148 species of plants completely new to science discovered in India

The Modi government's responsibility to preserve biodiversity is likely to increase manifold as 148 new species of plants have been discovered by the Botanical Survey of India (BSI).

                                                   

While these 148 species are altogether new to science, scientists at the BSI have also discovered 19 new varieties (sub-species) during 2014-15.
Besides, 101 species have been recorded for the first time in India.

While 114 novelties (new traits in a plant species) were described and published by scientists at the BSI, those from other institutes reported 164 novelties during 2014. Seed plants contributed the maximum with 42 per cent of the total discoveries followed by fungi at 19 per cent. Microbes contributed to 13 per cent of the new findings, while lichens had 12 per cent. Algae formed 9 per cent of the total new species while pteridophytes and bryophytes contributed to 2 and 3 per cent, respectively.
Region-wise, most of the new species were discovered in Western Ghats, which accounted for 22 per cent of the total discoveries made, followed by Eastern Himalaya at 15 per cent. The North-East India contributed to 15 per cent of the total discoveries while Andaman and Nicobar Islands shared 13 per cent of the new species found. About 11 per cent of the new findings were recorded from Peninsular India, followed by Western Himalaya with 9 per cent.

The Gangetic Plains, Eastern Plains and Central India, collectively, contributed to 10 per cent of the total new discoveries of 2014.

Novel Drug From Nature Shows Early Promise

A biotechnology company developing an unusual drug—derived from the venom of a sea anemone to treat autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis and multiple sclerosis—reported encouraging results from a phase 1 clinical trial.
                             

Seattle-based Kineta Inc. said it expects early next year to begin recruiting patients for the next stage of the drug’s development, a phase 2 clinical trial. Kineta said the drug, called dalazatide, is intended to block only the white blood cells that cause many autoimmune diseases. Traditional treatments for autoimmune disorders suppress the entire immune system, putting patients at risk for infections.

Phase 1 trials are preliminary, meant to test the safety and tolerability of a new drug in a small group of patients. The bulk of new drugs tested fail to advance to phase 2 trials, which test a product’s efficacy among a larger group.

Autoimmune diseases affect as many as 23.5 million people in the U.S., especially women, according to the National Institutes of Health. Prevalence of the diseases, in which the immune system attacks the body’s own organs, tissues and cells, is increasing, for reasons that aren’t clear. There is no cure.

“The results of this trial indicate an important advance in developing next-generation treatments for autoimmune disease that specifically regulate the immune response without broad immune suppression,” said Dr. Shawn Iadonato, Kineta’s chief scientific officer.

Dalazatide is derived from the venom of the sun anemone, which lives on reefs in the Caribbean. It is part of a burgeoning research effort, much of it centered in Australia, to find new treatments, including painkillers, from the venoms of snakes, spiders and other creatures. Dalazatide is the first compound emerging from this area of research, which was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article in April, to be tested in humans, Kineta said.

For its phase 1 clinical trial, Kineta enlisted 24 patients with psoriasis, an autoimmune disorder that causes scaly patches on the skin. Participants were randomly assigned to three groups—those receiving 30 micrograms of the drug, another getting 60 mcg and a third given a placebo. Injection treatments were administered twice a week for four weeks, and patients were followed for an additional month.

