EQ: Read About All Things Green, Improve Your Environment Quotient

EQ: The Quint’s green newsletter. Read about climate change, alternate energy, raise your environment quotient

Scientists from 27 countries including India have joined forces to develop an early warning system for earthquakes. (Photo: iStock)

E-India

• Scientists from 27 countries including India have joined forces to develop an early warning system for earthquakes. If successful, the system could save countless lives.

Green signal for 6-lane solution to unclog Delhi and NCR. (Photo: Reuters)

• In good news for Delhi’s air pollution, the Eastern Peripheral Expressway plan has finally been cleared. The six lane highway is expected to keep Delhi’s traffic under control by ensuring that vehicles (especially goods trucks) do not transit through the capital while travelling elsewhere.

E-Mage

Pluto’s largest moon Charon is shown in this NASA handout image which was taken on July 14, 2015. The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters. ( Photo: Reuters)

E-Video

The young elephants, Bala and Hari, both 2-years-old, enjoyed a water-spray and a bath with each other during one of the hottest July on record.

Bala is the youngest elephant at the Chester Zoo, UK and was born in January 2013 while Hari was born just a few months earlier in November 2012.

E-Resource & Waste

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/Indian Wind Energy)

• Excellent news for all those working towards a carbon neutral future - both developed and developing countries have been rapidly adding to their renewable energy capacity with India having the fifth highest installed wind capacity globally. Good news at a time when Denmark’s wind farms have proved capable of generating 140% of its power requirements.

E-Law

Reports suggest that air quality in Delhi has deteriorated over the past two years. (Photo: Reuters)

• The NGT continued its efforts to control Delhi’s air pollution in hearings this week. The Tribunal asked the government to present a report on the reasons for Delhi’s poor air quality and suggested several measures including staggered traffic times to control pollution. In a separate order, the NGT affirmed its earlier ruling banning tourism in the Rohtang pass in order to check environmental degradation and glacier melting in the area.

E-International

A new close-up image of a region near Pluto’s equator reveals a range of youthful mountains rising as high as 11,000 feet above the surface of the icy body, in a picture released July 15, 2015. (Photo: Reuters)

• Stunning images this week highlighted Pluto’s ice mountains for the very first time. The pictures were taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft after a ten year long journey to the outer reaches of our solar system and are expected to “send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing boards”.

E-Nature

Bioacoustics or pre-recorded animal distress calls is used as a defence against crop-raiding animals. (Photo: iStocks)

• Conservationists have hit upon an ingenious method of preventing wild animals from straying onto cropland. The new method uses bioacoustics or pre-recorded animal distress calls as a way to warn animals away from the boundaries of cropland. Animals are unharmed in the process and the method has reported success rates of 90%.

E-Tech

Pilot and designer Didier Esteyne (R) prepares to take off in the Airbus Group E-Fan electric aircraft, during an attempt to fly across the English channel. (Photo Reuters)

• The first electrically powered flights flew across the English Channel, indicating a new future for such battery powered aircrafts. The planes release zero emissions and could be valuable way to reduce aviation caused air pollution.

E-Quiz

Mount Sinabung volcano as seen from a village in North Sumatra province, Indonesia. (Photo: Reuters)

• How many active volcanoes are there in the world?