The Geeky Eco Warrior

With heat records are being broken across Europe and emissions continue to warm the planet, the human body seems to be reaching its limits to cope. It is the time of the year when the sun is at its cruel worst in the northern hemisphere. This time, the ire of the fireball hit the European cities which are in the grip of the second heatwave. The   temperatures are touching record highs   and Paris has surpassed its hottest temperature ever recorded, with the mercury soaring near 43 degrees Celsius on Thursday (July 25, 2019). Other European cities and countries are faring no better. The gruelling heat that persisted over the past week affected Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, besides France — which reported five deaths due to the heat. Temperate Europe is now heading towards a  new normal  — the acute heatwaves and unbearable summers are here to stay. While the phenomenon is not a first-time occurrence in Europe, it is still not as bad as the present one. The 200...

  There are 3890 wild tigers in the world, approximately 2226 are in India itself amounting to about 70 per cent of all wild tigers in the world, although the tiger population is thriving in India, our obstruction to their dispersal accentuates the man-animal conflict. These cats especially tigers need their well-defined territories. Tigers require more area than tigresses and it is seen that tigresses share their territories with tigers but no two tigers share the same territories. Tiger's behaviour is to run away from where humans reside. (Photo: ANI) The territory of a tiger mainly depends upon prey base, geographic area, water source and sex of the cat. Natural behaviour of a cat may it be a stray cat or a big cat like a tiger or a leopard is to run away from the presence of human beings. Big cats are shy animals which do not like to come near humans but unfortunately due to safaris and tourism the behaviour which is portrayed by the tigers is not their natural instinctive beha...

Will the Mumbai-Ahmedabad 508-km bullet train line at the cost Rs. 1.1 lakh crore will save Mumbai from the deluge by cutting through 40% of the mangroves? In a glimmer of hope, the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHRSCL), which is the implementing agency of the Railways’ bullet train project has said that they have reworked the design of the station in Thane, Maharashtra, to reduce the number of mangroves affected due to the project. This comes after a slew of protests by environmental activists who have been saying that the size of the mangroves lost would be equivalent to five-and-a-half times the size of Mumbai’s Azad Maidans. They had also asked the government to look for alternative options rather than killing the mangroves in their plea addressed to PMO and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on June 25, 2019. Responding to the plea, NHSRCL has issued a statement that they have reworked the design of the station in Thane to reduce the number of affected ma...

Buying lipstick, or a pack of crisps? Remember that there are only around 13,400 Sumatran orangutans that remain in the wild. She did not give up her home when those out to kill her, ripped her months-old baby from her. She did not give up her home even when she was shot 74 times. Even when the air-gun pellets pierced her eyes, blinding her, she felt her way up the tree trunks with her fingers searching out fruits for her sustenance. She did not give up her home because she had nowhere else to go. Her name, ironically, is Hope . She is a Sumatran orangutan. One of the thousands who are rendered homeless and killed in fulfilling our demands for everything from snack foods to soaps —everywhere palm oil is needed. All Hope lost. It is unlikely Hope will be released back into the wild. It is unlikely that she will survive in the wild. (Photo: Twitter/ Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry) Orangutans are the most intelligent beings on the planet after human beings. In fact, the w...

The city is reeling under the worst water crisis in 30 years. Chennai is facing a drought for the third year in a row. The city went without a single drop of rain for   about 200 days , the city had a brief shower last week. Too little and too late for a city that is experiencing its worst water crisis in 30 years. The city’s primary water source — its groundwater has been tapped to the fullest. The four sources that replenish the groundwater — Red Hills Lake, Poondi reservoir, Sholavaram lake and Chembarambakkam tank, in addition to the water desalination plants at Nemelli and Minjur —  are now dry . Against a total of 11.257 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) capacity, the four reservoirs supplying water to Chennai have  less than 35mcft water left in store . The demand for water in the city has gone up by 47% in the last decade from  750 million litres per day (MLD) in 2008 to 1,100 MLD in 2018 . In the same period, the metro...

Suffering from medical conditions such as diabetes, anxiety, depression and psychosis? Worry not. Dr Facebook is here to diagnose and rescue. But do you want to be? Have you been posting about religion and using religious language like "God" or "pray" in your Facebook posts recently? And do you think it is sweet of you to do so? Maybe not. Maybe it is time to go off real sweets for a bit and get your blood glucose levels checked as you might be 15 times more likely to have diabetes than your friends who have not posted about God in a while now. Or so says a  medical research  by Penn Medicine and Stony Brook University scientists that was  published in PLOS ONE science journal . According to them, language in Facebook posts may help identify medical conditions — such as diabetes, anxiety, depression and psychosis in patients —as it is believed that language in social media posts could be indicators of diseases. Your Facebook status may be revealing more than you thi...