After a meeting between Prime Minister Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin

Netanyahu on Wednesday, India and Israel announced a strategic partnership

between the two countries, and signed seven agreements in the fields of water,
agriculture, space, including a $40 million joint fund for research and development in
innovation.

Endosulfan causes DNA damage in animals:

Study
For the first time, researchers in India have found that mice and rats exposed to
endosulphan suffer from DNA damage and genomic instability, and impaired DNA damage
response. which may cause cancer and genetic abnormalities.
The team found mice and rats exposed to endosulfan generated reactive oxygen
species, a potent DNA damaging agent. The reactive oxygen species, in turn, caused DNA
damage in the form of breaks in DNA strands. The broken DNA strands generally tend to
repair themselves by rejoining. But endosulfan treatment was found to cause extensive
processing of broken DNA leading to increased and long deletion in the strands.

Heavy rainfall not associated with warming:

IIT Bombay study
A study carried out by researchers at IIT Bombay has found that extreme rainfall events over India
do not have significant association with land surface air temperature over India and sea surface
temperature over central Indian Ocean. The study also found that dynamic moisture transport
caused by thermal gradient between land and water had a significant role on mean and extreme
rainfall compared with direct thermodynamic effect (where the atmosphere has a greater capacity to
carry moisture when temperature rises).The results are contrary to the general
notion that global warming or increased summer temperature is
responsible for extreme summer monsoon rainfall events. In the recent past,
there has been considerable change in heavy summer monsoon rainfall pattern in India and there is
considerable debate on whether such extreme events are caused by global warming or by
urbanisation.

A study carried out in Brazil revealed that there was a decrease in extreme
rainfall with increasing temperature. In the latest study too, the researchers did not
find evidence to support intensification in either the mean or extreme rainfall over India in a
warming world. The claim is not really that climate change is not important. But the
novel results indicate that the local warming is not the controlling factor.

Mahasweta Devi wrote Hajar Churashir Ma (1084s Mother) in 1974,

when Naxalism had scorched its way across Bengal. Twelve years after she wrote it, the
novel got Mahasweta a Jnanpith.
 Mission Bhagiratha The Prime Minister during his short
visit inaugurated phase-I of Mission Bhagiratha drinking water
project for every household at Komatibanda in Chief Ministers
Gajwel constituency.

India, US discover major natural gas reserve in Indian ocean

A joint expedition by India and the US discovered a major deposit of natural gas in the Indian
Ocean, offering the potential to significantly expand energy production in a region that's
currently a big importer.

India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the US Geological Survey struck a large,
highly enriched deposit of natural gas hydrate, an icy form of the fuel in the Bay of Bengal off
the country's east coast, potentially the first producible reserve of its kind in the w ..

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It
Photo: Special arrangement

A view of the ROV made by National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai.

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science and technology

Scuba divers who take a plunge into ocean floors to study coral reefs can now take a break. An
indigenously developed remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is taking up their role with more efficiency
and accuracy and its expected to contribute significantly to the conservation and management of
corals.

The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, had recently deployed the ROV for
studying the coral reefs of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are facing survival threats due to
global warming.

While it would take weeks together for a scuba diver to diagnose the health of corals, the ROV could
map a larger area in a day.

The images of corals recorded by the ROV are useful for studying the biodiversity of coral reefs and
their evolution. The underwater visuals had shown the coral debris and boulders caused by the 2004
tsunami and the rejuvenation of the colonies of branching corals, stony coral and brain corals at
some locations, explained G.A. Ramadass, Head, Deep Sea Technologies Group, NIOT.

The coral reef biodiversity at Andaman region, which spreads across an area of 11,000 sq km, was
seriously affected during the 2004 tsunami. The increasing sea surface temperature added to the
stress. Currently, there is no mechanism other than scuba diving to examine the corals and assess the
extent of damage or rejuvenation, explained Dr. Ramadass.

According to the experts, no evidence of coral bleaching was seen in Andaman reef during April 2016
when the ROV carried out a survey. However, the ecosystem needs to be monitored constantly to
understand the impacts of raise in temperature, he said.

Development of ROV
NIOT had earlier developed a deep water work class Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) ROSUB
6000 which was suitable for exploration in deep waters. It was successfully operated at a maximum
depth at 5,289 metres in the Central Indian Ocean Basin. It also contributed to the exploration of
deep ocean minerals such as gas hydrates, polymetallic nodules and hydrothermal sulphides, which
occur at water depths ranging between 1,000 and 6,000 metres, said a communication from the
institute.

A new miniaturised version of ROV, which could be effectively used for exploration and inspection
up to 500-metre water depths, caters to the need of the research community and industry. It was also
deployed for scientific research in Antarctica as a part of the 34th Indian Scientific Expedition to
Antarctica during Jan-Apr 2015. It was deployed in the Lake Priyadarshini near the Indian
permanent station Maitri and in the New Indian barrier ice shelf regions.

Though ROVs with similar depth rating and capabilities are available in the international market,
many of them were not suitable for polar conditions. Also the scientific payload such as irradiance
sensor, water sampler, sound velocity profiler, sector scanning sonar with the state of the art
navigation systems makes the ROV a unique one, Dr Ramadass said.