Lithium – ion Battery

Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries pack high energy density in a tiny package, making them the ideal choice for devices such as laptops and cell phones. Commercialized in 1991 by Sony,Lithium ion batteries provided a superior alternative to the prevalent nickel-cadmium(Ni-Cad) batteries of the day.

Lithium has long been desirable for batteries because it is the lightest of all metals, making it a tantalizing choice for a portable energy source. In fact, ever since the 1970s, lithiumbased batteries have been available in a non-rechargeable form. Watch batteries are one well-known example.

The relative instability of the lithium proved even more apparent during charging, leading to its slow adoption as a rechargeable battery. The end result is a compromise where the name says it all – lithium ion batteries use only the ions rather than the metal itself. The outcome is a much more stable though slightly less powerful energy source ideal for recharging. And even with the decrease in power, lithium ion based batteries still deliver more than double the voltage of nickel-cadmium.

Other than higher power and lower weight, li-ion batteries are user friendly as well. Unlike its predecessor, the nickel-cadmium, lithium-ion batteries do not suffer from the “memory effect.” That is, the battery does not have to be fully discharged before being recharged. On the other hand, earlier nickel-cadmium batteries would “remember” where they were recharged, leading them to charge only to that point again. Later developed nickel-metal-hydride batteries also solved this problem.

opposite that users should be wary of. Lithium ion batteries shouldn’t be run all the way down before charging; they respond much better with constant recharges. Battery gauges, on the other hand, are often impacted and display incorrect readings from this practice. This leads some people to believe a memory effect exists, when in fact it’s the meter that needs to be reset. Draining the battery all the way down every 30 charges or so can recalibrate the gauge.

Eventually all rechargeable lithium ion batteries will meet their end. After about two to three years, li-ion batteries expire, whether or not they are being used. To prolong the battery when not in use, store it in a cool dry place at approximately 40 percent capacity. Also, avoid exposing a lithium ion battery to extreme temperatures for prolonged periods of time, and recharge constantly when in use. When it’s time to eventually dispose, lithium ion batteriesare much safer than many other types of rechargeable batteries, allowing them to be safely placed in the trash. As with most other things – if recycling is an option, that is the best one of all.

Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) : A Comprehensive

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is imposed in areas affected by internal rebellion, insurgency or militancy. Since it is a common practice in the country to deploy the armed forces to quell such unrest, this Act provides the armed forces with an enabling environment to carry out their duties without fear of being prosecuted for their actions.

Background

The origins of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 can be traced to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1948. The latter in turn was enacted to replace four ordinances—the Bengal Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance; the Assam Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance; the East Bengal Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance; the United provinces Disturbed Areas (Special Powers of Armed Forces) Ordinance—invoked by the central government to deal with the internal security situation in the country in 1947.

Incidentally, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1948 was repealed in 1957, only to be resurrected a year later in 1958. The context was the fast deteriorating internal security situation in the ‘unified Assam’. The Nagas, who inhabited the Naga Hills of Assam and Manipur, had opposed the merger of their area with that of India on the grounds that they were racially and socio-politically different from the Indians. They had even voted in favour of a referendum declaring independence in 1951 and raised the banner of revolt. They boycotted the first general election of 1952, thereby demonstrating their non-acceptance of the Indian Constitution and started committing violent acts against the Indian state.

Basic Facts

• Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was promulgated in September 1958 to control Naga insurgency that had broken out in the mid fifties.
• It has since been enacted for Tripura in 1970, Manipur in 1980, Punjab in 1983 and J&K and Assam 1990. Earlier, Punjab was also brought under the Act through the Armed Forces (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act of 1983.
• It came into the limelight in 2004 with the custodial death of a Manipuri woman, Thangjam Manorama Devi, accused of being an underground operative.
• In November 2011, the central government extended the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in J&K for another year. The Act was first imposed in the state in 1990 and since then its term has been extended every year by the unanimous agreement of all concerned agencies. This time around, however, the decision to extend the Act met with some opposition.
•  In November 2010 Irom Sharmilla has completed ten years of her fast for revoking of the Act.
• Manipur, however, withdrew the Act from some places against the wishes of the Central government in August 2004.

Present Status

Presently, the Act is in force in Assam, Nagaland, Manipur (except the Imphal municipal area); Tripura (40 police stations); the Tirap and Changlang districts of Arunachal Pradesh and a 20 km belt in the states with a common border with Assam. Apart from the Northeast, the AFSPA is also in force in Jammu and Kashmir, which came under its purview on July 6, 1990 as per the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act of 1990.

