An Overview of environmental issues and protection measures in Indian non-ferrous plants

In the industrial scenario of the country, non-ferrous industry plays a predominant role producing variety of metals and alloys for application in chemical, petrochemical, structural, power and engineering sectors. Base metal industries have witnessed remarkable changes in the past two decades besides registering considerable growth. But, most of these base metal industrial developments are generally associated with environmental degradation viz., by way of discharge of wastes into air, natural water bodies or subsoil. Release of harmful gases and suspended particulate matters (SPM) into air leads to ecological imbalance, resulting in de¬struction of natural life cycle of flora and fauna and many other associ¬ated harmful effects. Environmental degradation has become one of the most pressing problems facing India today. Tackling the pollution prob¬lem needs innovative and effective approach and industries should be encouraged to adopt non-polluting technologies rather than seeking to regulate the discharged toxic effluents. This critical review includes en¬vironmental impacts due to base metal production, approaches to envi¬ronmental improvement and finally examines various options to prevent pollution in base metal industries

IMPLEMENTATION OF REUSE IN THE AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS SCRUM

The concept of reuse is applied in one of the agile development methodologies called the scrum. Sprint is a single functionality and the result at the end of the sprint functionality is derived as the shippable or bugs. This paper makes an attempt to use the concept of reuse in the agile software development to meet the dynamic change of customer requirements in banks. A banking project is created using both waterfall model and scrum model, and the knowledge gained is stored in the ontology-based repository for the first time. Again, the same project is created for different vendors using the ontology-based repository. The result shows that maximum sprint is reused and all the knowledge gained is stored in the form of ontology. This ontology helps identify the shippable component of each sprint which is a small executable functionality. This leads to less cost and time to deliver the product. The main aim is to increase the availability of the reusable artifacts, which lead to increase the reusability of the developer. The experimental results show improvements in the performance of retrieving the components for the software development. Â

Environmental and waste management in iron and steel industry

The Indian Iron and Steel scenario has changed considerably after the announcement of Government Policy on de-control and liberalization. Several new entrepreneurs have entered the steel industry. It is heartening to see that the steel industry is set to carve a niche for itself in the domestic and foreign market. The rapid progress of steel industry has aggravated environmental and waste management problems. This has led to increasing pressurefrom Government and the public to speed up action plan for effective industrial waste management. The waste management in steel industry is an emerging complex issue and can be implemented after regulating through monitoring, analysis, legalization, addition of infra-structural facilities for enforcement, waste auditing, change of process technology etc. The paper reviews current knowledge of waste management in Indian Steel Industry, approaches to environmental improvement and examines various options to environmental man-agement plan keeping in view of the importance of sustainable endurance of environment and other natural resources

Weight status, body image and bullying among adolescents in the Seychelles.

We investigated the relationship between being bullied and measured body weight and perceived body weight among adolescents of a middle-income sub Saharan African country. Our data originated from the Global School-based Health Survey, which targets adolescents aged 13-15 years. Student weights and heights were measured before administrating the questionnaire which included questions about personal data, health behaviors and being bullied. Standard criteria were used to assess thinness, overweight and obesity. Among 1,006 participants who had complete data, 16.5% (95%CI 13.3-20.2) reported being bullied ≥ 3 days during the past 30 days; 13.4% were thin, 16.8% were overweight and 7.6% were obese. Categories of actual weight and of perceived weight correlated only moderately (Spearman correlation coefficient 0.37 for boys and 0.57 for girls; p < 0.001). In univariate analysis, both actual obesity (OR 1.76; p = 0.051) and perception of high weight (OR 1.63 for "slightly overweight"; OR 2.74 for "very overweight", both p < 0.05) were associated with being bullied. In multivariate analysis, ORs for categories of perceived overweight were virtually unchanged while ORs for actual overweight and obesity were substantially attenuated, suggesting a substantial role of perceived weight in the association with being bullied. Actual underweight and perceived thinness also tended to be associated with being bullied, although not significantly. Our findings suggest that more research attention be given to disentangling the significant association between body image, overweight and bullying among adolescents. Further studies in diverse populations are warranted

Metallurgy of Complex Pb, Cu and Zinc Sulfides

For the winning of Pb, Cu and from sulfides ores by conventional methods, it is essential that these be beneficiated to high grade concentrates. The ore mine- rals in polymetallic and complex deposits are often found to be in close mutual penetration with each other and to the non-metallic gangue.In many cases where the attempts have been made to concentrate these ores; it is either difficult to obtain - a suitable grade of the concentrate by conventional flotation methods or the recovery of metals into the respective concentrate is poor. Zinc that finds its way to a copper concentrate is always discarded in the slag as a waste, while copper in a Pb concentrate leads to serious smelting problems. In such cases the cost of production by a smelting process becomes unfavourable and new approaches to process these ores become more attractive. Hydrometallurgical processes, based on leach-ing and precipitation alone, or in combination with conv-entional extractive metallurgical methods will play an important role in meeting the requirements of such complex ores. Such processes can more easily be adopted to small scale operation than conventional smelting and refining

Treatment of Complex lead, Copper and Zinc sulfides

FOR the adoption of conventional methods for the recovery of lead , copper and zinc from the complex sulfide ores, it is essential that these be beneticiated to a high grade concentrate. The minerals present in such complex ores are often found in such close inter -growth that it is either difficult to obtain a suitable grade of the concentrate by physical methods or the recovery of metals in the respe-ctive concentrates is poor. For example, the zinc that finds its way to a copper concentrate is always discarded in the slag as a waste, while copper in a lead concentrate leads to serious smelting problems. In such cases the cost of production by conventional smelting process becomes unfavourable and new approaches to process the ores become more attractive

Waste management perspective in non-ferrous industries

Indian non-ferrous metals industry has witnessed rapid growth over the past two decades. This progress has brought about environmental degradation as well. The liberalisation, globalisation. and openness earlier introduced by the Government offer every scope for emphasising and validating ecological issues. This coupled with criteria adherence to conventional approaches involving re¬source utilisation has contributed significantly to the generation of liquid and solid waste in non-ferrous production industry. Developing countries in recent years have started shifting their feature of business strategy of environmental management from remediation technology to pro-active green solutions, that avoid the pollution mess in the first place. The paper reviews current knowledge of end of pipe technologies and their management, approaches to waste minimization options through reduction of source wastes, reduction of recycling and re-use. The paper also examines the various approaches to effective technologies to destroy or treat the wastes generated