Is Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFV) worth it ?

A flex-fuel vehicle is a modified version of vehicle that could run both on gasoline and doped petrol with different levels of ethanol blends,which can include upto 100% ethanol. When FFV is integrated with strong hybrid electric technology, it is called Flex Fuel Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FFV-SHEV). FFV-SHEV are the hybrid vehicles having capability to run solely on either electric or petrol modes. The central government has released an expert committee report on the roadmap for ethanol blending in India by 2025. The roadmap proposes a gradual rollout of ethanol-blended fuel to achieve E10 fuel supply by 2022 and phased rollout of E20 fuel supply by 2025. Currently, 9.45% of ethanol is blended with petrol in India. A 10% blending of petrol does not require major changes to engines but a 20% blend could require some changes and may even drive up the prices of vehicles. 

Ethanol is a renewable biofuel as made from biomass. It is a clear ,colorless alcohol made from a variety of biomass materials called feedstocks such as sugarcane. It is naturally produced by the fermentation of sugar by yeast or via petrochemical process such as ethylene hydration. In India, it is primarily produced from sugarcane-based raw materials or certain types of heavy molasses, surplus rice available with the Food Corporation of India and maize.

Benefits of FFV :
• Reduces pressure on oil import bill : It is expected to reduce the demands for petroleum products. India presently imports more than 80% of its petroleum requirement from gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE etc. which is one of the biggest outflow of money from the country. This policy is likely to reduce the petroleum imports and the country can save upto ₹ 30,000 crores per year .
• Benefiting Farmers : It will create alternative sources of income for farmers and will encourage them to produce water-saving crop like maize to produce ethanol. If the crops are damaged by any means, it can also be used in producing ethanol.
• Boost to Atma Nirbhar Bharat : It is in line with Prime Minister’s vision ofAtma Nirbhar Bharat and government’s policy on promoting ethanol as a transport fuel. It will reduce our dependency on foreign countries over energy sources I.e., costly petroleum for automobiles and will be large step towards creating Atma Nirbhar Bharat.
• Reducing Greenhouse Gas & Tackling Climate Change: By using biofuel ( ethanol), the greenhouse gas emissions like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide , etc. on the daily basis will reduce drastically thus reducing the pollution and providing better air quality.

Possible challenges during implementation of the program :

• High cost of the flex fuel engine.
• Lower fuel efficiency as compared to fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and natural gas.
• Running cost will be higher due to lower fuel efficiency.
• Till now, most of the Indians are not ready to accept flex fuel vehicles due to higher cost and low efficiency reasons.
• Ethanol act as solvent and could wipe out the protective oil film of the engine thus leading to wear and tear and further causing more expenses.
• A greater percentage of blending could also mean more land being diverted for water-intensive crops such as sugar cane, which the government currently subsidises.
• The increased allocation of land also puts into question the actual reduction in emissions that blending ethanol with petrol brings about.
• Because flex fuel isn’t as economical as gasoline, gas stations are less likely to carry it. Only a small percentage of gas stations nationwide supply ethanol.

The debates surrounding the pros and cons of flex fuel vehicles aren’t going away anytime soon. However, there does seem to be a move toward using ethanol as an environmentally friendly and economical fuel source.More ethanol refining plants are opening up and it’s possible for more people to switch to FFV. Technology is always changing, so there’s no way to predict whether flex-fuel vehicles would emerge over the next few years.

Sources : The Hindu and Dristi IAS

Doing Yoga will not lead to serious disease

Today, entire nation is celebrating international yoga day. This day was considered such a long day.Yoga keeps our body full of energy and this keeps our colour and mind in a Normal control over the body.It makes the person active and body remains flexible.

First time, this day was celebrated on 21 June 2015 whose initiative was done by honourable PM Narendra Modi on 27 September 2014 in United Nation General Assembly during his speech he said-. “Yoga is an invaluable gift from the ancient tradition of India; it symbolizes the unity of mind and body; harmony between man and nature; thought, moderation and fulfillment; and a holistic approach to health and well-being.” It is not about exercise, but a sense of oneness within ourselves, discovering the world and nature. By becoming a consciousness in our changing lifestyles, it can help us deal with climate change. So Let’s work towards adopting an International Yoga Day.”

In 2011, the international humanistic meditation and yoga shri shri Ravishankar and it’s other mentors has representative of the confedaration of Portuguese industry and supported and tell the world to do yog together on the occasion of international yoga day which was held on 21 June and give suggestions to united nations to be announced soon.

Impact of Yoga in our life- Practicing yoga develops physical health.- It develops mental health.- It develops social health.- It develops spiritual health.- It helps in our self-realisation, etc.Yoga at the physical level comprises several postures or asanas to keep the body healthy. The mental techniques in Yoga include breathing exercises or pranayama and meditation to discipline the mind.

Governmental planning for Yoga Day 2022-

Minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi will be at the Fatehpur Sikri in Uttar Pradesh whereas Giriraj Singh will be at Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar. Minister for State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal will be in Jaipur, Minister of State for external affairs V Muraleedharan will be at the Padmanabhava Temple in Kerala, MOS Road and Transport VK Singh will be at the Kochi Fort.Minister for State for Defence Ajay Bhatt will be at the Wagah border. Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh will be in Jammu and MOS Health Bharati Pawar will be at the Martand Sun Temple at Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir. It was during his speech at the Keeping the overarching theme of the 75 years of India’s independence the Ministry for Ayush has identified 75 locations for Union Ministers to participate in the Yoga Day celebration. While Ayush Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will be joining the Prime Minister from Mysore, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will be performing yoga at the IAF base in Coimbatore.Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be performing Yoga in Delhi. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will be present at Purana Qila in Delhi whereas Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri will be present at iconic red fort. Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy will join the Yoga celebrations from the Hussain Sagar Lake in Hyderabad whereas Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur will be present in Hamirpur.Law Minister Kiren Rijiju will be performing yoga at Dong village in Arunachal Pradesh whereas Heavy Industries Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey will join the Yoga celebrations From the iconic Puri Beach.Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will be present at the Sun Temple in Konark in Odisha whereas Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be at Jantar Mantar in the national capital.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will be at the Marine Drive in Mumbai whereas Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will be at the statue of unity in Kevadia Gujrat Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi will be in Hampi while Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia will be at the Gwalior Fort. Road and Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari will be at the Zero Milestone .

This year PM Narendra Modi rejoins all the ministers on the occasion of international yoga day 2022.

Soon to be launched in India-“5G”-

In the silver jubilee celebrations of telecom regulatory, PM Narendra Modi said that 5G testbed is an important step for reliance in direction of critical & modern technologies.

It is a new global wireless standard after 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. 5G enables a new kind of network that is designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices.5G wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connects new industries.

The Department of Telecommunications (DOT) has confirmed that 5G services will be launched in India this year.

Broadly speaking, 5G is used across three main types of connected services, including enhanced mobile broadband, communication, and the massive lot. A defining capability of 5G is that it is designed for forward compatibility the ability to flexibly support future services that are unknown today. Enhanced mobile Broadband addition to making our smartphones better, 5G mobile technology can usher in new immersive experiences such as VR and AR with faster, more uniform data rates, lower latency, and lower cost-per-bit.Mission-critical communications 5G can enable new services that can transform industries with ultra-reliable, available, low-latency links like remote control of critical infrastructure, vehicles, and medical procedures.

wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a more uniform user experience to more users. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connects new industries.

High Speed works faster on mobile phones and other devices when compared to 4G and 4G LTE. It allows users to download movies, videos, and music in seconds as opposed to minutes. The network has 20 Gbps speed enabling organizations to use the same for services such as automation, advanced web conferencing, etc. A recent survey says that consumers who used 5G saved nearly 23 hours per day in the downloading process.2. Low Latency has low latency when compared to 4G that will support new applications such as Al, IoT, and virtual reality efficiently. Not only that, it enables mobile phone users to open a webpage and browse things without any hassles. Another thing is it gives ways to access the internet anytime when looking for some important information Increased capacity. Increased capacity

It has the capacity to deliver up to 100 times more capacity than 4G. It allows companies to switch between cellular and Wi-Fi wireless strategies that will help a lot to experience better performance. Apart from that, it provides methods to access the internet with high efficiency. More Bandwidth of the main advantages of 5G is that it increases more bandwidth that will help transfer the data as soon as possible. Furthermore, mobile phone users can ensure a faster connection with more bandwidth after choosing a 5G network.5. Powering innovation↑5G technology is the perfect choice for connecting with a whole range of different devices including drones and sensors.

The government need to take precautions while launching 5G because it also gives harmful impact on animas and radiation in the environment.

Inflation

Inflation refers to the rise in the prices of goods and services like food, clothing, petrol, housing, transport, etc. over a period of time. When there is rise in Inflation rate, purchasing power of money decreases,i.e. same amount of goods will be purchased in higher prices. When there is fall in the price index of the items, the purchasing power of the money increases this is called deflation. A certain level of inflation is required in the economy to promote expenditure and to demotivate hoarding money through savings. The optimum level of inflation will nurture economic growth.

Types of Inflation :

1.Demand Pull Inflation : An increase in the supply of money and credits stimulates the overall demand for goods and services. The demand increases more rapidly than the economic’s production capacity. This increasing demand creates demand-supply gap as there is not the supply of products as per demand, leading increase in prices.
2.Cost Push Inflation : Demands of the  goods and services remains constant but there is increase in their prices. There are several factors affecting this pricing of goods like depletion of resources,  monopoly over market , government taxation, change in exchange rate,etc. For example, sudden increase in prices of tomatoes, onions etc. due to poor harvest, crude oil fluctuations,etc.
3.Built-in Inflation : It evolves from the past events and continues to affect the economy of the country. We often get to see blue collar worker’s protest for higher pay scales.

Causes of Inflation :

• Increase in supply of money in the market beyond a certain limit reduces the value of currency.
• Increase in prices of imported products.
• High demand and low supply of products leads to hike in price.
• People with more money tends to spend more causing increase in demands.
• Low growth of agricultural products leads to decrease in agricultural prices causes rise in price of goods through reduced supply.

Impact of Inflation :

• It causes loss of purchasing power of the money. It impacts the general cost of living as now people have the constant wages but have to buy less amount of daily products due to hike in price which ultimately leads to deceleration of economic growth.
• It reduces savings as substantial amount of income is spent on daily consumables due to increased costs.
• It also leads to consumers hoarding goods in fear of further increase in prices leading more shortage of supply and exponential increase in price.

“A New Virus Is Found In Animals-“

According to reports, the disease has been found in several Indian states like Assam, Odissa, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh etc. It is an infectious disease in cattle caused by a virus of the family Poxviridae also known as needling virus. This disease is spread over by fever, enlarged lymph nodes & multiple nodules on skin and mucous membranes.

It was first seen as epidemic in lambia in 1929. Intially it was thought to be result of either poisoning or hypersensitivity to insect bites, also in 1943& 1945 in Botswana, Zimbabwe & now in Pakistan.

Symptoms-

Infected cattle develop fever, lacrimation, nasal discharge and hypersalivation, followed by the characteristics eruptions on the skin and other parts of the body in 50% of cattle. Incubation period is 4-14days. Clinical findings of lumpy skin disease in cattle-. The nodules are well circumscribed, round,slightly raised, firm, and painful and involve the entire cutis and the mucosa of the GI, respiratory, and genital tracts. Nodules may develop on the muzzle and within the nasal and buccal mucous membranes. The skin nodules contain a firm, creamy-gray or yellow mass of tissue. Regional lymph nodes are swollen, and edema develops in the udder, brisket, and legs. Secondary infection sometimes occurs and causes extensive suppuration and sloughing; as a result, the animal may become extremely emaciated, and euthanasia may be warranted. In time, the nodules either regress, or necrosis of the skin results in hard, raised areas (“sit-fasts”) clearly separated from the surrounding skin. These areas slough to leave ulcers, which heal and scar.

Treatment and Prevention of Lumpy skin disease in Cattle-. Attenuated virus vaccines may help control spread of lumpy skin disease in recent years beyond its ancestral home of Africa is alarming. Quarantine restrictions have proved to be of limited use. Vaccination with attenuated virus offers the most promising method of control and was effective in halting the spread of the disease in the Balkans.Administration of antibiotics to control secondary infection and good nursing care are recommended, but the large number of affected animals within a herd may preclude treatment.

Lumpy skin disease is now occurred at regional problem that requires high level of awareness at technical and political level. Government need to take strict action against the disease .

Agnipath Scheme

The government unveiled its new Agnipath scheme for recruiting soldiers below the rank of commissioned officers into the three services of the armed forces on 14th June, 2022.Under the new scheme, around 45,000 to 50,000 soldiers will be recruited annually and most will leave the service in just four years. Of the total annual recruits, only 25 per cent will be allowed to continue for another 15 years under permanent commission.

Format of the Scheme :

Aspirants between the ages of 17.5 years and 21 years will be eligible to apply. The scheme is only applicable to personnel below officer ranks. Recruitment will be done twice a year through rallies.The recruitment will be done on “all India, all class” recruitment to the services (from any caste, region, class or religious background). Currently, recruitment is based on ‘regiment system’ based on region and caste bases. There will be a training period of 6 months and deployment for three and a half years. Recruits will get starting salary of Rs 30,000, along with additional benefits which will go up to Rs 40,000 by the end of the four-year service.During this period, 30 per cent of their salary will be set aside under a Seva Nidhi programme, and the government will contribute an equal amount every month, and it will also accrue interest. At the end of the four-year period, each soldier will get Rs 11.71 lakh as a lump sum amount, which will be tax-free. For 25% of soldiers, who are re-selected, the initial four-year period will not be considered for retirement benefits.

Benefits :

• Make the armed forces much leaner and younger: For India’s over 13-lakh strong armed forces, the current average age profile is 32 years. It is envisaged it will come down by about 4-5 years by implementation of this scheme
• Reduce the defence pension bill: The government has either allocated or paid more than Rs. 3.3 lakh crore in defence pension since 2020.As per Army calculations, the savings for the government in this ‘Tour of Duty model’ of recruitment from just one sepoy would be around 11.5 cr (the army initially proposed a 3-year service model).
• Create “future-ready” soldiers: A youthful armed forces will allow them to be easily trained for new technologies.
• Increased employment opportunities and higher skilled workforce: Apart from job opportunities in the army, recruits because of the skills and experience acquired during the four-year service such soldiers will get employment in various fields.The central government will likely give preference to Agniveers in regular employment after their four years stint.

Concerns regarding the scheme:

• Present benefits and security of jobs will be lost: Recruits will not get permanent jobs or promised pension and health benefits even after retirement.
• Doubt about training: 6 months of short training may not be enough to trust them with the same kind of tasks that current troops can be trusted with.
• Erosion of loyalty: “All India, all class” recruitment to the services may lead to the erosion of the loyalty that a soldier has for his regiment.

The Agnipath Scheme will be the only route for recruitment into the military. Personnel recruited under this system are to be called Agniveers , which will be a new military rank. The introduction of the scheme has been criticised for lack of consultation and public debate. The Communist Party of India stated that it strongly disapproved the ‘Agnipath’ scheme that does disservice to India’s national interests. Professional armed forces cannot be raised by recruiting ‘soldiers on contract’ for a period of four years. This scheme, to save pension money, severely compromises the quality and efficiency of our professional armed forces. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav called the scheme, “negligent” and potentially “fatal” for the country’s future. Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) chief said that the people returning after four years of service would cause gang wars in the country. The scheme is scheduled to be implemented from September 2022.This scheme will bypass many things including long tenures, pension and other benefits which were there in old system. Opposition parties in India have criticized and expressed concerns about the consequences of the new scheme. They have asked the scheme to be put on hold and that the scheme be discussed in the Parliament.On 16 June 2022, violent protests erupted in several states in India where the army aspirants angry with the new scheme called for its rollback and damaged public property. By 17 June, 12 trains were set on fire, and the movement of 300 trains were affected. 214 trains were cancelled, 11 trains were diverted and 90 were terminated short of their destination. On 18 June, protesters in Bihar called a strike against the scheme. They clashed with the police and set fire on several vehicles since morning in Bihar. Train services were stopped in Bihar till 8 PM, on 18 June. They will be stopped again from 4AM onwards on 19 June. More than 350 trains were cancelled across India as the violence continued in several states. In Kerala a large protest march was held in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, against the scheme. The protesters said their strikes would continue till the Centre rolls back its decision and ensured justice.

Sources: The Indian Express and Wikipedia

Surtsey – The Young Volcanic Island

Surtsey Island

Most islands on Earth are older than millions of years, but Surtsey island is younger than some of the people reading this article. Surtsey is located near the southern coast of Iceland. It emerged from the Atlantic Ocean in a fiery eruption, which began 130 meters below see level in November 1963. During the next three and one-half years its volcanic core built up an island of one square mile area.  Since then, wave erosion has caused the island to steadily diminish in size: as of 2012, its surface area was half a square mile. Icelandic government has made it strictly off limit to the public, with only one tiny a small prefabricated hut used as research station. Tourists can’t set a foot on the island, but anyone can admire it from afar during a boat ride. Although it doesn’t show a direct threat to life and health, casual visitors can jeopardize the purity of one of the most important experiments in the history of the mankind. Because of which the island was able to thrive naturally and organically develop its own ecosystem, consisting of plants, birds, insects and seals. Surtsey has been producing unique long-term information on the colonization process of new land by plant and animal life.

Formation of the Island

The volcanic activities started on the sea floor few days before it became visible on the surface. The eruption site is 430 feet below sea level, and at this depth volcanic emissions and explosions would be suppressed and dissipated by the water pressure and density. Gradually, as repeated flows built up a mound of material that approached sea level, the explosions could no longer be contained, and activity broke the surface.

The eruptions took place at three separate vents along a northeast by southwest trending fissure. Over the weeks, explosions were continuous, and after just a few days the new island was formed. As the eruptions continued, they became concentrated at one vent along the crack and began to build the island into a more circular shape. The violent explosions caused by lava and sea water created a loose pile of volcanic rock, which was eroded swiftly by North Atlantic storms during the winter, reducing the island size to the half.

Beginning of Life and research on the Island

It was intensively studied by volcanologists during its eruption, and afterwards by botanists and other biologists as life forms gradually colonized the originally barren island. Since they began studying the island in 1964, scientists have observed, the first bacteria colonized it in only a few hours after the onset of the volcanic pumice over the water, the arrival of seeds carried by ocean currents, the appearance of molds and fungi, followed in 1965 by the first vascular plant, of which there were 10 species by the end of the first decade. By 2004, they numbered 60 together with 75 bryophytes, 71 lichens and 24 fungi. Eighty-nine species of birds have been recorded on Surtsey, 57 of which breed elsewhere in Iceland. The island is also home to 335 species of invertebrates. Spiders, worms, flies, and various types of beetles are also, among its main inhabitants.  Continuing their research, scientists expect to shed light on the theory of the origin of life on Earth, which still hides many mysteries.

Human footprints on the Island

The only substantial human interference over the island is in the form of a small hut made of natural materials, used by researchers while staying on the island. The hut has a few bunk beds and a solar power source to drive an emergency radio. There is also an abandoned lighthouse foundation. On a couple of occasions, few trespassers came in rowboats and planted potatoes and tomatoes on the island, which were immediately uprooted.

Future of the Island

Although erosion has caused it to reduce in size and might continue to do so, however, the good news is, its core is covered with harder lava, thus, this island is unlikely to disappear entirely in the near future. Additionally, because of its continuing protection, Surtsey will continue to provide invaluable data on primary succession and biological colonization long into the future. 

Indian Farming – Protest Against Farmers Act

Indian Farmers Act Protest 2020 – 2021

In the years of 2020 to 2021, there was a battle raging over just how free market India’s economy should become. In September 2020 the Parliament of India had passed three farm acts. India has seen largest farmer protest of the modern history, where, tens of thousands of farmers across the country were demanding, that the government should revoke this series of reforms that will change India’s agricultural sector.

Agriculture and allied sectors by far are the largest employer in India providing employment to more than 50% of the population and accounting for 17.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). India is the world’s largest producer of many fresh fruits, spices, jute, oil seeds and food staples like, rice or wheat. For decades, the government has shielded farmers from the free market by providing price supports on some crops, running wholesale markets where farmers can sell their goods on Minimum Selling Price (MSP), and rounding up buyers to guarantee sales. But when, the government planned to take a step back, with the hopes that the free market will boost an industry that has stagnated over time, farmers fear they’ll get the raw end of the deal, even if the free market helps the overall economy.

History of Agriculture in India

Agriculture has been an integral part of the Indian Economy, both in before and after Independence periods of India. In the Colonial British Era, agriculture was the only means of subsistence, as more than 85% of the Indian population was dependent on agriculture. Majority Indian peasants lived in poor conditions, due to scarcity of agricultural resources, dependency on unpredictable Monsoons for irrigation, Zamindari System and the taxes imposed by British Raj. This period is marked by several farmer protests in different parts of the country.

After independence, India adopted significant policy reforms in the National Five Year Plans, focusing on the goal of food grain self-sufficiency. It began with Several land reforms, adopting superior yielding, disease resistant crop varieties in combination with better farming knowledge and mechanization to improve productivity. A well-planned irrigation infrastructure was developed, that included a network of major and minor canals from rivers, groundwater well-based systems, tanks, and other rainwater harvesting projects for agricultural activities. This ushered in India’s Green Revolution. The states of Punjab and Haryana, led India’s green revolution and earned the distinction of being the country’s breadbasket.

