Eating Beef Is Harmful For The Environment: UNEP

Eating Beef Is Harmful For The Environment

Tells United Nations Environment Program

Big Controversy is going on in India about Eating Beef. Incidents like lynching of a person for eating beef even triggered debate and protests against rising intolerance. Opposition Parties used the issue to attack against Union Govt led by Narendra Modi. But what United Nations thinks about eating beef? It says Eating Beef is harmful for the Environment.

For more information switch over to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) study.

United Nation: A majority of countries in the world is striving toward sustainable consumption to save planet Earth. With a number of reasons being attributed as the leading cause of climate change, a latest study put forward by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has dubbed beef as a "climate harmful meat."

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome believes that meat consumers, especially the beef consumers, pose a major threat to the global environment. 

According to a report in The Economic Times,  production of even one gram of meat for an average hamburger lead to release of 6.61 pounds carbon in the atmosphere.

Taking the statistics into account, the production of meat results in global warming more than the gas discharged into the atmosphere by the burning of transport fuel. Figures furnished by FAO in the study titled "Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options" show that livestock production result in 18 percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, while the transport sector contributes 15 percent of the emissions.

Therefore, experts believe that cutting the production of energy-intensive meat production will help reduce world's carbon footprint. The effect would be much more pronounced than decreasing or altogether eliminating the use of automobiles and fuels.

"This over consumption of meat is really killing many things (there has to be a campaign) that big meat consumers should stop that. At least try one day without meat," said Laurence Tubiana, the French Ambassador for the Paris Climate Change Negotiations scheduled to be held in December.

In terms of meat consumption, an average North American consumes around 322 grams of meat every day, while a Chinese who consumes around 160 grams of meat each day. On the other hand, an average Indian consumes only 12 grams of meat per day. That means, an average American has a 25 percent greater contribution of global warming than a non-vegetarian Indian.

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Unique Gift to PM Modi by Menaka Gandhi

Unique Gift to PM Modi by Menaka Gandhi

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi got a special gift from Menaka Gandhi a few days ago. Finding the present wasn't easy. In fact, the search took a while and it was even feared that the hunt might be futile. But then it was located in Dehradun and, since there was just one of its kind, a courier was dispatched to Uttarakhand to bring it back unharmed.

What the minister for women and child development got the PM for his 65th birthday was a "rare" and "sacred" offering with a mythological resonance. It may have been a few days after September 17, which is the PM's birthday, but Gandhi was able to present Modi with a sapling of Ficus Krishnae, a tree that's more commonly known as Makhan Katori, for his garden at 7, Race Course Road.

The local name reflects the mythological association, playing on Lord Krishna's love of butter (makhan) as a boy, which he would often steal from homes in Vrindavan. During one such gastronomic escapade, his mother Yashoda discovered him.

To get out of a scolding, he hid the butter by cupping it in a leaf. The leaves of that tree thenceforth took the shape of a cup and it came to be known as Makhan Katori—biological name, Ficus Krishnae.

Here's more to the story. After Krishna got an earful from his mother, the butter melted and started running out of the cupped leaf. That's the explanation for the latex-like sap that flows whenever a leaf is plucked from the tree.

 Accompanying the gift was a note from Gandhi to the prime minister elaborating on the mythological value of the tree with the hope that the prime minister would plant it in the garden of his official residence.

At various times in his career, Modi has been compared to Krishna by members of his party — and not for his love of butter.

India Wins in another PATENT WAR

India Wins in another PATENT WAR

NEW DELHI: India scored an important success when it fully protected its traditional knowledge by stalling a leading UK-based laboratory's move to patent a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark and green tea for treating hair loss. Thanks to the vigilance of The vigilance of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The move comes just days after India foiled a similar attempt by US-based consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive from patenting a mouthwash formula containing herbal extracts. 

The vigilance of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) helped protect the Indian products as the council in its submission to the European Patent Office managed to prove that turmeric, pine bark and green tea were being used as a treatment for hair loss in Indian systems of medicine like Ayurveda and Unani since ancient times. 

The UK-based company - Pangaea Laboratories Limited - had filed the patent application in February, 2011. The CSIR-TKDL unit had, however, objected to it and filed evidence on January 13, 2014 once the patent application got published in the European Patent Office website. 

Based on India's evidence, the patent application was finally "deemed to be withdrawn" by the applicant on June 29 this year. 

The back-to-back victories in thwarting the attempts of the two big foreign entities (Colgate-Palmolive and Pangaea Laboratories Limited) adds another feather to the cap of TKDL's which has tasted success now in about 200 such cases without incurring any cost to the public exchequer. 

