30 oC. FTIR study was carried out, which suggested that the presence of Cr (VI) ions in the biomass affects the bands corresponding to hydroxyl and carboxyl groups.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Effects of Air Pollution on the Ultraviolet Radiation Reaching
the Earth: A Case Study of Three Nigerian Cities
-- M U Igboekwe and K T Eke
In this work, the effects of air pollution, such as depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer (which in turn leads to increase in the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the earth’s surface), increase in global temperature, and comparison of radiation in a polluted and non-polluted areas, are studied. Basically, the effect of air pollution can be remedied by making a substitution of ozone layer depleters like chlorofluorocarbon with hydrochlorofluorocarbon, carbon dioxide and water for fire extinguishing and others. The city of Port Harcourt has the highest sunburn unit of 14.1 mL in the month of March, and the cities of Ikeja and Calabar have their highest sunburn units of 14.5 mL in the month of December. These figures indicate the period of highest stratospheric ozone layer depletion. Hence, it is observed that air pollution can be hazardous, but if the rate of pollution is reduced drastically, the ozone layer can be restored.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Pattern Formation Through Cooperative Self-Organization
in Stressed Bacterial Colonies: A Complexity Perspective
-- Saurabh Shanu, Gaurav Srivastava, Dushyant Agarwal
and Sudeepto Bhattacharya
Stressed bacteria have developed cooperative strategies to cope with unfavorable growth conditions and to replicate. In this paper, we describe experimentally the effects of stressing bacteria using antibiotic stress, nutritional stress and substrate stress. We find that the cooperative communications between bacteria in the colony are manifested as fascinating complex spatial patterns. We then describe a modeling of this experimentally observed cooperative behavior of the bacteria colony from the perspective of complexity. The inter-bacterial interactions that give rise to the spatial patterns are viewed as an emergent phenomenon, with the interactions being modeled as a Prisoner’s dilemma game. We obtain deterministic finite automata that model the interactions, and derive both, a context-free as well as a context-sensitive grammar describing the bacterial interactions and consequent evolution over discrete time.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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