INS Shivaji: It is an Indian Naval station placed in Lonavala, Maharashtra. It homes to the Naval College of Engineering which trains officers of the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard.
Indian Navy already operates a primary damage manipulation simulator Akshat at INS Shivaji to train its officers and sailors on damage management on a warship at sea. Indian Navy’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence School and Center for Marine Engineering Technology also are based here.INS Shivaji had its humble beginning as a replacement for the ‘Stokers’ Training School’ at HMIS Dalhousie, in Naval Dockyard, Bombay. Commissioned with the aid of the then Governor of Bombay, Sir John Colville, as HMIS Shivaji on 15 February 1945, it has become INS Shivaji on 26 January 1950.
Nallamala Forest: It is one of the largest stretches of undisturbed forest in South India, apart from the Western Ghats. It is spread over five districts in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It is located in Nallamala Hills, which is a part of the Eastern Ghats. It lies south of the Krishna River. The forest has a good tiger population, and a part of the forest belongs to the Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve, the largest tiger reserve in the country. It has a warm to hot climate throughout the year, with summer especially hot and winters mostly cool and dry. It gets most of its rain during the South West monsoon. Vegetation: Tropical dry deciduous.
Diversity for Restoration (D4R) tool: It is developed with information on 237 socio-economically important native trees from the Western Ghats. It is devised by Bioversity International. The team from Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), with the help of Bioversity International, modified it to promote restoration programmes in India. The tool helps the user in identifying species that match their restoration objectives. It further helps identify species that can resist local stresses and adapt to evolving environmental conditions. The tool has information about 100 plant functional traits that have been considered to offer the best possible solution. The tool informs the user whether the tree species offers timber, fruit, manure or other commercial benefits. It also informs if the tree is resilient to physiological stresses such as extreme high or low temperatures, salinity or acidity tolerance in the soil among others. The tool could also identify windbreakers. This tool is already being used in countries such as Malaysia, Ethiopia, Columbia, Peru, Burkina Faso, Cameroon etc.
Octopus nursery: The newly found nursery is almost two miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. This nursery belongs to the genus of Muusoctopus and doesn’t have ink sacs – an organ found in most cephalopods. It is a marine mollusc and a member of the class Cephalopoda, more commonly called cephalopods. A ring of eight equally-long arms surrounds the head. They use their arms to “walk” on the seafloor. They have three functioning hearts. Their blood is copper-based which is more efficient at transporting oxygen at low temperatures and makes their blood blue in colour. They are solitary creatures excellent at camouflaging and concealing themselves
They are about 90 per cent muscle, and because they lack bones, they can fit through very small spaces. Their skin contains cells called chromatophores that allow the octopus to change colour and pattern. They are found in every ocean of the world.