Various Views

• The military has tendered its position to the government against any dilution of the Act.
• The cabinet committee on security has taken the army’s reservations on board.
• The Central government appointed a five-member committee under former Supreme Court judge Justice B P Jeevan Reddy to review if the Act needs to be tonned down or repealed completely and replace it by a humane one. In its 147-report, the committee on 6 June 2005 recommended the repealing of the Act. However, the government did not agree with the recommendation.
• The Second Administrative Reforms Commission’s (Veerappa Moily Commission) Fifth Report on Public Order seconded the BP Jeevan Reddy committee report that the AFSPA should be repealed and, as recommended by the Jeevan Reddy Committee, a new chapter be inserted in the UAPA. However, it held that ‘the proposed insertion of Chapter VI A should apply only to the Northeast.’ The reason for this has not been explained, even though it defeats the whole purpose of the BP Jeevan Reddy Committee. The purpose of the latter was to dispel alienation in the NortheEast by enabling military deployment under a general, as against a special law.
• The Moily Commission’s recommendation that the inserted chapter be only applicable to the Northeast has been criticised as counter-productive. It also ignores the fact that the Act is operative in J&K too.
• There is no clarity over its current status

Implications

• The Act has acquired centrality in any discussion on India’s counter insurgency and anti-terrorism strategy
• its implications for centre-state relations, its impact on the fundamental rights of citizens, the tacit political message sent to areas singled out for such laws, such as the Northeast and J&K, as being ‘different’ from the rest of India, the possible empowering of the military to an extent of skewing the ‘civil-military’ balance, the strategic costs of the Act in terms of losing ‘hearts and minds’ etc.

Controversial Provisions & Criticism

• Under AFSPA, Central forces can tackle local issues, fight social unrest and can be redeployed if necessary to restore peace as per the request of the state administration  i.e., For declaring an area as a ‘disturbed area’ there must be a grave situation of law and order on the basis of which Governor/Administrator can form opinion that an area is in such a disturbed or dangerous condition that use of Armed Forces in aid of civil power is necessary
• By Act 7 of 1972, this power to declare areas as being disturbed was extended to the central government
• Under section 4 (d), the army can enter and search without a warrant to make an arrest or to recover any property, arms, ammunition or explosives which are believed to be unlawfully kept on the premises. This section also allows the use of force necessary for the search.
• This law also overrides the CrPC. The CrPC establishes the procedure for police officers to follow for arrest, searches and seizures, a procedure that the army and other paramilitary are not trained to follow.
• use force or fire upon, after giving due warning, an individual or a group of individuals unlawfully carrying or in possession of or is reasonably suspected of being in unlawful possession of any of the articles mentioned in Section 15 of this Act.
• Powers under the AFSPA, under Section 4 (a), have a bearing on ‘hard core’ rights, such as right to life. This is why the AFSPA has come under criticism on two counts. One is that the Act is a ‘colourable’ legislation, giving emergency powers without proclaiming emergency. Second is that the extensive power to take life violates international obligations and Article 14.

Supreme Court Guidelines

The Supreme Court’s verdict in 1988 in the matter of Naga Peoples’ Movement of Human Rights vs. Union of India was essentially that ‘Parliament was competent to enact the central Act’. The Court stated that in the event of deployment of the armed forces in aid of the civil power in a state, the forces shall operate in cooperation with the civil administration

However, the stipulations made by the Supreme Court place an extraordinary onus on the military for self-regulation. These include

• the officer (including an NCO) taking decisions needs to ensure that the action is ‘necessary’ and that the ‘due warning’ has been issued and in any case ‘the officer shall use minimal force required for effective action against the person/persons acting in contravention of the prohibitory order.’
• It held that ‘conferment of the power… to destroy the structure utilised as a hide-out by absconders in order to control such activities could not be held to be arbitrary or unreasonable’ since the propensity of offenders of repeating their past activities could not be precluded.
•  It required the handing over of arrested persons to be done in 24 hours (excluding journey) so as to be in compliance with Article 22 of the constitution in which this time limit is stipulated.
• Section 6, it opined, ‘does not suffer from the vice of arbitrariness.’ Its view was that: ‘The protection given under Section 6 was not a conferment of an immunity on the persons exercising the powers under the Central Act. It only gave protection in the form of previous sanction of the Central Government before a criminal prosecution of a suit or other civil proceeding was instituted against such person.’ In case the government was to decline permission, then it had to state its reasons as its decision was subject to judicial review.

