TARA OCEAN EXPEDITION

The Tara Expedition is a research expedition through the ice of the Arctic. The polar schooner Tara was to drift in the ice for approximately two years from its departure, late in August 2006. In the community of oceanography it is met with great interest especially in the context of the International Polar Year (2007-2008).

The three-year expedition will study marine life in the context of climate change. It comprises a team of oceanographers, ecologists, biologists, geneticists, and physicists from universities and institutes around the world.

In their 150,000-km voyage, the team will assess how corals are adapting to hotter and more acidic seawater; study diatoms, which play a major role in sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; hunt “giruses” (giant viruses) that infect fish, shrimps and photosynthetic plankton, but whose genes could prove useful to medicine; and sequence DNA of the unicellular ‘protists’ that make up a fifth compartment of life on earth, but about which very little is known.

Prestigious labs from around the world are participating, including the Marine Biology Laboratory (U.S.), Flinders University (Australia), Centre Scientifique de Monaco (France), the University of Milan (Italy) and University of Warwick (U.K.) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Germany).

 Scopus Awards instituted by the National Academy of Sciences, India, and Elsevier, a leading research publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services to encourage young scientists.

 Each award carries a plaque, a citation and Rs.50,000 in cash.

What is Pulmonary edema?

Pulmonary edema or oedema is fluid accumulation in the lungs. It leads to impaired gas exchange and may cause respiratory failure. It is due to either failure of the heart to remove fluid from the lung circulation ("cardiogenic pulmonary edema") or a direct injury to the lung parenchyma ("noncardiogenic pulmonary edema").

AMMONIUM NITRATE

The chemical compound ammonium nitrate, the nitrate of ammonia with the chemical formula NH4NO3, is a white crystalline solid at room temperature and standard pressure. It is commonly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer, and it has also been used as an oxidizing agent in explosives, including improvised explosive devices. It is the main component of ANFO, a very popular explosive.