Shaurya (missile)

The Shaurya missile is a canister launched Hypersonic surface-to-surface tactical missile developed by the Indian Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) for use by the Indian Armed Forces. It has a range of between 750 to 1900 km  and is capable of carrying a payload of one ton conventional or nuclear warhead.It gives the potential to strike in the short-intermediate range against any adversary.The Shaurya missile provides India with a significant second strike capability

The Shaurya missile is speculated to be the land version of the under-water Sagarika K-15 missile, although DRDO officials have reportedly denied its connection with the K-15 program Shaurya is stored in a composite canister, which makes it much easier to store for long periods without maintenance as well as to handle and transport. It also houses the gas generator to eject the missile from the canister before its solid propellant motors take over to hurl it at the intended target.

CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured

• A fundamental pillar of physics that nothing can go faster than the speed of light appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.
• Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity the famous E=mc2 equation just doesn't happen.
• "The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside the Swiss city of Geneva.
• CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometres) away in Italy travelled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormous implications of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there was no flaws in the experiment.
• The CERN researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results.
• A similar neutrino experiment at Fermilab near Chicago would be capable of running the tests, said Stavros Katsanevas, the deputy director of France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research. The institute collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory for the experiment at CERN.
• Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of nature.
• Einstein's special relativity theory that says energy equals mass times the speed of light squared underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly up until now."

Central Civil Services Authority

ARC 2 recommends 

• In posting officers in Government of India, the primary consideration should be to select the most suitable person for the post that is on offer.
• Domains should be assigned by the Central Civil Services Authority (the Commission has recommended the constitution of this Authority in 10th report) to all officers of the All India Services and the Central Civil Services on completion of 13 years of service.
• The Central Civil Services Authority should invite applications from all officers who have completed the minimum qualifying years of service, for assignment of domains. The applications should specify the academic background of officers, their research accomplishments (if any) and significant achievements during their career, relevant to the domain applied for. 
• A consultative process should be put in place where the offi cers should be interviewed and their claims to specific domains evaluated. The Authority should thereafter assign domains to the officers on the basis of this exercise. 
• In case some domains do not attract applicants, the Authority should assign these domains to officers with the relevant knowledge and experience.
• All vacancies arising at the level of Deputy Secretary/Director during a financial year should be identified well before the beginning of that financial year, by the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT). The Ministries concerned should also give a brief job description for these positions. All these posts and their job description should be notified to the cadre controlling authorities of the concerned All India Services and Central Services. On receipt of nominations from the cadre controlling authorities, the DOPT should try to match the requirements of various positions with the competencies of the officers in the 'offer list'. The DOPT should then seek approval for the entire list from the Competant Authority.
• The Central Civil Services Authority should be charged with the responsibility of fixing tenure for all civil service positions and this decision of the Authority should be binding on Government.
• Officers from the organized services should not be given 'non-field' assignments in the first 8-10 years of their career.
• State Governments should take steps to constitute State Civil Services Authorities on the lines of the Central Civil Services Authority.

STAGES IN PUBLIC POLICY PROCESS

1. Policy formulation is the first stage in public policy process. Through this process the dernands of the system are converted into policies. But before this it has to be clearly established as to which demands require to be converted into policies.
2.  At the policy interpretation stage, the formulated public policy is further clarified and interpreted in order to make it fully understandable.
   
3. The next stage in public policy process is policy education. The government through various channels of mass-media attempts to make the masses aware of the formulated policies.
   
4. After this comes the stage of policy implementation, when the policies are systematically executed by the different administrative agencies at the central, state and local levels. To ascertain the impact of policies, it is very essential to keep an eye on the implementation process,
   
5. To see that expenditure does not exceed the resources available and to see that policies are positively affecting those for which they are being made. For this proper monitoring of policy implementation has to be done. and
   
6. Policy evaluation stage is the final stage in policy process. Proper and appropriate administrative and adjudicative functions are needed for keeping a conlplete control over the public
   

Palestinian President Abbas vows to pressure UN to recognize UN membership

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to pressure the United Nations Security Council to recognise U.N. membership for the state of Palestine — a step that the U.S. President has consistently warned Mr. Abbas' government against.
• With Mr. Abbas promising to take the matter to the highest U.N. body on Friday, the U.S. now risks having to make good on its promise to use its Security Council veto — a move that is likely to be highly unpopular throughout the Middle East.

