State Bank of India has granted an endowment of Rs 10 lakh to the Bombay Natural History Society to support the society's activities in wildlife research, environment protection and in spreading public awareness.

According to a statement from A K Batra, chief general manager, SBI, western region, this endowment has been provided under the aegis of the bank Community Services Division. The bank's donation will be kept in a separate fund with BNHS as the State Bank of India Endowment for Public Education, Awareness and Research. The projects under this will be funded from the interest of the principle amount, Batra said.

The Society plans to bring out an informative wall newspaper in regional languages on environment awareness that will distributed free in schools.BNHS secretary J C Daniel said that such gestures from the corporate community have help the Society achieve its objectives in the past and looks forward to more such contribution to helpconserve the country's natural heritage.

Replacement for test animals

A Rensselaer Incubator company has commercialised a technology that replaces live animals but still allows testing. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winning biophysicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Charlie Keese, a senior research scientist at the Institute, have developed the Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing 100, which uses electricity to study complex cell behavior.

Giaever and Keese founded Applied Biophysics Inc (www.biophysics.com) at the Rensselaer Incubator Center in 1993. Since then, they've licensed the ECIS technology for commercial use and have sold more than 20 systems worldwide. Using the new electric biosensor instead of the traditional petri dish and microscope to study cells offers unprecedented sensitivity and detailed results, says Giaever. Data can be taken as often as every quarter-second to follow a cell's behavior movements.

The software runs on a Windows 98 platform and manages all dataacquisition, storage, and analysis. The Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing 100 eliminates the need to carry out tests on live animals and yields more comprehensive data when studying toxic effects on cells.

Glacier bay fishing issue Environmental groups including The Wilderness Society and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) have sharply criticised a legislative rider, authored by Alaska Republican Senator Frank Murkowski that would allow commercial fishing to continue unabated in the protected wilderness of Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve. The rider is attached to the Supplemental Emergency Appropriations Bill now being considered in the US Congress.

Murkowski's proposal would prevent the National Park Service from phasing out illegal commercial fishing in Glacier Bay, even though Alaska's other Senator, Ted Stevens, also a Republican, and the White House agreed to such a plan just last year.

Neither paper nor plastic

Biocorp of Columbus, Ohio has created a corn starchbased truly 0biodegradable and compostable lawn and leaf bag-the Biocorp reSourceBags. Two local municipalities are kicking off yard-cleanup pilot programmes this weekend by offering residents the alternative of using the environmentally friendly reSourceBags in place of bulky paper bags. The pilot programmes are beginning in conjunction with the city of Columbus' spring cleanup effort, "Keep Columbus Beautiful." Frederic Scheer, president of Biocorp said, "The bags biodegrade in a composting environment within 35 days and leave no chemical residues."

The reSourceBags(TM) have been tested at both the Upper Arlington composting facility and the Columbus composting facility in Groveport. Both composting facilities are owned by the Solid Waste Authority of Ohio and operated by Kurtz Bros. Biocorp claims to be the only company in the United States making and selling commercially available legitimate biodegradable plastic products. Biocorp also makes biodegradable plstic cutlery, currently being used byMcDonald's in Europe.