The seriousness with which the Court viewed the ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ is obvious in the following:

• The instructions in the form of “Do’s and Don’ts” had to be treated as binding instructions which were required to be followed by the members of the armed forces exercising powers under the Central Act and a serious note had to be taken of violation of the instructions and the persons found responsible for such violation had to be suitably punished under the Army Act, 1950.

Human Rights Commission Role

The National Human Rights (Protection) Act of 1993 leaves the armed forces out of its intimate purview. Its oversight role over the armed forces is considerably restricted. The commission can at best seek a report from the central government. After the receipt of the report, it may make its recommendations to it. The central government is to inform the commission of the action taken within three months. This is to be published and a copy is to be given to the petitioner or his representative. That the NHRC’s however is highly restricted which puts the onus of supervision on those at the ministerial level, in terms of political supervision of the military, and on internal self-regulation by the military and its leadership

Indian Army’s Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations

The doctrinal understanding is that, within the ambit of these rights, the endeavour must be to have as light a footprint as possible. Alongside, a strict human rights protection regime must be in place, termed ‘zero tolerance’. The strategic fallout is in gaining support of the people, deemed the ‘center of gravity’. Valuing the human rights of citizens is thus consequential, though it is a means to an end.

This perspective, reflected in the Indian Army’s doctrine, is that respecting the human rights factor is a strategic necessity. The problem with such a perspective is that the converse is equally implicit, that is, if required by strategy, human rights can be neglected.

The Joint Doctrine for Sub-Conventional Operations (JDSCO) says that, ‘It is our constitutional obligation to honour the HR of our people and any disregard to this obligation will only enable the terrorist/insurgents to discredit the state’s legitimacy and influence. (emphasis added). Further, it states, ‘Upholding of HR is a constitutional obligation and is also necessary to establish the credibility of the government in the eyes of the people’ (emphasis added). The qualifications, emphasised here, make it apparent that the constitutional obligation is not enough on its own merits.

Instead, the strategic fallout makes it necessary to honour human rights. This understanding is compounded by a perspective that takes human rights protection as a ‘force multiplier’. A force multiplier is defined as, ‘a capability that, when added to and employed by a combat force, significantly increases the combat potential of that force and thus enhances the probability of successful mission accomplishment.’

Recommendations & Conclusion

• Any force that operates in a counter terrorism environment, and in the case of J&K, superimposed by a proxy war, needs protection. The Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) provides protection under Sec 45 and 197 as does the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967, amended in 2008 under Section 49. Therefore, any future amendment, needs to cater for the protection of the armed forces operating in a disturbed area
• Incorporation of existing Supreme Court guidelines on Dos and Don’ts in AFSPA/UAPA.
• Create committees at the district level with representatives of army, police, civil administration and the public to report, assess and track complaints in the area.
• All investigations should be time bound. Reasons for delay, should be communicated to the aggrieved.
• Implementation of Jeevan Reddy Commission recommendations
• AFSPA should be made compliant with international and national norms of human rights and humanitarian law .
• Elevate human rights as the core organising principle in counter insurgency

P.S. this post is intended to be exhaustive (with background) so plz dont mind the length of the post

Sources & Further Reading : Idsa 1 , Indian Army Doctrine, Idsa Analyses, ToI

India’s unsuccessful bid to revise HRA at Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO

CGPCS Working group 3(Contact group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia) and Industries have worked closely to produce BMP4 – 4th version of Best Management practices for shipping industry. This BMP4 defines HRA – High Risk Area related to piracy.  Industries, as editors of the BMPs, define and revise the scope of the HRA. In the meeting conducted recently, no revision of HRA was agreed to, by the industry.

The High Risk Area defines itself by where pirate activity and/or attacks have taken place. For the purpose of BMP the High Risk Area is an area bounded by Suez and the Strait of Hormuz to the North, 10°S and 78°E. (Note – the UKMTO Voluntary Reporting Area is slightly larger as it includes the Arabian Gulf). Attacks have taken place at most extremities of the High Risk Area. Attacks to the South have extended into the Mozambique Channel. A high state of readiness and vigilance should be maintained even to the South of the Southerly limit of the High Risk Area.

India’s proposal

India is looking for revision of HRA upto 65 degree E longitude as opposed to current 78 degree E longitude.

Why does India propose revision ?

