Article history: Received on: 19/03/2013 Revised on: 03/04/2013 Accepted on: 15/04/2013 Available online: 12/05/2013 Ficus altissima Blume belonging to family Moraceae is perennial tree with 20-30 ft tall distributed in the hills of northern India and deccan peninsula, up to an altitude of 100-2000 m. It is commonly known as Council Tree. Leaves and bark are used in skin diseases. The tree is o...

SJV Chelvanayakam (1898-1977), a ranking civil lawyer and legislator, was probably the well known Parkinson disease victim in the 20th century Sri Lanka. He was born in Ipoh, Malaya, where his father had moved in the last decade of the 19th century for professional advancement. Ipoh was then an attractive location for migrants from China and the Indian subcontinent since it was in the Kinta val...

Passerine birds are very plastic in their adaptations, which has made it difficult to define phylogenetic lineages and correctly allocate all species to these. Sapayoa aenigma, a member of the large group of New World flycatchers, has been difficult to place, and DNA-DNA hybridization experiments have indicated that it may have been misplaced. This is confirmed here, as base sequencing of two n...

Abstract West Antarctic and the Peninsula have experienced dramatic warming in austral spring since 1970s. Using observations Community Atmosphere Model version 4 (CAM4), this study explores physical mechanism by which tropical Pacific Indian Ocean temperature anomaly mode (PIM) affects dipolar surface air (SAT) anomalies across spring. The positive phase of PIM, characterized sea (SSTAs) centr...

An erosional landscape characterized the Western Ghats in the Deccan Volcanic Province of India. The upland region shows the absence of sedimentological records for the stratigraphic period from post-Eocene to prePleistocene, except laterites which are extensively developed. The absence of any sedimentological records, therefore, has put severe constraint on the reconstruction of the Tertiary h...

The response of Asian monsoon precipitation to contrasting orbital parameters is simulated using the MRI-CGCM climate model. Results show that for the 125 kya B. P. experiment , a large continental heating due to obliquity forcing is apparent and accounts for the strengthened cross equatorial flow, stronger monsoon westerly over the Ara-5 bian Sea, and an enhanced precipitation over the Indian ...

Systematically investigating the impacts of Pleistocene sea-level fluctuations on mangrove plants may provide a better understanding of their demographic history and useful information for their conservation. Therefore, we conducted population genomic analyses of 88 nuclear genes to explore the population dynamics of a mangrove tree Lumnitzera racemosa across the Indo-West Pacific region. Our r...

The Asian monsoon is the most significant component of the global climate system. During recent two decades, concerned efforts have been made to investigate the Asian monsoon. A substantial achievement has been made in basic physical processes, predictability and prediction since the MONEX of 1978-79. The major advance in our understanding about of the variability of the Asian summer monsoon ha...

The most explosive volcanic event of the Quaternary was the eruption of Mt. Toba, Sumatra, 75,000 y ago, which produced voluminous ash deposits found across much of the Indian Ocean, Indian Peninsula, and South China Sea. A major climatic downturn observed within the Greenland ice cores has been attributed to the cooling effects of the ash and aerosols ejected during the eruption of the Younges...

The Turin Shroud is traditionally considered to be the burial cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death approximately 2000 years ago. Here, we report the main findings from the analysis of genomic DNA extracted from dust particles vacuumed from parts of the body image and the lateral edge used for radiocarbon dating. Several plant taxa native to the Mediterranean area ...