While utilizing my leisure time in the field camp at west Sikkim Himalaya, I read an article in ‘The Telegraph’ written on the second centenary of Charles Darwin, which I wish to share with you. At the age of 22, in 1831, Darwin set sail on HMS Beagle armed with a compass, a pistol, a geological hammer and a bunch of note book. He wrote 1383 pages of geological notes and dug out fossils from the rocks. On the voyage, he read Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology. On return to England, in 1836, the first book which Darwin wrote was on ‘Geology’. Our sincere tribute to the legend.
      In a message to the organizers of a conference at Lucknow, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam wrote “It is essential that India has to work on mission mode research for forecasting the earthquake using multiple parameters using precursors such as pre-shock conditions, electromagnetic phenomenon prior to final rupture and atmospheric and ionospheric anomalies.” This time, we are providing two papers on earthquake prediction in the Technical issue .
     ‘Earth Hour’, a unique awareness campaign for global warming, has also posed challenging tasks for earth scientists (see Forum). On this occasion we are providing a special article in our Popular Issue.
      The Society of Earth Scientists (SES) has completed one year. The list of Fellows of the Society is given to enhance mutual interactions among the scientists.
       I hope we will continue to receive your support and feedbacks.

Satish C.Tripathi

Honorary Editor, ESI and Secretary,SES

sctgsilko@rediffmail.com

April issue at a Glance