Jalmani programme(जलमणी)

The goal of the rural water supply programme of GoI, as stated in the XI th plan documents is to provide every rural person with adequate water for drinking, cooking and other domestic basic needs on a sustainable basis. This basic requirement should meet certain minimum water quality standards and be available at all times, in all situations, in which it is readily and conveniently accessible. However, this is likely to meet challenges, as the quality of water may deteriorate when it actually reaches vulnerable areas like rural schools. Therefore in order to supplement and add value to the on going rural water programme, and address this key challenge, a programme for installation of Stand Alone Purification System in rural schools, has started since 2008.

In order to decide on technology options the Department had constituted a High Level Technical Committee (HLTC) in March 2008. The Jalmani programme is implemented by the State Governments through the Gram Panchayat/Village Water and Sanitation Committees/Self Help Groups including women Self Help Groups, School Committees and PTA. However, flexibility is given to the State Governments to involve other stake holders also viz., NGOs, Mahila Mandals etc for the sake of better implementation of the Programme at the village level. For operating this programme, funds are provided by the State Governments or the institutions nominated by them to the Village Panchayats for activities relating to capacity building, awareness generation/publicity and such other activities which are necessary for the smooth implementation of the programme.

The ownership of water purification systems is vested with the school authorities. However, it is the direct responsibility of the Village Panchayats that the systems are run effectively and the school children get quality water in sufficient quantity. This programme is an outcome of the NRDWQM&S which empowers rural community including schools to test their own water samples. The success of this programme will be measured by the improvement in the quality of water as established in the test results under the NRDWQM&S. For this purpose there will be close coordination between School Management Committee and Village Panchayats. Village Panchayats will have the overall responsibility to ensure that drinking water available in the schools meets the minimum prescribed standards in terms of quality, potability and quantity.

National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring & Surveillance Programme (NRDWQM&S)

This programme is an outcome of the NRDWQM&S which empowers rural community including schools to test their own water samples. The success of this programme will be measured by the improvement in the quality of water as established in the test results under the NRDWQM&S. For this purpose there
will be close coordination between School Management Committee and Village Panchayats ultimately Village Panchayats will have the overall responsibility to
ensure that drinking water available in the schools meets the minimum prescribed standards in terms of quality, potability and quantity.

India Mark II

The India Mark II hand pump technology is a human-powered pump designed to lift water from a depth of fifty metres or less. The Mark II is world's most widely used water handpump.The pump was designed in the 1970s to serve village water needs in developing countries and rural areas. The pump is installed on top of a drilled well or borehole and lifts water from the bottom of the well through repeatedly moving the pump handle up and down. Several manufacturers, primarily in India, manufacture the pump which now falls under public domain. By the mid 1990s, five million of the pumps had been manufactured and installed.The pump was designed in the 1970s in a joint effort between the Government of India, UNICEF, and The World Health Organization (WHO) to address the severe drought and a water shortage affecting India during that period and to prevent evacuation of villages to refugee camps.

The Evil Quartet

A biologist called Jared Diamond coined the phrase ‘the evil quartet’ to describe the four main human-induced causes of extinction
1. Overkill.
2. Habitat destruction and fragmentation.
3. Impact of introduced species.
4. Chains of extinction.

Habitat destruction

Habitat destruction has played a key role in extinctions, especially related to tropical forest destruction.Factors contributing to habitat loss are: overpopulation, deforestation, pollution (air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination) and global warming or climate change.[citation needed]

Habitat size and numbers of species are systematically related. Physically larger species and those living at lower latitudes or in forests or oceans are more sensitive to reduction in habitat area.Conversion to "trivial" standardized ecosystems (e.g., monoculture following deforestation) effectively destroys habitat for the more diverse species that preceded the conversion. In some countries lack of property rights or lax law/regulatory enforcement necessarily leads to biodiversity loss (degradation costs having to be supported by the community).
A 2007 study conducted by the National Science Foundation found that biodiversity and genetic diversity are codependent—that diversity among species requires diversity within a species, and vice versa. "If any one type is removed from the system, the cycle can break down, and the community becomes dominated by a single species." At present, the most threatened ecosystems are found in fresh water, according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, which was confirmed by the "Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment", organised by the biodiversity platform, and the French Institut de recherche pour le développement (MNHNP).
Co-extinctions are a form of habitat destruction. Co-extinction occurs when the extinction or decline in one accompanies the other, such as in plants and beetles.

Hybridization and genetics

In agriculture and animal husbandry, the green revolution popularized the use of conventional hybridization to increase yield by creating "high-yielding varieties". Often the handful of hybridized breeds originated in developed countries and were further hybridized with local varieties in the rest of the developing world to create high yield strains resistant to local climate and diseases. Local governments and industry have been pushing hybridization which has resulted in several of the indigenous breeds becoming extinct or threatened. Disuse because of unprofitability and uncontrolled intentional and unintentional cross-pollination and crossbreeding (genetic pollution), formerly huge gene pools of various wild and indigenous breeds have collapsed causing widespread genetic erosion and genetic pollution. This has resulted in loss of genetic diversity and biodiversity as a whole.
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using the genetic engineering techniques generally known as recombinant DNA technology. Genetically Modified (GM) crops today have become a common source for genetic pollution, not only of wild varieties but also of other domesticated varieties derived from relatively natural hybridization.
 Genetic erosion coupled with genetic pollution may be destroying unique genotypes, thereby creating a hidden crisis which could result in a severe threat to our food security. Diverse genetic material could cease to exist which would impact our ability to further hybridize food crops and 

livestock against more resistant diseases and climatic changes.

