The arsenic affected areas of West Bengal are lying on a sediment of Younger Deltaic Deposition (YDD). The same sediment extends eastwards towards Bangladesh, covering the approximate area of 34 districts out of a total of 64 districts in Bangladesh. We suspect that the groundwater of these 34 districts of Bangladesh may be arsenic contaminated.

Arsenic has been found in groundwater in seven districts of West Bengal covering an area 37,493 km having about 34 million population. Our survey indicates that 560 villages are arsenic-affected and more than a million people are drinking arsenic contaminated water and more than 200,000 people are suffering from arsenic-related diseases.

A 4.80 m long shallow water sediment core, collected from the inner shelf (at 22 m water depth) off Karwar, near Kali river mouth is studied for foraminiferal tracers of palaeomonsoons. The climate history of this core which represents the last 4,500 years approximately revealed the evidences of a significant change in the intensity of the precipitation around 2,000 years BP.

Statistics relating to the date of onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala for the 100-year period 1891-1990 reveal that the mean and median dates of onset for south Kerala are 31 May and 1 June, with a standard deviation of 8.5 days. Declaring the date of monsoon onset is not a straightforward matter. However, rainfall pattern, uppper air circulation features and INSAT cloud pictures are useful guides, and these indicate that the onset date in 1990 esd 17-18 May. During 1891-1990 there have been onlyy 12 years in which the date of onset over Kerala has been on or before 18 May.

A research paper by Gowariker have used multiple and power regression involving 15 independent variables for long range forecasting of monsoon rainfall in India. They have also argued that, when most of the independent variables are 'favourable' almost invariably the monsoon rainfall is normal. In this note we formalize this approach using a parsimonious logistic regression model. The probability of a normal rainfall can be assessed in most cases using only five of the 15 variables.

The four recent major earthquakes of the Himalayan Convergence Zone, viz., the Kangra earthquake of 1905, the Bihar-Nepal earthquake of 1934, and the two Assam earthquakes of 1897 and 1950 were assigned magnitudes greater than 8 by Richter. Although estimates of areas vary, it is agreed that an extended rupture with its long dimension parallel to the local strike of the Himalaya was involved in each case.

Porpax Lindi. is a small genus found only in the mainland of Asia. It differs from its close relative Eria Lindl. in having the sepals joined into a tube and having a very short pseudobulb which is wider than long. While on an exploration to Silent Valley a curious population of Porpax was located. Comparing with other known species of the genus, the plants were described here as a new species. The plants were growing on lichen covered tree trunks in moist shady places.

During the last few years, India has been witnessing an unusual development. The country is trying to make progress, which needs the availability of uninterrupted electrical power. This may be obtained from different types of sources such as hydel, thermal, nuclear, tidal or fossil fuel power stations.

Charcoal is perhaps the best example of biochar. Considering the interest that has been generated by Jha et al. many readers would be interested in knowing how actually charcoal is made. During one of our recent field surveys to Kasera locality in Kangra District, Himachal Pradesh, (Correspondence)

An integrated study using remote sensing and multi geophysical data was carried out over parts of Deccan Syneclise, for eliminating the inherent ambiguities associated with each of the individual methods, and to understand the hydrocarbon prospects. The subsurface sections constructed using geophysical data such.

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