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of December by George Saunders (Random House).

In a review of her latest novel, the New York Times noted, “Jhumpa Lahiri first made her name with quiet, meticulously observed stories about Indian immigrants trying to adjust to new lives in the United States, stories that had the hushed intimacy of chamber music”.

“The premise of her new novel, The Lowland, in contrast, is startlingly operatic,” the influential US daily said calling it “certainly Ms Lahiri’s most ambitious undertaking yet”, that “eventually opens out into a moving family story”.

Born in London, 46-year-old Lahiri, who lives in New York’s Brooklyn, is the daughter of immigrants from West Bengal.

She is the author of three previous books. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Her novel The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book and was selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications.

The Namesake was also adapted into a film of the same name by acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair.

Her second book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, was named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.

At the Nov 20 NBA awards ceremony in New York, each winner in the Young People’s Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction and Fiction categories will receive $10,000, while the other finalists will receive $1,000.

The judges considered more than 1,400 submissions for this year’s prizes. To be eligible, a book must have been written by a US citizen and published in the US between December 1, 2012, and November 30, 2013.

Improved air conditioners can save India 60,000 MW

The India-US climate cooperation agreed to during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent summit meeting with President Barack Obama will also include a focus on improving the energy efficiency of air, conditioning in India, which has the potential to avoid as many as 120 large power plants of 500 MW each, and to help avoid brownouts and blackouts. More importantly, it has the potential to significantly reduce the import of fuel for power plants, thereby reducing the vexing issue of the current account deficit that the finance ministry and the new Reserve Bank of India governor are trying to tackle.

The preliminary calculations based on study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, show that such reduction in import of the fossil fuel can be much more than announced under the increase in import duty on gold and other electronic appliances, as urgent measures.

Air conditioners could add as much as 140 GW to peak load by 2030. The new IndiaUS Collaboration on Smart and Efficient Air Conditioning and Space Cooling is intended to advance policies and innovation to drive mass deployment and rapid uptake of high-efficiency cooling equipment and technologies to capture significant energy savings.

The crowning achievement of the bilateral summit, among the proactive measures to tackle climate change, has been to immediately convene India-US Task

Force on the dangerously potent hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs) to discuss, inter alia, multilateral approaches to phase down these gases which have global warming potential of nearly 2,000 times more than carbon dioxide and whose consumptions and emissions are growing at the rate of more than 15 percent.

Manmohan Singh, Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, over the last few months, have stepped up their trinity leadership on the complex global challenge of the climate change on top of the ‘Yes, we can’ list. The leaders also noted that they “are committed to support the full implementation of the agreed outcomes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with its ongoing negotiations”. They strongly welcomed the efforts of the UN secretary general to mobilise political will through 2014 towards the successful adoption of a postKyoto protocol or an agreed outcome with legal force applicable to all parties by 2015, during a global meet that France is to host.

The India-US bilateral agreement includes cautious but definite practical steps and multilateral approaches for dealing with climate change. This includes using the expertise and the successful institutions of the Montreal Protocol to phase down the consumption and production of HFCs based on economically viable and technically feasible alternatives. There will also be provision to grant the incremental cost of the technology transfer and grace period for developing countries like India and China.

This is the key principle of the “common but differentiated responsibility” that India has advocated and successfully defended even for the Montreal Protocol, under which India has already benefited by about $300 million and a grace period of 10 years as compared to the phase-out timetable of the developed countries, to adopt and assimilate the latest efficient technologies.

Manmohan Singh and Obama also envisioned the possibility that HFCs remain within the scope of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol for accounting and reporting of emissions of these powerful green house gases. The partnership between India and the US on HFCs has topped up the cascading developments this year, in May the countries of the Arctic Council endorsed action on HFCs by the Montreal Protocol at their ministerial meeting in Sweden. Also in May the EU proposed that the UNFCCC encourage the parties of the Montreal Protocol to phase down HFCs.

In June, Obama and Xi agreed to support this approach. This was followed by support for the proposal from the small island nations of the Pacific in August, from the 34 countries of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants in early September, and most recently, from the leaders of the largest economies in the world, the G20.

Phase-outs of ozone depleting refrigerants under the Montreal Protocol have revolutionised the refrigeration and air-conditioning industry globally. The momentous improvements in energy efficiency, for example in refrigerators and central air conditioning to the extent of 50-70 percent have already reaped major economic and environmental benefits, particularly in emerging economies of India and China. The industry is now heralding similar benefits for the alternatives to HFCs that would play an important role in catalysing further much-needed energy efficiency gains.

The UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization and other scientists estimate that cutting HFCs and the other short-lived climate pollutants can cut the rate of global warming in half, cut Arctic warming by two-thirds and cut warming in high elevation regions of the Himalayas and Tibet by at least half.

Dinosaur remains found in Maharashtra

Fossilised dinosaur bones and eggs of gigantic creatures that measured around 1820 metres and weighed 10-13 tonnes, have been discovered from the Salbardi area, around 60 km from Amravati in eastern Maharashtra, a geologist said recently.

The discoveries have been made after nearly six years of efforts by a team led by AK Srivastava and his doctorate student RS Mankar, both from the Department of Geology, SGB Amravati University.

“These remains have been found in the sedimentary rocks, geologically known as ‘Lameta Formation’ deposited during the Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) period,” said Mankar.

Following detailed studies of the discovery, they have interpreted that around 66-71 million years ago, there was a huge lake in which these Lameta sediments were deposited, Srivastava said.

During that period, a species of dinosaur, Titanosaurus Colberti, belonging to the Sauropod Family also inhabited the region and laid the eggs, Mankar explained.

The dinosaurian remains now exist in the form of small fragments of bones and complete eggs of the animals, which are firmly fixed in the rocks and hence irretrievable, said Mankar.

The work on the bones and discovery has been published in the latest issue of the prestigious journal Current Science, Srivastava said.

From the finding, the geologists have presumed that the Titanosaurus Colberti was a giant reptile measuring around 18-20 metres long and weighing up to 13 tonnes.

It was herbivorous animal with a short and deep neck, long forelimbs and a short tail, but could not survive after the Late Cretaceous period due to hostile conditions which developed due to high temperatures and release of hazardous gases during the volcanic activity forming the Deccan Trap Basalt.

Mankar said this is not the first dinosaur remains in have been found in India and earlier, there have been discoveries from Nagpur, Chandrapur, and now Amravati in the state.

Besides, more finds have been made in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh and Kheda district of Gujarat, which has reported the largest number of discoveries in India.

“The latest discovery in Amravati highlights its presence from a new area indicating that these giant creates ruled much geographical area than was previously believed. Accordingly, it has attracted the attention of the country’s scientific community working in dinosaur related areas,” Srivastava said.