“Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.”
Benjamin Disraeli
“परिस्थितियां मानव नियंत्रण से बाहर हैं, लेकिन हमारा आचरण हमारे ही नियंत्रण में है।”
बेंजामिन डिसरायलि
Recently, a massive glacier burst occurred at Chamoli in Uttarakhand. The exact reason for the burst is not yet known. But the incident has brought the focus again to the dangers of climate change. This incident is also being seen as the Glacial Lake Outburst flood.
It is a lake found under a glacier. It is usually formed beneath an ice cap or ice sheet. It is formed at the boundary between ice and the underlying bedrock. At this boundary, the gravitational pressure decreases the pressure melting point of ice.
The Proglacial lakes are the lakes formed at the tips of the glacial as a result of the retreating glaciers. They are often bound by sediments and boulders In the Himalayas, majority of the glaciers are known to be receding. So, there are several proglacial lakes in the regions.
Breach in the boundaries of the proglacial lakes can lead to large amounts of water to rush down to nearby streams and rivers. The water gains the momentum on its way by coming in contact with the sediments, rocks and other materials. This causes flooding downstream.
The falling masses of snow and ice for which the speed increases as they move down the slope is called as an Avalanche.
India and China have agreed on disengagement in the North and South bank of Pangong lake in eastern Ladakh. The agreement mandates both sides to cease forward deployment of troops in a “phased, coordinated and verifiable” manner.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau spoke on February 10, 2021. The discussion dealt with bilateral and global efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic through vaccine production, multilateral cooperation, and the “recent protests” by farmers in India.
The Central government has conveyed to Twitter officials that the manner in which the platform allows fake, unverified, and automated bot accounts to be operated on its platform, raises doubts about its commitment to transparency and healthy conversation on the platform. This meeting took place in view of the order issued by the Centre directing Twitter to remove tweets and accounts using hashtag related to “farmer genocide” and accounts supported by Khalistan sympathisers and backed by Pakistan.
Indian Army National Seminar-cum-Webinar, named as Divya-Drishti 2021 on Multi-Domain Operations: Future of Conflicts was organised by Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) on February 11, 2021. Participants included Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), General MM Naravane.
The Unani Day was celebrated on February 11, 2021. Unani day marks the birth anniversary of Hakim Ajmal Khan (11 February 1868-29 December 1927) of Delhi. The Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine (CCRUM), Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India organized a hybrid virtual National Conference on Unani Medicine. The conference was themed on ‘Unani Medicine: Opportunities and Challenges in times of COVID-19’.
Two new initiatives of Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) —SAKSHAM (Shramik Shakti Manch)- a dynamic job portal for mapping the skills of workers & facilitate placement of 10 lakh blue-collar jobs and a Seaweed Mission for commercial farming of seaweeds and its processing for value addition towards boosting national economy were launched on February 10, 2021.
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on February 11, 2021 virtually inaugurated more than 57,000 water structures constructed in Madhya Pradesh under ‘Jalabhishekam’ water conservation campaign from New Delhi.
To boost electric mobility, the government aims to support through subsidies about 62,000 electric passenger cars and buses, besides 15 lakhs electric three- and two-wheelers. The focus is also on creating electric charging infrastructure, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari told the Lok Sabha in a written reply. Phase-II of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME India) Scheme is being implemented with a total budgetary support of Rs 10,000 crore.
Air travel has become costlier, with the Union government on February 11, 2021 increasing the minimum and maximum fares an airline can levy on a given route. The minimum fare on a route has gone up by 10% and the maximum by nearly 30%. The government has been regulating airfares from May 25, 2020, when domestic flights resumed after the nationwide lockdown. The fare for the shortest flight (40 minutes) will now vary from ₹2,200 to ₹7,800, and the longest flight (nearly four hour 40 minutes) will cost between ₹7,200 and ₹24,200.
National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) on February 11, 2021 said that Shanghai-based New Development Bank has committed to invest USD 100 million (around Rs 728 crore) in NIIF Fund of Funds (FoF). NDB joins the Government of India (GoI), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) as an investor in the FoF. The FoF was established in 2018 with the objective of providing homegrown Indian private equity fund managers access to an India-focused institutional investor that operates at scale.