The Farm Acts

  1. Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020
    1. expands the scope of trade areas of farmers’ produce from select areas to “any place of production, collection, aggregation”.
    1. allows electronic trading and e-commerce of scheduled farmers’ produce.
    1. prohibits state governments from levying any market fee, cess, or levy on farmers, traders, and electronic trading platforms for the trade of farmers’ produce conducted in an ‘outside trade area’.
  2. Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020
    1. provides a legal framework for farmers to enter into pre-arranged contracts with buyers including mention of pricing.
    1. defines a dispute resolution mechanism.
  3. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020
    1. removes foodstuff such as cereals, pulses, potato, onions, edible oilseeds, and oils, from the list of essential commodities, removing stockholding limits on agricultural items produced by Horticulture techniques except under “extraordinary circumstances”
    1. requires that imposition of any stock limit on agricultural produce only occur if there is a steep price rise.

Farmers Protest

Soon after the acts were introduced, unions began holding local protests, mostly in Punjab and Haryana. The methods of protest were Gherao, Dharna, Raasta roko, Demonstration, Suicide. A movement named Dili Chalo began, in which tens of thousands of farming union members marched towards the nation’s capital. The Indian government ordered the police and law enforcement of various states to stop the protesters using water cannons, batons, and tear gas to prevent the farmer unions from entering into Delhi. Various domestic and international NGOs supported the protesters by providing temporary shelters, food and healthcare services. Numerous deaths and fatalities were caused during the protest. All talks between farmers and central government to agree on common grounds remain inconclusive. The Supreme Court of India put a stay on the implementation of the farm laws in January 2021. Farmer leaders cheered and welcomed the stay order

End of the Protests

In late November 2021 the Modi administrators finally repealed the All three farm bills. Hundreds of farmers danced and celebrated the victory, they began removing roadblocks and dismantling thousands of makeshift homes along major highways. The protest was finally declared to be over and the farmers started returning to their homes happily.

North Sentinel Island – The Mysterious Place on Earth

North Sentinel Island

In the modern era, where technology is expanding at an unprecedented pace and people are exploring the possibility of Lunar inhabitation and leveraging Artificial Intelligence to perform tasks using machines that actually require human intelligence, it seems impossible to accept the fact that there is a place where people live in the Paleolithic era? What may seem strange to us, is the truth of the Sentinelese tribe, residing in the Bay of Bengal on the remote island of North Sentinel, is that they have not only avoided any contact with the outer world but stand as a warrior for their island if anyone tries to enter it.

A thick forest-like umbrella that prevents the world from knowing or gathering any information about this island. The funny part is that some don’t even know how many people actually call the island their home.

North Sentinel Island has many interesting facts to know about. No wonders, if you haven’t heard of North Sentinel Island, not many individuals are aware of it. North Sentinel Island is one of the largest islands amongst the cluster of islands within the Bay of Bengal and is part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India).

Geography

The North Sentinel Island is approximately the same size as New York’s Manhattan Island, about 59.6 km2. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tilted the tectonic plate under the island, lifting it by one to two meters. Large tracts of the surrounding coral reefs were exposed and became permanently dry land or shallow lagoons, extending all the island’s boundaries—by as much as one kilometer on the west and south sides. It is surrounded by coral reefs, and lacks natural harbors. The entire island, other than the shore, is forested. There is a narrow, white-sand beach encircling the island, behind which the ground rises 20 meters.

Flora and Fauna

The island is largely covered in tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest. Due to the lack of surveys, the exact composition of the terrestrial flora and fauna remain unknown. Maurice Vidal Portman in his 1880s expedition to the island, reported an open, “park-like” jungle with numerous groves of bulletwood and Malabar silk-cotton trees.

Indian boars are apparently found on the island and serves as a major food source for the Sentinelese, with reports by Portman referring to a “huge heap” of pig skulls near a Sentinelese village. North Sentinel Island, is also considered a globally Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International, as despite the lack of surveys, the pristine habitat likely supports a diversity of birdlife.

A large coral reef is known to circle the island, and mangroves are also known to fringe its banks. Sea turtles also, occur near the island and likely to be a part of diet for the Sentinelese. Sharks and Dolphins were also sighted on a survey near the island.

Sentinelese Tribe

Sentinelese are believed to owning this tiny island for almost 60,000 years. Their language is totally unknown and it doesn’t hold any similarity with other tribes in the Andaman Island. The most interesting fact about these human beings are that they have not yet discovered how to create fire!! Which means, they are still living in Stone age, representing the past of human race. The Sentinelese are among the last of the isolated communities left in the world who live without any communication with globalized civilization. Their exact population is still unknown; it is believed to be between 50 and 500.

Fascinating facts

  • The Sentinelese are one among the few tribes in the entire world that have been truly isolated.
  • Visiting the North Sentinel Island is prohibited by the Indian government.
  • The Sentinelese tribe survived the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
  • There is no data regarding the actual population of the island.
  • Anthropologists and researchers consider that the Sentinelese are descendants of Africa, resulting in theories that the island was settled by vacationers from the west coast of Africa.
  • Sentinelese language is not known by anyone outside of their community.
  • The lifestyle of the tribes is very unique. They still collect food in the forest for hunting. They also use coastal water as a way of seafood.
  •  They make boats that are too narrow and described as “too narrow to fit two feet”.
  • Weapons and tools used by the Sentinelese are mostly made of stone and animal bones. 
  • The Indian navy, which repeatedly patrols the Andaman Island chain, has an official coverage known as “eyes on, hands-off.” Military members watch the island to make sure that no outsiders enterprise to its shores whereas they staying away from the Sentinelese people.
  • Sentinelese are known for killing any guests visiting them. On several previous expeditions and rescue operations, they have killed all the people visiting them.
  • Sentinelese don’t accept gifts from outsiders; however, they have developed great liking for coconuts, though, they don’t know how to grow them on their own. On several previous occasions they have accepted coconuts as gifts.

The History of Capital Market in India

Indian Capital Market

Indian Capital Markets are one of the oldest in Asia. The earliest records of security dealings in India are ambiguous and roughly dates back to 200 years ago. Initially, in the eighteenth century, East India Company securities were traded in the country. Later in 1861 with the American Civil War began and opening of the Suez Canal, led to a tremendous increase in Exports to the United Kingdom and United States. Several companies were registered under the British Companies Act during this period and many banks came forward to handle the finances relating to these trades. An unincorporated body of a dozen of stockbrokers, which informally traded cotton in the city, under a banyan tree in front of the Town hall in Mumbai formed an association. Afterwards, in 1985 it became an incorporated body, which we know known by the name of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Until the end of the nineteenth century securities trading remained unorganized with the main trading centers in Mumbai and Kolkata. Trading activities flourished during this period, resulting in a boom in share prices. This boom, the first in the history of the Indian capital market lasted for about half a decade. However, there had been much fluctuation in the stock market on account of the American war and the battles in Europe, therefore it was more prominently known as ‘Satta Bazar’, which means a market of speculations.

Pre-Independence Era of Indian Capital Market

British government was not interested in the economic growth of the country. As a result, many foreign companies depended on the London capital market for funds rather than in the Indian capital market. Hence, the Indian capital market was not properly developed before Independence. The growth of the industrial securities market was very much hampered since, there were very few companies and the number of securities traded in the stock exchanges was still smaller. A large part of the capital market consisted of the gilt-edged marker for government and semi-government securities. Business was essentially confined to company owners and brokers, with very little interest displayed by the general public.

Post-Independence Era of Indian Capital Market

In the post-independence period also, the size the capital market remained relatively small. During the first and second five-year plans, the government’s emphasis was on the development of the agricultural sector and public sector undertakings. The public sector undertakings were healthier than the private undertakings in terms of paid-up capital but shares were not listed on the stock exchanges. Moreover, the Controller of Capital Issues (CI) closely supervised and controlled the timing, composition, interest rates pricing allotment and floatation consist of new issues. These strict regulations de-motivated many companies from going public for almost four and a half decades.

However, since 1951, the Indian capital market has been broadening significantly and the volume of saving and investment has shown steady improvements. All types of encouragement and tax relief exist in the country to promote savings. Besides, many steps have been taken to protect the interests of investors, to illustrate, the government enacted the Securities Contracts (regulation) Act and Companies Act in 1956. A very important indicator of the growth of the capital market, is the growth of joint stock companies or corporate enterprises. In 1951 there were about 28,500 companies, both public limited and private limited companies with a paid-up capital of Rs. 775 crores.

In the 1950s, Tata Steel, Bombay Dyeing, National Rayon, Kohinoor mills and Century textiles were the favorite scripts of speculators. Speculation, non-payment or defaults were prominent features of the market.

The 1960s was characterized by the wars and droughts in the country which led bearish trends. Financial institutions such as LIC and GIC helped to revive the sentiment by emerging as the most important group of investors. The first mutual fund of India, the Unit Trust of India (UTI) came into existence in 1964.

In the 1970s Badla trading was resumed under the disguised forms of hand delivery contracts. Badla trading involved buying stocks with borrowed money with the stock exchange acting as an intermediary at an interest rate determined by the demand for the underlying stock and a maturity not greater than 70 days. This revived the market. However, the capital market received another severe setback in 1974, when the government broadcasted the Dividend Restriction ordinance. An Act to provide, in the interests of national economic development, for temporary restrictions on the power of certain companies to declare dividends out of profits and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. This led to a slump in market capitalism at the BSE by about 20 per cent overnight and the stock market did not open for nearly a fortnight.

Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) was promulgated in 1973. This act enforced all non-banking foreign branches and subsidiaries with foreign equity exceeding 40 per cent had to obtain permission to establish new undertakings, to purchase shares in existing companies, or to acquire wholly or partly any other company. Several MNCs opted out of India. One hundred and twenty-three MNCs offered shares worth Rs 150 crore, creating 1.8 million shareholders within four years. The offer prices of FERA shares were lower than their intrinsic worth. Hence, for the first the FERA dilution created an equity cult in India. It was the spate of FERA issues that gave a real fillip to the Indian stock markets. For the first time, many investors got an opportunity to invest in the stocks of such MNCs as Colgate and Hindustan Liver Limited. One mass participation by retail investors came into picture, when in 1980s, entrepreneur, Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani came up with the Reliance IPO, followed by BSE introducing the BSE Sensex, providing a means to measure overall performance of the exchange to the investors.

CAATSA

The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) is a US federal law, enacted on 27th July, 2017 and came into effect from January 2018, that has imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia. This act prevents trade partners of the United States in entering into bilateral contracts with these three nations. The Act empowers the US President to impose at least five of the 12 listed sanctions on persons engaged in a significant transaction with Russian defence and intelligence sectors. Its ultimate goal is to prevent revenue from flowing to the Russian Government. The Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), aims at taking punitive measures against Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The Act primarily deals with sanctions on the Russian oil and gas industry, defenceand security sector, and financial institutions, in the backdrop of its military intervention in Ukraine and its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections.

Background of CAATSA :

The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act came against the backdrop of three events that would have serious implications regarding geopolitics. They are as follows:
• Iran’s Nuclear Missiles Program: The United States Government believed that any progress in Iran’s nuclear missile program would further destabilize the Middle-East as Iran has repeatedly made threats against Israel, a key NATO and United States ally. The CAATSA gives authority to the President of the United States to impose sanctions against any party involved in the sale and transfer of military technology to Iran.
• Curbing Russian influence: The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and allegations of interventions in the US polls of 2016 was the catalyst for the CAATSA against Russia. Under the act sanctions can be imposed on Russia should the state or private individuals be found involved in activities such as cybersecurity, crude oil projects,  financial institutions, corruption,  human rights abuses etc.
• North Korea and weapons of mass destruction: North Korea has a nuclear weapons military program and as of 2020 it’s estimated missile arsenal includes 30-40 warheads with enough fissile materials to produce 6-7 missiles per year. North Korea has made repeated threats against its South Korea repeatedly and also against the United States.

Types of Sanctions:
The CAATSA contains 12 types of sanctions. There areonly two sanctions that may impact either India-Russia relations or India-US relations.
• Prohibition of Banking transactions: It is likely to have an impact on India-Russia relations.This would mean difficulties for India in making payments in US Dollars to Russia for the purchase of the S-400 systems.
• Export Sanction: The second sanction will have greater consequences for India-US relations. It has the potential to completely derail the India-US Strategic and Defence partnership, as it will deny the license for, and export of, any items controlled by the US.

India’s Concerns :

Seventy per cent of Indian military hardware is Russian in origin. While the US has become its second-largest defence supplier, mainly of aircraft and artillery, India still relies heavily on Russian equipment, such as submarines and missiles that the US has been unwilling to provide. The USA President was given the authority in 2018 to waive CAATSA sanctions on a case by case basis. A waiver of such CAATSA for India has been under consideration since the law had come into force. In fact, India was threatened with sanctions when it decided to buy the S-400 missile launchers from Russia and buy crude oil from Iran. What is also worrying for India is the example of Turkey who, despite being a key NATO ally, was expelled from the US F-35 fighter jet programme when it purchased S-400 missile systems from Russia. Yet India went ahead with the S-400 deal in 2018 with no negative reaction from the United States government. The delivery of the S-400s is expected to finish by 2025. However, the USA has repeatedly stated that India should not assume it will get a waiver. Now India could also face USA sanctions for purchasing the S-400 Triumf missile defense system from Russia under the CAATSA. If implemented stringently, CAATSA would impact Indian defence procurement from Russia. Lately, the United States Government has stated that although a waiver is not possible at this time, a blanket application of sanctions against India for its defence contracts with Russia is also not being considered. India stopped importing oil from Iran in mid-2019 following sanctions on the Persian Gulf nation by the Trump administration.Iran in 2017-18 was its third-largest supplier after Iraq and Saudi Arabia and met about 10% of total needs.Iran getting closer to China is also a serious concern for India.

India needs to balance its relation with both Russia and USA, so that its national interest is not compromised. Russia always saw India as a balancer that’s why Russia facilitated India’s inclusion into Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and formation of Russia-India-China (RIC) grouping.The defence procurement for India has become significant amid deadly clashes with China on Line of Actual Control (LAC). Further, Russia is an all weather defence partner of India.India today is in a unique position to have a favourable relation with all great powers.It needs to develop closer ties with the United States, which could balance any moves towards a strategic partnership between China and Russia. Thus, India must leverage this position to help in building a peaceful world order.

Sources : The Hindu and Drishti IAS

Another COVID-19 Pill-” Paxlovid”

Pfizer announced its investigational novel COVID-19 oral antiviral medicine , Paxlovid reduced hospitalization & death. The adminstration has also arranged to purchase 20 million corses of drug. It will be manufactured & distributed to pharmacies in weeks & months.

It is orally bioavailable drug used against HIV that is active against M*pro, a viral drug that play an essential role in viral replication by leaving the 2 viral polyproteins . It has demonstrated antiviral activity against all coronavirus that are known to infect humans. It is ritonavir , a strong cytochrome P450 ( CYP) 3 A4 drug and boosting agent that has been used to boost HIV . How may tablet are needed? After it is prescribed, Paxlovid is administered as three tablets taken together orally twice daily for five days, for a total of 30 tablets. What are the side effects? Possible side effects of Paxlovid include impaired sense of taste, diarrhea, high blood pressure and muscle aches, says the FDA. Using Paxlovid at the same time as certain other drugs may result in “potentially significant drug interactions.” Consult with your doctor. Using Paxlovid in people with uncontrolled or undiagnosed HIV-1 infection may lead to HIV-1 drug resistance, the FDA said. How did Paxlovid performed in clinical studies? Paxlovid significantly reduced the number of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by 88 percent, compared to placebo among patients treated within five days of symptom onset and who did not receive COVID-19 therapeutic monoclonal antibody treatment.

It is developed by Pfizer and can be taken at home to help keep high- risk patients from getting so sick that they need to be hospitalized.

According to Kaiser health information it not always easy to find a prescription; one individuals told that RPR that it took an usual amount of knowledge and connections.

The medication company named Pfizer is taken a stepping towards vaccine named “Paxlovid” to reduce hospitalization and may offer to India at lower prices.

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

The OIC is the second largest intergovernmental organisation after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states. It is the collective voice of the Muslim world.These are countries with Islam as the state religion, but also those in which Muslims form the majority of the population. Occasionally, members would also be admitted in which Muslims are only a minority but play a significant role for the country.The OIC’s 57 current members are located primarily in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia. Together they cover an area of 31.66 m km² with a population of about 1.89 bn. This corresponds to about 24.35% of the world’s population.

The organisation of Islamic Cooperation was established by First Islamic Summit Conference held in Morocco in September 1969 , to marshal the Islamic world after an act of arson at the Aqsa Mosque in Jersualem by a 28 year old Australian in 1969.Its headquarters is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The organisation plans to permanently move its headquarters to East Jerusalem once the disputed city is liberated. It aspires to hold Israel accountable for war crimes and violations of international laws.

Objective of the OIC :

The main objective of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation is to promote cooperation between Muslim states in the fields of culture, science, social cooperation and the economy. It endeavors to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world , prevent growing dissention in muslim societies and work to ensure that member states take united stand at UN General Assembly, Human Rights council and other international fora. An essential part of its work is also the protection of the Islamic faith and the holy sites. It has consultative and cooperative relation with UN and other intergovernmental organisation to protect the interests of Muslims and settle conflicts and disputes involving member states eg. , territorial conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

OIC Functioning :

The membership is to be ratified with full consensus at the OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers. UN members with a Muslim majority can join the organization. All decision-making in the forum requires a quorum defined by the presence of two-thirds of the member states and complete consensus.In case a consensus cannot be reached, decisions shall be made by a two-thirds majority of members present and voting.The Council of Foreign Ministers is the chief decision-making body and meets annually to decide on how to implement the OIC’s general policies. The OIC is financed by the member states proportionate to their national incomes.Islamic Summit is the supreme authority of the organisation.Convening every three years, Islamic Summit deliberates, takes policy decisions, provides guidance on issues relevant to the organisation and considers issues of concern to the member states.

Status of India’s relationship with OIC as an organisation :

Islam is the second-largest religion in India after Hinduism, with over 200 million Muslims making up approximately 15% of the country’s total population.India has the largest Muslim population outside of Muslim-majority or Islamic states. However, India’s relationship with Pakistan, the latter being an Islamic state, has been riddled with hostilities and armed conflict since the 1947 Partition of India. The poor relationship between the two states has had a direct impact on India–OIC relations due to Pakistan’s status as a founding member of the organization. India has pushed for the OIC to accept it as a member state, arguing that Indian Muslims comprise 11% of the world’s total Muslim population; Pakistan has staunchly opposed the entry of India into the organization.Pakistan has cited its conflict with India over the Kashmir region as the reason for its opposition, and frequently accuses India of perpetrating widespread human rights abuses against Kashmiris in the Indian-administered territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which has witnessed an ongoing militant uprising since the 1980s.The OIC has been urged to press India on the Kashmir dispute, and has faced pushback from Indian officials for occasional references to Jammu and Kashmir as territory that is militarily occupied by India. The Muslim world has largely lent its support to Pakistan over India during any armed conflicts between the two states.

Criticism of the  OIC :

• Prioritise Rights of Muslim Minorities: The OIC had become a premise for ‘window dressing’, more interested in the rights of Muslim minorities in places such as Palestine or Myanmar than the human rights violations of its member states.

• Incompetent at investigating Human Rights Violations: Thebody lacks power and resources to investigate human rights violations or enforce its decisions through signed treaties and declarations.

• Centred around Quranic Values: The organisation is largely restricted toarbitrating in conflicts where both parties are Muslims.This is because the organisation is centred around Quranic values which believes to make it a qualified arbitrator.

• Failed to Establish a Cooperative Venture: The OIC has failed to establish a cooperative venture among its members, who were either capital-rich and labour-scarce countries or manpower-rich and capital scarce.The organization has not evolved to become a significant player either in international politics or in the area of economic cooperation.

Sources : The Hindu, The Indian Express and Drishti IAS

Scientists dicovered “Fast Radio Burst”-

According to radio astronomy, a fast radio burst is transient radio pulse of length ranging from fraction of millisecond to few milliseconds. Astronomers detected a signal from galaxy believed to a nearly 3 billion light years away called fast radio burst. This radio burst is said to be “co-located with compact , persistent radio source with dwarf host galaxy of high specific star- formation”.

It estimate the average FRB releases much energy in millisecond as sun put out in 3 days.The first FRB was discovered by Ducan Loriner and his student David Warkenic in 2007 when they were looking through archieval pulsar survey data, and it is therefore commonly referred to as the Loriner . Only a handful of emissions have been traced to specific areas of the sky, most indicating sources in other galaxies.In 2020, a source within the Milky Way – most likely belonging to a type of neutron star called a magnetar – was confirmed to be a fast radio burst emitter.The flash of radio waves is incredibly bright, if distant, comparable to the power released by hundreds of millions of suns in just a few milliseconds. This intensity suggests powerful objects like black holes and neutron stars could be involved, with highly dense bodies such as magnetars and pulsars as likely culprits.The events were once considered to be largely transient – they seemed to happen once, without obvious signs of a repeat emission. In fact, it was only in 2016 that astronomers found any evidence of multiple bursts from the Locate the perfect prospect with real-time Linked in Sales Navigator.

