Daily Archives: March 13, 2019

The Hindu scribe Padmakumar passes away

Arts,Culture & Entertainment, Travel

K. Padmakumar 

K. Padmakumar, 54, Assistant Editor, The Hindu, passed away at a private hospital here early Sunday following a brief illness.

A postgraduate in economics, Padmakumar started his career in the Free Press Journal in Mumbai in 1988 and later moved on to the Business World magazine.

In 1994, he joined the Indian Express and worked in its Coimbatore, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram editions.

He joined The Hindu in 2000 and was part of the Kerala news desk ever since. His colleagues remembered Padmakumar for the team spirit, humaneness, insight, personal warmth and professional zeal he brought to the job.

Padmakumar was also the nucleus of a vast network of friends, which included artists, writers, journalists, photographers, painters, academics, intellectuals, amateur astronomers, environmentalists and trekking enthusiasts.

Padmakumar had an abiding zest for the Himalayas. His annual sabbatical invariably included a long and demanding hike to the mountains with his friends.

Padmakumar had in 2017 contributed an article to an anthology of Himalayan trekking experiences published by DC Books.

The social media account of the journalist is replete with memorable photographs of his Himalayan treks, including the last one he made to Kedarnath in September 2018.

His body was cremated at Santhi Kavadam here in the presence of family and friends. He was the son of the late P. Krishnankutty Nair. Padmakumar is survived by his mother Indira Nair; wife C. Indukala (Kerala State Public Service Commission); daughter Varsha Nandini (student, Kendra Vidyalaya, Pattom); sister Dr. Uma Sundar (Mumbai) and brother Krishna Prasad Nair (IDBI).

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala have expressed their condolences to the family of the departed journalist.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Kerala / by Special Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – March 10th, 2019

India’s newest frog evolved 60 million years ago

Agriculture, Green Initiatives & Environment, Nature, Records, All, World Opinion

The starry dwarf frog, named after Wayanad’s Kurichiya tribe, is found outside protected areas

It is just 2 cm long and sports pale blue spots and brilliant orange thighs. The discovery of the starry dwarf frog, a nocturnal amphibian that lives under leaf litter on a mountaintop in Kerala’s Wayanad, has been published on March 13 in PeerJ, an international multidisciplinary journal.

It was in June 2010 that frog researcher Vijayakumar S.P. first laid his eyes on the odd-looking frog and picked it up from atop Wayanad’s Kurichiyarmala.

“I knew that it was a new species, it had many interesting morphological characters… shape and colour patterns that I haven’t seen in other Western Ghats frogs,” wrote Dr. Vijayakumar, from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science, in an email to The Hindu.

Recently, Dr. Vijayakumar and his co-workers, including from the George Washington University in the U.S., studied its physical, skeletal and genetic characteristics. They also compared the frog with specimens of similar species in museum collections across the world. While scans of its skeletons showed it to be completely different from any other similar-sized frog seen in Wayanad, some of its physical characteristics (such as its triangular finger- and toe tips) closely resembled frogs in South America and Africa. Genetic studies, however, revealed a different story: its closest relatives are the Nycibatrachinae group of frogs that dwell in the streams of Western Ghats, and the Lankanectinae frogs of Sri Lanka.

The team named the new species the starry dwarf frog Astrobatrachus kurichiyana (genus Astrobatrachus after its starry spots and kurichiyana in honour of the Kurichiya tribal community who live in the area). It is not only a new species but different enough to be assigned to a new ‘subfamily’. Genetic analysis reveal that the species is at least 60 million years old.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Science / by Aathira Perinchery / Kochi – March 13th, 2019