The black list

China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are the most polluted countries in Asia, while Singapore, Malaysia and Japan are the cleanest, indicates a recent survey. The Hong-Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Limited (PERC) conducted the survey.

SINGAPORE

singapore: The Singapore Zoological Gardens will use genetic material including sperm and tissue samples to clone animals. "Cloning would help prevent endangered species from becom-ing extinct," said Bernard Harrison, chief executive of Wildlife Reserves Singapore ( wrs ), which manages the zoo.

Singapore

Three out of four office buildings in Singapore are wasting energy because of inefficient air-conditioning systems, according to media reports. A Singapore building of 20,000 square metres spends us $41,250 each month on air-conditioning, when an energy-efficient building would require only us $12,650.

Beam the sound of music

Engineers in Singapore and China have developed audio beams that will help reduce noise pollution due to high decibel sound. The audio beam can focus a narrow beam of sound, just like a beam of light. Only the person within the beam area can hear the sound," says Zhang Ming, the project's head researcher. The speaker uses ultrasound. The researchers hope to further develop the system to track a listener moving around a room.

Urban rain water harvesting

The Japanese capital Tokyo receives 1,400 mm of rain in a year. But concrete prevents it from percolating into the ground. Urban flooding and acute water scarcity affected the people almost every second year. The solution to both problems lay in rainwater harvesting. Sumida City was the first ward of Tokyo to promote rainwater harvesting. Nearly 500 buildings in Tokyo have installed these systems. Sumida City has also launched a subsidies programme for encouraging rainwater utilisation. It offers subsidies up to one million yen for each rainwater project.

Three countries in South East Asia

Three countries in Southeast Asia -- Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines-- have made efforts to provide drinking water by capturing rain. In Thailand, the absence of foreign assistance for large-scale water projects forced the government to look at smaller options, with great success. The Population and Community Development Association, an ngo, undertook a successful rural programme of experimentation with indigenous materials for construction of tanks.

Voices from Making Water Everybody's Business <br> Talking about water

When I was speaker of the Lok Sabha, I called a special session to discuss serious issues confronting the country. I don't think water was discussed in this special session. We never thought of it. We talked about corruption and criminalisation. Experts and politicians will have to come together at some forum to discuss this. Parliament is not a forum. I don't know how many years it will take parliament to become a serious body again. -- P A SANGMA, Former Chief Minister, Meghalaya, and former speaker, Lok Sabha

Dial in a headache

people who use mobile phones experience headaches more often than those who do not. Moreover, the headaches last longer if the call duration is high. These are the findings of a study conducted in Singapore to study the prevalence of the symptoms of specific central nervous system (cns) ailment among handheld cellular phones.

Owning a car in Singapore means---

lFirst buying a certificate of entitlement that cost as much as US $ 47,000 in early 1994, over and above the price of a car lPaying 45 per cent import duty on the car's market value to register a car; a registration fee of US $1,000 for a private car and US $5,000 for a company registered car lPaying an additional registration fee of 150 per cent of the open market value

Seamless transport

There is now a growing recognition that cities can become sustainable only if auto dependence can be reduced. Says Newman, "Rapidly developing cities that have not put in place any physical or economic restraints on traffic, have not built high quality transit system, and have not protected their traditional forms of non-motorised mobility from the onslaught of motorised traffic, now have huge traffic problems as well as associated environmental and social problems."