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BYTEBACK
Bt cotton
I hope the reader of the Dawn ScienceDotcom, who wrote me on Bt Cotton, would be satisfied with my answers because of the misunderstanding caused by comments by Shaukat Ali Bhambhro “Bt cotton found susceptible to army worm in Sindh” (Dawn ScienceDotcom: Nov 8).
Certain comments made by him need evaluation and analysis:
In the first paragraph, Mr Bhambhro too writes “Bt is one of the most valuable pest control tools for such farmers”. If he does not believe in Bt seed, then why he said it in the beginning of his comments.
In the second paragraph he mentions that Bt, as an agro-chemical marketed by Sandoz and other companies, failed to create market in Pakistan. Please note in my any paper I never talk about “Bt” as an “agrochemical” to control pests. Bt is not an agrochemical it is gene from a bacteria found in soil all over the world, which is inserted into the cotton seed to protect from bollworms.
At the bottom of the same first column he writes “in the year 2000 a local newspaper of Karnataka (India) reported ‘Secret Trails of Bt Cotton’ ....” But we have to understand that Indian’s government has legalized Bt Cotton to grow since 2002, which he too admitted in the second column. Similarly, he brings up the problem of the jassid and mites in the third column. Please note that I never said that Bt can control these pests because they are not major damaging pests around the world while bollworms are a major threat to cotton crops.
It is unfortunate that we are still debating Bt “Gene 1” while the world has started marketing Bt “Gene 2” which offers more control on different pests as compared to Bt “ Gene 1”.
Mr Bhambhro talks about “illegal cultivation of Bt seeds in Sindh”.
Although Mr Bhambhro says that I am a supporter of Bt cotton, the fact is that I will support any technology which will benefit my country.
I am very much interested to motivate our scientists to commercialize their research products as we are spending in billions on their educations, training, labs, etc, it is time to see and judge the claims they make, whatever they are. Their research is useless if we cannot use it in to benefit our life.
Ijaz Ahmad Rao
luckystarpk@yahoo.com
Multiple questions
Please answer these questions:
1. How can I change the secret question of my Yahoo mail account?
2. While surfing the net my computer hangs and eventually restarts. How can I fix this problem?
3. Is it possible to increase the size of virtual memory on a system?
Danyal Akhund
Lahore
Editor’s reply: Your queries are answered in the same order as asked:
1. Login to your Yahoo account, and go to Mail Options, Account Information. From here you can change your password and any information you desire.
2. Get your system checked for viruses. Empty your internet cache files and temporary files and also find out if your hard drive partitions are overfilled with data, if so reduce them down in size by uninstalling some of the unused programs.
After all this, if the problem persists, get it checked by an expert technician for some hardware problem such as malfunctioning of cooling system or RAM conflicts.
3. Virtual memory by default is managed by Windows, however, if you want to set it to desired value, you can do so by going to Control Panel> System Properties> Advance. Make sure the value you define is three times your physical RAM for system to maintain stability.
Cellphone to MSN
How I can connect my cell phone to my MSN messenger?
Atif Khalid Butt
Lahore
Editor’s reply: For this, you would have to download and instal MSN Mobile 3.0 from
The next step is making information and services from the internet as accessible via a PDA, pager or cellphone as it is from a PC today. This means getting a GPRS service. MSN Mobile 3.0 extends to wireless customers services, such as MSN Hotmail email, MSN MoneyCentral online personal finance service, the MSNBC.com news service and Expedia.com, the most popular online travel service. By this way MSN Mobile offers an integrated network of content and services through an unparalleled range of mobile phone carriers.
Delay in booting
My WindowsXp system takes very long to boot that is about 3-5 minutes which sounds abnormal. What could be the reason?
Salman Kidwai
Karachi
Editor’s reply: There could be various reasons for this problem. First and foremost the problem could be because of your weak hardware, such as, worn out hard drive, conflicting physical memory or low-powered VGA if your system falls on the lower side of PIII 550MHz. If you don’t have any of the above mentioned hardware weak link. Touch the problem on software level by checking for a virus with updated antivirus program. Most probably you have installed several programs that run at startup, those could also be responsible as well for slowing down your PC. Make sure you cut down the number of heavy programs that reside in your system tray. To do so, search out Startup items by typing MSCONFIG on Run. Make sure you don’t temper with your system files. That should fix the problem. If all this fails to show any improvement try to format your drive and reinstall your system.
Entry in web engines
How can I register my website with search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo!? Where can I get the complete Java codes for this? Is there any site which offers free domains?
Editor’s reply: Visit