The events were once considered to be largely transient – they seemed to happen once, without obvious signs of a repeat emission. In fact, it was only in 2016 that astronomers found any evidence of multiple bursts from the same source.A number of ‘repeaters’ have been identified since then, with some researchers venturing that many, if not all FRB sources could routinely emit bursts in sequences too difficult to detect using current instruments. This hypothesis was supported when that a FRB observed three years previously had since repeated faintly on two more recent occasions scientists reported . Shortly after this report, astronomers with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Collaboration published findings of the first FRB we know of that’s repeating in a distinct pattern. The FRB has a predictable pattern of hourly activity over the course of four days, followed by 12 days of quiet.With much still to learn about FRB, their mechanism is one of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy.

India-Iran relations

India-Iran ties are shaped around energy, Central Asia and security. These are currently being influenced by hostile relations between the US and Iran. The US has imposed sanctions against Iran in response to the Iranian nuclear program and Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad, that are considered terrorist organizations by the US. The US has recently imposed sanctions through the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which imposes unilateral sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea.

Iran’s economy is largely dependent on its oil exports; with the sanctions in place, the country is cut off from its main source of revenue. India has steadily cut imports from Iran as sanctions from the US and other Western countries blocked payment channels and crippled shipment routes. To offset the reduction in Iranian oil imports, India has turned to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and Azerbaijan, which have sufficient crude capacity to replace Iranian crude oil imports.

Iran is a geopolitical entity in its own right. Iran has borders with a large number of countries that India could not access because of the barrier that Pakistan posed to India’s overland connectivity plans. India’s relationship with Iran has been built carefully and thoughtfully by all past governments as Iran for India is not just an energy supplier from the Persian Gulf regions. Infrastructure building activities in Afghanistan are done with support from Iran. India is worried about the situation in Afghanistan because of the larger national security concern attached to the region : Possibility of dominance by Taliban, Rise of extremist threats to India, Pakistani influence and Strategic encirclement by China. Afghanistan is particularly important for both India and China as there is a possibility of a power vacuum in the country after the US’ withdrawal. So, Iran is vital for India to secure its interest in Afghanistan and Central Asia as it can connect India to these regions.

Iran’s Chabahar port is vital for India’s geopolitical and economic interests in West Asia, Afghanistan and Central Asia, which is a part of India’s extended neighbourhood.The trade and transit corridor allows India to access these regions over land by bypassing Pakistan.The significance of this port has risen in recent years because of China’s bid to increase its influence in India’s immediate and extended neighbourhood via BRI and ‘cheque book’ diplomacy and investments in ports like Gwadar.Chabahar’s location as a gateway to the Indian Ocean makes it ideal and lucrative regional shipping hub.It offers India a geopolitical vantage point from which it can keep an eye on Pakistan’s Gwadar port. Located barely 90 km away, Gwadar port is being developed by China as the pivot of its investment in Pakistan and a key juncture in its ambitious BRI. Iran recently announced that it would initiate work on a crucial rail link between Zahedan and Chabahar Port alone. India had earlier committed to jointly develop the rail track in 2016. Iran justified this move by stating funding delays from India.India’s External Affairs Ministry clarified that it had been left to Tehran to nominate an authorised entity to finalise outstanding issues – technical and financial – after the meeting between two sides in December 2019 to review the railway project.India being kicked out of this important project may be due to India’s close ties with the US and China’s growing influence in Iran, which is facing increasing economic crisis because of sanctions.

India’s relations with Iran are often under duress due to US pressure and sanctions that are blocking legitimate financial highways to and from Iran.India is facing difficulties in balancing its relations with Iran and US as most suppliers for projects in the sanction-hit country fear their names featuring in US blacklists.It is also forced to take sides with the US despite numerous issues because it is facing an almost-war like the situation with China in Ladakh.The US is motivated primarily to protect its own interests in India and India’s neighbourhood, with little to benefit for India.Yet, India seems to be reluctant to improve its ties with Iran after the US’ withdrawal from the nuclear deal. This convinced Iran that India would not collaborate to its needs to counter the US sanctions.This makes an alliance with China more advantageous, though Beijing would not endanger its already tense relations with the US.

Iran knows the risk of close ties with China and is wary about it. However, it has a limited choice as US’ aggressive foreign policies has isolated it from the world and crippled its economy. Iran is against India’s decision to abrogate Article 370 and 35A.It has called on India and Pakistan to show restraint and prevent the killing of innocent Kashmiris, revealing possible close ties between Pakistan and Iran.Iran also voiced against extremist Hindus and their parties during the 2020 Delhi riots.Apart from these issues, Iran also sidelined India’s ONGC from exploration rights at its Farzad B Gas field, stating that it will engage the company at a later date.

As India is treading a fine line in balancing relations with the US, China and Iran while striving to augment its political influence in West Asia, embracing one country over the other is not an option for India.Therefore, a multilateral foreign policy is a way forward.India must retain its involvement in the Chabahar port development because of the geostrategic significance. In the immediate term, India should improve its multi-alignment credentials to absorb investments into the port projects from the public and private sector, boost maritime cooperation among littoral countries to enhance the transit of goods, and foster regional partnership for the Chabahar port development.Based on the mutual geostrategic and energy interests, India could collaborate with Japan under the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.Japan’s participation would enhance the multilateral characteristics of the transit hub in the region, unlike the China-owned Gwadar port. This will further enhance multilateral investments to solidify regional economic partnerships that enable the sustainability of the port. In conclusion, India-Iran relations are economically and geostrategically important for New Delhi. A new multilateral foreign policy strategy is vital for India to maintain strategic autonomy that favours inclusive growth and national interests.

Sources: The Hindu, The Indian Express , The diplomat and IAS express.

The Craze for going Abroad

Should I study in India or Abroad? This is the dilemma every youngster in India is facing nowadays. As we know India’s  education system is totally a mess. It is just theory based with zero practical knowledge given to students whereas in Western countries equal importance is given to practical knowledge along with theory. As soon as they pass out from their higher secondary school ,they start thinking about doing ILETS and going abroad as a study visa is one of the easiest ways to go abroad. The craze for going abroad started in the 80’s and it is still in Trend. However, earlier only rich and affluent families used to send their children abroad for study but nowadays middle class families with the help of some  scholarships are able to send their children to Abroad.

Do you know why they are crazy to go and study abroad? The reasons are obvious. India has failed to provide employment to its youth. According to a recent survey , India’s Unemployment rate is quite High. However there is also  no statistics available on the success rate of students going abroad . Unemployment and poverty are the main reasons why people choose to settle abroad. Good wealth and good basic facilities of living attract people from third world countries. Another reason which works as a bait for indian people to go abroad is their high standards of living. As the process of development started early in western countries so they developed early compared to the third world countries which are lacking behind. 

Along with high quality education they provide wide exposure to students which enhances their learning and understanding skills. With exposure students can implement what they have learnt in social science classes. Another thing which is good about studying in Abroad that students become independent there. They start earning and need not to depend on their parents for expenses and all which is not the case in third world countries like India.

Like a coin has two sides, so does it. after reading all above mentioned reasons of youth going and settling abroad, you all must be wondering about the drawbacks  of settling there . First of all  it is a one way street . Those  who go and study there hardly come back to their home town because high pay scale and good working facilities keep them bound there only. Students also go through emotional breakdown as they are studying all alone in a foreign country. Some degrees become useless as their home country might not give them recognition. 

In a nutshell, people are going crazy about going abroad and want to settle there only. One of the easiest and legal ways to go there is by getting a study Visa and then settling down there. But those who are not able to make it,  try other illegal ways to enter abroad and end up becoming illegal immigrants in an alien country. 

“Education”-A Weapon For Developing Nation

The process of receiving or giving an sysmatic instruction, especially at a school or university. Education originated as transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next.

The formal education is usually in school, where a person may learn basic, academic, or trade skills. Small children often attend a nursery or kindergarden but often formal education begins in elementary school & continuous with secondary school.

Types of Education- Formal education- This is also known as formal learning which usually takes place within the premises of the school. It refers to the basic academic knowledge that a child learns in a formal manner.This continues from an elementary school to secondary school and further on to colleges. Such an education is provided by specially qualified teachers who are efficient enough with the art of instruction.The student and the teacher are both aware of the facts and engage themselves through a process of education. Some of the examples formal education are classroom lea Institute grading/certification, or planned education of different subjects with a proper syllabus acquired by attending an institution.

Informal education-This is the type of education wherein a parent is teaching a child things that are beyond academics like preparing a meal or riding a bicycle.People can also get informal education through books or educational websites. This is an education that is not derived in schools through a proper learning method. It is not pre-planned nor deliberate.It is an experience that an individual garners by undergoing regular pra and observing others. Some of the examples may be teaching a child witn some basic personality traits, learning a mother tongue, performing certain extracurricular activities, etc. Non-formal education – It refers to adult basic education, adult literacy education, or skill development. It can take different forms of learning, which is consistently and systematically provided in order to develop a particular skill or ability in an individual.This type of education is highly flexible and includes a wide range of activities. Some of the examples may be fitness programs, community-based adult education courses, and free course different platforms. Splato’s academy, mosaic from Pompeii Education began in prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. In pre literate societies, this was achieved orally and through imitation. Story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be readily learned through imitation, formal education developed. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom. Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi in the Chinese edition of Euclid’s Elements published in 1607.

Chinese edition of Euclid’s Elements published in 1607Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BC, became the successor to Athens as the intellectual cradle of Ancient Greece. There, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BC. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE 476.In China, Confucius (551-479 BC), of the State of Lu, was the country’s most influential ancient philosopher, whose educational outlook continues to influence the societies of China and neighbours like Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Confucius gathered disciples and searched in vain for a ruler who would adopt his ideals for good governance, but his Analects were written down by followers and have continued to influence education in East Asia into the modern era. The Aztecs had schools for the noble youths called Calmecac where they would receive rigorous religious and mi The Aztecs had schools for the noble youths called Calmecac where they would receive rigorous religious and military training. The Aztecs also had a well-developed theory about education, which has an equivalent word in Nahuatl called tlacahuapahualiztli. It means “the art of raising or educating a person”,or “the art of strengthening or bringing up men”. This was a broad conceptualization of education, which prescribed that it begins at home, supported by formal schooling, and reinforced by community living. Historians cite that formal education was mandatory for everyone regardless of social class and gender. There was also the word neixtlamachiliztli , which is “the act of giving wisdom to the face. These concepts underscore a complex set of educational practices, which was oriented towards communicating to the next generation the experience and intellectual heritage of the past for the purpose of individual development and his integration into the community.After the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Eurono.

Elsewhere during the Middle Ages, Islamic science and mathematics flourished under the Islamic caliphate which was established across the Middle East, extending from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Indus in the east and to the Almoravid Dynasty and Mali Empire in the south.The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts and sciences spread out across the globe. Missionaries and scholars also brought back new ideas from other civilizations – as with the Jesuit China missions who porgmissio s who played a significant role in the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and Europe, translating works from Europe like Euclid’s Elements for Chinese scholars and the thoughts of Confucius for European audiences. The Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. Much of modern traditional Western and Eastern education is based on the Prussian education system.In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age. Due to this the proliferation of compulsory education, combined with population growth, UNESCO has calculated that in the next 30 years more people will receive formal education than in all Education . Importance of Education- It helps a person to get knowledge and improve confidence in life. It can help you improve in your career and your personal growth. An educated person can become a great citizen in society. It helps you to take the right decisions in life.The modern, developed and industrialised world is running on the wheels of education. To be able to survive in the competitive world, we all need education as a torch that leads the way. Mentioned below are the various features of education which outline the importance of education in human life. Safety Against Crime: The chances often educated person getting involved in crime or criminal acts are very low. An educated person is well aware of his/ her surroundings and is less susceptible to getting cheated or be fooled Women Empowerment: The empowerment of women is an essential and important pillar to optimize the good functioning .

Women Empowerment: The empowerment of women is an essential and important pillar to optimize the good functioning of our society and nation as a whole. We can break old customs like child marriage, sati, dowry, etc only by educating the men and women of our nation. The fundamental right of Right to Freedom and Expression can only be achieved if the women of our country are educated and empowered. We can win the fight against the many social evils. Removing Poverty: Education is pivotal in removing our poverty from our society and our country. The clutches of poverty are very harsh and one of the main factors behind all the problems of our society. If a person if well educated, he/she can get a good job and earn money to sustain his/her family Preventing War and Terrorism: Education teaches everyone the importance of peace and Brother, the importance of staving united and Talk to a expert.

Preventing War and Terrorism:Education teaches everyone the importance of peace and brotherhood. The importance of staying united and spreading love is the need of the hour. To achieve world peace and prevent war and terrorism, education is important. Maintaining Law and Order: A good political ideology can only be developed if the citizens of our country are educated and taught the importance of following and respecting the law and order of our country. Law abiding citizens contribute majorly in improving and sustaining the law and order of the country and the world.Importance of Education for a Country below are the reasons why education is important for our country, as well as any country in the world.Citizens of a country understand true potential through the means of Talk to an expert.

Education is always remains the backbone of the nation and the government also made changes in education policy 2020 for development of the country.

Bad Bank

A bad bank is a financial entity set up to buy non performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans, from banks. It is not involved in lending and taking deposits, but helps commercial banks clean up their balance sheets and resolve bad loans.It buys bad debtors of a bank at a mutually agreed value and attempts to recover the debts or associated securities by itself.

The aim of setting up a bad bank is to help ease the burden on banks by taking bad loans off their balance sheets and get them to lend again to customers without constraints. After the purchase of a bad loan from a bank, the bad bank may later try to restructure and sell the NPA to investors who might be interested in purchasing it. A bad bank makes a profit in its operations if it manages to sell the loan at a price higher than what it paid to acquire the loan from a commercial bank. A supposed advantage in setting up a bad bank is that it can help consolidate all bad loans of banks under a single exclusive entity. The one time transfer of assets out of the balance sheets will relieve banks of their assets out of bank’s balance sheets will relieve banks of their stressed assets and allow them to focus on their core business of lending. Banks with clean balance sheets can mobilize fresh capital from the market and improve their credit growth, which is crucial for spurring investments. Bad banks would also give an impetus to India’s economic growth , which has been affected by heightened risk aversion arising from the unbridled growth in NPAs . And the bad bank will unlock trapped capital, which will be a net positive for the economy in the long term. The idea of a bad bank has been tried out in countries such as the U.S.,Germany, Japan and others in the past. Some experts believe that by taking bad loans off banks, a bad bank can free capital of over ₹ 5 lakh crore that is locked in by banks as provisions against these bad loans. This will give banks the freedom to use the freed customers.

It is argued that creating a bad bank is just shifting the problem from one place to another.Without fundamental reforms to solve the NPA problem, the bad bank is likely to become a warehouse for bad loans without any recovery taking place. An important concern is regarding mobilizing capital for the bad bank. In an economy hit by the pandemic, it is hard to find buyers for distressed assets and the Government is also in a tight fiscal position. There is no clear procedure to determine at what price and which loans should be transferred to the bad banks.

Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan was cautious about the idea of a bad bank in which banks held a majority stake. In his book ‘I Do What I Do,’ the celebrated economist and banker had pointed out that if a bad bank was in the public sector, the reluctance to act would merely be shifted to the bad bank.

Sources : The Hindu, Drishti IAS , Wikipedia

The origin of “monkey pox”-

The monkeypox is a rare and dangerous viral disease which is found in Europe and US, has raised red flags in several countries. It is rare, usually mild infection as it is contaminated from infected wild animals in Africa.

It was discovered in 1958 when two- pox like outbreaks occurred in colonies of monkey kept for research, thus leading in its name says US centres for disease controla and prevention (CDC).

It is caused by monkeypox virsuses, a type of orthopoxvirus.One of two types in humans the one is African type causes a less severe disease than central African type.This may be spread from handling bushmeat, animal bites or scratches, body fluids, contaminated objects or other than less contact with infected persons.

Symptoms-. It includes headache, muscle pains ,fever and fatigue.It may intially appar like flu.

It can resemble an chickenpox, measles and smallpox, but it is distinguished by presence of swollen glands.

They appear behind the ear, below the jaw, in neck or in groin before onset of rash.

Many cases in 2022 monkeypox an outbreak presented with genital and penianal lesions, fever , swollen lymph.

How To Prevent-

Smallpox vaccine has been reported to reduce risk of monkeypox among previously vaccinated person in Africa.

The (CDC) recommends that person who investigating monkeypox outbreak and involved in caring for infected persons should receive smallpox vaccination.

The (CDC) does not recommends pre- exposure vaccination for unexposed veterinarian, veterinary staff, or animal control officers.

The( CDC) recommends that healthcare providers done a full set of personal protective equipment.

The disease is rare and dangerous so the people must be aware of the infection and should be vaccinated timely to avoid the chance to get infected.

Does language affect thought?

What is language? Linguists, psycholinguists, neurologists, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers have all tried to answer this question. ‘Language’ is often used interchangeably with ‘communication’, but they are not the same. Animals can communicate with each other, but they can’t be said to have language. Language, especially human language is unique and radically different from other types of tools of communication because of its immense vocabulary, ordered structure, use of metaphor and analogy, and syntactic flexibility. Human language can, thus, be broadly defined as an amalgam of lexicon, syntax, and semantics. Our identity is influenced by the language we speak. Identity can be broadly classified into ‘personal’ and ‘collective’ identity. Personal identity is, basically, a definition of yourself, and collective identity is how you define yourself in relation to others. Our identity is defined by myriad factors such as our beliefs, cognition, perception, culture, and tradition. The language we speak influences these factors and thus influences and cultivates our personal and collective identity.

Language affects the way we think. There is a hypothesis in linguistics known as linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir-Whorf or the Whorf hypothesis. It concerns the relationship between language and thought. According to the Whorfian hypothesis, the language one speaks influences one’s cognition and perception of the world and thus people’s perception is relative to their spoken language. Nuances and idiosyncrasies in our language affect the way we communicate with and perceive the world, thus influencing our perception and cognition. There is empirical evidence available that establishes a link between language and thought, for example, the study of Chinese bilinguals and dialectical thinking. Eastern cultures and languages are proven to promote dialectical thinking. A group of researchers conducted a study in 2013 to see if Chinese bilinguals displayed different levels of dialectical thinking when communicating in different languages. The study concluded that the Chinese bilinguals displayed higher levels of dialectical thinking when primed by the Chinese language than with the English language (Chen et al., 2013).

The study regarding the gender of words and their effect on the speaker’s perception and cognition also helps establish a link between language and thought. The study conducted in 2003 asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects that have opposite gender assignments in those 2 languages. When the speakers were asked to describe a “key” which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish, German speakers used words like “hard”, “jagged”, “heavy” whereas Spanish speakers used words like “delicate”, “intricate”, and “lovely”. When asked to describe a “bridge”, feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, German speakers used words like “elegant” and “fragile” whereas Spanish speakers used “strong” and “sturdy” (Boroditsky 6).

These studies, to some extent, prove the Whorfian hypothesis. We think in our primary language, and we alter our thinking to fit our language. We can think without language, but we need language to know that we are thinking. Language thus influences our cognition and thought processes.

Language affects the way we perceive the world. Perception is subjective. The same objects evoke different meanings for different people and thus the way we experience the environment around us also differs from person to person due to different individual values, beliefs, culture, and language. Lera Boroditsky’s work with the Pormpuraaw community shows how language can influence a person’s perception of the world. The pormpuraaw community of aboriginal Australia think about time and space very differently. Their language does not use relative spatial terms like ‘left’ and ‘right’ but instead uses absolute directional terms like ‘north’, ‘south’, ‘south-east’. When asked to arrange cards that depicted temporal progression in the correct order, the Pormpuraawans sometimes arranged the cards from right to left and sometimes left to right. Their decision was not random but was instead dependent on their spatial orientation. If they were facing south the cards would be arranged from left to right and when facing east the cards would come towards the body and so on, thus always arranging the cards from east to west. The Pormpuraawans superior knowledge of spatial orientation stems from their immense vocabulary dedicated to describing time and space (Boroditsky and Gaby, 2010).

Another study was conducted in 2007 that establishes a link between language and perception. The study tested Russian speakers and English speakers on their ability to discriminate between different shades of blue. The result of the 2007 study indicated that the Russian speakers were faster to discriminate between the 2 shades of blue than the English speakers because the Russian language describes a clear distinction between light blue and dark blue unlike the English language (Winawer et al., 2007).

Thus, a person’s language can immensely influence how he views objects, colours, and even fundamental concepts like time and space.

Language is a carrier of culture and tradition. You communicate through language and when you communicate you pass and receive information that reflects your upbringing, your culture, history, and tradition. In a community, the history and culture of that community are passed down generation after generation through a shared language. This fact makes the task of preserving and saving language even more cardinal. When a language dies, it’s not just mere words that go out of existence. The history, heritage, tradition, and culture attached to that language also cease to exist. The Mahabharata and Ramayana were oral stories before they were written, same with the Iliad and Odyssey. The accumulated body of knowledge of a community dies when its language dies. If you lose your language, you also lose a sense of your personal and collective identity because “language carries culture, and culture carries the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world” (Thiong’O, 118).

Humans are social creatures. We have an innate need to communicate with others and it is through communication that we come to define ourselves, our personal identity, and our place in the world, our collective identity. Language is located at the epicentre of our identity as it is through language we communicate with others. Our attachment to language thus cultivates our identities. Our personality, our individuality, our ego, and our existence are defined by the mere words we utter.

Works cited

Chen, Sylvia Xiaohua, et al. “Does Language Affect Personality Perception? A Functional Approach to Testing the Whorfian Hypothesis.” Journal of Personality, vol. 82, no. 2, 2013, pp. 130–43. Crossref, doi:10.1111/jopy.12040.

Boroditsky, Lera. “HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? | Edge.Org.” Edge, 09–11-06, http://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think.