In China's battle against newborn deaths, lessons for India

• China has reduced deaths among newborn babies by almost two-thirds in little over a decade — an unprecedented success rate that a new study says holds lessons for countries like India still struggling with high neonatal and maternal mortality rates.
• Deaths among newborn babies fell from 24.7 per 1,000 in 1996 to 9.3 in 2008 — a 62-per-cent decrease — according to a paper published in The Lancet medical journal on Friday.
• At the heart of China's success, the paper found, was a vast improvement in access to obstetric care in rural areas, and a nationwide programme that specifically targeted increasing the number of hospital births.
• The study found that less than half of all women in China gave birth in hospitals in 1988. By 2008, however, hospital births had almost become universal.
• Other countries, the study said, could learn from China's focus on improving access to health care in rural areas, with the findings proving "a great impetus for countries to increase demand for and quality of facility-based intrapartum care."
• Five countries account for more than half the world's newborn deaths — India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

• India accounts for the highest number of newborn deaths in the world — over nine lakh in 2009 — despite a 33-per-cent drop from 1990, according to a recent study released by the World Health Organisation. Newborns account for 41 per cent of all child deaths.
• According to UNICEF, India's Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) in 2009 was 34 per 1,000 live births — more than three times higher than China's NMR, which UNICEF estimated at 11 in 2009. India's NMR in 1990 was 49.
• India's Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR), which is closely tied to NMR figures, is also far higher than China's. In 2008, India's MMR, or the deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes, was 230 per 100,000 live births. China's, that same year, was 38.
• China's controversial one-child policy, which reduced the risk of child and maternal deaths by limiting the number of children for each family, has also been cited as bringing down infant mortality rates.

EAM visits Vietnam for 14th JCM

Held discussions covering the entire gamut of bilateral, regional and global issues. Expressed satisfaction that the Strategic Partnership was developing well and agreed to add greater content to bilateral relations in the fields of Defence & Security, Trade & Investment, Education & Culture and other areas. 

Co-chaired the 14th India-Vietnam Joint Commission Meeting on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation at the end of which they signed the agreed minutes. 

Reviewed implementation of activities for 2007-10 under bilateral cooperation and agreed to a plan of activities for 2011-13. Focus areas for cooperation include political, defence and security, trade and investment, credit and banking, energy including oil and gas exploration, agriculture, animal husbandry and aquaculture, science and technology, information and communications technology, health, civil aviation, education, human resources development, capacity-building and cultural and media exchanges. 

EAM also inaugurated the Vietnam-India Advanced Resource Centre for Information and Communication Technology. 

This project, the largest so far under bilateral assistance, has been set up under a US$ 2 million grant by India to Vietnam. The hi-tech Centre will provide a wide range of training in Information & Communication Technology (ICT), application of e-learning technology in education, infrastructure for web portal creation, service infrastructure for GIS application development, turn key support for e-governance applications and digital library infrastructure for use by libraries. It is expected to train more than 2000 government officials and students in various IT related areas. 

The Centre will train students and professionals aspiring to make a career in the field of ICT and serve as a hub for the training of the trainers as well as, help teachers to learn fundamentals of IT and IT based teaching tools. It will also offer specially designed training programme to increase IT literacy amongst the officials working in the Government of Vietnam. The project will also provide specialized assistance in identifying e-governance solution for various departments in Government of Vietnam. 

An Article on Biotech Regulation Act

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/raghuvansh-prasad-singh-brai-bill-bulldozing-public-opinion/449406/

Trickle Down Economic Theory

An economic theory which states that investing money in companies and giving them tax breaks is the best way to stimulate the economy.

Proponents of this theory believe that when government helps companies, they will produce more and thereby hire more people and raise salaries. The people, in turn, will have more money to spend in the economy.

