Cytotoxic and genotoxic affects of acid mine drainage on fish Channa punctata (Bloch).

The investigation deals with the effects of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) of coal mine on fish Channa punctata (Bloch) by examining the incidence of haematological, morphological, histological changes and DNA fragmentation in tissues of C. punctata in laboratory condition. For this study fishes were exposed to 10% of AMD for a period of 30 days. The fusion of the primary and secondary gill lamellae, distortion, loss of alignment, deposition of worn out tissues and mucous on the surface of the lamella in the gills; degeneration of morphological architecture, loss of alignment of tubules, mucous deposition in the kidney; cellular damage, cellular necrosis, extraneous deposition on the surface, pore formation in the liver are some important changes detected by scanning electron microscopy. Fishes of AMD treated group showed gradual significant decrease in TEC, Hb and, increase in TLC and DLC as compared to that of the control. DNA fragmentation observed in kidney of fishes from treated group indicates an intricate pollutant present in the AMD. The high incidence of morphological and histological alterations, haematological changes along with DNA breakage in C. punctata is an evidence of the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of AMD of coal mines.

Compact steep-spectrum sources and the unified scheme.

The compact steep-spectrum sources (CSSs) are an interesting class of objects which are of subgalactic dimensions; they occur more frequently in high-frequency surveys because their spectra often turn over at lower frequencies. We have estimated the symmetry parameters of a well-defined sample of CSSs and compared these with the larger 3CR sources of similar luminosity to understand the evolution and the consistency of CSSs with the unified scheme. We suggest that the majority of CSSs are likely to be young sources advancing outward through an asymmetric, inhomogeneous environment to form the larger ones. The radio properties of the CSSs are consistent with the unified scheme, where the axes of the quasars are seen closer to the line of sight while the radio galaxies lie closer to the plane of the sky. We discuss how radio polarization observations may be used to probe whether the physical conditions in the central regions of the CSSs are different from the larger ones. We present a simple scenario where the depolarization and high rotation measures seen in many CSSs can be consistent with the low rotation measures of cores in the more extended quasars and suggest further observations to test this scenario.