Boroditsky, Lera & Gaby, Alice. (2010). Remembrances of Times East. Psychological science. 21. 1635-9. 10.1177/0956797610386621.

Winawer, J., et al. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 19, 2007, pp. 7780–85. Crossref, doi:10.1073/pnas.0701644104.

Thiong’O, Wa Ngugi. “The Language of African Literature.” Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, James Currey Ltd / Heinemann, 2011, pp. 109–27.

CAG : Chief guardian of public purse

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India is the Constitutional and Independent Authority in India, established under Article 148 of the Constitution of India.
He is the head of the Indian audit as they are authorized to audit all receipts and expenditure of government of India and state governments,including those of autonomous bodies and corporations substantially financed by the Government. 
They are entitled to audit the Consolidated fund of India, Contengency fund of India and public account so it is said to be chief guardian of public purse.

CAG is appointed by the President by warrant under his  hand and seal and provided with tenure of 6 years or 65 years of age,  whichever is earlier. They can’t be appointed twice.
CAG can be removed by  the President only in accordance with the procedure mentioned in the Constitution that is the manner same as removal of a Supreme Court Judge.
He is ineligible to hold any office, either under the Government of India  or of any state,once he retires/resigns as a CAG.

As per the provisions of the constitution, the CAG’s (DPC) (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971 was enacted. As per the various provisions, the duties of the CAG include the audit of:
• Receipts and expenditure from the Consolidated Fund of India and of the State and Union Territory having legislative assembly.
• Trading, manufacturing, profit and loss accounts and balance sheets, and other subsidiary accounts kept in any Government department; Accounts of stores and stock kept in Government offices or departments.
• Government companies as per the provisions of the Companies Act, 2009 Corporations established by or under laws made by Parliament in accordance with the provisions of the respective legislation.
• Authorities and bodies substantially financed from the Consolidated Funds of the Union and State Governments. Anybody or authority even though not substantially financed from the Consolidated Fund, the audit of which may be entrusted to the CAG.
• Grants and loans given by Government to bodies and authorities for specific purposes.
• Entrusted audits e.g. those of Panchayati Raj Institutions and Urban Local Bodies under Technical Guidance & Support (TGS)

.Limitations of CAG :
• The CAG officials only see accounts that government departments want them to see.
• The CAG cannot call for particulars of expenditure incurred by the executive agencies but has to accept a certificate from the competent administrative authority that the expenditure has been so incurred under his authority.
• The CAG officials are often under pressure of time and the concerned officers says the related files are lost.

The solution to the problem is to digitize the receipts and expenditure to be audited, make government accountable for transparency and CAG get as much time as needed to make adequate audit report.

Sources : The Hindu, Wikipedia

“I am of the opinion that this dignitary or officer is probably the most important officer in the Constitution of India. He is the one man who is going to see that the expenses voted by Parliament are not exceeded, or varied from what has been laid down by Parliament in the Appropriation Act.” — Dr. B.R Ambedkar

A ” Palace of Winds”

Hawa Mahal was built by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh which was located in heart of the pink city of jaipur, rajasthan.This beautiful pink structure is predominantly a high screen wall made up of pink and red sandstone that denotes to a royal women to get an eyeful of street festivals and busy. It was built in 1979 as he was so impressed with the khetri mahal built in the town of jhunjhuna, rajasthan that he embarked constructing Hawa Mahal. It is extention of royal City palace and leads to Zenana or woman’s chambers to facilitate royal rajput woman.

Intersting Facts You Must Know About Hawa Mahal- Hawa Mahal has about 953 windows which keep the palace cool. All the Jaipur royals utilized this building as their summer retreat.The building was specially erected for the royal ladies of Jaipur.The meaningful purpose of this building was to allow Royal ladies watch the street festivals.

There is no front entrance to the Hawa Mahal. If you want to get in, you have to enter from the rear side.The Hawa Mahal has only ramps, instead of regular stairs to reach the upper floors of the building. In the present day, the “Hawa Mahal” has become a famous tourist spot and one of the spectacular sights in Jaipur.The palace has become a famous spot for the shooting of several Indian and international films.Architecture Famous for its Architectural facts “Hawa Mahal” was designed like a beehive.

As Hawa Mahal has its own significance and it is shown that how royal woman is lived in ” purdah”.

BIMSTEC

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a multilateral regional organisation established with the aim of accelerating shared growth and cooperation between littoral and adjacent countries in the Bay of Bengal region. It is interregional organisation connecting South Asia and Southeast Asia. It has 7 member countries in total – Five are from South Asia, namely India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Srilanka and 2 are from Southeast Asia , namely Myanmar and Thailand.

It was founded on 6th June 1997 as BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri-Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation) with the adoption of Bangkok declaration. It became BIMST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation) with the entry of Myanmar on 22nd December 1997. Nepal entered as Observer country in December, 1998. And later on , it was named in its current form when Nepal and Bhutan became members in 2004. BIMSTEC headquarters is located in Dhaka , Bangladesh. Its principle is to maintain sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence, no interference in internal affairs , peaceful coexistence and mutual beliefs. It is an addition not substitute to any existing bilateral , multilateral or regional ties.

It is a sector driven organization. Each member-countries serve as a lead for a sector : trade,investment and development (Bangladesh ); Environment and climate change (Bhutan); Security,including counter terrorism,tourism,transport and communication (India); agriculture and food Security (Myanmar); people-to-people contacts (Nepal); science,technology and innovation (SriLanka) ; and connectivity (Thailand).

In terms of connectivity, Bimstec has  three major projects that could transform the movement of goods and vehicles through the countries in the grouping.
1. Kaladan Multimodal Project – It seeks to link India and Myanmar. The project envisages connecting Kolkata to Sittwe port in Myanmar, and then Mizoram by river and road. India and Myanmar had signed a framework agreement in 2008 for the implementation of this project. It’s yet to be finished.
2.  Asian Trilateral Highway – It will connect  India and Thailand through Myanmar. The highway will run from Moreh in Manipur to Mae Sot in Thailand via Myanmar. It is expected to be completed by 2023.
3. Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicles Agreement – the agreement was signed on 15th June 2015 for seamless movement of goods and vehicles.The BBIN project suffered a setback in 2017 when Bhutan temporarily opted out of it after being unable to get parliamentary approval for the

There are some issues hampering the progressive development of BIMSTEC :
1. Lack of cordial bilateral relations between its member states. Eg., India-Nepal, India-Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh-Myanmar ties are not good, due to political, economic, and social reasons.
2. Uncertainties over SAARC impact the development of BIMSTEC. Eg., BIMSTEC members Nepal and Sri Lanka want a revival of the SAARC summit.
3. Thegrowing influence of China in South Asia. Eg., popular Bangladeshi scholar supported admitting China as a partner in BIMSTEC. However, India will not welcome this idea.
4. Apathy towards holding regular annual summits. Eg., while most of the regional organisation (SCO, ASEAN, G20) were able to meet at a high political level even during the Pandemic, BIMSTEC leaders failed to meet.

the 5th BIMSTEC summit was hosted by Srilanka in hybrid mode on 30th March,2022. Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a contribution of $1 million towards BIMSTEC’s operational costs and another $3 million to revive the organization’s center for weather and forecast at Noida, India. He stressed the need to give priority to regional security.

In the 25 years of its existence BIMSTEC hasn’t achieved much. That could be changing now with India’s heightened interest in the grouping, as a vehicle for the achievement of its strategic interests.

Source : The Hindu , The Diplomat

Monsoon Festival:A fanfare of rituals, customs and celebrations

A teej festival is celebrated by rajasthani people but mostly in parts like bundi and jaipur with much excitement in people.The women are adorned in fancy traditional attire,the sky is lotted with kites of variegated colors and aroma of delicious teej fingers in air.This year teej is celebrated on 30 August 2022.

This festival is celebrated because it is primarily dedicated to Parvati and her union with Shiva.Woman often fast in celebration of teej .It is traditionally observed by woman to celebrate monsoons during months of shravan and bhadrapada of hindu calendar.They often pray to Parvati & Shiva during teej.

Teej festival of rajasthan is grand view and you ought not to miss if you are in pink City.A royal procession of teej mata on an antique palanquin called teej swari,winds through lanes of the city.There is whole fanfare of dancers and brand players who accompany the processions.

It is three day celebration and each day has its own significance.On first day,”Dan Khana Di”, married woman enjoy meal prepared by their husband’s.All the ladies gather at the place and take part in following fan-filled activities. Swinging and singing– The first picture that comes to everyone’s mind is of the ladies swaying on a tree swing. Beautiful swings adorned with flowers are hung on the tree in their garden where women take their turn and sing songs about the eternal love of Lord Shiva and Goddess . Hands on Heena- Customized Jaipur One night before Teej, women put intricate designs of henna on their hands and feet. It is a part of Teej Shringar, the whole makeup thing which girls and married women do on the occasion. The married women hide their husband’s name in the design and ask them to reveal it in a playful game. ka -po-che

The festival is not all about women. Guys sure have their share of fun too. On the occasion of Teej festival in Jaipur, boys gather on their roofs and participate in a kite-flying competition. The whole sky can be seen dotted with colorful kites. You can hear them screaming Kai-po-che when someone manages to dock their rival’s kite. It is so much fun watching. Royal Rajasthan flava.

Hence, the teej festival is regarded as festival of women that brings joys and strengthen the bond between women, husband as well as her family.

What is MSP?

India is an agriculture dominated country. More than 50% of Indian workforce is employed by the agriculture. Farmers strive hard to produce high yield and quality products but their income is less than expenses. Market price is determined by supply and income demand. When there is large supply of crops but less demand , there is sharp fall in farm prices affecting farmers drastically. There is always price fluctuations in agricultural products while farmers get a decent return when there is shortage of supply,the same products fetch them poor price during bumper harvest season.
The government of India has introduced MSP (Minimum Support Price ) to protect producers against excessive fall in farm prices leading heavy loss suffered by the farmers.MSP is the minimum price a farmer must be paid for their agricultural produce as guaranteed by the government of India. If the market price falls below MSP, the government procures that crop from the farmers at MSP. MSP is announced for  22 major crops along with a Fair Remunerative Prices (FRP) for sugarcane. MSP is recommended by Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) but the final decision is taken by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs(CCEA) of union government.

MSP ensures profit of atleast 50% over the cost of production for the farmers.It includes cost of production, domestic and international prices, demand-supply conditions, inter-crop price parity and the terms of trade between agricultural and non-agricultural sectors.
Farmers are free to sell their products to any non-governmental parties, if they get favorable terms to sell their products or better than MSP. The government mainly buys rice and wheat at guaranteed price.

Benefits of MSP:
• It acts as a surety to farmers so that their crops get the fair amount for their produce and helps them sustain their losses and does not affect them drastically
• It helps to keep a floor price which does not let the prices fall below a certain point.
• The government can use these crops to be sold at government fair price shops at a price lower than market rate that will also help the government recover some amount and reduce the losses of the government.
• It safeguard the interest of the consumer by ensuring supplies at a reasonable price.
• Government manages food scarcity by distribution of stored grains at affordable prices.

Drawback of MSP :
It doesn’t increase in proportion to the increase in cost of production.
• There are a lot of farmers who don’t have adequate information about MSP and are exploited by middlemen.
• There are several regions in the country where farmers can’t access to the benefits through MSP.
• Open market workings , which works on supply and demand relations is detrimental for farmers , is disrupted by government intervention.
• Maintenance cost of procuring grains is raised by MSP which affects the investment in agri-infrastructure.

The Anthropocene

The Earth is divided into geological time scales, each denoting events that occurred in Earth’s geological history, by scientists. The scale begins with the formation of the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, known as “Hadean”. The current geological epoch is known as the “Holocene”, which began approximately 11,700 years ago. The Holocene epoch is characterized by the rapid proliferation and spread of the human species on Earth. The “Anthropocene” is a proposed epoch that follows the Holocene and marks the period when human activity has started to have a significant impact on the planet’s ecosystem. The term “Anthropocene” was first proposed by the Dutch chemist Paul J. Crutzen and American biologist Eugene F. Stoermer (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000) to denote the current period in Earth’s geological history wherein, instead of the environment shaping humans it is the humans who are shaping and drastically altering the environment.

The Anthropocene, according to Steffen et al. is divided into three periods (616). It begins with the industrial revolution, wherein man first harnessed the energy of fossil fuels, coal, and oil and gas. The extensive use of the newfound wealth of energy in the form of fossil fuels stamped a significant imprint on Earth’s environment, evident in the increase in deforestation and rise in the concentration of methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide in Earth’s atmosphere (616). The second period, from 1945-to 2015, is known as the “great acceleration”. This period is characterized by an exponential increase in the impact of humans on the Earth system. An increase in the population of humans and an increase in industrialization resulted in a substantial increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere (618). The third period, from 2015 onwards, is known as “stewards of Earth’s system”. This period is marked by the recognition of Anthropogenic influences on the Earth system and the subsequent filtration of this growing awareness on decision-making processes (618).

The major problem represented by the Anthropocene is the radical shifts in Earth’s temperature and biodiversity. These shift include global warming, extinction of species, habitat loss, and changes in the chemical composition of oceans and soils. Other probelms inlclude sustenance of human vices like greed, indifference, and intemperance.

There are, according to Steffen et al., three philosophical approaches to dealing with these problems. Firstly, is the business-as-usual philosophy (619), which employs a laissez-faire mindset when dealing with the changing global environment. The second is mitigation which is “based on the recognition that the threat of further global change is serious enough that it must be dealt with proactively” (619). And the third option is geoengineering (619), which attempts to solve the problem of climate change with technology.

Works cited

Crutzen, Paul J. and Eugene F. Stoermer 2000. The “Anthropocene.” Global Change Newsletter (41): 17–18.

Steffen, Will, et al. “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, vol. 369, no. 1938, 2011, 842–67. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0327.

Steffen, Will, Paul J. Crutzen, et al. “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature.” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, vol. 36, no. 8, 2007, 614–21. Crossref. https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:taahno]2.0.co;2

Significance of “Ganga Dussehra”

This year ganga dussehra will be celebrated on 9 June Thursday till 10 june Friday 2022.On this day devotees of godness ganga worship her holy incarnation and presence on earth. It is believed that a holy dip in ganga is equal to hundred Mahayagnas. Traditionally, this festival is also known as Gangavataran or Ganga Dashara. According to the books of Hindu mythology, it is believed that on this day Goddess Ganga descended on the planet earth. As per ancient beliefs, King Bhagirath from the Sagara Dynasty once worshiped Lord Brahma for purifying the souls of his ancestors and relive them of the curse, so that they can attain salvation. Lord Brahma asked the king to worship Lord Shiva as it was difficult for Lord Brahma to bring Goddess Ganga to earth for her rage and only Lord Shiva had the power to control it.Pleased by his prayers and dedication, Lord Shiva gave him a vardan (blessing) and he asked Lord Shiva to control the rage of Goddes Open App olding her in his Jata (hair) to save the earth from destruction. This festival is usually celebrated during Summers and it is believed that after worshiping and taking a holy dip in Ganga, donating food, fruits, vegetables, rice, flour, ghee, money, water containers etc can bring prosperity and happiness in life. It is believed that a person who stands in the holy Ganga, worships her and recites Ganga Strotam on this day finds a place in Baikunth after death. If you are unable to reach the river ghat, mixing a few drops of holy Gangajal gives the same virtue of Like any other occasion in Hindu mythology, the Ganga Dussehra festival has its own significance, values, and importance. The following blog will lead you through the journey of this auspicious event. Why ganga dussehra is celebrated? The legend has it that the king named Sagara had 60,000 sons searching for a lost horse for the Ashwamedha Yagya tied near the Ashram of Sage Kapil by God Indra. The 60,000 sons said to possess created tons of commotion that disturbed the meditating Sage Kapila and anger when the sage opened his eyes. So he burned them to ashes. He told them the touch of the water Ganga would only give them the Moksha. As per the legend, one among the descendants of King Sagara named Bhagiratha performed austerity to gratify Brahma and send Ganga on earth.Goddess Ganga then descended to earth in seven streams and washed down all the ashes of Bhagiratha ancestors, and thus, Ganga Dusshera is widely known because of the day when the river . King Sagara of the Suryavansha dynasty had decided to perform the Ashwamedha Yajna (horse sacrifice) to prove his supremacy. However, Lord Indra, considering the sacrifice results, stole the horse enlisted to perform the yajna and delivered it to the ashram of Kapila, a sage immersed in meditation.King Sagara’s 60,000 sons began to seek out the horse. Kapila snapped out of his meditation before they might do him any harm. As a consequence of their disrespect towards a venerated sage, the sons were burnt to ashes.While returning the horse to King Sagara’s grandson, Kapila revealed that the sons might be redeemed if the Ganga descended on earth and purified their souls with its water.King Sagara’s great-grandson, Bhagiratha, wished to free his ancestors from the curse. So, after much penance, he pleased the Ganges to descend from heaven, but not without a caveat: her currents would destroy the world.Anxious to deliver his ancestors, Bhagiratha prayed to Lord Shiva, who, impressed by his determination, agreed to interrupt the Ganga’s fall .

In Assam success rate of class 10 dips upto 56%

On Tuesday,The board of secondary education Assam announced the results of class 10 board examinations in which 56.49% of 4,05,582 candidates were declared successful as per the officials said.

The board states that the pass percentage of boys was 58.80 while it was 54.49 percent among the girls.

Total 2,29,131 candidates cleared the examination of class 10.Dhamaji recorded the highest pass percentage at 85.46 while chirag recorded the lowest percentage at 34.27.

In 2021,the pass percentage was 93.10 the examination could not be held last year just because of COVID pandemic and evaluation scheme was done on basis of special formula taking into the account of past performances of candidates.

In the Assam high Madrassa examination also conducted by the SEBA, the pass percentage was 54.73 with 10,454 who had appeared in it.

So, the percentage was dipped upto 56% as compared to past one.

Football – Beyond Emotions

Football is one of the greatest sports of all time. It takes us into a fantasy of excitement and sometimes it hurts. Modern football originated in England in the 19th century. The game was a 120-yard pitch containing 2 goal posts in two equal half. the winner was decided by the goals.

There are two teams, each team contains 11 players including a goalkeeper. Today’s football is much improved by great players like Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, etc. The sport involves so much of emotional moments that broke so many hearts. The Munich air disaster, the Murder of Andres Escobar, and The death of Emiliano sala are some of the dark days of football.

Munich air disaster 1958

The Munich disaster occurred on 6 February 1958 in West Germany. players of the British club Manchester United were flying from Munich. the flight crashed after the third attempt to take off from a slushy runway.23 passengers died after that and 21 survived. that was one of the saddest days in football.

The Munich air crash, Germany

Andres Escobar’s death

Andres Escobar was a Colombian international player who played for Colombia in many championships including the world cup. The Colombian was played for like Athletico Nacional BSC young boys and the Colombian national team.

Escobar was murdered aftermath of the 1994 world cup for scoring their own goal in the world cup competition which leads them to knock out from that tournament. the incident degraded the image of the country.

Emiliano Sala’s death

The Argentine footballer Emiliano sala passed away on January 21, 2019. The young superstar was an emerging player who played for the French club Nantes. the separation of Emiliano sala was a heartbreaking moment for the football world. Sala was overcome by toxic gases from the unlicensed aircraft before dying in a plane crash.

Education – passionate studies |5 simple ways

Education is an essential thing in our daily life. According to the growth of society, education must be provided to every citizen. The new world is mysterious, all things that exist had to be known to every people education ensures that. So whatever we want to be we should know about that.

Findings of great peoples, Technological know-how, awareness of the environment, History, etc are the main components of education. An educated person must show good character they were intelligent and efficient. They can build up our economy in a good manner

Nowadays students are struggling with exam results. They were worried about the marks they got. Parents also wanted marks from children. However, studying with understanding makes a perfect education. There are a few tips for good studies.

1. Awareness Of The Chapters

The student must have a correct idea of the chapters including the basic needs. It will increase our energy to study new things.

2. Making The Day For Studies

Mornings are a good time for making good decisions they may whisper through our ears for an entire day. Put a goal for the day in the mornings and we will begin to work toward that.

3. Visualization

When we were teaching or studying, try to imagine the concepts as well it will lead to an incredible memory of the topics.

4. Setting Our Mind

Setting our minds before studies is the best way to attain knowledge. When we think that we are free from anything, nothing can disturb us from our goals. Set our minds to study and make differences

5. Concluding Sentences

When we are willing to study a paragraph, make the important keywords from that. It will help you to study shortly and easily .

Speaking in Public

One of the hardest and easiest jobs to do is public speaking. If you are someone who is confident enough to speak in front of an audience, then it comes on the accessible side, which one will definitely enjoy doing. But if you are on the other side then, believe me, it is quite a task to do. I feel everyone is a victim of the brutal audience sitting over there, or the fear of going down to the stage and speaking in front of people, or sometimes one’s lack of preparation also causes some serious problems. Nevertheless, this can all be covered up.