1)Ships sail close to Indian Coast to avoid Piracy Prone areas. 78 degree E longitude covers entire western coast of India and even some portion in the south, close to Kanyakumari. Territorial waters of India upto 12NM are not part HRA however 78 degree limit brings high risk area much closer to Indian coast. As per security guidelines issued for HRA, vessels can carry weapons and Navy marines can be onboard. This is posing risk to our fishermen who venture into sea for their business and livelihood. There are incidents to prove that merchant vessels mistook ignorant fishermen to pirates, which pose potential risk to fishermen.

2) Insurance premiums for ships bound to this zone has increased significantly due to the area being demarcated as HRA.

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Some other info regarding piracy

Pirate Activity:

The level of pirate activity varies within the High Risk Area due to changing weather conditions and activity by Naval/Military forces.

Pirate activity generally reduces in areas affected by the South West monsoon, and increases in the period following the monsoon.

The onset of the North East monsoon generally has a lesser effect on piracy activity than the South West monsoon.

When piracy activity is reduced in one area of the High Risk Area it is likely to increase in another area (eg the area off Kenya and Tanzania, the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandeb all generally experience an increase in pirate activity during the South West monsoon).

Internationally Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC)

This corridor is in Gulf of Aden only.

Sources

Click to access BMP4.pdf

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/india-seeks-change-in-guidelines-to-ensure-fishermens-safety/article4308504.ece

In the context of…..Draft National water policy…write up by Mihir shah(bit lengthy)

http://www.epw.in/special-articles/watertowards-paradigm-shift-twelfth-plan.html

Basic principles on which Kepler Telescope works to find Exoplanets

One of the great problems in the search for exoplanets is detecting the darn things. Most are simply too small and too far away to be observed directly. Our Earth-based telescopes can’t resolve a faraway planet as a dot separate from its host star. Luckily, astronomers have other means at their disposal, and they all call for sophisticated telescopes armed with photometers (a device that measures light), spectrographs and infrared cameras.

The first method, known as the wobble method, looks for changes in a star’s relative velocity caused by the gravitational tug of a nearby planet. These tugs cause the star to surge toward Earth and then away, creating periodic variations that we can detect by analyzing the spectrum of light from the star. As it surges toward Earth, its light waves are compressed, shortening the wavelength and shifting the color to the blue side of the spectrum. As it surges away from Earth, its light waves spread out, increasing the wavelength and shifting the color to the red side of the spectrum. Larger planets intensify the wobble of their parent stars, which is why this technique has been so efficient at finding gas giants several times larger than Earth.

What’s one thing that all planets can do well? Block light. If a planet’s orbit crosses between its parent star and Earth, it will block some of the light and cause the star to dim. Astronomers call this a transit, and the related planet-hunting technique the transit method. Telescopes equipped with sensitive photometers can easily discern large planets, but they can also catch even the slight dimming caused by an Earth-sized object.

Finally, some astronomers have been turning to a technique known as microlensing. Microlensing occurs when one star passes precisely in front of another star. When this happens, the gravity of the foreground star acts like a magnifying lens and amplifies the brightness of the background star. If a planet orbits the foreground star, its additional gravity intensifies the amplification effect. This handily reveals the planet, which would otherwise be invisible to other detection techniques.

What is Greenhouse Runaway effect ?

A runaway greenhouse effect involving carbon dioxide and water vapor may have occurred on Venus.^[9] In this scenario, early Venus may have had a global ocean. As the brightness of the early Sun increased, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increased, increasing the temperature and consequently increasing the evaporation of the ocean, leading eventually to the situation in which the oceans boiled, and all of the water vapor entered the atmosphere. On Venus today there is little water vapor in the atmosphere. If water vapor did contribute to the warmth of Venus at one time, this water is thought to have escaped to space. Some evidence for this scenario comes from the extremely high Deuterium to Hydrogen ratio in Venus’ atmosphere, roughly ~150x that of Earth, since light hydrogen would escape from the atmosphere more readily than its heavier isotope, Deuterium.^[10][11] Venus is sufficiently strongly heated by the Sun that water vapor can rise much higher in the atmosphere and be split into hydrogen and oxygen by ultraviolet light. The hydrogen can then escape from the atmosphere and the oxygen recombines. Carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas in the current Venusian atmosphere, owes its larger concentration to the weakness of carbon recycling as compared to Earth (which requires liquid water), where the carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes is efficiently subducted into the Earth by plate tectonics on geologic time scales.

Strong evidence to link RF radiations to various health disorders ( telcom towers)

What is the safe limit?