Exotic species
The widespread introduction of exotic species by humans is a potent threat to biodiversity. When exotic species are introduced to ecosystems and establish self-sustaining populations, the endemic species in that ecosystem that have not evolved to cope with the exotic species may not survive. The exotic organisms may be either predators, parasites, or simply aggressive species that deprive indigenous species of nutrients, water and light. These invasive species often have features, due to their evolutionary background and new environment, that make them highly competitive; able to become well-established and spread quickly, reducing the effective habitat of endemic species.
As a consequence of the above, if humans continue to combine species from different ecoregions, there is the potential that the world's ecosystems will end up dominated by relatively a few, aggressive, cosmopolitan "super-species". In 2004, an international team of scientists estimated that 10 percent of species would become extinct by 2050 because of global warming. “We need to limit climate change or we wind up with a lot of species in trouble, possibly extinct,” said Dr. Lee Hannah, a co-author of the paper and chief climate change biologist at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at Conservation International.

Genetic pollution

Purebred naturally evolved region specific wild species can be threatened with extinction through the process of genetic pollution i.e. uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and genetic swamping which leads to homogenization or replacement of local genotypes as a result of either a numerical and/or fitness advantage of introduced plant or animal. Nonnative species can bring about a form of extinction of native plants and animals by hybridization and introgression either through purposeful introduction by humans or through habitat modification, bringing previously isolated species into contact. These phenomena can be especially detrimental for rare species coming into contact with more abundant ones. The abundant species can interbreed with the rarer, swamping the entire gene pool and creating hybrids, thus driving the entire native stock to complete extinction. Attention has to be focused on the extent of this under appreciated problem that is not always apparent from morphological (outward appearance) observations alone. Some degree of gene flow may be a normal, evolutionarily constructive, process, and all constellations of genes and genotypes cannot be preserved. However, hybridization with or without introgression may, nevertheless, threaten a rare species' existence.

Project "AVATAR"

A Russian entrepreneur, who heads a hi-tech research project called 'Avatar', has contacted the world's richest to offer them immortality.
Itskov claims that he will personally oversee their immortality process in exchange for an undisclosed fee.
Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years.
"You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it's not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime," the Daily Mail quoted Itskov as writing in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine.

He has contacted a list of billionaires with a proposal for funding his quest for immortality - which Itskov refers to as 'cybernetic immortality' and the 'artificial body'.
The initiative is opening its San Francisco office this summer, and will be launching a social media project connecting scientists around the world.
"The 2045 team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one's individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality," Itskov's official site said.
"Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death.
"For anyone interested, but skeptical, I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world's leading scientist working in this field.
Itskov envisages surgically 'transplanting' human consciousness into a robot body within 10 years.
He hopes to then 'upload' minds without surgery, leaving human bodies as empty husks as their owners 'live on' inside robots.
The project is called Avatar after the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, where human soldiers use mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a war against the inhabitants of a distant world.

Pantoea agglomerans

Researchers report they have found a way to kill malaria in mosquitoes by genetically modifying a bacterium commonly found in the insect’s mid-gut, according to a new study.

The bacterium, called Pantoea agglomerans, can be modified to secrete proteins that are toxic to the malaria parasite, but are not harmful to humans or the mosquito itself.  In fact, the bacterium is so specific to targeting malaria that it does not even affect other bacteria in the mosquito’s gut, according to the researchers from Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, who conducted the study.
The bacterium is genetically engineered to attack malaria in multiple ways.

“There are not one, but several anti-malaria compounds the bacterium secretes,” explained Dr. Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena, senior author of the study and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  “Each acts by a different mechanism and makes it much more difficult for the parasite to develop a resistance to it.”
One of the compounds secreted by the bacteria, for example, inserts itself into the membrane of malaria parasite, essentially poking holes in the parasite’s protective outer layer and causing it to ‘leak out’ and die.  Another one of the compounds binds itself to a crucial protein the parasite needs to survive, thus blocking the parasite from the taking advantage of the protein.
According to the researchers, the bacterium successfully inhibited the development of the deadliest human malaria parasite, known as Plasmodium falciparum, and the rodent malaria parasite, Plasmodium berghei, by up to 98 percent in a small preliminary study. The bacterium reduced the prevalence of malaria among the mosquitoes by up to 84 percent.
Past approaches to fighting malaria in mosquitoes focused around genetically modifying the insects themselves to resist malaria.  However, scientists found – while successful in the lab – it was much more difficult to spread the genetic changes in nature.
“We changed the strategy, taking advantage of the fact that mosquitoes, like humans, carry big population of bacteria in their guts,” Jacobs-Lorena said.  “We took one of bacteria and engineered it to produce anti-malaria proteins.  We re-introduced it back into the mosquitoes and found it works quite well.”
The reason this approach cannot be taken in humans, he added, is that while mosquitoes carry malaria in their guts, malaria nearly exclusively spreads through the bloodstream to the liver in humans – completely bypassing the gut.

Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM)

CAPAM is a membership organisation dedicated to strengthening public management and consolidating democracy and good governance throughout the Commonwealth. It achieves this by building networks across the Commonwealth, through which it exchanges experiences on new developments, innovations and the reform of public administration.HQ.-CANADA
Foundation: 1994

Activities
Conferences and seminars designed to promote networking and to advance innovation in public management, including: the annual Senior Public Executive Seminar; the annual Integrated Service Delivery Seminar; customised in-country executive seminars; and thematic regional seminars. The International Innovations Awards Programme (since 1997), with gold, silver and bronze winners, is announced at the biennial conferences. CAPAM has established a repository of materials on good practice in public administration housed online in the CAPAM e-library.