There are some techniques which can be used to overcome the fear of the audience. These are as follows

  1. Know your content- This helps in getting an insight into what you are going to speak. Which in turn would also help to grasp the content in a better and effective way. This is the very basic step to feel confident while you are up there on the stage.
  2. Practice as much as you can- It is well said that practice makes a man perfect. Practising will make you feel easy with your content. It will familiarize you more with the content. You will get to know the different pitches, when you are supposed to speak in which pitch. Practising in front of a mirror is one of the most effective ways.
  3. Know your audience- Knowing your audience, what they expect from you can be a great help. One must know what type of audience they have and should prepare accordingly.
  4. Scan audience- Scanning for friendly faces in the audience and imagining the entire as the friendly one can also boost one’s easiness on the stage, and be extremely helpful.
  5. Redirecting Nervousness- Redirect your nervousness into bodily gestures, helps you look more engaging and confident about your content and the way you are explaining becomes attractive.
  6. Focus on the bright side- Try to be focused on the bright side of the picture. This would help in keeping away anxiety.
  7. Stay focused- Being calm and focused during all your time, while on the stage would be reflected in your performance.
  8. Keep a smile on your face- Keeping a smile unconditionally help you to feel ease at any given situation. This would be a good tip in keeping you away from the nervousness and anxiety one might face. This will give a satisfactory feeling that you are having a good time while being up there.

I want to paint you

“… I want to paint you.”

She was surprised, sure enough. But she was also curious. Her face concealed nothing, and that was what fascinated me. As she walked through the gallery, each piece evoked something unique from inside her, and she did not bother to mask it.

Anyone could read the critique in her face, if they took the time. It is an artist’s dream – to clearly see the emotions we inspire with our work.Many had passed by my work since the showing began, pausing for a moment, offering a quick word of praise. I didn’t approach them. But, when she came to my painting, she lingered.

At first, she kept a sort of distance, taking in the portrait from optimum perspective.Then, she moved closer. Closer, still.

Narrowing her eyes, following the strokes of brush that formed arms and legs, and the arch of the neck. But, instead of smiling, like the others, she was disturbed. There was a distinct anxiety resting in her eyes. And that anxiety shattered me faster than any editorial the local paper had ever dished out. Editorials can be shredded with triumphant pleasure. But in the slight furrow of her brow, and the downward tug of her lips, this woman single handedly brought my heartbeat to a most uncomfortable rhythm. It was this distinct discomfort that pulled me from my place of observation and motivated me to speak.

“Something wrong?” I asked. I startled her, but she smiled and returned her attention to the portrait.“I was just looking at this dancer,” she replied.“Yes, but you seemed… upset?” I ventured. “What is it about the dancer?”

She darted her eyes at me for a moment, but only long enough to decide to continue our conversation.“It’s just, I feel sorry for her,” she explained.“Sorry?” I wasn’t sure what to think, really. “Why?”

“Because, I think she is lonely.”

That threw me off guard. I was accustomed to the usual praise.

“Beautiful.”

“Profound!”

“Truly, one of a kind.”

It grew tiresome in a way, but it was comfortably expected. The local venues were always thrilled with my offerings, but over time, my enthusiasm was reduced to contempt. When my secretary had first booked this showing for my latest piece, I almost threw my coffee at her. I was exhausted with the weekend shows at The Courtyard. True, they had conjured a good deal of business as of late, but I felt no satisfaction at the end of the day. All I could hope for were a few simple remarks, no real conversation.

No true appreciation.I had little expectation for this showing. My most recent work was a portrait of a ballet dancer. A studio had commissioned it, but agreed to let me display it at the show before delivery. It was simple in concept, but stood out amid the offerings of that particular show. Amid the bulky sculptures and spattering of interpretive study, my dancer’s clean lines were in stark contrast. Dark strokes outlined her body against white canvas, highlighting her single color.A pale violet tutu.“Please, what makes you say that?” I pressed herThis time, she turned to face me, surely intending to end our discussion, or perhaps threaten to call security. I had to save myself quickly.“Forgive me, it’s just, I am Stephen Erik,” I said. Her eyes widened, right on cue. “You mean, you’re the–”“Yes, I’m the one responsible for this… sad little dancer,” I replied, through somewhat gritted teeth.Sad. Sad was not the word I had imagined when bringing this piece to life. There was a soft laugh mingled with her smile, and I thought I saw a faint blush in her cheeks.“It’s wonderful to meet you, Mister Erik. I always hope to see something of yours here at the gallery, and I’ve never been disappointed.”At this, I felt I was able to breathe again. “And, you are?” I prodded.“Grace.”“Well now, Grace, please, indulge me? Why do you say the dancer is lonely?”For a moment, she hesitated, and I almost regretted revealing my identity as the artist. I’ve discovered that nice people are often afraid to offend the creator of the work. Perhaps they think we mix our own blood into the paint, or clay, or watercolors. I have never had such an attachment, although others surely have. More than spared feelings, I always craved true reaction. And, happily for me, Grace could not taper her true impressions.“She holds herself tightly. Like no one else has ever held her before,” she told me.I looked again at the portrait.

Yes, her arms were crossed over her chest, and her feet tightly planted in fifth position. I had sketched her hands myself, and yet, I had not quite noticed how tightly her fingers grasped. Or, perhaps I had done this.Perhaps I had subconsciously slipped my own hands into those of the dancer.“That’s quite an observation,” I replied. “Is that all?”“No,” she admitted. “The color. Purple. It’s such a lonely color.”I chuckled a little. “As opposed to, shall we say, yellow?”Her eyes darted back to me, wholly unamused. “Yellow can be lonely, too.”“Oh, really? How so? Tell me this philosophy of yellow,” I implored.“Yellow is a friendly color. It has lots of friends. Lots of people flock to yellow, because it smiles so much. And then, when yellow cries, they don’t know what to do. Because yellow is the one who smiles. So they just wait. Maybe they hand yellow some tissues or something. But it’s not what yellow really needs. So yellow is lonely, too,” she replied.

“Even surrounded by people who love them.”I was silent for a long while. I didn’t really know what to say. So much thought, so much perception into a color that rarely graced the edge of my palette. “And… purple?”She took a breath. “I think purple holds all of its feelings inside itself, until it is alone. And then, it cries. But nobody sees.”At that moment, I knew.

I wanted to paint this

Our Environment

By – Supriya

The word ‘ Environment ‘ is derived from a Greek word which means ‘ surrounding ‘. In simpler terms , we can say that environment is the atmosphere which surrounds an organism. It is in this atmosphere that an organism lives, thrives, nurtures and sustain itself. Thus, everything that we see around us – land , air ,water , flora and the fauna – consists of our environment . The environment exerts its influence upon us and thus our living conditions are indirectly controlled and affected to an extent . Any change in the environment is thus bound to disturb the harmony of the environment with its organisms. It becomes necessary for human beings not to disrupt this balance by their activities.  This inter- relationship between the organism and the environment is the Ecological Balance which should be maintained at all cost. Environment can be classified into the following categories – Lithosphere , Hydrosphere , Atmosphere and Biosphere. The land with its soil , rocks , mountains and valleys consists of the Lithosphere . The water bodies on the land – seas , oceans ,lakes ,ponds, rivers, etc – constitute the Hydrosphere . The air around us, enveloping us like a blanket is the Atmosphere and finally the plant and the animal kingdoms together make the Biosphere. In order to live in harmony with our environment , one should first acquire a deep understanding of one’s environment. The growing need to study man’s activities and their effects on the environment can be seen with the development of a seperate branch of science solely devoted to the branch of study known as Environmental sciences. This branch of study is related to the study of changes brought about in the environment either due to natural reasons or due to man – created disbalances.
Problems like air pollution, water pollution , noise pollution , green – house effect, global warming , ozone depletion , landslides , earthquakes , famines, conversion of fertile lands into deserts gradually are all due to the havoc created in the environment and the disturbance of Ecological Balance. This imbalance was created when man began to exploit and abuse the resources found in nature instead of using them. We need to give back to nature something if we want to sustain ourselves . Due to increase in population , the limited available resources fell short in comparison to the demand for them. Thus it gave rise to the exploitation of the resources available in the environment. The rate of use was much higher than the rate with which Nature could replenish its resources . This difference in the rate of consumption of Natural Resources and their rate of being renewed causes disruption of the Ecological Balance. In order to maintain the Ecological Balance, we must seek measures to control the growth rate of population and create awareness among people to upkeep the environment surrounding them. This can be done by firstly educating people about the hazards of over – population. There is also a need to make serious efforts in protecting the environment by encouraging people to plant trees, keep the rivers protecting the environment by encouraging people to plant trees, keep the rivers clean , prevent overgrazing by the cattle , judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides. A kind of mass movement should be undertaken to save and protect environment. Our survival on the planet depends upon the maintenance of the environment that protects us. Thus, it becomes our utmost need and necessity to regain the lost balance in the nature and create harmony between its various constitutent elements.

Thankyou!

Biodiversity

By – Supriya

Biodiversity means ” the variety of life on earth.” It is the variability of all living organisms – including animal and plant species  – the genes of all living organisms , and the terrestrial , aquatic and marine ecosystems of which they are part of . This , in essence , biodiversity represents all life. Biodiversity also includes the structure of the ecosystems and habitats that support essential living resources , including wildlife , fisheries and forests. It composes ecosystems that maintain oxygen in the air, enrich the soil , purify the water, protect against flood and regulate climate. Thus, it plays a great role in fulfilling basic human needs such as food , shelter and medicine. India contains a great wealth of biological diversity in its forests, its wetlands and in its marine areas. The country is one of the mega biodiversity centres in the world and has two of the world ‘s 18 ‘ biodiversity hotspots ‘, located in the Western Ghats and in the Eastern Himalayas . The total forest and tree cover of the country is estimated at 23.39 percent of the geographic area, of which forest cover accounts for 21 percent . India is estimated to have 49219 plant species representing 12.5% of the world ‘s flora and 868740 animal species representing 7.25% of the world ‘s fauna.  The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to raise awareness on sustainable management , conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests. To finance new models for high – value forest conservation in India,  through participatory approaches and mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation outcomes , the World Bank has approved financing of a US$15.36 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA) and a grant of US$ 8.14 million from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Trust Fund. The project seeks to demonstrate landscape conservation approaches in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat and Askot in Uttarakhand.
Over the last century a great deal of damage has been done to the biodiversity existing on the earth. Increasing human population , greater consumption levels and inefficient use of our resources are some of the causes that have led to overexploitation and manipulation of ecosystems. Trade of rhino horn and tiger skin etc has also led to the extinction of species. According to the latest tiger census report released on March 28, 2011 by the National Tiger Conservation Authority , the current tiger population estimated is 1706. Although the population of tiger has increased over the years, tigers face the threat of being killed for their skin . Society ‘s growing consumption of resources and increasing populations have led to a rapid loss of biodiversity , eroding the capacity of Earth ‘s normal systems to provide essential goods and services on which human communities depend. To enumerate ways of conservation of biodiversity wealth of India. The National Conference on Environment and Biodiversity of India will be held from 20 th – 22nd December 2011 in New Delhi. The conference would not only feature the beauty of the vast forest resources of India but would also discuss ways to prevent the loss of precious forest belts. It is necessary that we realise the importance of our biological resources for the continued welfare of India ‘s population.

Thankyou!

Population Explosion

By – Supriya

Next to the People ‘s Republic of China , India is the most populous country in the whole world. In 2011, India, with 1,210,193,422(1.21 billion) people is the second most populous country in the world, while China is on the top with over 1,350,044,605(1.35 billion) people. The figures show that India represents almost 17.31% of the world ‘s population , which means one out of six people on this planet live in India. India occupies 2.4% of the world ‘s land area and supports over 17.5% of the world ‘s population. Although, the crown of the world ‘ s most populous country is on China’s head for decades , India is all set to take the number one position by 2030. With the population growth rate at 1.58% , India is predicted to have more than 1.53 billion people by the end of 2030. In 1952, India was the first country in the world to launch a national programme, emphasizing family planning to the extent necessary for reducing birth rates ” to stabilize the population at a level consistent with the requirements of national economy”. The population of India at that time had been around 342 million . The population comprises 623.7 million males and 586.5 million females , according to a provisional 2011 Census report. China , the most populous nation , accounts for 19.4 percent of the global population. Among the states and Union Territories , Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state with 199 million people and Lakshadweep the least populated at 64429. The combined population of UP and Maharashtra is bigger than that of the US . The Census indicated a continuing preference for male children over female children. The latest child sex ratio is 914 female against 1000 male  – the lowest since Independence. According  to the data, literates constitute 74 percent of the total population aged seven and above. The literacy rate has gone up from 64.83 percent in 2001 to 74.04 percent in 2011 showing an increase of 9.21 percent. Concerned over the possibility of the country ‘ s population touching 1.8 billion by 2045, the government is taking various steps to rein in total fertility rates. The steps taken to stabilize population include the adoption of a National Population Policy , constitution of the National Commission on Population , registration of the National Population Stabilization Fund and constitution of an empowered action group for focused attention on eight demographically weaker states. The immediate objective of the national population policy is to address the unmet needs for contraception , health care infrastructure , and child health care. Most importantly , education is the key to greater awareness in people , which will ultimately control population . This is evident from the fact that Kerala which has an overall literacy population , while Uttar Pradesh which has an overall literacy rate of 57.36% and female literacy rate of 42.98% constitutes 16.49% of the Indian population.
The major cause of this population explosion is the widening gap between the birth and the death rate due to increased medical facilities . Another social cause in India that contributes to the growth of population in India is the low age of marriage . Early marriages should be discouraged at any cost which can be done only through various means such as the television and the cinema. This brings us to another related problem that of high illiteracy rate. Due to illiteracy , measures like family planning get defeated . Education makes people broad – minded , liberal , open to new ideas , logical and rational . It helps to keep away orthodoxy and superstitious thinking . Other causes of population explosion are joint family system , lack of responsibility of the young couples in the joint family to bring up their children, lack of recreational facilities and lack of information. The road is long and sturdy for India but it is not an impossible destination to arrive at. The government has to adopt strict measures like not recruiting the persons having more than two children, spread education and awareness among women etc. People should be made aware of the repercussions of population explosion and if that does not help, fear of law can also be used as a last resort in order to find ways to control the population of the country.

Thankyou!

Poverty in India

By – Supriya

Even after more than 60 years of independence , poverty remains the most serious problems that India faces. India still has the world ‘s largest number of poor people dwelling on its land. Of its population of more than 1.2 billion, an estimated 444 million are below the poverty line, out of which 61 percent dwell in the rural areas of the country. Most of them are daily workers, landless  labourers and self employed householders. A major percentage of this population is illiterate , with women, tribal and Scheduled Castes particularly being affected in large numbers. Today, one in every three persons living in abject poverty all over the world in an Indian. Poverty is a situation, which gives rise to the discrepancy between what one has and what one should have. Berstein Henry identifies a few dimensions of poverty such as lack of livelihood strategies , inaccessibility to resources like money , land or credit , feeling of insecurity or frustration and inability to maintain and develop social relations due to lack of resources. The three things that are usually used to define the concept of poverty are the amount of money required by a person to sustain , the life below a minimum subsistence level and the living standard prevalent at the time, and the comparative state of well – being of a few and the deprivation of the majority in the society. The first two concepts refer to the economic dimensions of poverty whereas the last one to its social needs. In terms of gratifying the basic physiological needs, poverty is measured in terms of an imaginary ‘ poverty line’. The poverty line serves as a cut – off line for separating the poor from the not – poor, given the size distribution of population by per capita consumer expenditure classes. Population with per capita consumer expenditure levels below the level defined by the poverty line is counted as poor. According to a 2005 World Bank estimate ,41.6% of the total Indian population falls below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25. The purchasing power parity (PPP) as per Indian standards is ₹21.6 a day in urban areas and ₹ 14.3 in rural areas. The Planning Commission of India has accepted the Tendulkar Committee report which says that 37% of people in India live below the poverty line.
A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi – dimensional Poverty Index(MPI) found that there were 645 million poor living under the MPI in India,421 million of whom are concentrated in eight North Indian and East Indian states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand,Madhya Pradesh , Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations. Presence of a massive parallel economy in the form of black (hidden) money stashed in overseas tax havens and underutilization of foreign aid have also contributed to the slow pace of Poverty alleviation in India. The poor can be classified into four groups – the destitute , extremely poor, very poor and poor. Poverty is that condition in which a person fails to not only fulfill his basic physiological needs but also fails to protect himself from diseases , get balanced nutrition , maintain good health etc. In simple terms, a person in order to survive should have proper food, clothing , shelter , health care and education. Thus poverty refers to a person failing to acquire these minimum levels of subsistence and thus suffers from starvation , malnutrition , and diseases. Poverty is in fact  not just an economic or a political problem. In order to combat this grave problem , first and foremost , there should be a strict check on population increase . Creation of employment opportunities, spread of education , elimination of black money , decentralisation of planning , helping women and youth to become self – reliant are some other ways to combat this problem . It is not due to lack of resources or technical assistance that we are failing in achieving our goals but more so due to lack of execution of these plans and programs.

The success story of Space X – from Falcon 1 to Starship

The Falcon super heavy launch vehicle was designed to transport people, spaceships, and various cargos into space. Such a powerful unit wasn’t created instantly and it also had its predecessors. The history of the Falcon family of vehicles began with the creation of the Falcon 1- a lightweight launch vehicle with a length of 21.3 meters and a diameter of 1.7 meters and a launch mass of 27.6 tones; the rocket could carry 420 kilograms or 926 pounds of payload on board. It became the first private device that was able to bring cargo into low earth orbit. Construction of the Falcon 1 of only two stages, the first of them consisted of a supporting element with fuel tanks, an engine and a parachute system. They chose kerosene as the fuel and liquid oxygen became its oxidizing agent.

The second stage also contains fuel tanks and an engine; though the latter had less thrust compared to the one in the first stage despite the huge launch cost $7.9 million. Totally five attempts were made to send the Falcon 1 beyond the of our planet nut not all of them were successful. During the debut launch of the rocket, a fire started in the first stage engine; this led to a loss of pressure which caused the engine to shut down in the 34th second of flight. The second attempt to start the Falcon 1 incurred a problem with the fuel system of the second stage fuels stopped flowing into its engine at 474 second of flight it shut down as well. The third time of the Falcon 1 went on a flight, it wasn’t alone of the serious cargo the rocket carried onboard the trailblazer satellites and to NASA microsatellites. In phase one with the first stage he flight went normally but when the time came to separate the stages, the first hit the second when it started engine, so the second stage couldn’t continue its flight.

 The fourth and fifth launches shoed good results but that wasn’t enough. The main problem with Falcon 1 was low demand due to its low payload abilities. For this reason, they designed Falcon 9; this device can carry on onboard 23 tons of cargo. It’s also a two stage launch vehicle and uses kerosene and l liquid oxygen as fuel. The device is currently in operation and the cost of its launch is equal to $62 million. The first stage of the rocket is reusable; it can return to earth and can be used again. The Falcon 9 is designed to not only launch commercial communication satieties but also to deliver dragon 1 to the ISS. Dragon 1 can carry a six ton payload from the earth, this drone supplies the ISS with everything they needs and it also takes goods back.

The dragon 2 is designed to deliver a crew of four people to the ISS and back to earth. Now there is an ultra heavy launch vehicle with a payload capacity of almost 64 tones. It is the most powerful and heavier device called the Falcon heavy. This rocket was first launched on February 6th 2018 and the test was successful. The rocket sent Elon Musk’s car into space- a red Tesla Roadster. After this debut subsequent launches were also conducted without problem. The launch cost is estimated to $150 million.

The first stage of the Falcon heavy consists f three parts. There are three blocks contain 27 incredibly powerful engines in nine each one. The thrust created when takeoff is comparable to 18 Boeing 747s at full power. The second stage is equipped with a single engine. It is planned that the device would be used for missions to the moon and mars. Currently, SpaceX working on the starship manned spacecraft.  According to its creators, this device will be much larger and heavier than all of the company’s existing rockets. This device will able to deliver cargo into space weighing more than a hundred tons. The launch of starship into pace is planned for 2022 to mars with a payload. Who knows, one of the mankind’s largest dreams may come true within the next year.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – History, Unknown facts

    The MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) scan is a medical imaging procedure that uses a magnetic field and radio waves to take pictures of our body’s interior. It is mainly used to investigate or diagnose the conditions that affect soft tissue such as tumors or brain disorders. The MRI scanner is a complicated piece of equipment that is expensive to use and found only in specialized centers. Although Raymond Vahan Damadian (1936) is credited with the idea of turning nuclear magnetic resonance to look inside the human body, it was Paul Lauterbur (1929-2007) and Peter Mansfield (1933) who carried out the work most strongly linked to Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. The technique makes use of hydrogen atoms resonating when bombarded with magnetic energy. MRI provides three dimensional images without harmful radiation and offers more detail than older techniques.

       While training as a doctor in New York, Damadian started investigating living cells with a nuclear magnetic resonance machine. In 1971 he found that the signals carried on for longer with cells from tumors than from healthy ones. But the methods used at this time were neither effective nor practical although Damadian received a patent for such a machine to be used by doctors to pick up cancer cells in 1974.

       The real shift came when Lauterbur, a U.S, chemist, introduced gradients to the magnetic field so that the origin of radio waves from the nuclei of the scanned object could be worked out. Through this he created the first MRI images in two and here dimensions. Mansfield, a physicist from England, came up with a mathematical technique that would speed up scanning and make clearer images. Damadian went on to build the full body MRI machine in 1977 and he produced the first full MRI scan of the heart, lungs, and chest wall of his skinny graduate student, Larry Minkoff – although in a very different way to modern imaging.