Union Ministers Smriti Irani, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Piyush Goyal jointly inaugurated the website of ‘The India Toy Fair-2021’on February 11. The Toy fair will be held from February 27 to March 02 in a virtual mode.
India’s first-ever diesel Tractor, converted to CNG, will be formally launched by the Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari on February 12, 2021. The conversion has been carried out jointly by Rawmatt Techno Solutions and Tomasetto Achille India.
Pakistan Navy is organising Exercise Aman off the coast of Karachi from February 11 to 16, 2021. A total of 46 countries including US, China, Russia, UK, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia are participating. The exercise seeks to develop and practice Response Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (RTTP) for maritime infrastructure, assets and forces against traditional and non-traditional threats.
Pakistan on February 11, 2021 said it had conducted a successful training launch of ‘Babar’ surface-to-surface cruise missile which can strike targets up to 450 kilometres.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted the Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia on February 10, 2021, causing a civilian plane on the tarmac to catch fire. The kingdom’s state television reported that the group used four bomb-laden drones to target the airport.
Steven Spielberg has been awarded Israel’s prestigious 2021 Genesis Prize in recognition of his contribution to cinema, his philanthropic works and his efforts to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, organizers announced on February 9, 2021. The USD 1 million award is granted each year to a person for their professional achievements, contributions to humanity and commitment to Jewish values.
New Zealand has officially suspended all diplomatic ties with Myanmar as it does not recognise the legitimacy of the new military-led government. These ties include aid and funds that were intended for the country.
A tsunami warning was issued after a massive undersea earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale struck a region between Australia and Fiji and north of New Zealand.
International Day of Women and Girls in Science was observed on February 11, 2021 with its theme as ‘Women Scientists at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19’. According to UNESCO data (2014 – 2016), only around 30% of all female students select STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in higher education.
China is celebrating Lunar New Year on February 12, 2021 as it ushered into the Year of the Ox. It is one of the most important Chinese festivals, also known as the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival.
Athlete Hima Das has been appointed as a Deputy Superintendent of Police by the Assam government. She won a silver in women’s 400m in the 2018 Asian Games, was also part of the gold-winning women’s 400m relay and mixed 400m relay quartets in the quadrennial event in Jakarta.
A
distinguished Chinese immunologist, Cao Xuetao, has been cleared of significant
wrong-doing more than a year after the government launched an investigation to review 63 manuscripts co-authored
by Cao containing suspected problematic images. The investigating committee
found that none of the papers contained plagiarized or fabricated data, but
that some had images had been “misused”, which “reflected a lack of rigorous
laboratory management”. Cao must now correct those papers and has been barred
from applying for grants or recruiting students for a year.
Research
leaders in China have been cracking down on problematic research for several
years, following ongoing issues with plagiarism and research misconduct. Cao,
now the president of Nankai University in Tianjin, China and a prominent voice
for strengthening research integrity in the country, is among the most
high-profile scientists to be investigated. The papers in question were
published before he became university president.
The
investigating committee, comprising representatives from the ministries of
science and education, and several other government agencies, published a
summary of its conclusions online on 21 January. However, it gave few details
about the investigation, including how many of Cao’s papers contained misused
images. Several scientists contacted by Nature criticized this
lack of transparency; others disagreed with the committee’s findings.
“It is
astonishing that [the committee] concluded that no fraud had been committed in
any of these cases,” says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist based in the San
Francisco Bay Area, California, who first raised issues about Cao’s papers in
November 2019, which triggered the investigation. Bik devotes her time to spotting problematic images in scientific papers.
Bik says that
in some of Cao’s papers, the same images have been used to represent different
experiments, which could have been accidental. “That is sloppy, but does not
necessarily mean it was done intentionally,” she says. But other papers contain
images with unnaturally repetitive elements. “I cannot think of any technical
reason or failure to correctly label images that could explain those repeats,”
she says. “The images appear to be altered.”
Huang Futao,
who studies higher education at Hiroshima University in Japan, says Cao should
now explain why there are so many problematic images in his papers, and what
measures he will take to prevent similar problems in the future.
