'Wastewater containing excreted material can tell us how a community is doing in a particular area pertaining to any epidemic, pandemic, and other bacterial and viral diseases.'
According to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research, the overall air quality of the national capital docked at 376 at 8:30 am on Tuesday.
A Central Pollution Control Board official said the AQI entered the "severe plus" or "emergency" category late on Thursday night, the first time since January this year.
The 77-year-old was recently diagnosed with pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital, where he died at 1.28 am, a Congress leader said.
Scientists have found that much of the Indus civilisation thrived around an extinct river, challenging ideas about how urbanisation in ancient cultures evolved.
The DMK parliamentary party appears to be a house divided, reports R Rajagopalan.
A 58-year-old man died after a power transformer fell on him in Raigad district. 2 people died and 3 were injured in two separate cyclone-related incidents in Pune.
'We are not saying we are going to face a drought... We are a doing and performing government. A contingency plan is being prepared,' Science Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan tells Rediff.com
There were no immediate reports of any loss of life or damage to property.
'Above 2,000 metres the gradient of the Himalayas is very steep and if you build any infrastructure (roads, dams, hydro power projects) in these regions, it will not be able to sustain these events (the onslaught of debris that comes down with great speeds).'
The woman who had accused environmentalist R K Pachauri of sexual harassment, on Tuesday tore into TERI, saying the "shameful" decision of appointing him as executive vice-chairman of the green body made her "flesh crawl", and resolved to take the case to a logical conclusion.
India and the United States, after sending their own respective spacecraft into Mars' orbit, have now agreed to cooperate on future explorations of the Red Planet, which America said will yield "tangible benefits" to both the countries and the world at large.
With increasing temperature, the toxic ozone levels, which cause a number of health problems especially for asthmatics, have breached the permissible limits in the city, the MET department said on Thursday.
El Nino is expected to occur in August-September, but it is unlikely to have any major impact on the monsoon, and the weatherman expects a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, which has a strong influence on rainfall in the country.
John Holdren, Director, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the two countries were working in the fields of space, medical sciences, climate change, clean energy and agriculture.
Delhi recorded 8.6 on the UV index on Tuesday while it was 8.2 at noon on Wednesday.
Pollution levels in Delhi and satellite towns shot up again on Sunday morning, with the air quality bordering the 'severe plus' category at several places.
The ozone hole over Antarctica expanded this month to one of the largest sizes on record due to unusually cold temperatures in the stratosphere, which could lead to more harmful ultraviolet rays reaching the Earth, according to NASA.
'The greatest danger is that the current crisis will clear a little, we'll be able to see our hands in front of our faces, and with great relief we'll forget all about it and willingly breathe poison until next November', says Mitali Saran.
The image clicked on July 6 clearly shows desert sand structures, river systems and complex cloud patterns.
Next week could see some respite from the heat.
The pollution board said that the situation will improve further by Sunday if favourable conditions prevail.
The latest forecast, given by Earth Sciences Minister Jitendra Singh, was a downward revision from a previous forecast of 93 per cent given at the outset of the monsoon in June, but was nowhere near as bad some farmers had feared.
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said people living in the coastal belt would be shifted to safer places.
The Ministry of Science and Technology has approached about a dozen well-known scientists from across the world in an effort to bring them back to various departments under the ministry, said Jitendra Singh, minister of state (independent charge) for science and technology.
'In the last 55 years India and Pakistan have gone to wars, but nobody spoke about scrapping the Indus Waters Treaty.'
India, along with 23 other countries, is participating in a major Indian Ocean-wide mock tsunami drill on September 9 and 10 that is aimed at testing the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System.
The arrival of the June-September rains has been delayed.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan has come out with a communiqu announcing distribution of portfolios of the ministers sworn-in on Monday in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers:
Tamil Nadu government deployed state and national disaster response force teams in Kanyakumari district, which bore the brunt of the rain fury.
For the second successive year, Monsoon is likely to be below normal with parts of north-west and central India to be the most affected.
'When the Americans are talking about colonising Mars by 2030, India cannot be lagging behind.'
Hours after 21 ministers took the oath of office and became a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ministry, speculation began on which minister would be handed which portfolio. However, all speculation ended after the list was announced.
The national capital woke up on Tuesday morning to 'severe' air quality under a blanket of thick haze, as pollution levels breached the permissible standards by multiple times.
The earthquake epicentred in the Hindukush mountain range in Afghanistan struck at around 2.40 pm, sending ripples across several states like Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi- National Capital Region, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan.
In the third reshuffle since coming to power, Prime Minister Modi raised the strength of his Council of Ministers from 73 to 76.
United States Vice President Joe Biden on Monday left for a rare vice presidential trip to India for the first leg of his visit to the Asia-Pacific region.
Word from the BJP is that following the controversy over his comments on Article 370, Jitendra Singh has been asked to desist from talking about his favourite topics and focus instead on the business of governance and the sizeable portfolios that he has been entrusted with, writes Archis Mohan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain DoPT, Atomic Energy as well as all important policy issues and portfolios not allocated.
The air quality in Delhi is turning worse, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said.
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