Working of an MRI machine

        The key components of an MRI machine are magnet, radio waves, gradient, and a super advanced computer. We all know that human bodies are made up of 60% water, and water is magnetic. Each of the billons of water molecules inside us consists of an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms that are called as H2O. Small parts of the hydrogen atoms act as tiny magnets and are very sensitive to magnetic fields. The first step in taking an MRI scan is to use a big magnet to produce a unified magnetic field around the patient. The gradient adjusts the magnetic field into smaller sections of different magnetic strengths to isolate our body parts. Take brain as an example, normally the water molecules inside us are arranged randomly. But when we lie inside the magnetic field, most of our water molecules move at the same rhythm or frequency as the magnetic field. The ones that don’t move along the magnetic field are called low energy water molecules. To create an image of a body part, the machine focuses on the low energy molecules. The radio waves move at the same rhythm or frequency as the magnetic fields in an MRI machine.

       By sending radio waves that match or resonate with the magnetic field, the low energy water molecules absorb the energy they need to move alongside the magnetic field. When the machine stops emitting radio waves, the water molecules that had just moved along the magnetic field release the energy they had absorbed and go back to their position. This movement is detected by the MRI machine and the signal is sent to a powerful computer which uses imaging software to translate the information into an image of the body. By taking images of the body in each section of the magnetic field the machine produces a final three dimensional image of the organ which doctors can analyze to make a diagnosis.

“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability”. –William Osler

 

 

Evolution of Art – Origin, Milestone and Masterpiece

Expressing oneself through art seems a universal human impulse, while the style of that expression is one of the distinguishing marks of a culture. As difficult as it to define, art typically involves a skilled, imaginative creator, whose creation is pleasing to the senses and often symbolically significant or useful. Art can be verbal, as in poetry, storytelling or literature or can take the form of music and dance. The oldest stories, passed down orally may be lost to us now, but thanks to writing, tales such as the epic of Gilgamesh or the Lliad entered the record and still hold meaning today. Visual art dates back 30,000 years, when Paleolithic humans decorated themselves with beads and shells. Then as now, skilled artisans often mixed aesthetic effect with symbolic meaning.

In an existence that centered on hunting, ancient Australians carved animal and bird tracks into their rocks. Early cave artists in Lascaux, France, painted or engraved more than 2,000 real and mythical animals. Ancient Africans created stirring masks, highly stylized depictions of animals and spirits that allow the wearer to embody the spiritual power of those beings. Even when creating tools or kitchen items, people seem unable to resist decorating or shaping them for beauty. Ancient hunters carved the ivory handles of their knives. Ming dynasty ceramists embellished plates with graceful dragons. Modern pueblo Indians incorporates traditional motifs in to their carved and painted pots. The western fine arts tradition values beauty and message. Once heavily influenced by Christianity and classical mythology, painting and sculptures has more recently moved toward personal expression and abstraction.

Humans have probably been molding clay- one of the most widely available materials in the world- since the earliest times. The era of ceramics began, however, only after the discovery of that very high heat renders clay hard enough to be impervious to water. As societies grew more complex and settled, the need for ways to store water, food, and other commodities increased. In Japan, the Jomon people were making ceramics as early as 11,000 B.C. by about the seventh millennium B.C.; kilns were in use in the Middle East and china, achieving temperatures above 1832°F. Mesopotamians were the first to develop true glazes, through the art of glazing arguably reached its highest expression in the celadon and three color glazes of the medieval china. In the new world, although potters never reached the heights of technology seen elsewhere, Moche, Maya, Aztec, and Puebloan artists created a diversity of expressive figurines and glazed vessels.

When Spanish nobleman Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola described the paintings he discovered in a cave in Altamira, contemporizes declared the whole thing a modern fraud. Subsequent finds confirmed the validity of his claims and proved that Paleolithic people were skilled artists. Early artists used stone tools to engrave shapes into walls. They used pigments from hematite, manganese dioxide, and evergreens to achieve red, yelled, brown, and black colors. Brushes were made from feathers, leaves, and animal hair. Artists also used blowpipes to spray paint around hands and stencils.

 

The Kardashev scale – Classifying Alien civilization

The observable universe is consists up to two trillion galaxies that are made of billions and billions of stars. In the Milky Way galaxy alone, scientists assume that there are some 40 billion earths like planets in the habitable zone of their stars. When you look at these numbers, there are a lot of possibilities of alien civilization to exist. In a universe that big and old, the possibilities of civilizations may start millions of years apart from each other, and develop in different directions and speed. So their civilization may range from cavemen to super advanced. We know that human started out with nothing and then making tools, building houses, etc. we know that humans are curios, competitive, greedy for resources, and expansionists. The more of these qualities that our ancestors had, the more successful they were in the civilization building process.

 Like this, the other alien civilizations also must have evolved. Human progress can be measured very precisely by how much energy we extracted from our environment. As our energy consumption grew exponentially, so did the abilities of our civilization. Between 1800 and 2015, population size had increased sevenfold; while humanity was consuming 25 times more energy. It’s likely that this process will continue into the far future. Based on these facts, scientist Nikolai Kardashev developed a method for categorizing civilizations, from cave dwellers to gods ruling over galaxies into a scale called the Kardashev scale. It is a method of ranking civilizations by their energy use. It put civilizations into four categories. A type 1 civilization is able to use the available energy of their home planet. A type 2 civilization is able to use the available energy of their star and planetary system. A type 3 civilization is able to use the available energy of their galaxy. A type 4 civilization is able to use the available energy of multiple galaxies

. It’s like comparing an ant colony to a human metropolitan area. To ants we are so complex and powerful, we might as well be gods. On the lower end of the scale, there are type 0 to type 1 civilization. Anything from hunting, gatherers to something we could achieve in the next few hundred years. These might actually be abundant in the Milky Way. If that possible, why they are not sending any radio signals in space. But even if they transmitted radio signals like we do, it might not be very helpful. In such a vast universe, our signals may extend over 200 light years, but this is only a tiny fraction of the Milky Way. And even if someone were listening, after a few light years our signals decay into noise, impossible to identify as the source of an intelligent species. Today humanity ranks at about level 0.75. We created huge structures, changed the composition and temperature of the atmosphere. If progress continues, we will become a full type 1 civilization in the next few hundred years. The next step to type 2 is trying and mine other planets and bodies.

 As a civilization expands and uses more and more stuff and space, at some they may start a largest project that extracting the energy of their star by building a Dyson swarm. Once it finished, energy has become unlimited. The next frontier moves to other stars light years away. So the closer a species gets to type 3, they might discover new physics, may understand and control dark matter and energy, or be able to travel faster than light. For them, humans are the ants, trying to understand the galactic metropolitan area. A high type 2 civilization might already consider humanity too primitive. A type 3 civilization might consider us bacteria. But the scale doesn’t end here; some scientists suggest there might be type 4 and type 5 civilizations, whose influences stenches over galaxy clusters or super clusters. This complex scale is just a thought experiment but, still it gives interesting things. Who knows, there might be a type omega civilization, able to manipulate the entire universe, and they even might be the actual creators of our universe.

James Webb space telescope – Working and Application

The James Webb space telescope or JWST will replace the Hubble space telescope. It will help us to see the universe as it was shortly after the big bang. It was named after the second head of NAS James Webb. James Webb headed the office of space affairs from 1961 to 1968. This new telescope was first planned for launch into orbit in 2007 but has since been delayed more than once, now it’s been scheduled for 18 December 2012. After 2030 the Hubble will go on a well deserved rest since its launch in 1990 its provided more than a million images of thousands of stars, nebulae, planets and galaxies. The Hubble captured images of stars that are show about 380 million years after the big bang which supposedly happened 13.7 billion years ago. These objects may no longer exist, we still see their light. Now we expect James Webb to show us the universe as it was only 100 to 250 million years after its birth. It can transform our current understanding of the structure of the universe. The Spitzer space telescope and Hubble telescopes have collected data of gas shells of about a hundred planets. According to experts, the James Webb is capable of exploring the atmospheres of more than 300 different exoplanets.

The working of James Webb space telescope

The James Webb is an orbiting infrared observatory that will investigate the thermal radiation of space objects. When heated to a certain temperature, all solids and liquids emit energy in the infrared spectrum; here there is a relationship between wavelength and temperature. The higher the temperature, there will shorter the wavelength and higher the radiation intensity. James Webb sensitive equipment will be able to study the cold exoplanets with surface temperatures of up to 27° Celsius. An important quality of this new telescope is that it will revolve around the sun and not the earth unlike Hubble which is located at an altitude of about 570 kilometers in low earth orbit. With the James Webb orbiting the sun, it will be impossible for the earth to interfere with it, however he James Webb will move in sync with the earth to maintain strong communication yet the distance from the James Webb to the earth will be between about 374,000 to 1.5 million kilometers in the direction opposite of the sun. So its design must be extremely reliable.

The James Webb telescope weighs 6.2 tones. The main mirror of the telescope is with a diameter of 6.5 meters and a colleting area of 25 square meters, it resembles a giant honeycomb consisting of 18 sections. Due to its impressive size, the main has to be folded for start up; this giant mirror will capture light from the most distant galaxies. The mirror can create a clear picture and eliminate distortion. A special type of beryllium was used in the mirror which retains its shape at low cryogenics temperature. The front of the mirror is covered with a layer of 48.25 grams of gold, 100 nanometers thick; such a coating best reflects infrared radiation. A small secondary mirror opposite the main mirror, it receives light from the main mirror and directs it to instruments at the rear of the telescope. The sunshield is with a length of 20 meters and width of 7 meters. It composed of very thin layers of kapton polyimide film which protects the mirror and tools from sunlight and cools the telescope’s ultra sensitive matrices to 220° Celsius.

The NIRCam- Near Infrared Camera is the main set of eyes of the telescope, with the NIRCam we expect to be able to view the oldest stars in the universe and he planets around them. The nurse back near infrared spectrograph will collect information on both physical and chemical properties of an object. And the MIRI mid-infrared instrument will allow you to see stars being born many unknown objects of the Kepler belt. Then the near infrared imager and sliteless spectrograph or NIRIIS camera is aimed at finding exoplanets and the first light of distant objects. Finally the FGS- Fine Guidance Sensor helps accurately point the telescope for higher quality images updates its position in space sixteen times per second and controls the operation the steering and main mirrors. They are planning to launch the telescope with the help of the European launch vehicle Ariana 5 from the kourou Cosmodrome in French Guiana space center. The device is designed for between 5 to 10 years of operation but, it may serve longer. If everything goes well, $10 billion worth of construction and one year of preparation will have finally started in orbit.

 

Medical breakthroughs – Laproscopy

 

Treating illness b using tools to remove or manipulate pats of the human body is an old idea. Even the minor operations carried high risks, but that doesn’t mean all early surgery failed. Indian doctors, at the beginning centuries before the birth of Christ, successfully removed tumors and performed amputations and other operations. They developed dozens of metal tools, relied on alcohol to dull the patient, and controlled bleeding with hot oil and tar. The 20th century brought even more radical change through technology. Advances in fiber optic technology and the miniaturization of video equipment have revolutionized surgery. The laparoscopy is the James Bond like gadget of the surgeon’s repertoire of instruments. Only a small incision through the patient’s abdominal wall is made into which the surgeon puffs carbon dioxide to open up the passage.

 Using a laparoscope, a visual assessment and diagnosis, and even surgery causes less physiological damage, reduces patient’s pain and speeds their recovery leading to shorter hospital stays. In the early 1900s, Germany’s George Kelling developed a surgical technique in which he injected air into the abdominal cavity and inserted a cytoscope – a tube like viewing scope to assess the patient’s innards. In late 1901, he began experimenting and successfully peered into a dog’s abdominal cavity using the technique. Without cameras, laparoscopy’s use limited to diagnostic procedures carried out by gynecologists and gastroenterologists. By the 1980s, improvements in miniature video devices and fiber optics inspired surgeons to embrace minimally invasive surgery. In 1996, the first live broadcast of a laparoscopy took place. A year later, Dr. J. Himpens used a computer controlled robotic system to aid in laparoscopy. This type of surgery is now used for gallbladder removal as well as for the diagnosis and surgeries of fertility disorder, cancer, and hernias.

Hypothermia is a drop in body temperature significantly below normal can be life threatening, as in the case of overexposure to severe wintry conditions. But in some cases, like that of Kevin Everett of the buffalo bills, hypothermia can be lifesaver. Everett fell to the ground with a potentially crippling spinal cord injury during a 2007 football game. Doctors treating him on the field immediately injected his body with a cooling fluid. At the hospital, they inserted a cooling catheter to lower his body temperature by roughly five degrees, at the same time proceeding with surgery to fix his fractured spine. Despite fears that he would be paralyzed, Everett has regained his ability to walk, and advocates of therapeutic hypothermia feel his lowered body temperature may have made the difference. Therapeutic hypothermia is still a controversial procedure. The side effects of excessive cooling include heart problems, blood clotting, and increased infection risk. On the other hand, supporters claim, it slows down cell damage, swelling, and other destructive processes well enough that it can mean successful surgery after a catastrophic injury. Surgical lasers can generate heat up to 10,000°F on a pinhead size spot, sealing blood vessels and sterilizing. Surgical robots and virtual computer technology are changing medical practice. Robotic surgical tools increase precision. In 1998, heart surgeons at Paris’s Broussais hospital performed the first robotic surgery. New technology allows an enhanced views and precise control of instruments.

“After a complex laparoscopic operation, the 65-year-old patient was home in time for dinner”. – Elisa Birnbaum, surgeon

 

History of Steam Engines – Thomas Savery

Thomas Newcomen, a Devonshire blacksmith, developed the first successful steam engine in the world and used it to pump water from mines. His engine was a development of the thermic siphon built by Thomas Savery, whose surface condensation patents blocked his own designs. Newcomen’s engine allowed steam to condense inside a water-cooled cylinder, the vacuum produced by this condensation being used to draw down a tightly fitting piston that was connected by chains to one end of a huge, wooden, centrally pivoted beam. The other end of the beam was attached by chains to a pump at the bottom of the mine. The whole system was run safely at near atmospheric pressure, the weight of the atmosphere being used to depress the piston into the evacuated cylinder.

 Newcomen’s first atmospheric steam engine worked at conygree in the west midlands of England. Many more were built in the next seventy years, the initial brass cylinders being replaced by larger cast iron ones, some up to 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter. The engine was relatively inefficient, and in areas where coal was not plentiful was eventually replaced by double-acting engines designed by James Watt. These used both sides of the cylinder for power strokes and usually had separate condensers. James watt was responsible for some of the most important advances in steam engine technology.

In 1765 watt made the first working model of his most important contribution to the development of steam power, he patented it in 1769. His innovation was an engine in which steam condensed outside the main cylinder in a separate condenser. The cylinder remained at working temperature at all times. Watt made several other technological improvements to increase the power and efficiency of his engines. For example, he realized that, within a closed cylinder, low pressure steam could push the piston instead of atmospheric air. It took only a short mental leap for watt to design double-acting engine in which steam pushed the piston first one way, then the other, increasing efficiency still further.

Watt’s influence in the history of steam engine technology owes as much to his business partner, Matthew Boulton, as it does to his own ingenuity. The two men formed a partnership in 1775, and Boulton poured huge amount of money into watt’s innovations. From 1781, Boulton and watt began making and selling steam engines that produced rotary motion. All the previous engines had been restricted to a vertical, pumping action. Rotary steam engines were soon the most common source of power for factories, becoming a major driving force behind Britain’s industrial revolution.

By the age of nineteen, Cornishman Richard Trevithick worked for the Cornish mining industry as a consultant engineer. The mine owners were attempting to skirt around the patents owned by James Watt. William Murdoch had developed a model steam carriage, starting in 1784, and demonstrated it to Trevithick in 1794. Trevithick thus knew that recent improvements in the manufacturing of boilers meant that they could now cope with much higher steam pressure than before. By using high pressure steam in his experimental engines, Trevithick was able to make them smaller, lighter, and more manageable.

Trevithick constructed high pressure working models of both stationary and locomotive engines that were so successful that in 1799 he built a full scale, high pressure engine for hoisting ore. The used steam was vented out through a chimney into the atmosphere, bypassing watt’s patents. Later, he built a full size locomotive that he called puffing devil. On December 24, 1801, this bizarre-looking machine successfully carried several passengers on a journey up Camborne hill in Cornwall. Despite objections from watt and others about dangers of high pressure steam, Trevithick’s work ushered in a new era of mechanical power and transport.

How do we measure distances in space? Light years

In the 1800s, scientists discovered the realm of light beyond what is visible. The 20th century saw dramatic improvements in observation technologies. Now we are probing distant planets, stars, galaxies and black holes where even light would take years to reach. So how we do that? Light is the fastest thing we know in the universe. It is so fast that we measure enormous distances by how long it takes for light to travel them. In one year, light travels about 6 trillion miles. It is the distance, we call one light year. The Apollo 11 had to travel four days to reach the moon but, it is one light second from earth. Meanwhile, the nearest star beyond our own sun is Proxima Centauri but, it is 4.24 light years away. Our Milky Way galaxy is on the order of 100,000 light years across. The nearest galaxy to our own, Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away.

 The question is how do we know the distance of these stars and galaxies? For objects that are very close by, we can use a concept called trigonometric parallax. When you place your thumb and close your left eye and then, open your left eye and close your right eye. It will look like your thumb has moved, while more distant objects have remained in place. This same concept applies in measuring distant stars. But they are much farther than the length of your arm, and earth is not large enough, even if you had different telescopes across the equator, you would not see much of a shift in position. So we look at the change in the star’s apparent location over six months, when we measure the relative positions of the stars in summer, and then again in winter, nearby stars seem to have moved against the background of the more distant stars and galaxies.

 But this method only works for objects less than a few thousand light years away. So, for such distances, we use a different method using indicators called standard candles. Standard candles are objects whose intrinsic brightness, or luminosity that we know well. For example, if you know how bright your light bulb is, even when you move away from it, you can find the distance by comparing the amount of light you received to the intrinsic brightness. In astronomy, we consider this as a special type of star called a Cepheid variable. These stars will constantly contract and expand. Because of this, their brightness varies. We can calculate the luminosity by measuring the period of this cycle, with more luminous stars changing more slowly. By comparing the light that we received to the intrinsic brightness we can calculate the distance.

 But we can only observe individual stars up to about 40 million light years away. So we have to use another type of standard candle called type 1a supernova. Supernovae are giant stellar explosions which is one of the ways that stars die. These explosions are so bright, that they outshine the galaxies where they occur. So we can use the type 1 a supernovae as standard candles. Because, intrinsically bright ones fade slower than fainter ones. With the understanding of brightness and decline rate, we can use the supernovae to probe distances up to several billions of light years away. But is the importance of seeing distant objects? Well, the light emitted by the sun will take eight minutes to reach us, which means that the light we see now is a picture of the sun eight minutes ago. And the galaxies are million light years away. It has taken millions of years for that light to reach us. So the universe is in some kind of an inbuilt time machine. The further we can look back, the younger we are probing. Astrophysicists try to read the history of the universe, and understand how and where we come from.

“Dream in light years, challenge miles, walk step by step”William Shakespeare

Why Waves Occur? Waves and Tides

Why do waves form?

A wave begins as the wind ruffles the surface of the ocean. When the ocean is calm and glasslike, even the mildest breeze forms ripples, the smallest type of wave. Ripples provide surfaces for wind to act on, which produces larger waves. Stronger winds push the nascent waves into steeper and higher hills of water. The size a wave reaches depends on the speed and strength of the wind. The length of time it takes for the wave to form, and the distance over which it blows in the open ocean is known as the fetch. A long fetch accompanied by strong and study winds can produce enormous waves. The highest point of a wave is called the crest and the lowest point the trough. The distance from one crest to another is known as the wavelength.

On November 11, 2011, US surfer Garrett McNamara surfed a massive wave (78-foot (23,8-meter)) at Nazaré.

Although water appears to move forward with the waves, for the most part water particles travel in circles within the waves. The visible movement is the wave’s form and energy moving through the water, courtesy of energy provided by the wind. Wave speed also varies; on average waves travel about 20 to 50 Mph. Ocean waves vary greatly in height from crest to trough, averaging 5 to 10 feet. Storm waves may tower 50 to 70 feet or more. The biggest wave that was ever recorded by humans was in Lituya bay on July 9th, 1958. Lituya bay sits on the southeast side of Alaska. A massive earthquake during the time would trigger a mega tsunami and the tallest tsunami in modern times. As a wave enters shallow water and nears the shore, it’s up and down movement is disrupted and it slows down. The crest grows higher and be gins to surge ahead of  the rest of the wave, eventually toppling over and breaking apart. The energy released by a breaking wave can be explosive. Breakers can wear down rocky coast and also build up sandy beaches.

Why does a tide occur?

Tides are the regular daily rise and fall of ocean waters. Twice each day in most locations, water rises up over the shore until it reaches its highest level, or high tide. In between, the water recedes from the shore until it reaches its lowest level, or low tide. Tides respond to the gravitational pull of the moon and sun. Gravitational pull has little effect on the solid and inflexible land, but the fluid oceans react strongly. Because the moon is closer, its pull is greater, making it the dominant force in tide formation.

Gravitational pull is greatest on the side of earth facing the moon and weakest on the side opposite to the moon. Nonetheless, the difference in these forces, in combination with earth’s rotation and other factors, allows the oceans to bulge outward on each side, creating high tides. The sides of earth that are not in alignment with the moon experience low tides at this time. Tides follow different patterns, depending on the shape of the seacoast and the ocean floor.  In Nova Scotia, water at high tide can rise more than 50 feet higher than the low tide level. They tend to roll in gently on wide, open beaches in confined spaces, such as a narrow inlet or bay, the water may rise to very high levels at high tide.