Cao says the
investigation was grueling. He and his colleagues handed over 1500 pages of
material some stretching back more than 15 years, repeated experiments, and
submitted new data. Cao says he was corresponding author on 54 of the papers
investigated and that 35 contained unintentional errors resulting in image
misuse. He blames the lack of “unified definitions and journal policies
regarding image processing” ten to fifteen years ago when the problematic
papers were published. “What are classified as ‘errors’ today might not be
considered errors back then but instead, acceptable practices,” he says. Cao
did not respond to Bik’s suggestion that some images looked intentionally
altered.
In November
2019, Bik raised concerns on the academic discussion forum PubPeer about
problematic images in dozens of papers written by Cao and his group. Several
other people, mostly anonymous, raised similar issues in other papers from the
group. At the time, Cao said his lab would investigate the issues raised and
was confident they did not alter the paper’s conclusions. Some of Cao’s
co-authors replied on PubPeer that some mistakes were honest errors, such as images
being mislabeled.
As a result
of the investigation, the committee ordered Cao to respond to the concerns in
the papers in question and carry out corrections. Based on a Nature analysis,
19 have been corrected and 3 have been withdrawn since Bik first flagged the
papers. Cao is also prevented from applying for national science and technology
projects, and from acting as a scientific expert in any activities using
government funds.
Cao says he
will improve data archiving and image processing procedures in his laboratory.
“We’re confident that with more stringent and updated data management and
education, we’ll continue to make positive contributions to the advancement of
human health and disease research,” he says.
Bik says that
the most important upshot of the investigation is the committee’s instruction
to Cao is to retract or correct the papers in question — but she is concerned
that more papers have still not been retracted.
Sun Ping, a
former research-integrity officer at China’s science ministry who now consults
on research integrity at Siyidi International Education Consulting and Service
in Beijing, would like the committee to make details of its investigation
public. “If the investigation report can be made public, the interested readers
will make their own judgements,” says Sun.
The committee
also released its findings on several other researchers’ papers that had been
flagged for problematic images. They found no evidence of fraud in papers by Li
Hongliang, a cardiovascular researcher and dean of the School of Basic Medical
Sciences at Wuhan University in China, but did identify misuse of images that
“reflected the lack of rigorous processing of experimental data”. Li will face
the same penalties as Cao, but they will last for two years.
The committee
also found no evidence of fraud in papers by Geng Meiyu, a pharmacologist at
the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, China, who gained fame with a
controversial and contested finding that suggested a seaweed extract can slow
decline in people with Alzheimer’s disease, but reprimanded her for incorrect
use of images in papers. Nor did they find evidence of fraud in papers by Pei
Gang, a molecular biologist at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell
Biology, China, and by Rao Yi, a neuroscientist at Capital Medical University
in Beijing.
Li, Geng and
Rao did not respond to requests for comment on the committee’s findings. Pei
says the investigation into his papers was a waste of resources. “I still want
to know what the evidence was that started this,” he says.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00219-4
This will significantly increase the efficiency of our LEAs and, at the same time, drastically reduce the time taken to provide justice. It can be a win-win for all the key stakeholders.There is an urgent need for law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to adopt technology in their operations as it can act as a force multiplier. This is especially true in India where the police to population ratio is less than 150 per 100,000, whereas the United Nations recommends 222 police officials per 100,000 residents. But there are ways in which LEAs can use technology to increase their efficiency and effectiveness.
One, digitise citizen-facing services. Most citizens in India dread the idea of having to go to a police station. Technology can help make this interaction more pleasant. By providing digital access to the police, citizens can avail services from the comfort of their home. The Punjab Police has a citizen-facing portal, Saanjh, which provides online services for downloading first information reports and searching for stolen vehicles and lost mobiles, among other services. These digital portals also provide an easy and transparent mechanism to the citizens to register their complaints, provide feedback and track their complaint status. Technology can also be used to provide senior police officials dashboard views for their areas of jurisdiction, identify trends, patterns, outliers and take corrective action.
In addition to digital portals, social media can be used by LEAs to reach out directly to citizens — providing information on traffic jams, how to protect against cybercrime, dispelling rumours, countering fake news. The social media interaction can be both “push” — alerts are sent to citizens — or “pull” — citizens access the social media page/handle in order to get the desired information.