• According to the new regulations in India, a maximum power density of 0.9 w/m2 can be allowed for a 1,800 MHz GSM operators
• Bioinitiative Report 2012 has found health hazards to be reported much below in the range of 0.0005 w/m2 which is about 2,000 times lower that what is still being prescribed.
• The report points out that the prescribed limits all across the world are 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the lowest levels at which effects have been found

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/strong-evidence-link-rf-radiations-various-health-disorders-bioinitiative-report

Inclusive Growth

Definition: A growth process that ensures equal access to opportunities for all segments of society regardless of their individual circumstances.

Thus, inclusive growth is about providing the poor with a starting point that can enable them to enjoy the fruitfulness of economic growth.

How to achieve inclusive growth?

Growth accelerators ( strategies for growth)   +     Equalizing accelerators which make the growth more equitable and thus, more inclusive.
Source: World Bank Development Policy Review

Planning Commission keeps talking of this but it unfortunately continues its primary focus on providing impetus to “growth” ( fixing a target of achieving 9 per cent GDP growth), but adopts no methodologies to measure and monitor “inclusive growth”. If the Planning Commission is indeed serious and honest about “inclusive growth” then it should also fix targets for Gini coefficient, HDI and other such measures also. Otherwise it would appear that “inclusive growth” is being used more as a slogan for effect than a parameter for the planning process.

What else you think measures inclusive growth?

Surrogacy Issue in India

LEGAL SURROGACY

Under Indian laws, a healthy woman can volunteer to carry a baby for another couple. She signs a contract with the doctor ,with an undertaking not to claim owner-ship of the baby in future. A surrogate mother is given a payment (whatever is decided between the doctor and the couple) that is mentioned in the contract. The child is given to the couple once documents of adoption are notarised.

 

PROCEDURE 

The woman conceives the baby either directly through the father or through IVF , where the sperm of the father is fused with her egg. In some cases, both the sperm and the egg may be provided by the parents, and the embryo so developed is placed in the surrogate mother’s womb.

FRAUD

In some cases, the parents are told the surrogate is delivering their baby but the woman actually delivers a baby fathered by someone else.

ILLEGAL SURROGACY

Doctors have been known to convince healthy women to carry a baby for money. The woman gets pregnant but without the agreement that would have made surrogacy legal. This amounts to baby trading.

Shale Gas

Shale is a type of sedimentary rock that contains clay and minerals such as quartz. It is commonly found in rocks from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, meaning that it is often between 500 and 700 million years old. Shales are known to be rich in organic matter, including natural gas.

Shale gas refers to natural gas mined from shale wells. A form of gas-rich rock, shale is often found in layers in the ground. Though extracting gas from shale has not been very profitable in the past, recent technological breakthroughs have improved the prospects of shale gasmining. In particular, the techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have largely solved some of the problems associated with gaining access to shale gas. Some have criticized shale gas mining as harmful to the environment, however.

Although shale gas wells are typically not permeable enough to allow for easy extraction of natural gas, the advent of hydraulic fracturing has helped circumvent this problem. Hydraulic fracturing involves drilling a borehole into a well and pumping in a fluid called a fracture fluid. The fracture fluid serves to increase the pressure in a well, leading to the formation of new fractures. A permeable mix such as sand can be added to keep the fractures open and allow natural gas to flow out of the well. Hydraulic fracturing techniques have opened up many

shale gas wells as potential sources of natural gas.

Another technology that has made shale gas extraction more economical is horizontal drilling. Horizontal drilling seeks to modify the path of a borehole to better penetrate a gas-rich shale. This technique is used because shale wells often stretch horizontally in layers that are not very thick in the vertical direction. To maximize the flow of natural gas, however, the surface area of the well in contact with the borehole must be maximized. Hence,boreholes are drilled horizontally through a shale well to improve the flow of gas.

Types of Solar Energy

Solar energy can be broadly classified into Photovoltaic solar power and Thermal solar energy. Solar thermal energy is the energy created by converting solar energy into heat whereas Photovoltaic solar power is the energy created by converting solar energy into electricity using photovoltaic solar cells.

Concentrating Solar Power is a new form of solar thermal energy in which power is generated by focusing reflected sunlight at a point. In Solar PV power is generated by photoelectric effect.

Their working can be seen here:

CSP is highly efficient when compared to Photovoltaic but the downside is that it is costly. However when used to generate large quantities of power CSP may be economical. Hence solar PV technology dominates all  other types of solar energy. Now a days, Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) is also being used in which solar panels are parabolic and therefore, corresponding less land space is required; disadvantages include greater complexity of cell manufacture and price per kilowatt hour.