2000 police used to quell pollution protest in China which left one dead

One person died and 50 were arrested after some 2,000 police, using rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, put down a protest by villagers against pollution from a chemical plant in China’s Inner Mongolia, an overseas human rights group said.
Inner Mongolia has seen sporadic unrest since 2011 when the vast northern region was rocked by protests after an ethnic Mongol herder was killed by a truck after taking part in demonstrations against pollution caused by a coal mine.
Ethnic Mongols, who make up less than 20 percent of Inner Mongolia’s 24 million population, say their grazing lands have been ruined by mining and desertification and that the government has tried to resettle them in permanent houses.
Coal rich Inner Mongolia is supposed to enjoy a high degree of self-rule, but many Mongols say the Han Chinese majority has been the main beneficiaries of economic development.
In the latest incident, villagers in Naiman Banner took to the streets to protest against a chemical processing zone they said was polluting farmland and grazing land, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said in a statement late on Monday.
The group quoted a witness as saying police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators, leading to one death.
An official who picked up the telephone at the local government said he was unable to confirm any deaths and declined to comment further.
However the government posted on its official microblog on Monday that it had ordered the chemical zone to close and shift to another undisclosed location and that it would punish any rule breaking by the companies there.
The government also said that it would go after protesters who blocked roads, smashed up vehicles, stoked tension or spread rumours.
About 90,000 “mass incidents” - a euphemism for protests - occur each year in China, triggered by corruption, pollution, illegal land grabs and other grievances.
Aware at the anger over environmental problems, the Chinese government has declared a war on pollution, vowing to abandon a decades-old growth-at-all-costs economic model that has spoiled much of China’s water, skies and soil.

New to Nature No 138: Gastrodia flexistyloides

Many evolutionary biologists, including Charles Darwin in Fertilisation of Orchids (1862), have written about the bizarre and improbable contrivances by which orchids attract insect pollinators. Some orchids go so far as to mimic a female insect in appearance to attract an amorous male as an unwitting partner in pollination. A recently discovered orchid, Gastrodia flexistyloides, takes a very different approach. Like the similar G. flexistyla, it has a three-lobed column bearing the pollen. Two lobes are upright while the third is sharply curved in – and downward. There is a very good reason for this. These orchids are self-pollinating. Moreover, their flowers are cleistogamous. That is, the sexual bits are tightly enclosed within flowers that never open.
In many cleistogamous flowers the meeting of the gametes relies solely on gravity, pollen dropping within the flower. In the case of these species they do not have as far to fall, the sharply bent structure virtually assuring that self-pollination occurs. Clever variation on the system.
The species was described by Kenji Suetsugu of the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University. It was found in bamboo forest on Takeshima Island, Japan, predictably within the geographic range of the genus. The other 50 Gastrodia orchids are found in tropical and temperate areas of Asia, Oceania, and Madagascar.
Like other members of the genus, the new orchid is a parasite. Technically, it is described as a myco-heterotroph, a plant that derives its nutrients from fungi. Unlike the more familiar symbiosis between fungi and tree roots by which there is a network of give-and-take exchange of nutrients, Gastrodia species extract what they require from the fungus but so far as is known contribute nothing in return.
Gastrodia flexistyloides differs from G. flexistyla in a few important details. Specifically, the new species sends up a taller stalk when flowering, has consistently and completely cleistogamous flowers, and shows a perianth that is both narrower and smaller. Suetsugu observed hundreds of individual plants during the period of flowering from mid-March until late April, all of which bore unopened flowers. At nine to 18 cm, the inflorescence of the new species is just a bit larger than an average member of the genus. Record sizes are about 3 cm at the short end and 100 cm at the tallest. The exchange of pollen between these two, Suetsugu argues, is simply impossible due to this anatomical chastity belt. Reasonable as far as it goes, it does raise some other questions about whether there is a single evolutionary origin of such a plant.
Like other Gastrodia, the new one has a fleshy tuber or underground stem and is conspicuously devoid of leaves. I cannot mention orchid tubers without reference to an old wives’ tale. Certain orchid tubers are shaped like testicles, and it has been long claimed that, when consumed, they are an aphrodisiac. This is, of course, a load of bollocks.

Tigers Only Rarely Become Man-eaters

Usual prey is deer, buffalo, gaur. However a hungry tiger will go for anything from young elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, leopards, bears and even humans. A male's territory frequently overlaps those of several females, to which he mates as they come in estrus. Pregnancy lasts for around three and a half months and usually four or five cubs are born. In the wild not all of these survive since the female is often not able to hunt enough to feed all of them as they depend on her for their food until one and a half years of age. Also randomly, other male tigers may kill the cubs to bring the female into heat.