Two, use it for crime detection. Technology can effectively help get a digital footprint of the criminal. Mobile forensics can be used to retrieve critical information such as contacts, photos, SMS, video, email, web browsing history, location information and social networking messages. Call Detail Records (CDR) contain information about calls made and received, cell tower location, International Mobile Equipment Identity — a unique identifier for each mobile phone, and International Mobile Subscriber Identity — a unique identifier for each SIM. Due to the high usage of mobile phones, it is difficult to analyse these records manually. CDR analysis tools can be used to identify call patterns, most frequently called numbers, geo-location, and help in tracking missing persons, lost mobiles, movement, and establish relationships between criminal associates.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to match fingerprints, facial images, analyse CCTV footage and recognise vehicle number plates. In order to detect false number plates, AI can also be used to recognise the make and model of the car and match it with the vehicle registered with that number plate. Big Data can be used to integrate data from multiple sources such as social media tools, financial institutions, travel records, hotel stays, CDRs and criminal records. This can help create a 360-degree view of the criminal and draw linkages between criminal associates.
Smartphone apps linked to centralised databases can provide the investigating officer real-time access to information on missing vehicles, missing people, dead/unidentified bodies and criminal records, thereby significantly reducing the time taken to investigate a crime.
Three, use it in the realm of crime prevention. The holy grail for any LEA is to be able to prevent a crime before it takes place. Big Data can play a major role as it can be used to identify crime patterns and hot spots. AI can be used to draw correlations between the type of crime, time, location. Analysing crime patterns in Punjab showed that snatching incidents peaked around 8 pm in rural districts whereas the peak occurred around 10 pm for urban areas. Information of streets/roads where most of the snatchings occur can be studied by plotting the crime locations on maps. The findings can then be used to deploy beat constables more effectively thereby reducing/preventing crime. Given the high number of postings and transfers in the police, the MIS reports and dashboards can help the newly transferred officer to get up to speed quickly.
Sentiment analysis of social media chatter can be used to identify potential riots (including location and time) as well as track the source of rumours designed to create communal disharmony. Social media can also be used in a proactive manner to provide authentic information to the public and dispel false rumours/fake news.
Four, LEAs have often not fully appreciated the impact of technology for improving internal efficiency. While most police departments in India have an operational human resources management system in place, efforts need to be put in to mine the data more effectively. Analysis of educational qualifications, age, gender, religion, caste, training, posting, rank, and supervisor-to-employee ratio can be used to identify gaps in the organisation.
These gaps can be addressed via hiring, training, postings thereby ensuring a more “balanced” and effective organisation. Similarly, key performance indicators such as the time taken to file a charge-sheet, types of crimes solved, time taken to address complaints, citizen feedback scores can be used to determine an officer’s performance in a more objective manner.
Training-Open Source Learning Management Systems, low-cost bandwidth and a digitally aware workforce mean that it is now possible to provide online training in a cost-effective manner on an unprecedented scale. To increase reach and effectiveness, these courses need to be offered in vernacular languages, they can be quiz-based, and certificates and recognition given to officers who demonstrate the ability to leverage these learnings in their jobs.
And finally, real-time integration. The five pillars of the criminal justice system are police, courts, prosecution, jails and forensics. While efforts have been made to integrate data from these five pillars at the central level, a lot of work needs to be done to integrate these systems at the state level. Countless man-years are lost in taking physical files from one place to another. Real-time integration between the information technology systems of these pillars will help in reducing duplicate data entry and errors. This will significantly increase the efficiency of our LEAs and, at the same time, drastically reduce the time taken to provide justice. It can be a win-win for all the key stakeholders.
Dhruv Singhal is the chief technology officer of Punjab Police
Source: Hindustan Times, 12/02/21
“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”
George Bernard Shaw
“आप कांच के दर्पण में अपना चेहरा देख सकते हैं; और अपने कर्म में आप अपनी आत्मा को देख सकते हैं।”
जॉर्ज बर्नार्ड शॉ
The Rajya Sabha on February 9, 2021 passed the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Second (Amendment) Bill, 2021 to regularise unauthorised colonies in Delhi. It replaces the National Capital Territory of Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Second (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 which was promulgated by President Ram Nath Kovind on December 30, 2020.
India and Afghanistan on February 9, 2021 signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of the Shatoot dam to provide drinking water to Kabul. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his Afghan counterpart Hanif Atmar signed the MoU for the construction of the dam.
Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have developed energy-efficient pesticide sprayers devices for smaller agricultural tracts owned by marginal farmers. The device is aimed to increase field capacity and uniformity in liquid spraying. It will also reduce the drudgery to the operator and dependency on fossil fuel for carrying out spraying in cropped areas.
The government presented the data that it has cancelled the FCRA licences of over 20,600 NGOs in the last 10 years. Most of these cancellations were done on account of non-filing of annual returns which is a mandatory requirement under the law. The NGOs were found to have violated various provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010.
Bollywood actor-director Rajiv Kapoor passed away on February 9, 2021 at the age of 58.
The Supreme Court (SC) on February 9, 2021 approved the mechanism proposed by SBI Mutual Fund to distribute Rs 9,122 crore to the unitholders of shuttered debt schemes of Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund. The distribution mechanism was framed in consultation with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Franklin Templeton MF. SC on February 2 had directed to distribute Rs 9,122 crore to respective unitholders in proportion to their holdings in the schemes.
The Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) has said that 247 central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) earned profit of Rs 1.78 lakh crore during 2018-19. However, the CAG flagged that 189 CPSEs had accumulated losses of Rs 1.4 lakh crore as on March 31, 2019. Out of these, net worth of 77 companies had been completely eroded due to the accumulated losses.
HDFC Bank is inviting applications from start-ups and solo entrepreneurs for its SmartUp grants under its corporate social responsibility (CSR) brand — Parivartan. The window to apply will close on February 16, 2021. The bank will be focusing on start-ups in the education (edtech) and skill development sector this year for the grant.
The government has decided to close two pharma public sector undertakings and disinvest the other three. The Department of Pharmaceuticals has five public sector undertakings (PSUs). Out of the five PSUs, the government will close two pharma PSUs, namely Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL) and Rajasthan Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd (RDPL). While the government will strategically disinvest the other three — Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd (HAL), Bengal Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BCPL), and Karnataka Antibiotics & Pharmaceutical Ltd (KAPL).
The Ministry of Agriculture has said that the government has launched a new Central Sector Scheme titled ‘Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Produce Organizations (FPOs)’ and it has committed resources in this regard with a budgetary provision of Rs 6,865 crore. The FPOs will be developed to produce clusters, wherein agricultural and horticultural products are grown for leveraging economies of scale and improving market access for members. The FPOs will be provided financial assistance upto Rs 18 lakh per FPO for a period of three years.
India will overtake the European Union as the world’s third-largest energy consumer behind China and the US by 2030. It was highlighted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its India Energy Outlook 2021 report released on February 9, 2021.
Safer Internet Day was observed on February 9, 2021. The day is observed every year on the second day of the second week of February. From cyberbullying to social networking to digital identity, each year Safer Internet Day aims to raise awareness of emerging online issues and current concerns.
The Pakistan Supreme Court has directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government to start the immediate rebuilding of a Hindu temple located in Karak district’s Teri area which was set on fire by a mob on December 30, 2020. In January 2021, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had also announced reconstruction of the temple, as well as a crackdown against the attackers.
On a 56-44 vote, the Senate has declared that the impeachment trial for Donald Trump is constitutional and will move forward. The vote came after four hours of arguments from Trump’s lawyers and the Democratic impeachment managers.
Chinese authorities are blocking access to Clubhouse, a social media app that allowed users in China to discuss sensitive topics with people abroad including Taiwan and treatment of the country’s Muslim minority. The move adds Clubhouse to thousands of websites and social media apps to which the ruling Communist Party blocks access in an effort to control what China’s public sees and reads.
The first Arab interplanetary mission entered the orbit of Mars on February 9, 2021 after nearly seven-month, 300-million-mile journey to unravel the secrets of weather on the Red Planet. The unmanned space probe named “Al-Amal”, Arabic for “Hope”, blasted off from Japan in 2020.
The WHO team of experts investigating the origin of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan said that the virus most probably jumped to humans through an intermediary host species.
French novelist and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere died on February 8, 2021 at the age of 89. He was awarded Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2015. He also won Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film (1963) for ‘Heureux Anniversaire’, shared with Pierre Étaix and Academy Honorary Award (2014) for lifetime achievement.
England (578, 178) defeated India (337, 192) by 227 runs in the first Test to take a 1-0 lead in the four-match series at MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai on February 9, 2021.