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The knowledge on the floral and faunal composition of protected areas (PAs) is crucial for formulating suitable conservation plan. In this paper, inventory and species richness of non-marine molluscs of Chintamoni Kar Bird Sanctuary has been made and is for the first time from any PA of West Bengal. A total of 276 specimens belonging to 22 species (10 species of land snails and 12 species of freshwater) of non-marine molluscs (land and freshwater) were collected and examined from this sanctuary. The malacofaunal inventory comprises of nine genera under seven families among land snails and 12 genera & seven families from both gastropods & bivalves under the freshwater forms. As far as species richness is concerned, the family Ariophantidae was found to be dominant among land forms whereas species of the families Thiaridae and Unionidae were dominant among freshwater forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the family Truncatellidae Gray, 1840 are widely distributed globally, but their presence in India is unclear. So far, only one species Truncatella guerinii A. Villa & J. B. Villa, 1841 has been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but most malacologists were unsure of its occurrence due to the lack of appropriate descriptions and proper identification. In this paper, we confirm its presence in the Andaman Islands and also in Pondicherry in Indian waters. In addition, its natural history, distribution and the detailed taxonomy of the species is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the sighting of critically endangered red-headed vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) at the Palamau Tiger Reserve in Jharkhand, India.

Electrical energy is a vital part of modern life, and expectations for grid resilience to allow a continuous and reliable energy supply has tremendously increased even during adverse events (e.g. Ukraine cyberattack, Hurricane Maria). The global pandemic COVID-19 has raised the electric energy reliability risk due to potential workforce disruptions, supply chain interruptions, and increased possible cybersecurity threats. Additionally, the pandemic introduces a significant degree of uncertainty to the grid operation in the presence of other challenges including aging power grids, high proliferation of distributed generation, market mechanism, and active distribution network. This situation increases the need for measures for the resiliency of power grids to mitigate the impact of the pandemic as well as simultaneous extreme events including cyberattacks and adverse weather events. Solutions to manage such an adverse scenario will be multi-fold: (a) emergency planning and organisational support, (b) following safety protocol, (c) utilising enhanced automation and sensing for situational awareness, and (d) integration of advanced technologies and data points for ML-driven enhanced decision support. Enhanced digitalisation and automation resulted in better network visibility at various levels, including generation, transmission, and distribution. These data or information can be employed to take advantage of advanced machine learning techniques for automation and increased power grid resilience. In this paper, the resilience of power grids in the face of pandemics is explored and various machine learning tools that can be helpful to augment human operators are discused by: (a) reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on power grid operations and actions taken by operators/organisations to minimise the impact of COVID-19, and (b) presenting recently developed tools and concepts of machine learning and artificial intelligence that can be applied to increase the resiliency of power systems in normal and extreme scenarios such as the COVID-19 pandemic., (© 2021 The Authors. The Journal of Engineering published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Institution of Engineering and Technology.)

Two new jumping spider species: Nandiciusvallisflorum sp. n. , (♀) and Pelleneshimalaya sp. n. (♂, ♀), are diagnosed, described and illustrated in detail. The specimens were collected from the Valley of Flowers, western Himalayas, Uttarakhand State of India.