Fynbos is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly winter rainfall coastal and mountainous areas with a Mediterranean climate; the fynbos ecoregion is within the Mediterranean forests and scrub biome. In fields related to biogeography, fynbos is known for its exceptional degree of biodiversity and endemism, consisting about 80% species of the Cape floral kingdom where nearly 6,000 of them are endemic; this land has faced severe threats and still does, but due to the many economic uses conservation efforts are being made to help restore it. The word fynbos is confusingly said to mean "fine bush" in Afrikaans, as "bos" means "bush". Typical fynbos foliage is ericoid rather than fine; the term, in its pre-Afrikaans, Dutch form, was recorded by Noble as being in casual use in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, John Bews referred to: "South-Western or Cape Region of Macchia or Fynbosch".
He said: "In this well-known region where the rain occurs in winter and the summers are more or less dry, the dominant vegetation is of a sclerophyllous type and there is little or no natural grassland, though there are many grasses..." He refers to a high degree of endemism in the grasses in that region. Elsewhere he speaks of the term as "...applied by the inhabitants of the Cape to any sort of small woodland growth that does not include timber trees". However, in the technical, ecological sense, the constraints are more demanding. In the latter half of the 20th century, "fynbos" gained currency as the term for the "distinctive vegetation of the southwestern Cape". Fynbos – which grows in a 100-to-200-km-wide coastal belt stretching from Clanwilliam on the West coast to Port Elizabeth on the Southeast coast – forms part of the Cape floral kingdom, where it accounts for half of the surface area and 80% of the plant species; the fynbos in the western regions is richer and more varied than in the eastern regions of South Africa.
Of the world's six floral kingdoms, this is the richest per unit of area. The Holarctic kingdom, in contrast, incorporates the whole of the Northern Hemisphere north of the tropics; the diversity of fynbos plants is high, with over 9,000 species of plants occurring in the area, around 6,200 of which are endemic, i.e. growing nowhere else in the world. South Africa's Western Cape has the vast majority of species with one estimate finding 8,550 species in 89,000 km2, higher than that estimated for the Malayan forests, 7,900 species in 132,000 km2, it has been claimed that it exceeds the richest tropical rainforest in South America, including the Amazon. Of the Ericas, over 600 occur in the fynbos kingdom, while only two or three dozen have been described in the rest of the world; this is in an area of 46,000 km2 – by comparison, the Netherlands, with an area of 33,000 km2, has 1,400 species, none of them endemic. Table Mountain in Cape Town supports more than the entire United Kingdom. Thus, although the fynbos covers only 6% of the area of southern Africa, it has half the species on the subcontinent – and in fact has 1 in 5 of all African plant species so far described.
Five main river systems traverse the Cape floral kingdom: the Oliphants River of the Western Cape. The most conspicuous components of the flora are evergreen sclerophyllous plants, many with ericoid leaves and gracile habit, as opposed to timber forest. Several plant families are conspicuous in fynbos. Proteas are represented by many species and are prominent in the landscape with large striking flowers, many of which are pollinated by birds, others by small mammals. Most of these do not have anything like ericoid leaves, nor do most Rhamnaceae, Fabaceae, or Geraniaceae. Fynbos Ericaceae include more species of Erica than all other regions combined, they are popularly called heaths and are smaller plants bearing many small, tubular or globular flowers and ericoid leaves. Restionaceae occur in greater variety in fynbos than anywhere else. Many of them grow in wet areas such as seasonal marshes and spongy basins in the sources of mountain streams, but others grow in decidedly arid conditions. Depending on the locality and the aspects under discussion, several other families have equal claim to being characteristic, including Asteraceae and Iridaceae.
More than 1400 bulb species occur among the fynbos, of which 96 are 54 Lachenalia. Areas that are dominated by "renosterbos", Elytropappus rhinocerotis, are known as Renosterveld; the fynbos area has been divided into two similar ecoregions: the lowland fynbos on the sandy soil of the west coast, the montane fynbos of the Cape Fold Belt. The Lowland Fynbos and Renosterveld experiences regular winter rainfall to the west of Cape Agulhas; the ecoregion has been subdivided into 9 areas: the West Coast Forelands from the Cape Flats to the Olifants River.
The Armley asbestos disaster is an ongoing health issue originating in Armley, a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Described by Dr. Geoffrey Tweedale as a "social disaster", it involved the contamination with asbestos dust of an area consisting of around 1,000 houses in the Armley Lodge area of the city; the contamination was the result of the activities of a local asbestos factory, part of the Turner & Newall group and occurred between the end of the 19th century and 1959 when the factory closed. At its peak the factory had 250 employees. At least 300 former employees are believed to have died from asbestos-related illnesses, a number of cancer deaths in the Armley area were traced to the factory in 1988 as a result of an investigation by the Yorkshire Evening Post; the estate was found to have the highest incidence in the country of mesothelioma. As the interval between exposure and diagnosis can be up to 50 years the number of further deaths which may occur due to the factory's emissions or residual dust since its closure cannot be predicted.