The demands of the habitat in which the tiger lives have not favored the development of a complex society and instead we see a dispersed social system. This arrangement is well suited to the task of finding and securing food in an essentially closed habitat where the scattered prey is solitary or in small groups. Males can learn the reproductive condition of females, and intruding animals are informed of the resident's presence, thus reducing the possibility of direct physical conflict and injury, which the solitary tiger cannot afford as it depends on its own physical health to obtain food.

When the young are small and unable to follow she must obtain food from a small area, as she has to return to suckle them at regular intervals. Later, when her young are larger and growing rapidly she must be able to find and kill enough prey to feed herself and the young. These are usually associated with the acquisition of one male's home range by another. By killing the offspring of the previous male, incoming male ensures that females in his newly acquired range come into heat and bear his offspring.

The female rears them alone, returning to the "den" site to feed them until they are old enough to begin following her, at about eight weeks of age. The cubs remain totally dependent on their mother for food until they are approximately 18 months old and may continue to use their mother's range until they are 2 - 2.5 years old, when they disperse to seek their own home ranges.

You Need To Know About These Basic Facts About The Nile

The Nile is famous as the longest river in the world. The river got its name from the Greek word Neilos, which means valley. The Nile floods the lands in Egypt, leaving behind black sediment. That's why the ancient Egyptians named the river Ar, meaning black and "Rivers of Life".

The River Nile is about 6,670 km (4,160 miles) in length and is the longest river in Africa and in the world. Although it is generally associated with Egypt, only 22% of the Nile's course runs through that country.

The River Nile runs through Egypt, creating a fertile green valley across the dessert.
It was by the banks that one of the oldest civilizations in the world began. The ancient Egyptians lived and farmed along the Nile, using the soil to produce food for themselves and their animals.

The Nile and its tributaries flow through 10 distinct African nations: Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Eritrea and Burundi.

The vast river system of the Nile includes two main tributaries: the White Nile (so named for its milky, silt-filled appearance), and the Blue Nile, which joins the White Nile in Sudan on its way to the sea.

The source of the White Nile is the springs of Mount Bigugu in Rwanda. The source of the Blue Nile is Sakala Springs above Lake Tana in Ethiopia, which contributes to more than 50 percent of the river's flow. The water's volume from the Blue Nile increases tremendously in the monsoon season, from July to September.

The Nile flows south to north, beginning in the highlands of Ethiopia and Rwanda heading toward the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria, Egypt. Around 5000 B.C., the first great Egyptian civilization was founded in the northern Nile Valley. The Egyptians came to rely heavily on the Nile and its annual summer floods for irrigation, agriculture and transportation.

The ancient Egyptians worshiped the Nile as one of their gods and made sacrifices solely for the Nile's sake. The first dams were built on the Nile in 1861 in order to raise the river levels for easier navigation and increased irrigation. Major dams on the Nile today include Aswan Dam, Roseries Dam, Sennar Dam and Owen Falls Dam.
Today the Nile remains a vital pathway that is essential to millions of African farmers. Egypt still imports 40 percent of its grain by means of the Nile.

The entire Nile River Delta is estimated to drain an area of 1,293,000 square miles. This area is so vast that is has a number of different climate areas. North, in Egypt and Sudan, rainfall is sparse. More to the south, in and around Ethiopia, rainfall is heavy, contributing to the floodwaters that rush downstream and eventually create the wonderfully fertile soil that supports so much of life in Egypt and Sudan. Dams, the most notable being the Aswan High Dam, have been built along the route to prevent massive flooding of populated areas.

The Nile River Delta is home to many species of animals, including crocodiles, turtles, baboons, wildebeest, and more than 300 species of birds, including fishing eagles, ibis, and the Nile Valley Sunbird.

The people who lived along the Nile in ancient times used the river for agriculture and transportation. That hasn't changed, although the methods of agriculture and transportation have. Steam ships are still used in Egypt and Sudan, to transport goods.

Only 22% of the river passes through Egypt, the other countries through which Nile passes are Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. The cities that Nile flows past are Cairo, Khartoum, Gondokoro, Aswan, Karnak, Thebes and the town of Alexandria.