Friday, October 23, 2009

Bt brinjal safe for human beings: TNAU

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Genetically Modified (GM) Bt brinjal was 'safe' to human beings, animals and environment, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) said on Wednesday. The university has been involved in the research for the past six years.

The brinjal was safe to human and animal consumption. Moreover, it required less pesticide applications during cultivation, a TNAU release said.

It was free from pesticide residues and therefore were safe for human consumption, it said.

Noting that TNAU would approach Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) for the formal release of these varieties pending the final decision of the Centre, it said adding, once approval was obtained, Bt brinjal varieties would be released by the university.

The seeds of Bt brinjal could also be stored for sowing for next season, since they were not hybrids, it said.

Brinjal was an important cash crop for poor and marginal farmers and in India it was cultivated in about 5,10,000 hectares, with an annual production of 8.2 million tonnes.

In Tamil Nadu, brinjal was cultivated in 7,676 hectares with an annual production of 82,049 metric tonnes, the release said.

The average productivity was around 10.69 metric tones per hectare and the crop was usually damaged by the insect fruit and shoot borer (FSB) it said.

At times, farmers lose even to the extent of 70 per cent of their produce due to insect attacks and traditional management strategies have proved to be ineffective and farmers, therefore, heavily relied on chemical pesticides to control pests.

Sometimes farmers used pesticides indiscriminately to ensure a good harvest, leading to harmful effects on the environment, health of farmers and consumers, the release said.

Since no genotype resistant to FSB insect was available, 'well proven' Bt technology has been employed in brinjal cultivation to effectively manage the pest.

Bt brinjal has undergone rigorous bio safety tests before they were approved for commercial cultivation by GEAC and TNAU had developed brinjal varieties Co2-Bt MDU-Bt, KKM-1 and PLR1
Bt, the release said. 

10 Ways to Maintain the Performance of your PC

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1) Always back up your files. There is a remote possibility that your hard drive could fail or you could encounter a lethal virus that could wipe out your whole hard drive. Invest in USB sticks and back up your important files. Another way to backup is to partition your hard drive and keep copies of important files on each partition. Software such as partition Magic or Handy Backup can help with this. You could also obtain an external hard drive and backup using Norton ghost.
Ways Increase PC Performance
Ways Increase PC Performance
2) Viruses can be backdoors into your computer, making your computer crash or even worse letting hackers gain access to your personal information. Always use an anti-virus program and had it regularly update. You can get some free anti-virus software from the Internet such as AVG, so there is no excuse to keep your computer vulnerable to attack.
3) PCs can be vulnerable to attack even without viruses. Hackers can detect your computer on the Internet and attempt to upload viruses without your knowledge. Therefore it is important to get a firewall. Again firewalls can be obtained free on the Internet one example with the zone alarm. Make sure you set the firewall to on.
4) The recycle bin on the computer is one of the most overlooked items. Remember once you deleted the program or a file the unused files will stay in the recycle bin until you’ve emptied it. Only by entering the recycle bin you free up the space on your hard drive.
5) Defragment your hard drive at least once a month. The defragment tool is available in your system tools. This will ensure that your most commonly run programs will start faster and your overall experience will be smoother. You can also use tools like JKDefrag or Smart Defrag.
6) Make sure you use a Registry cleaner to keep your computer running smoothly. Registry cleaners are available free online.
7) Temporary Internet files especially cookies can clog your hard drive resulting in poor performance of your PC. You can usually quite easily get rid of the temporary Internet files using the disc cleaner in Vista, going to the tools in Internet Explorer.
8 ) Desktop PCs the CPU usually has a fan that cools the processor down. Fans can accumulate dust particles and prevent the blades from going round which will result in the CPU overheating. This can reduce the performance of your computer. Remove the dust particles with a cloth and below the rest of the particles away making sure that you don’t touch the components on the motherboard. Keeping your processor cool is very important.
9) When you install some programs they are automatically placed onto the startup programs list. You may find that after doing a lot of installs your computer may take a long time to startup. Go to the startup items list by going to “run” and typing “msconfig”.You’ll then get a list of the startup programs. Here you can uncheck any programs that you don’t need.
10) Spyware and adware are very similar to viruses in that they can slow your computer down. These can invade your privacy and even damage the PC. Windows vista has a free spyware and adware scanner and of free adware spyware scanners on the Internet such as Spybot search and destroy.
Guest Writer – Bob has been writing Technology related articles from years and is also a Software Developer at www.qiqisoft.com

source : http://www.amitbhawani.com/

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