Indian Wildlife Club Forum

Nature is a small manifestation of heaven on earth. Every subtle breeze, the roll of thunder rejuvenates and fills us with awe. Science strives to safeguard and use nature without much interference; and Art has striven to appreciate it, for centuries. Both Art and Science together has produced amazing music, in appreciation of nature (Bjork-Biophilia)

 Nature is irreversibly connected to us. Studies of evolution or creationist theories only prove that. And the connection of man with nature ,needs to be embraced and safeguarded.

Without the combination of talents from all fields to protect all that’s left to protect. Natures life blood will cease to flow; if we turned a blind eye to it,today.

"Part of the problem arises from the fact that we do not have a system of “green accounting”. Economists estimate GDP which is gross domestic product as a broad measure of national income and also estimate NDP which is net domestic product which accounts for the use of physical capital. But as yet, we have no generally accepted system to convert Gross Domestic Product into Green Domestic Product that would reflect the use up of precious depletable natural resources in the process of generating national income. Many years ago, the noted Indian environmentalist Anil Agarwal had advocated the concept of a Gross Nature Product to replace the usually estimated Gross National Product................

 .........Economists all over the world have been at work for quite some time on developing a robust system of green national accounting but we are not there as yet. Ideally, if we can report both Gross Domestic Product and Green Domestic Product, we will get a better picture of the trade-offs involved in the process of economic growth. Alternatively, as some economist have argued, we need alternative indicators to measure true welfare improvement, as Green GDP is not be the best indicator of sustainability or future increases in consumption or welfare – indicators such as “Genuine Savings/Investment”, and “Genuine Wealth Per Capita” are being developed as alternatives. We don’t need precise numbers. Even a broad-brush estimate will be a huge step forward to give practical meaning to the concept of “sustainable development” which all of us swear by in theory.

Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta at Cambridge University has calculated that the “genuine” domestic investment rate in India is around 2.3 percentage points lower than the normally reckoned domestic investment rate for the period 1970-2001 after taking into account environmental costs and both calculated as a proportion of GDP. He goes on to show that as against the estimated growth rate of India’s per capita GDP of 2.96% per year during this period, the growth rate of per capita genuine wealth after taking into account environmental costs works out to 0.31% per year."

Read full speech by Jairam Ramesh,
Minister of State (Independent Charge), Environment and Forests, Government of India at the link

http://tinyurl.com/5vg8ykg

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http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3232:jairam-ramesh-on-environment-and-development&catid=110:home-page

Living system controls its activity through enzymes. Enzymes are biological catalysts. They increase or decrease the rate of chemical reaction in the cell, but enzymes remain unchanged after the reaction. Most cellular reaction occurs about a million time faster with the help of the enzymes rather than in the absence of it. Enzymes work on which chemical substances are known as substrate. Enzyme works on substrate to form an enzyme-substrate complex. After reaction, this complex split and produce the Product and enzyme get released. In the end of the reaction, enzyme remains unchanged and paired with another substrate. A small amunt of enzyme can work on a huge amount of substrate.

The term, enzyme was first used by Kuhne(1878). Buchner (1897) first collected enzymes from Yeast cell.

The general properties of enzymes are

1.      All enzymes are globular protein and catalyst.

2.      Their presence do not affect on characteristic and type of the Product.

3.      Enzyme reactions are bi-directional.

4.      Enzymes are selective for their substrate.

5.      Enzyme’s activity can be influenced by other molecules. Inhibitors are the molecule that decreases enzyme’s activity. Activators are molecule that increases the activity.

6.      Enzyme works in definite pH, temperature and concentration.

7.      The protein parts of the enzymes are apoenzyme, and non-protein part is known as co-factors.

International Union of Biochemistry (IUB) and Enzyme Commissiob (EC) classify and name the various enzymes. Generally, -ase is added with the name of the substrate to form the name of an enzyme, eg; the enzymes function on arginine and urea are respectively known as arginase and urease.

Tulip Das

http://www.orangecounty.in/kabini/home.php