Current research in Solar PV technology: 

Quantum dot solar cells are an emerging field in solar cell research that uses quantum dots as the photovoltaic material, as opposed to better-known bulk materials such as silicon, gallium . Quantum dots have bandgaps that are tunable across a wide range of energy levels by changing the quantum dot size. This is in contrast to bulk materials, where the bandgap is fixed by the choice of material composition. This property makes quantum dots attractive for multi-junction solar cells, where a variety of different energy levels are used to extract more power from the solar spectrum.

 

Rangarajan Committee report on PSC mechanism in Petroleum sector

Highlights of the report’s recommendations are given below:

Fiscal Terms under the PSC

2. The existing PSC allows the contractor to recover his cost, before giving the Government its share in the contractor’s revenues, in case there is commercial discovery leading to production. A certain proportion of the balance revenues of the contractor are shared with the Government, based on the value of an investment multiple for each year. These are biddable parameters. This investment multiple is the ratio of cumulative net cash income to cumulative exploration & development cost. Government’s share increases as the multiple increases, which happens when cumulative income increases at a rate higher than the rate of increase for cumulative cost.

3. Under this system, a close scrutiny of costs becomes critical for the Government since there is incentive for contractors to book as costs expenses that do not reflect the true economic cost to the contractor (e.g., through transfer pricing). This is perceived by contractors as interference in commercial decision-making, whereas the Government and CAG view it as legitimate and necessary. Since decisions are taken in a joint committee, called Management Committee, having government and private party representatives, decisions get delayed and execution under the contract is hampered.

4. Since cost recovery is at the root of the problems experienced, it is proposed to dispense with it, in favour of sharing of the overall revenues of the contractor, without setting off any costs. The share will be determined through a competitive bid process for future PSCs. The bids will be made in a bid matrix, in which the bidder will offer different percentage revenue shares for different levels of production and price levels. The bids will have to be progressive with respect to both volume of production and price level.

This will ensure that as the contractor earns more, Government gets progressively higher revenue, and will also safeguard government interest in case of a windfall arising from a price surge or a surprise geological find. Further, the underlying cause of the Management Committee and audit related problems will be removed, and the Management Committee will no longer go into issues relating to approval of budget or procurement issues. Investor interests should remain unaffected, since investors will be free to bid the Government share, and they will also have a more hassle-free operational environment.

5. The committee has also recommended that an extended tax holiday of 10 years, as against 7 years already available for all blocks, be granted for blocks having a substantial portion involving drilling offshore at a depth of more than 1,500 metres, since cost of a single well can be as high as US$ 150 million.

6. Further, the committee has recommended extending the timeframe for exploration in future PSCs for frontier, deep-water (offshore, at more than 400 m depth) and ultra-deep-water (offshore, at more than 1,500 m depth) blocks from eight years currently, to ten years.

Contract Management

7. Apart from resolution of problems currently experienced in contract management through the proposed fiscal regime under new PSCs, the committee has suggested two mechanisms for improving progress of exploration and development under existing PSCs. For policy related issues, it has suggested the setting up of a Secretary-level inter-ministerial committee to suggest policy solutions. For issues involving condonation of delay on the part of the contractor in preparing for and seeking approvals, and for minor technical issues, the mandate of the existing Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ECS) can be expanded. The ECS has earlier been empowered, with CCEA approval, to condone delays in the exploration phase only.

Audit

8. Issues currently being raised in audit would no longer arise under the proposed fiscal regime for new PSCs. Apart from this, after consulting CAG, it has been recommended that the list of blocks be periodically made available to the CAG for selecting those that it would directly audit. CAG would select blocks on the basis of financial materiality, and would focus on blocks in the exploration and development phase, when costs incurred are higher. Other blocks would be ordinarily audited by CAG-empanelled auditors, although CAG would continue to have its statutory freedom to directly audit even these. Further, it has been recommended that CAG perform the audit within two years of the financial year under audit, as prescribed under the PSC. Also, for PSCs beyond a high financial threshold, a concurrent audit mechanism may be considered.