There are typically two spring tides and two narrow tides each month. Spring tie of great range than the mean range, the water level rises and falls to the greatest extend from the mean tide level. Spring tides occur about every two weeks, when the moon is full or new. Tides are at their maximum when the moon and the sun are in the same place as the earth. In a semidiurnal cycle the high and low tides occur around 6 hours and 12.5 minutes apart. The same tidal forces that cause tides in the oceans affect the solid earth causing it to change shape by a few inches.

 

 

Black Holes – The Hawking Radiation, definition and facts

When a massive star dies, it leaves a small but dense remnant core in its wake. If the mass of the core is more than 3 times the mass of the sun, the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces and a black hole is formed. Imagine the size of a star is 10times more massive than our sun being squeezed into a sphere with a diameter equal to the size of New York City. The result is a celestial object whose gravitational field is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape it. The history of black holes was started with the father of all physics, Isaac Newton. In 1687, Newton gave the first description of gravity in his publication, Principia mathematica, that would change the world. Then 100 years later, John Michelle proposed the idea that there could exist a structure that would be massive enough and not even light would be able to escape its gravitational pull. In 1796, the famous French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace made an important prediction about the nature of black holes. He suggested that because even the speed of light was slower than the escape velocity of black hole, the massive objects would be invisible. In 1915, Albert Einstein changed physics forever by publishing his theory of general relativity. In this theory, he explained space time curvature and gave a mathematical description of a black hole. And in 1964, john wheeler gave these objects the name, the black hole.

The “Interstellar” black hole was created using a new CGI rendering software that was based on theoretical equations provided by Thorne.

In classical physics, the mass of a black hole cannot decrease; it can either stay the same or get larger, because nothing can escape a black hole. If mass and energy are added to a black hole, then its radius and surface area also should get bigger. For a black hole, the radius is called the Schwarzschild radius. The second law of thermodynamics states that, an entropy of a closed system is always increases or remains the same. In 1974, Stephen hawking– an English theoretical physicists and cosmologist, proposed a groundbreaking theory regarding a special kind of radiation, which later became known as hawking radiation. So hawking postulated an analogous theorem for black holes called the second law of black hole mechanics that in any natural process, the surface area of the event horizon of a black hole always increase, or remains constant. It never decreases. In thermodynamics, black bodies doesn’t transmit or reflect any radiation, it only absorbs radiation.

When Stephen hawking saw these ideas, he found the idea of shining black holes to be preposterous.  But when he applied the laws of quantum mechanics to general relativity, he found the opposite to be true. He realized that stuff can come out near the event horizon. In 1974, he published a paper where outlined a mechanism for this shine. This is based on the Heisenberg uncertainty Principe. According to the principle of quantum mechanisms, for every particle throughout the universe, there exists an antiparticle. These particles always exist in pairs, and continually pop in and out of existence everywhere in the universe. Typically, these particles don’t last long because as soon as possible and its antiparticle pop into existence, they annihilate each other and cease to exist almost immediately after their creation.

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration produced the first-ever image of a black hole

In the event horizon that the point which nothing can escape its gravity. If a virtual particle pair blip into existence very close to the event horizon of a black hole, one of the particles could fall into the black hole while the other escapes. The one that falls into the black hole effectively has negative energy, which is, in Layman’s terms, akin to subtracting energy from the black hole, or taking mass away from the black hole. The other particle of the pair that escapes the black hole has positive energy, and is referred to as hawking radiation. Due to the presence of hawking radiation, a black hole continues to loss mass and continues shrinking until the point where it loses all its mass and evaporates. It is not clearly established what an evaporating black hole would actually look like. The hawking radiation itself would contain highly energetic particles, antiparticles and gamma rays. Such radiation is invisible to the naked eye, so an evaporating black hole might not look like anything at all. It also possible that hawking radiation might power a hadronic fireball, which could degrade the radiation into gamma rays and particles of less extreme energy, which would make an evaporating black hoe visible. Scientists and cosmologists still don’t completely understand how quantum mechanics explains gravity, but hawking radiation continues to inspire research and provide clues into the nature of gravity and how it relates to other forces of nature.

 

The Large Hadron Collider – Most Powerful Particle Accelerator

 The smallest thing that we can see with a light microscope is about 500 nanometers. A typical is anywhere from 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers in diameter. So we need an electron microscope to measure these atoms. The electron microscope was invented in 1931. Beams of electrons are focused on a sample. When they hit it, they are scattered, and this scattering is used to recreate an image. Then what about protons or neutrons? Or what about quarks? The quarks are the most fundamental building blocks of matter. So how did we find such small particles exist? The answer is a particle collider. A particle collider is a tool used to accelerate two beams of particles to collide since 1960s.

The largest machine built by man, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator occupying an enormous circular tunnel of 27 kilometers in circumference, ranging from 165 to 575 feet below ground. It was situated near Genoa, Switzerland. It is so large that over the course of its circumference crosses the border between France and Switzerland. That’s the giant collaboration going on between over 100 countries and 10,000 scientists. The tunnel itself was constructed between 1983 and 1988 to house another particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, which operated until 2000, its replacement, the LHC, was approved in 1995, and was finally switched on in September 2008.

Working of the Large Hadron Collider

 The LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built and has designed to explore the limits of what physicists refer to as the standard Model, which deals with fundamental sub-atomic particles. There are two vacuum pipes are installed inside the tunnel which intersects in some places and 1,232 main magnets are connected to the pipe. For proper operation, the collider magnets need to be cooled to -271.3 °C. To attain this temperature, 120 tons of liquid helium is poured into the LHC. These powerful magnets can accelerate protons near the speed of light, so they can complete a circuit in less than 90 millionths of a second. Two beams operate in opposite directions around the ring. At four separate points the two beams cross, causing protons to smash into each other at enormous energies, with their destructions being witnessed by super-sensitive instruments. But it’s not that easy to do this experiment. Each beam consists of bunches of protons and most of the protons just miss each other and carry on around the ring and do it again. Because, atoms are mostly empty space so getting them to collide is incredibly difficult. It like colliding a needle into a needle, provided that the distance between them is 10 kilometers.

The aim of these collisions is to produce countless new particles that stimulate, on a micro scale, some of the conditions postulated in the Big Bang at the birth of the universe. Higgs Boson was discovered with the help of LHC. This so called ‘God Particle’ that could be responsible for the very existence of mass. If it disappeared, all particles in the universe will become absolutely weightless and fly around the universe in the speed of light, the exact value is 299,792,458 m/s. that mean we can reach our moon in 1.3 seconds from earth.

“When you look at a vacuum in a quantum theory of fields, it isn’t exactly nothing.”Peter Higgs

Why Higgs Boson called God’s particle

In 1964 peter Higgs with five scientists proposed a theory called the Higgs mechanism to explain the existence of mass in the universe. Before 1930s, atoms were considered as the fundamental particles. Then we found electron, protons and neutrons as atomic particles. Later we found that protons and neutrons are made up of even more small fundamental particles called quarks. Quarks are the fundamental building blocks for the whole universe. The key evidence for the existence of these elementary particles came from a series of inelastic electron-nucleon scattering experiments conducted between 1967 and 1973 at the Stanford linear accelerator center. They are commonly found in protons and neutrons. There are six types of quarks, up quark, down quark, top quark, bottom quark, strange quark, charm quark. They can have positive (+) or negative (-) electric charge. Up, charm and top quarks have a positive 2/3 charge. Down, strange, bottom quarks have a negative 1/3 charge. So protons are positive because there are two quarks (+2/3) ups and one down quark (-1/3), giving a net positive charge (+2/3+2/3-1/3 =1). These three quarks are known as valence quarks, but the proton could have an additional up quark and anti-up quark pair.

The Higgs mechanism theory

In the second half of the 20th century, physicists made a developed a theory called a standard model of particle physics. They theorized about twelve fundamental particles that make up all matter, and four particles called bosons are responsible for three fundamental forces of nature. It includes strong force, weak force, and electromagnetism. Gravity is another force, it is not a part of this model but, it can be modeled using general relativity. With these fundamental particles in the standard model and gravity, we can build almost everything in the entire universe. However until 2012, the standard model was an underlying theory. Because all forces carrying particles should be massless. So, although the photons are massless, experiments show that the weak forces bosons have mass. So that was a promising model that could be used to explain our universe. But perhaps, it would need to be thrown out because it had the seemingly fatal flaw in being inconsistent regarding the way the weak force worked in the late 1950s physicists had no idea to resolve these issues all attempts to solve this problem. But indeed it created new theoretical problems. In 1964, Peter Higgs hypothesized that perhaps the force articles were massless but gained mass when they interacted with an energy field that is the reason for the existence of the entire universe.

During the very early moments following the big bang, in the universe, the elementary particles were massless and they were pure streams of energy that move at the speed of light. As the expansion of the universe was proceeding, density and temperature decreased below a certain key value. According to the theory, the Higgs field interacts with particles and can give them mass. It is theorized that different particles interact differently with the field, the particles that interact with it more intensely have greater mass and particles that don’t interact with it that much have lower mass. Just imagine Higgs field as water, pointed shape objects interact lesser with water and cube shaped objects interact more with it. Some particles don’t interact with the field like photons are massless. A fundamental part of the theory was the presence of a specific particle; it’s called the Higgs boson. A boson that would allow the Higgs mechanism to unfold correctly to give mass to all other particles.

CERN’s discovery of a new particle

Even though Higgs theorized it, scientists can’t able to prove that until 2012. The particle accelerators had to possess a huge amount of energy to detect them. Finally, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the CERN’s particle accelerator has been turned on in 2008 and managed to recreate the required energy and temperature conditions in 2012. The Higgs boson was finally experimentally detected and on 4th July, a conference held in the CERN auditorium announced the discovery of a particle compatible with the Higgs boson. The machine accelerates Hadron bundles at close to the speed of light and collides them each other in opposite directions. At four separate points the two beams cross, causing protons to smash into each other at enormous energies, with their destructions being witnessed by super-sensitive instruments. Even if LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator, it had to work hard to detect Higgs boson. If the Higgs field doesn’t exist, all particles in the universe will become absolutely weightless and fly around the universe in the speed of light. For This reason Higgs boson is often called as the ‘God particle’.

 

 

 

Stem Cell Therapy – Working and Future technology

 Our bodies contain many specialized cells that carry out specific functions. These specialized cells are called differentiated cells. Stem cells are cells with the potential to develop into many different types of cells in the body. They act as a repair system for the body. They are unspecialized cells, so they cannot do specific functions in the body. It can create the potential for the cells to be used to grow replacement tissues. American development biologist James Thomson (1958), from the University of Wisconsin School of medicine, won the race to isolate and human embryonic stem cells. On November 6 1998, the ‘journal science’ published the results of Thompson’s research. It described how he used embryos from fro fertility clinics which were donated by couples who no longer needed them, and developed ways to extract stem cells and keep them reproducing indefinitely.

With the ability to develop into any one of the 220 cell types in the body, stem cells hold great promise for treating a host of debilitating illness, including diabetes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, and spinal cord injury. They also provide scientists with models of human disease and a new ways of testing drugs more effectively in living organisms. But for all the hopes invested, progress has been slow. It has helped that stem cell research has been steeped in controversy, with different groups questing the ethics of harvesting stem cells from human embryos.

In 2007 Thomson and Shinya Yamanaka, from Kyoto university, Japan, both independently found a way to turn ordinary human skin cells into stem cells. Both groups used four genes to reprogram human skin cells. Their work is being heralded as an opportunity to overcome problems including the shortage of human embryonic stem cells and restrictions on U.S. federal funding for research.

How stem cell therapy works?

Researches grow stem cells in lab. These developed stem cells are manipulated to specialize into specific types of cells, such as heart muscle cells, blood cells or nerve cells. These manipulated specialized cells can be implanted into the heart muscle. The healthy implanted heart muscle could then contribute to repairing defective heart muscle. The first stem cell therapy was a bone marrow transplant performed by French oncologist Georges Mathew in 1958 on five workers at the Vinca nuclear institute in Yugoslavia who had been affected by a criticality accident.

Stem cell therapies have become very popular in recent years, as people are seeking the latest alternative treatments for their many conditions. Stem cell therapies are very expensive to pursue. Even simple joint injections can cost $1,000 and more advancement treatments can rise in cost up to $100,000 depending on the condition. Patients must do their research and ask as many questions as they can before financially committing to treatment. Since it is a life changing treatment, it will effectively cost high.

Future stem cell treatments

 The stem cell treatment can helps us curing various diseases in the future. But it is important not to overhype the potential of stem cells and to accurately communicate findings to the public. We must not allow the misleading of some people says that we can cure the untreatable diseases with stem cell treatments. However with more research and investment, I believe that stem cell therapy could transform disease outcomes of many patients.

“The regenerative medicine revolution is upon us. Like iron and steel to the industrial revolution, like the microchip to the tech revolution, stem cells will be the driving force of this next revolution.”   -Cade Hildreth

 

History of Motorcars – Karl Benz

It is difficult, to imagine a world without the motorcar. When German engineer Karl Benz drove a motorcar tricycle I 1885 and fellow Germans Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach converted a horse down carriage into a four wheeled motorcar in august 1886, none of them could have imagined the effects of their invention. Benz recognized the great potential of petrol as a fuel. His three wheeled car had a top speed of just ten miles (16 km) per hour with its four-stroke, one cylinder engine. After receiving his patent in January 1886, he began selling the Benz velo, but the public doubted its reliability. Benz’s wife bertha had a brilliant idea to advertise the new car. In 1886 she took it on a 60mile (100) trip from Mannheim to near Stuttgart. Despite having to push the car up hills, the success of the journey proved to a skeptical public that this was a reliable mode of transport.

Daimler and Maybach did not produce commercially feasible cars until 1889. Initially the German inventions did not meet with much demand, and it was French companies like Panhard at Levassor that redesigned and popularized the automobile. In 1926 Benz’s company merged to form the Daimler Benz company. Benz had left his company in 906 and, remarkably, he and Daimler never met. Due to higher incomes and cheaper, mass produced cars, the United States led in terms of motorization for much of the twentieth century. This kind of movement has, however, come at a cost. Some 25 million people are estimation to have died in car accidents worldwide during the twentieth century. Climate changing exhaust gases and suburban sprawl are but two more of the consequences of a heavy reliance on the automobile.

Invention of the clutch

Almost all historians agree that clutch was developed in Germany in the 1880s. Daimler met Maybach while they were working for Nikolaus Otto, the inventor of the internal combustion engine. In 1882 the two set up their own company, and from 1885 to 1886 they built a four-wheeled vehicle with a petrol engine and multiple gears. The gears were external, however, and engaged by winding belts over pulleys to drive each selected gear. In 1889, they developed a closed four- speed gearbox and a friction clutch to powers the gears, this car was the first to be marketed by the Daimler motor campy in 1890. Without a clutch, if the car engine is running the wheels keep turning. For the car to stop without stalling, the wheels and engine must be separated by a clutch. A friction clutch consists of a flywheel mounted to engine side. The clutch originates from the drive shaft and is a large metal plate covered with a frictional material. When the flywheel and clutch make contract, power is then transmitted to the wheels.

Gears in Motorcars

Karl Benz was the first to add a second gear to his machine and also invented the gear shift to transfer between the two. The suggestion for this additional gear came from Benz’s wife, bertha, who drove the three-wheeled Motorwagen 65 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim – the first long distance automobile trip. The gears allow the engine to the maintained at its most efficient rpm while altering the relative speed of the drive shaft to the wheels. Gears originally required double clutching, where the clutch had to be depressed to disengage the first gear from the drive shaft, and then released to allow the correct rpm for the new gear to be selected. The clutch was then pressed again to engage the drives shaft with the new gear. Modern cars use synchronized which use friction to match the speeds of the new gear and he shaft before the teeth of the gears engage, meaning that the clutch only needs to be presses once.

“One thing I fell most passionately about: love of invention will never die” – Karl Benz

The Deepest Image ever taken – Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble space telescope is the most famous telescope in the world. It was named after the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble who changed our understanding of the universe proving the existence of other galaxies. It is an automatic observatory, has discovered millions of new objects in space. It helped us to witness the birth of new stars, found planets outside the solar system and see super massive black holes. Hubble was launched in 199o, and from December 1993 to may 2009, the telescope was repaired and updated four times. Astronauts visited HST five times in order to make repairs and new instruments.

Hubble holds the record for the longest range of observation. The light from the most distant galaxies has taken billions of years to travel across the universe and reach Hubble. By taking this picture, Hubble was literally looking back in time to the very early universe. You can notice on the right side of the image, there is a galaxy very much like the Milky Way that galaxy is about five billion years away, so we are looking back in time by five billion years. In March 4th, 2016, NASA releases a historic image, one that many believed was impossible. It captured the farthest away of all known galaxies; it’s located about 13.4 billion light years away from us. The light from his galaxy has just reached the earth crossing the distance that separates us; hat is now we can observe it as it was 400 million years after the big bang. This galaxy is 25 times smaller than our galaxy, the Milky Way.  It helped to find the age for the universe now known to be 13.8 billion years, roughly three times the age of earth.

With the advanced camera of the NASA’s Hubble space telescope, it discovered a new planet called Fomalhaut b which orbiting is parent star Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut is 2.3 times heavier and 6 times larger than the sun around it is a disc of cosmic dust which creates the resemblance of an ominous eye. Fomalhaut b lies 1.8 billion miles inside the ring’s inner edge and orbits 10.7 billion miles from its star. Astronomers have calculated that Fomalhaut b completes an orbit around its parent star every 872 years. The Fomalhaut system is 25 light years away in the constellation Piscis Australis. But in April 2020, astronomers began doubting its existence; the planet is missing in the new Hubble pictures. Scientists believe that this planet was a cloud of dust and debris formed as a result of a collision of two icy celestial bodies.

In 1994, Hubble captured the most detailed image of the iconic feature called the pillars of creation. The pillars of creation are fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire eagle nebula. The blue color in the image represent oxygen, red is sulfur, and green represents both nitrogen and hydrogen. The nebula was discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer jean Philippe Loys de cheseaux, is located 7,000 light years from earth in the constellation serpens. During its work Hubble has presented millions of images but unfortunately NASA has suspended missions to repair and modernize the telescope. It is assumed that in 2021, Hubble will be replaced with the new James Webb space telescope.

Are Perpetual Machines Really Work?

Most of us might have had this idea, that magnets attract each other in opposite poles, so why can’t we use this to create free energy. Like placing a magnet or a metal in a car and attach the other magnet with a rod or something and place it in front of the car that keeps them attract each other. With this idea, we can move the car without any energy, forever. A perpetual motion machine is a device that is supposed to work indefinitely without any external energy source. Imagine a windmill that produced the breeze it needed to keep rotating or a light bulb whose glow provided its own electricity. These devices have captured many inventers’ imaginations because they could transform our relationship with energy. It sounds cool right? But there is only one problem, it won’t work.

In countless instances in history, people have claimed that they have made a perpetual motion machine. Around 1159 A.D. a mathematician called Bhaskara the learned sketched a design for a wheel containing curved reservoirs of mercury. He reasoned that as the wheels spun, the mercury would flow to the bottom of each reservoir, leaving one side of the wheel perpetually heavier than the other. The imbalance would keep the wheel turning forever. Bhaskara’s drawing was one of the earliest designs for a perpetual motion machine. And more people have claimed that they made a perpetual motion machine, like Zimara’s self blowing windmill in the1500s, the capillary bowl where capillary action forces the water upwards, the oxford electric bell, which takes back and forth due to charge repulsion, and so on. In fact the US patent office stopped granting patents for perpetual motion machines without a working prototype.

Why perpetual motion machines won’t work?

Ideas of perpetual motion machine all violate one or more fundamental laws of thermodynamics. These laws describe the relationship between different forms of energy. The first law of thermodynamics says that “Energy neither be created nor be destroyed”. You can’t get out more energy than you put in. that rules out a useful perpetual motion machine right away because a machine could only ever produce as much as it consumed. There wouldn’t be any leftover energy to power a car or charge a phone. But what if you just wanted the machine to keep itself moving? Let’s take the Bhaskara’s wheel, the moving parts that make one side of the wheel heavier also shift its center of mass downward below the axle. With a low center of mass, the wheel just swings back and forth like a pendulum and will stop. In the 17th century, Robert Boyle came up with an idea for a self watering pot. He theorized that capillary action, the attraction between liquids and surfaces that pulls water through thin tubes, might keep the water cycling around the bowl. But if the capillary action is strong enough to overcome gravity and draw the water up, it would also prevent it from falling back into the bowl.

For each of these machines to keep moving, they had to create some extra energy to nudge the system past its stopping point, breaking the first law of thermodynamics. There are ones that seems to keep moving, but in reality, they invariably turn out to be drawing energy from some external source. Even if engineers could design a machine that didn’t violate the first law of thermodynamics, it still wouldn’t work in the real world because of the second law. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that energy tends to spread out through processes like friction, heating. Any real machine would have moving parts or interactions with air or liquid molecules that would generate tiny amount of friction and heat, even in a vacuum. That heat is energy escaping, and it would keep leeching out, reducing the energy available to move the system itself until the machine inevitably stopped. Like I said about the idea of a car with magnets, the magnets in it won’t able to move the car. Even if the magnet is so powerful to move the car, the friction came into action and will eventually stops the car. So these two laws of thermodynamics will destroy every idea for perpetual motion. With these, we can conclude that perpetual motion machines are impossible.

  YOU  CAN’T  GET  SOMETHING  FOR  NOTHING.