Recently, it had frustrated a move by Colgate-Palmolive to patent a mouthwash formula containing herb 'Jayaphal' (Nutmeg) extract. "The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, headed by senior scientist Archana Sharma, had submitted proof in the form of references from ancient books, which said the herb and its extracts of 'Myristica Fragrans' were used for oral diseases in Indian systems of medicine", said an official note. 

The TKDL is a pioneering initiative to prevent misappropriation of country's traditional medicinal knowledge at international patent offices. It has structured and classified the Indian traditional medicine system in approximately 25,000 sub-groups for Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga. 

It is proving to be an effective deterrent against bio-piracy and is being recognized as a global leader in the area of traditional knowledge protection. 

Ancient India had Planes: Claim at Indian Science Congress

Ancient India had Planes: Claim at
 Indian Science Congress

Mumbai: The subject regarding the Ancient Indian Aviation Technology has drawn the interest of Scientists and this time. This subject has been included to the  agenda of Major Science Confrence started here on Saturday, 3rd January 2015. Of course, it has drawn the ire of some scientists including a NASA Scientist by name Dr. Ram Prasad Gandhiraman also.

An invited plenary speaker at the Indian Science Congress in Mumbai today, Sunday January 2015, raised eyebrows after he delivered a 30 minute speech on ancient Indian aviation technology. Captain Anand Bodas said planes were invented in the Vedic Age by a sage. He also said they could travel from one planet to another, halt mid air and move in any direction thereafter.

"There is official history and unofficial history. Official history only noted that the Wright Brothers flew the first plane in 1903," said Mr Bodas.

He cited an ancient Indian treatise, the 'Vaimanika Prakaranam' as the source of the text and said that most of its principles have been forgotten with the passage of time.

The symposium on 'Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit' was a first in 102 years of the Indian Science Congress. Eight speakers were invited to deliver speeches on topics ranging from ancient Indian botany and nueroscience of yoga to ancient Indian aviation technology and ancient Indian surgery.

An online petition by a scientist at the NASA research centre, signed by over 200 other scientists had demanded that the scheduled lecture be cancelled as it mixes mythology with science and misleads people.
Referrring the online petition against the subject, Mr. Bodas said "I haven't heard of any online petition. I'll cross the bridge when I get there. Once I receive it, I'll give it thought".

Go through the report by Eric Mack regarding the contraversy:

The Wright brothers were a little late to the aviation game when you consider that pilots in ancient India were flying aircraft not only around the world, but from planet to planet as well. At least, that's one of the claims scheduled to be presented at the Indian Science Congress began Saturday, 3rd January 2015 at the University of Mumbai, in a session titled "Ancient Indian Aviation Technology."

The presenters of the session are apparently serious in their belief that ancient Indian planes were not only able to travel across the solar system, but also "could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward," according to one of the speakers, Captain Anand J Bodas, quoted in the Mumbai Mirror.

It's easy enough to fly around the Internet and find plenty of material from folks who believe we were visited by ancient astronauts or that humans had cracked flight much earlier than 1903. But the Indian Science Congress is not the type of gathering where you would normally find such topics on the agenda. Most of the other sessions are on topics more fitting of a university science setting, such as biodiversity, quantum chemistry or fusion.

The session is tucked into a symposium on "Ancient Sciences Through Sanskrit," with other talks on things like the "Neuroscience of Yoga" or "Scientific Principles of Ancient Indian Architecture and Civil Engineering."

NASA Scientist Objects: The idea of mixing in a serious talk on ancient Indian astronauts with presentations on more rigorous research and science policy issues at a major science conference has drawn the ire of Dr. Ram Prasad Gandhiraman, a NASA scientist at the agency's Ames research center in California.

Gandhiraman has collected hundreds of signatures from other scientists around the world on a petition demanding that the session be cancelled.

The petition also cites what Gandhiraman sees as increasing political attempts to mix mythology and science in India:

"We as scientific community should be seriously concerned about the infiltration of pseudo-science in science curricula with backing of influential political parties," the petition reads. "Giving a scientific platform for a pseudo-science talk is worse than a systematic attack that has been carried out by politically powerful pseudo-science propagandists in the recent past. If we scientists remain passive, we are betraying not only the science, but also our children."

The Sanskrit text that describes the ancient flying machines which Bodas cites, the Vaimanika Shastra, has itself been studied thoroughly by scientists who have concluded that very few of the craft it describes would likely be able to fly at all.

This leaves a few possible explanations: ancient Indian aviation truly is the stuff of mythology, or alternate ancient laws of physics allowed ancient astronauts to fly all over in shoddily conceived craft, by today's standards. Perhaps the answer lies in a study of this "bone" on Mars, left behind by an ancient Indian "pilot?"