Biology Miscellaneous (Part-I)

• The NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has designated the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) Mumbai, as the nodal agency for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.

IIPS collaborates with a number of Field Organizations (FO) for survey implementation.Each successive round of the NFHS has had two specific goals:

To provide essential data on health and family welfare needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other agencies for policy and programme purposes.

To provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues.

• The survey provides state and national information for India on:
• Fertility
• Infant and child mortality
• The practice of family planning
• Maternal and child health
• Reproductive health
• Nutrition
• Anaemia
• Utilization and quality of health and family planning services.

The funding for different rounds of NFHS has been provided by USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, UNFPA, and MoHFW (Government of India).

• Chlorophyll — Magnesium
• Haemoglobin — Iron
• Table salt — Sodium chloride
• Washing soda — Sodium carbonate

One of wool’s greatest properties as a sustainable material is its biodegradability. Wool is made out of keratin, the same protein as human hair. Micro-organisms in soil or water can break down woolen matter.

Wool’s biodegradation properties are in sharp contrast to synthetic fibres, which take much longer to break down and also release microplastics into the environment.

Biodegradation is nature’s way of recycling wastes, or breaking down organic matter into nutrients that can be used and reused by other organisms.

Biodegradable wastes include any organic matter in waste which can be broken down into carbon dioxide, water, methane, compost, humus, simple organic molecules by micro-organisms (comprising mainly bacteria, yeasts and fungi) and other living things by composting, aerobic digestion, anaerobic digestion or similar processes.

Hence, Biodegradable wastes can usually be converted into useful substance with the help of bacteria.

Among the given options, insecticides are non-biodegradable, while paper, food and plant waste, wood and cellulose are biodegradable materials.

Insecticides, like many synthetic chemicals, are designed to be persistent and resist breakdown by natural processes. This means they can accumulate in the environment and cause harm over time

Biodegradable materials are those that can be broken down by natural processes, like decomposition by microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), into simpler, harmless substances.

Paper, food scraps, plant waste, wood, and cellulose are all derived from living organisms and are easily broken down by decomposers in the environment.

Bacteria, fungi and microalgae, all three are widely used in industries. Today bacteria is used in manufacturing curd, cheese, butter and in making a different type of antibiotic medicines.

Diatoms are a small group of algae, Diatomaceous soil consists of fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae. It is used in the manufacture of glass and it is also used in sugarcane mills as bacteria filter.

Fungus (yeast) have been used for thousands of years in the production of beer, wine and bread. Besides this different types of acids like citric acid, gallic acid etc. are also obtained from different types of fungus.