Wearing 3-D viewing goggles, scientists peer at virtual pink, blue and purple clouds billowing in cyberspace at a research laboratory in the Dutch city of Delft.

By tracking how particles move in and around computer-simulated clouds, they hope to shed light on one of the unknowns of climate forecasting: how these masses of water droplets and ice crystals influence changing temperatures.

Research from a savannah area in Mali shows that satellites can reveal the environmental factors that trigger the biological cycles of both the Plasmodium falciparum parasite and its host the Anopheles mosquito. Remote sensing data of vegetation accurately predicted climate trends affecting both the parasite and the mosquito and could therefore forecast the severity of a malaria outbreak.

The risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection is variable over space and time and this variability is related to environmental variability. Environmental factors affect the biological cycle of both vector and parasite. Despite this strong relationship, environmental effects have rarely been included in malaria transmission models.

P. Oppili
CHENNAI: The State Forest Department has taken up the work of monitoring and mitigating fires in forest areas with the help of remote sensing and GIS technologies.

Whale sharks are a declining species for which little biological data is available. While these animals are protected in many parts of their range, they are fished legally and illegally in some countries. Baseline biological and ecological data are needed to allow the formulation of an effective conservation plan for whale sharks. It is not known, for example, whether the whale shark is represented by a single worldwide panmictic population or by numerous, reproductively isolated populations.

The concept of food security has evolved during the last three decades to include not only food availability, but also economic access to food and the biological absorption of food in the body. The author discusses in this paper the challenge of achieving sustainable advances in farm productivity, leading to an "ever-green revolution" in the fields of farm families with small holdings.

Aprimatologist, environmentalist and UN messenger of peace - that's Dame Jane Goodall for one and all. But what is she doing at a technology platform like Map World Forum, raised the brow of many a technologist at the event.

Analysis of daily rainfall data over India during the period 1951

Total atmospheric moisture content present in the atmosphere is less than 1% of total atmospheric composition. The atmospheric moisture variability accounts for nearly 10% variation in global hydrological cycle. The atmospheric moisture variability occurs in the form of cloud cover and hence in to the precipitation.

>> A California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors was struck down February 26 by a US federal appeals court >> More than 1,815 digital maps will be completed in 2009 marking official and clandestine roads, rivers, settlements, and schools in Brazillian Amazon. Cartographers from Brazil

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