Gas Price Mechanism

9. At present, there is APM gas, and some quantity of non-APM gas. The difficulty in gas valuation for determining Government’s share is that there is no single gas price. India has long-term supply import contracts as well as spot market imports, and the range of prices has significant spread. However, the re-gasification infrastructure limits imports. The domestic gas too does not have adequate transportation infrastructure to enable creation of a domestic market. Internationally, gas hubs and balancing points exist in major regional markets, of which US’s Henry Hub and UK’s National Balancing Point / NBP (which is connected to continental Europe) are the largest. For the Asia-Pacific, Japan’s Custom Cleared rate for crude oil is a benchmark rate, although unlike the US and Europe, it represents an import price rather than a producer price.

10. The PSC provides for arm’s length pricing and prior Government approval of the formula or basis for gas pricing, subject to policy on natural gas pricing. Since no market-determined arm’s length price currently obtains domestically and nor is this likely to happen for several more years, a policy on pricing of natural gas has been proposed. The proposed policy would provide for estimation of an unbiased arm’s length price based on an average of two prices, which can be interpreted as alternative estimates of an arm’s length price for the Indian producer.

The relevant price in this context would be the price producers receive in other gas-producing destinations. One price would be derived from the volume-weighted net-back price to producers at the exporting country well-head for Indian imports for the trailing 12 months. The other would be the volume-weighted price of US’s Henry Hub, UK’s NBP and Japan Custom Cleared (on net-back basis, since it is an importer) prices for the trailing 12 months. The arm’s length price thus computed as the average of the two price estimates would apply equally to all sectors, regardless of their prioritisation for supply under the Gas Utilisation Policy.

11. The suggested formula will apply to pricing decisions made in future, and can be reviewed after five years when the possibility of pricing based on direct gas-on-gas competition may be assessed.

for PSC mechanism: refer to http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dRZJsa05prkJ:www.gktoday.in/gk/profit-petroleum/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefox-a

source: http://www.indiainfoline.com/Markets/News/Report-of-Committee-on-production-sharing-contract-mechanism-in-Petroleum-Industry/5576598951

Type 2 Diabetes – Neural connection

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes / diabetes mellitus (DM) is a condition in which the body cannot properly store and use glucose for energy. To use glucose, the body needs a hormone called insulin that’s made by the pancreas. For some people with diabetes, the body becomes resistant to insulin. In these cases, insulin is still produced, but the body does not respond to the effects of insulin as it should. This is called insulin resistance. Whether from not enough insulin or the inability to use insulin properly, the result is high levels of glucose in the blood, or hyperglycemia.

People with diabetes are at greater risk for problems that involve damage to small blood vessels and nerves due to high levels of glucose in the blood. They are also at a greater risk of developing hardening of large arteries (atherosclerosis), which can result in a heart attack, stroke, or poor blood flow to the legs.

Types of Diabetes:

• Type 1 DM results from the body’s failure to produce insulin, and presently requires the person to inject insulin or wear an insulin pump. This form was previously referred to as “insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus” (IDDM) or “juvenile diabetes”.
• Type 2 DM results from insulin resistance, a condition in which cells fail to use insulin properly, sometimes combined with an absolute insulin deficiency. This form was previously referred to as non insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or “adult-onset diabetes”.

Type 2 diabetes makes up about 90% of cases of diabetes with the other 10% due primarily to diabetes mellitus type 1 and gestational diabetes. Rates of type 2 diabetes have increased markedly over the last 50 years in parallel with obesity: and India is the leading country with highest number of people with Type 2 diabetes. The causes of type 2 diabetes are shown in the following diagram:

Recent discovery of a gene by Indian Scientists:

The Indian Diabetes Consortium (INDICO), a Pan-India initiative led by CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) has recently discovered “TMEM163 gene” which  encodes a probable vesicular transporter in nerve terminals. The study established a possible mechanism that the gene is responsible for impairing insulin secretion. . This effort places India to the list of countries which have the technology and human resource to perform high throughput complex genomic experimentation, at par with leading researchers in the developed world.

Sources:

wiki, bodyandhealthcanada.com, pib, medwebuk

 

National Large Solar Telescope (NLST)

Introduction:

1. While the Rs 300-crore National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) will study the sun, the facility can also be used at night to look for planets outside the solar system. The NLST is expected to be ready by 2017.
2. At present, the world’s largest solar telescope is the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in Kitt Peak National Observatory at Arizona in the US.

What is NLST?