What are Quarks? – Definition, Properties and Types

In the early models of the atom were simple, with protons and neutrons forming a nucleus and negatively charged electrons orbiting it, it seemed like a tiny solar system. In the early 1930s, however, analysis of cosmic rays and experiments with particle acceleration showed the existence of new particles by the dozen. In the early of 1960s American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig independently conjectured that protons and neutrons were made of even more fundamental particles. They named the subatomic particles as Quark in 1964. The word quark came from James Joyce’s novel “Finnegan’s Wake” in which it is a nonsense word made by Joyce.  He key evidence for their existence came from a series of inelastic electron-nucleon scattering experiments conducted between 1967 and 1973 at the Stanford linear accelerator center. Other theoretical and experimental advances of the 1970s confirmed this discovery, leading to the standard model of elementary particle physics currently in force.

Properties of Quarks

Quarks are most commonly found inside protons and neutrons. They have many properties including mass, electric, charge, and color. There are six types of quarks, up quark, down quark, top quark, bottom quark, strange quark, charm quark. They can have positive (+) or negative (-) electric charge. Up, charm and top quarks have a positive 2/3 charge. Down, strange, bottom quarks have a negative 1/3 charge. So protons are positive because there are two quarks (+2/3) ups and one down quark (-1/3), giving a net positive charge (+2/3+2/3-1/3 =1). These three quarks are known as valence quarks, but the proton could have an additional up quark and anti-up quark pair.

 An anti-quark is the anti-particle of a quark and it could have other types of quarks. It includes pairs of strange quarks and anti-strange quarks, charm quarks, and anti-charm quarks. In fact, the proton has tons of quarks, anti-quarks pairs. The quarks are held together by the strong force which is carried by particles called gluons. So inside the proton, there are zillions of gluons and quarks all moving around close to the speed of light. The quarks that comprise a proton only make of 1% of the mass of that proton. A neutron consist two down quarks and one up quark which gave it an overall charge of 0. The quarks have a property called color change. It includes three color, red, blue, green and each of them is complemented with an anti-color. When we mix these three colors, we get white, that’s why proton is called colorless. The quarks change their colors constantly but, In order to maintain colorless state, the ant-color mix into it.The interaction between quarks and gluons is responsible for almost all the perceived mass of protons and neutrons and is therefore where we get our mass.

Conclusion

The discovery of quarks was a gradual process that took over a decade for the entire sequence of events to unfold. A variety of theoretical insights and experimental results contributed to this discovery, but the MIT-SLAC deep inelastic electron scattering experiments plays a vital role. The existence of quarks is recognized today as a cornerstone of the standard model. I numerous experiments at CERN including those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicists are measuring the properties of Gell-Mann and Zweig’s particles with ever-greater precision.

                  “Three quarks for muster mark!” – Author James Joyce

Atomic Bomb – History of Nuclear Weapons

During the World War II the united sates used an unprecedented $2 billion to feed an ultra-secret research and development program, the outcome of which would alter the relationships of nations forever. Known as the Manhattan project, it was the search by the United States and her closest allies to create a practical atomic bomb. It is a single device which capable of mass destruction, the threat of which alone could be powerful enough to end the war. The motivation was simple. Scientists escaping the Nazi regime had revealed that research in Germany had confirmed the theoretical viability of atomic bombs. In 1939, in support of their fears that the Nazis might now be developing such a weapon, Albert Einstein and others wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) warning of the need for atomic research. By 1941 FDR had authorized formal, coordinated scientific research into such a device. Among those efforts would ultimately unleash the power of the atom was Robert Oppenheimer, who was appointed the project’s scientific director in 1942. Under his direction the famous laboratories at Los Alamos would be constructed and the scientific team assembled. On July 16 1945, in a small town called Alamogordo, New Mexico, the course of human history was changed; the first atomic bomb was detonated that day.

By the end of 1945, the bombing had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima, and a further 74,000 in Nagasaki.

Principle of an atomic bomb

An atom bomb works in the principle that when you break up a nucleus of an atom, a large amount of energy is released. Because it takes a large amount of energy to keep the nucleus bound together. When you split it apart, the energy is released. Scientists chose the biggest and heaviest nucleus that is found in nature to be the best object for splitting. It is uranium, it is unique in that one of its isotopes is the only naturally occurring element on that is capable of sustaining a nuclear fission reaction. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 146 neurons together to give an atomic mass of 238 or U238. A very small portion of uranium, when it is mine, is in the form of an isotope U235, this isotope  has the same 92 protons but only 143 neutrons, or three fewer than U238. U235 is highly unstable, which makes it highly fissionable. When uranium U235 is slammed by a neutron, it becomes uranium 236. In the process of splitting and creating two more stable atoms, a whole bunch of energy is released, along with three more neutrons. These three more neutrons fly out and slam more U235 atoms. And thus, a chain reaction occurs, causing more and more U235 to be split, and ultimately causes a huge explosion. The uranium contains only 0.7% of this U235 isotope, and a whole bunch of it is needed to make one atomic bomb.

Another engineering challenge is to create a vessel with the correct shape and material to contain the neutrons after fissioning, so that they do not escape, but rather cause more atoms to fission. And it is lined with a special mirror so that it forces neutrons back in to the fissionable material rather than escape the vessel. Then the correct amount of fissionable material has to be placed inside this vessel. This is called ‘super critical mass’. There has to be enough mass to sustain an uncontrollable chain reaction resulting in an explosion.  The super critical mass has to be kept apart until you are ready for an explosion. Otherwise an explosion can occur when you don’t want it. The reason is because these isotopes are unstable, and are throwing off neurons randomly. In an atomic bomb, two subcritical masses are slammed together usually with a conventional bomb contained inside the outer bomb. This conventional explosive charge initiates the chain reaction. This project ultimately created the first, man-made nuclear explosion, which Robert Oppenheimer called “trinity” on July 16, 1945. The concept of an atom bomb is simple but, the process of actually creating a bomb is not so simple.

“Now I am became Death, the destroyer of worlds.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

Nikola Tesla’s Inventions – Working of AC current

“I don’t care that they stole my idea, I care that they don’t have any of their own”, said by one of the greatest inventors to have ever lived, the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla who developed the framework for modern-day electrical engineering. When Nikola Tesla began work at Edison’s DC (direct current) power plant in the United States, his new employer was not interested in his ideas for a new type of power called AC (alternating current). At the time DC was the only electrical supply, but it could only be transmitted across short distances before it lost power. To Edison, AC sounded like competition and he persuaded Tesla to work on improving his DC system by offering him a huge sum of money. But when Tesla had done what he had been asked, Edison reneged on his promise. Tesla resigned and returned to his AC power concepts. DC power is constant and moves in one direction and the resistance in wires causes it to lose power over distance. AC power does not have this problem as it varies in current so the resistance is less, and yet it varies in current so the resistance is less, and yet it delivers the same amount of power.

How AC current works?

In an atom, the negatively charged electrons are bound to the nucleus due to their electromagnetic attraction to the oppositely charged nucleus. But the electrons in the outer most shell called valence shell can sometimes become free due to external forces. These electrons that escape from the valence shell are called free electrons and they can move from one atom to another. This movement is called charge and the flow of electric charge is called electricity. Materials that allows many electrons to move freely are conductors and don’t allow are called insulators. That why copper is a great conductor. Alternating current would flow back and forth 50-60 times per second, this is called the frequency. Even though Thomas Edison one of the famous and powerful men of the 19th century, he tried his best to compete with Tesla. The mathematic formula of the current is P = I×V, with this formula, the same amount of power can be transmitted either at high current and low voltage or low current and high voltage. But when you transmit current through wires, there will be also loss of heat. To overcome this problem, we have to higher the voltage to reduce the heat loss.

In modern electric power grids, electricity is transmitted at hundreds of thousands of volts. But the voltage cannot be this high when it arrives at your home. So a transformer steps down this high voltage to typically between 100 and 240 volts. The step down process of AC current is way easier than the DC current. Transformers require a time varying voltage to function, and since direct current is constant, and only alternating current is time varying, transformers like these only work with AC electricity. In Edison and Tesla’s time, there was no easy way to transform voltage with direct current. And this is the primary reason Tesla’s AC won out over Edison’s DC in the early era of electrical transmission.

AC current – a scientific breakthrough

This made AC power more cost effective, as fewer power plants were needed. Entrepreneur George Westinghouse saw the potential of Tesla’s AC power and bought his patents for AC motors. Edison began a propaganda war in an attempt to keep DC power on top, but it was inevitable that ac power would win. Almost all electricity is now delivered as Tesla’s AC power. Edison’s place in history as an inventor and electrician is secure. But in many ways Tesla went even further. He envisioned fluorescent lights, technology of the radio, and remote control. Nikola Tesla was one of the most forward thinking, and dynamic visionaries that ever lived.

“If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world”. – Nikola Tesla

Ballistic missiles – History, Application and Working

The history of rocketry dates back to around 900 C.E., but the use of rockets as highly destructive missiles able to carry large payloads of explosives was not feasible until the late 1930s. War has been the catalyst for many inventions, both benevolent and destructive. The ballistic missile is intriguing because it can be both of these things. It has made possible some of the greatest deeds mankind has ever achieved, and also some of the worst. German Walter Dornberger and his team began developing rockets in 1938, but it was not until 1944 that the first ballistic missile, the aggregate-4 or V-2 rocket, was ready for use. V-2 was used extensively by the Nazis at the end of World War II, primarily as an error weapon against civilian targets. They were powerful and imposing: 46 feet (14m) long, able to reach speeds of around 3,500 miles per hour (5600 kph) and deliver a warhead of around 2,200 pounds (1000 kg) at a range of 200 miles (320 km).

Ballistic missiles follow a ballistic flight path, determined by the brief initial powered phase of the missile’s flight. This is unlike guided missiles, such as cruise missiles, which are essentially unmanned airplanes packed with explosives. This meant that the early V-2 flew inaccurately, so they were of most use in attacking large, city sized targets such as London, Paris, and Antwerp. The Nazi ballistic missile program has had both a great and a terrible legacy. Ballistic missiles such as the V-2 were scaled up to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles with a variety of warheads, but also the craft that have carried people into space. Ballistic missiles may have led us to the point of self destruction, but to venture beyond our atmosphere.

 Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) were first developed by the United States in 1959. It is a guided ballistic missile with a minimum range of 5500 kilometers primarily designed for nuclear weapon. United States, China, France, India, United Kingdom and North Korea are the only countries that have operational ICBMs. The ICBMs has a three stage booster, during the boost phase the rocket get the missile airborne, this phase last around 2 to 5 minutes until the ICBM has reached space. ICBMs have up to three rocket phases with each one ejected or discarded after it burns out. They use either liquid or solid propellant. The Liquid fuel rockets tend to burn longer in the boost phase than the solid propellant. The second phase of the ICBMs is the point where the rocket has reached space, here it continues along is ballistic trajectory. At this point the rocket will be travelling anywhere from 24,140 and 27,360 kilometers an hour. The final phase is the ICBM’s final separation and re- entry into earth’s atmosphere. The nose cone section carrying the warhead separates from the final rocket booster and drops back to earth. If the ICBM has rocket thrusters, those will be used at this point to orient itself towards the target. It is important that ICBMs have adequate heat shields to survive reentry, if not they burn up and fall apart. It’s important to note that although countries have ICBMs, none have ever been fired in anger against another country.

“This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era in transportation that of space travel.” –  Walter Dornberger

Optics – Application, Laser optics, Fiber optics communication

The formal study of light began as an effort to explain vision. Early Greek thinkers associated with a ray emitted from the human eye. A surviving work from Euclid, the Greek geometrician, laid out basic concepts of perspective, using straight lines to show why objects at a distance appear shorter or slower than they actually are. Eleventh-century Islamic scholar Abu Ali al Hasan Ibn Al-Haytham known also by the Latinized name Alhazen revisited the work done by Euclid and Ptolemy and advanced the study of reflection, refraction, and color. He argued that light moves out in all directions from illuminated objects and that vision results when light enters the eye. In the late 16th and 17th centuries, researches including Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snel noticed that light bent as it passed through a lens or fluid. Although he believed the speed of light to be infinite, Danish astronomer Ole Romar in 1676 used telescopic observations of Jupiter moons to estimate the speed of light as 140,000 miles a second. Around the same time, Sir Isaac Newton used prisms to demonstrate that white light could be separated into a spectrum of basics colors. He believed that light was made of particles, where as Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens described light as a wave.

The particle versus the wave debate advanced in the 1800s. English physician Thomas young’s experiments with vision suggested wavelike behavior, since sources of light seemed to cancel out or reinforce each other. Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxell’s research united the forces of electromagnetism fell along a single spectrum. Te arrival of quantum physics in late 19th and early 20th century prompted the next leap in understanding light. By studying the emission of electrons from a grid hit by a beam of light known as the photoelectric effect Albert Einstein concluded that light came from what he called photons, emitted as electrons changed their orbit around an atomic nucleus and then jumped back to their original state. Through Einstein’s finding seemed to favor the particle theory of light, further experiments showed that light and matter itself behave both as waves and as particles.

How do lasers work?

Einstein’s work on the photoelectric effect led to the laser, an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission radiation.” As electrons are exited from one quantum state to another, they emit a single photon when jumping back. But Einstein predicted that when an already excited atom was hit with the right type of stimulus, it would give off two identical photons. Subsequent experiments showed that certain source materials, such as ruby, not only did that but also emitted photons that were perfectly coherent-not scattered like the emissions of a flashlight, but all of the same wavelength and amplitude. These powerfully focused beams are now common-place, found in grocery store scanners, handheld pointers, and cutting instruments from the hospital operating room to the shop floors of heavy industry.

Future trends in fiber optics communication

Fiber optics communication is definitely the future of data communication. The evolution of fiber optic communication has been driven by advancement in technology and increased demand for fiber optic communication. It is expected to continue into the future, with the development of new and more advanced communication technology.

Another future trend will be the extension of present semiconductor lasers to a wider variety of lasing wavelengths. Shorter wavelength lasers with very high input powers are of interest in some high density optical applications. Presently, laser sources which are spectrally shaped through chirp managing to compensate for chromatic dispersion are available. Chirp managing means that the laser is controlled such that it undergoes a sudden change in its wavelength when firing a pulse, such that the chromatic dispersion experienced by the pulse is reduced. There is need to develop instruments to be used to characterize such lasers. Also, single mode tunable lasers are of great importance for future coherent optical systems. These tunable lasers laser in a single longitudinal mode that can be tuned to a range of different frequencies.

“Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.” – Claude Debussy

Does sneezing stops your heart?

Most of us have experienced it while in our class, meeting or at any other important commitments. Yes, sneezing, especially when we were suffering from some allergies, we can’t control it, but why do we sneeze? What’s the reason behind it? Well a sneeze is officially called as Sternutation. Sneezing is an involuntary activity of our body to clear our nose. Whenever a foreign matter such as dust, dirt, germs or anything that shouldn’t be there enters your nostrils, the nose get irritated and it sends a message to your brain. Then to remove the particle your brain sends a message to all of your muscles for a sudden exhalation process called a sneeze, and it would take only milliseconds for your brain to process this. In 2002, a study at Denmark’s department of Otorhinolaryngology at Rigshospitalet showed that 95% of people sneeze four times or less each day. Worldwide, we could be sneezing upwards of 7.8 billion times a day.

Shot of an attractive young woman feeling ill and blowing her nose with a tissue at home

Cultural beliefs about sneezing

          Many people think that sneeze is a sign of good luck, while others think it’s a bad sign. People in ancient Greece, 400BC believed these sneezes are favorable sign from the gods. During the 6th century, the plague killed 200 million people all over the world; sneeze is also one of the symptoms of this disease. So people started to believe that sneeze is a sign of death and by saying “bless you” they thought it may prevent them from being infected and some used to consider as a final blessing. That’s why still some people say “God bless you” when someone sneeze.

Does really sneeze stops our heart?

        Do you know? Your sneeze can create 100,000 droplets and it can travel up to 160 kilometers (100 miles) an hour. Yes it’s more likely a faster way to spread diseases than a cough. So while sneezing, our heart stops for a second and start after that? Well it seems like it takes a break but, it’s not the case. Usually we inhale deeply before sneezing; this increases the pressure in your chest and slows down the blood flow to your heart. The heart compensates this by changing to its regular beat right after we sneeze. So it only reduces the heart rate for a short period of time rather than stopping it. Do you know? The heart can continue to beat for a short time after being removed from the body because; it has its own electrical system that can pump blood as long as it gets oxygen. So a sneeze won’t stop the electrical activity of our heart.

Is holding your sneeze dangerous?

       Most of us hate sneezing in awkward situations, it makes us embarrassed. Did you ever tried to hold your sneeze? If you did, the following incident will show why you should not. A 34 year old man has admitted to a hospital in the UK for serious neck infection. Doctors found that the pressure built from the sneeze cant able to escape as he blocked his nose and mouth. It causes rupture in the cavity that connects our nose and mouth called pharynx. It seems that he is trying to hold his sneeze every time for the last 30 years because, he feels that it would be unhygienic to sneeze into the atmosphere. He was hospitalized for a week and doctors treated him with the necessary antibiotics to cure the infection.

      Sneezing is one of the primary defense systems in our body to get rid of harmful irritants in our nose. The entered irritant somehow should have to go out. So, don’t try to hold it, just let it happen.

“I used to wake up at 4 AM and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness”.     – James Thurber.

Evolution of Indian agriculture

India is the second largest producer of wheat and rice, which are the most widely used staple food. India also plays a major role in producing dry fruits, raw materials for textile industries, roots, tuber crops, pulses, coconut, sugarcane and various other vegetables. Agriculture plays a vital role in Indian economy. According to the sources, Indian agriculture began by 9000 BCE on north west India. Indians considered agriculture as their major survival and they even worshiped it and we still do.

Rise and Fall of agriculture

Farmers used to cultivate their lands with completely natural seeds and fertilize them using bio fertilizers, that is manually prepared fertilizers which consists of cow dung, dry leaves, vegetable and fruit waste and farmers even used earthworms to decompose the organic matter. Earthworms have the ability to eat and mix large amount of soil and organic matter and deposit it in the form of casts. The crops that are obtained as a result of natural organic forming were healthy but the yield was less. In order to increase the yield, nowadays lot of chemical fertilizers, pesticides are used, which increases the yield but the quality of the crop is a question mark. Over the years, the dependency on agriculture has declined to 50 percent as per the latest round of the periodic labor force survey for 2018-19, also the lockdown has severely disrupted India’s agriculture.

The Origin of Glass – Unknown facts

Archeological findings suggest that glass was first created during the Bronze Age in the Middle East. To the southeast, in Egypt, glass beads have seen found dating back to about 2500 B.C.E. Glass is made from a mixture of silica sand, calcium oxide, soda, and magnesium, which is melted in a furnace at 2,730°F (1,500°C). Most early furnaces produced insufficient heat to melt the glass properly, so glass was a luxury item that few people could afford. This situation changed in the first century B.C.E. when the blowpipe was discovered. Glass manufacturing spread throughout the Roman Empire in such quantities that glass was no longer a luxury. It flourished in Venice in the fifteenth century, where soda lime glass, known as ‘cristallo’, was developed. Venetian glass objects were said to be the most delicate and graceful in the world.

How glass was made?

It all begins in the earth’s crust, where the two most common elements are silicon and oxygen. These react together to form silicon dioxide, whose molecules arrange themselves into a regular crystalline form known as quartz. Quartz is commonly found in sand, where it often makes up most of the grains and is the main ingredient in most types of glass. You probably noticed that glass isn’t made of multiple tiny bits of quartz and for good reason. The edges of the rigidly formed grains and smaller defects within the crystal structure reflect and disperse light that hits them. But when the quartz is heated high enough, the extra energy makes the molecules vibrate until they break the bonds holding them together and become a flowing liquid, the same way that ice melts into water. Unlike water, though, liquid silicon dioxide does not reform into a crystal solid when it cools. Instead, as the molecules lose energy, they are less and less able to move into an ordered position, and the result is what is called an amorphous solid. A solid material with the chaotic structure of a liquid, which allows the molecules to freely fill in any gaps, this makes the surface of lass uniform on a microscopic level, allowing light to strike it without being scattered in different directions.

How glass is transparent?

Why light is able to pass through glass rather than being absorbed as with most solids? You may know that an atom consists of a nucleus with electrons orbiting around it, but you may not know that an atom has a lot of empty space. So, light passes through these atoms easily without hitting any of these particles. Then why aren’t all materials transparent? This is because, the different energy levels those electrons in an atom can have. Consider an atom of an iron, an electron in it initially assigned to move in a certain orbit. But if it had the enough energy; it could reach the exited state and jump to a closer orbit. So, one of the light photons passing through can provide the needed energy. But there is one thing; the energy from the photon has to be the right amount to get an electron to the next orbit. Otherwise, it will just let the photon pass by, and it just so happens that in glass, the electrons are placed so far from each other, that the photons of visible light can’t provide enough energy for an electron. Photons from ultra violet light give just the right amount of energy, and are absorbed. That’s why you can’t get a suntan through glass. This amazing property of being both solid and transparent has given glass many uses throughout the centuries.

 In the 1950s Sir Alastair Pilkington introduced ‘float glass production”, a revolutionary method still used to make glass. Other developments have included safety glass, heat resistant glass, and fiber optics, where light pulses are sent along thin fibers of glass. Fiber optic devices are used in telecommunications and in medicine for viewing inaccessible parts of the human body.