J. W. Roberts Ltd. was founded in Armley in 1874 as a textile producer working with cotton and jute. By 1906, its factory on Canal Road, known as the Midland Works, specialised in the manufacture of asbestos insulation mattresses for steam locomotive boilers and is believed to have been one of only two factories in the world at the time which processed blue asbestos. In 1920 it merged with Turner Brothers Asbestos Company Ltd. Newalls Insulation Company Ltd. and the Washington Chemical Company Ltd. to form Turner & Newall Ltd. which in 1925 became a public company. T&N's rapid growth has been attributed to a product called "Sprayed Limpet Asbestos", developed in the Armley works in 1931; this was made by mixing raw asbestos with water and cement, the resulting slurry being spray applied to the surface to be insulated, creating a cheap soundproof and fire resistant coating. Sprayed Limpet Asbestos generated huge profits for T&N who exported the product to 60 countries where it was applied to a wide range of buildings including schools and theatres and the London Underground.
The factory at Armley closed in 1959. Midland Works emitted vast quantities of asbestos dust through its ventilation system, which covered the nearby streets and rooftops of surrounding houses. One resident told of how his wife "used to wipe the greyish white dust off the window sills of their home at 9.30 am, that an hour if the machines at Roberts were blowing out dust, there would be another layer of dust half an inch thick."It was not uncommon until the factory's closure for children to be seen playing in the dust in the streets and the local school's playground, making'snowballs' which were thrown in ignorance of the danger they posed. Others used the thick layer of dust in the playground to mark out hopscotch squares. In subsequent legal hearings, residents testified how: "If you walked right behind the factory it was like cotton, it was in the cracks in the pavement behind the factory. We used to sweep this blue dust up, it was blue fluffy stuff... I used to get up in the morning and the other side of the street always had a layer of fine dust with footmarks on it from the early morning workers."
Of the conditions in the nearby school one said: "The dust was always there while I was at school, lying on walls or window ledges if it had been damp. It was like snow fall." Describing the loading bay, to which local children had easy access, one witness recalled: "Sometimes sacks were left out overnight. They were hessian sacks and they were full of a sort of fluffy dust. We could jump on the sacks when they were left out... I remember seeing grey-blue coloured dust come out of them. If we jumped hard enough the sacks burst open. After sitting or bouncing on the sacks I remember being covered in dust." During the summer doors and windows of both the factory and the houses were left open for cooling, during the winter children congregated around the factory's street-level ventilation outlets for warmth. In 1974, after reviewing company documents about Midland Works, a T&N public relations officer wrote: "I hope much indeed that we are never called upon to discuss Armley in the public arena." In 1978, Leeds City Council informed T&N that the factory was still "badly contaminated" with asbestos, with dust found in the basement, lift shaft, ventilation shafts and beneath the floors.
Hessian sacks containing asbestos fibre were still present, the yard was filled with'a few hundred tonnes' of blue asbestos waste mixed with soil. R. D. Lunt, T&N's Safety and Environment manager, wrote of the factory basement: "Every nook and cranny has asbestos fibre in it". T&N contributed £15,000 towards the clean-up of the factory, claimed they were doing so out of "a moral, not a legal responsibility" to do so; the surrounding houses and buildings were not included in this operation, Leeds City Council and T&N "agreed to keep the whole matter'low-key' if approached by the media", while a T&N internal memo stated "The Principal Inspector of Factories and the Assistant Director of Environmental Health are anxious to play this down and have given us considerable support."Documents discovered by lawyers in the 1990s revealed that in 1979 T&N were notified of asbestos contamination in a house in Aviary Road that had once been part of the Midland Works after the city's Public Analyst found asbestos in an attic and garden, an internal T&N memo about this stated "... it is reasonable to suppose that adjoining properties might be involved."
Leeds City Council did not inform the public. T&N paid for the decontamination of the property in Aviary Ro
Government Zawlnuam College is a college in Zawlnuam, Mamit district of Mizoram. The college is affiliated to Mizoram University; the College has only around 60 students. Zawlnuam College was established in 1986, pronvincialized in 2007, it good NAAC accreditation in 2016. The college has the following departments: Department of English Department of History Department of Education Department of Political Science Department of Economics Department of Mizo Education in India Education in Mizoram Mizoram University Literacy in India Official website Google. "Government Zawlnuam College". Google Maps. Google