1. The National Large Solar Telescope NLST will be a state-of the-art 2-m class telescope for carrying out high-resolution studies of the solar atmosphere.
2. Sites in the Himalayan region at altitudes greater than 4000-m that have extremely low water vapor content and are unaffected by monsoons are under evaluation for this project.
3. Its geographical location will fill the longitudinal gap between Japan and Europe and is expected to be the largest solar telescope with an aperture larger than 1.5 m till ATST (Advanced Technology Solar Telescope) and EST (European Solar Telescope) come into operation.
4. The Indian telescope most likely could come up either at Hanle or Merak village located near Pangong Tso Lake in Lad­akh close to the Sino-Indian border. The fabrication is expected in 2013. It will take three and a half years to build the telescope and the first light is expected by 2017.
5. This project is led by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics and has national and international partners.
6. The telescope has an aperture size of two metres. Most back-end instruments of the telescope would be made in-house and the instrument for night time observations will be developed in collaboration with Hamburg Observatory in Germany.
7. The Adaptive Optics technology crucial to taking forward the large telescopes to the diffraction limited performance has come of age for observations of the Sun.

Use:

1. The NLST will mainly study the sun, to know more about its magnetic field, sun spots and solar activity. When completed, it will be one the world’s largest solar telescopes.
2. The telescope will also be used for other activities like searching for extra solar planets.
3. Ever since the discovery of the first exo-planet way back in 1995, close to 800 exo-planets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet ) have been identified by scientists, primarily due to the Kepler space mission and its predecessors.
4. A better understanding of the how and why of the formation and decay of sunspots assumes importance as they pose a threat to the communication system on earth as well as space satellites.
5. Increased sunspot activity frequently accompanies an increase in the outflow of matter from the Sun in the form of solar wind. Charged particles in this wind can interfere with the operation of satellites by introducing what is called background static and also interact with atoms in the upper part of earth’s atmosphere, wreaking havoc with the communication systems on ground.
6. Satellites in low earth orbit face greater risk as during periods of heightened solar activity, the earth’s upper atmosphere swells up slightly in response to the extra heating, which in turn increases the rate of decay of these satellites.

Technicalities:

1. NLST is an on-axis alt-azimuth Gregorian multi-purpose open telescope with the provision of carrying out night time stellar observations using a spectrograph at the final focus.
2. The telescope utilizes an innovative design with low number of reflections to achieve a high throughput and low polarization.
3. High order adaptive optics is integrated into the design that works with a modest Fried parameter of 7-cm to give diffraction limited performance.
4. The telescope will be equipped with a suite of post-focus instruments including a high-resolution spectrograph and a polarimeter.

Miscellaneous Data:

1. NLST will be larger than the current solar telescopes such as the 1.5-m German telescope GREGOR (on Tenerife) and the 1.6-m New Solar Telescope at Big Bear.
2. On the other hand NLST is small enough not to run into the design problems which are related to the 4-m class projects such as the ATST (Advanced Technology Solar Telescope)and EST (European Solar Telescope) and can be completed on a much shorter time scale of about 3 years.
3. A novel feature of NLST is that it will also be possible to carry out night time observations of stars.

Staggered rise in diesel price will squeeze inflation: Swaminathan S A Aiyar

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-01-02/news/36111738_1_diesel-price-price-inflation-fiscal-deficit

 

India has stringent price controls on diesel and other petroleum products, yet, wholesale price inflation is 7.3% and consumer price inflation is almost 10%. Under-recoveries of oil marketing companies are a whopping Rs 2,00,000 crore a year. This is six times the Rs 33,000 crore being spent on the government’s flagship employment scheme MNREGA. This wrecks all priorities in spending.

Why do price controls on diesel fail to curb inflation? The Parikh study explains that the implicit diesel subsidy is financed by higher government borrowing, and leads directly to a higher fiscal deficit. Research by Jadhav and others shows that a 1% rise in the fiscal deficit raises broad money (M3) by around 0.9% in Indian conditions. And a rise in M3 is inflationary, since more money chases the same goods and services.

The implicit oil subsidy of Rs 2,00,000 crore is around 2% of GDP today. This causes M3 to rise by around 1.8%, raising the price of all non-oil goods. So, the attempt to keep oil prices down leads to a rise in other prices. It is like squeezing one part of a balloon: this merely creates a bigger bulge in the rest of the balloon. When a high fiscal deficit fuels inflation, it makes exports uncompetitive, increases imports, widens the trade deficit and, so, causes depreciation of the rupee. This further raises the prices of imported goods like oil, worsening inflation in a vicious circle.

 

PS: Under recoveries of omc’s are different from their losses. under recovery==[ Revenue earned- that revenue which can be earned when the sale is at the international benchmark ] (singapore stock exchange in india’s case).