Denmark to get 1st female Prime Minister

• Denmark has elected its first female prime minister, ousting the right-wing government from power after 10 years of pro-market reforms and ever-stricter controls on immigration.
• Near complete official results showed on Thursday that a left-leaning bloc led by Social Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt would gain a narrow majority in the 179-seat Parliament.
• Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen conceded defeat, saying he would present his Cabinet's resignation Friday to Queen Margrethe, Denmark's figurehead monarch.
• The result means the country of 5.5 million residents will get a new government that could roll back some of the austerity measures introduced by Loekke Rasmussen amid Europe's debt crisis.
• A majority for the "red bloc" also deprives the anti-immigration Danish People's Party of the kingmaker role it has used to tighten Denmark's borders and stem the flow of asylum-seekers.
• The opposition won 89 of the mainland seats compared to 86 for the governing coalition, according to preliminary results with 100 per cent of votes counted. The "red bloc" was expected to win at least two of the four seats allocated to the semiautonomous territories of Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

Koodunkulam to add 2000 MWe to grid

• After more than a decade of delays, the Koodunkulam Atomic Power Project will attain criticality in the next quarter.
• Power Secretary P. Uma Shankar said 1000 MWe would be added in the next quarter and another 1000 MWe in the last quarter of this year.

India to provide humanitarian assistance to Horn of Africa nations

India will provide humanitarian assistance of US$ 8 million to the countries afflicted with severe famine and drought in the Horn of Africa i.e. Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti. The assistance will be provided through the World Food Programme. 

India has also contributed US $ 1.5 million to the AU Trust Fund on Somalia and US $ 0.5 million to the UN Trust Fund. This is part of the assistance announced by Hon'ble Prime Minister for augmenting the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) at the India-Africa Forum Summit-II in Addis Ababa, in May this year. 

India would be cooperating with Somalia in capacity building in areas such as fisheries, IT and agriculture. India is also considering extending technical assistance to Somalia in developing a counter piracy policy and strategy. The issue of Piracy is of considerable concern for India and has been taken up with the Somali side. 


India is firmly committed to the progress and development of Africa. Our economic package of US$ 5.7 billion for the African countries, over the next three years, is demonstrative of our time tested ties and commitment. 

composite leading indicator (CLI)

The OECD composite leading indicator (CLI) is designed to provide early signals of turning points (peaks and troughs) between expansions and slowdowns of economic activity. The OECD compiles CLIs for 29 member countries, for 6 non-member economies and for 7 country groupings such as Euro zone. The data are available from the beginning of 1960s for most countries.

This Web site at: www.oecd.org/std/cli

Trains soon to be equipped with DRDO’s bio-digesters

• DRDO will soon equip around 1,000 passenger trains with bio-digesters to solve human waste disposal problem.
• The technology developed by the premier defence research organisation was used to decompose biological waste generated by soldiers deployed in high-altitude regions such as Siachen and Ladakh.
• "The pilot project to install bio-digesters in trains has been completed successfully. Necessary modifications have been made as per Railways requirement and soon the technology will be implemented on a mass scale
• Keeping in mind the specific requirements of passenger trains, Railways and DRDO signed a MoU to co-develop these bio-digesters to keep railway tracks clean.
• Gwalior-based lab, Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE), has developed this technology wherein a special form of bacteria is used to treat human waste in zero discharge toilets.
• The DRDE deals with micro-organisms and hazardous material. Besides developing technologies for soldiers, it is also working on other concentrations of bacteria and zero discharge toilets for various projects.
• "In future, bacteria for charging of bio-toilets will be available in packets and pouches. In zero discharge toilets effluent will be recycled for flushing purpose," said Director, Life Sciences, G. Ilavazhagan.
• DRDO has also modified the technology to deal with the problem of people throwing all kind of waste materials in train toilets.
• The bacteria which is used in these bio-digesters is found in Antarctica and has been modified to suit the different projects of DRDO to make bio-digesters for different climatic regions.

Government Accepts Recommendations of GoM on Corruption

The Government has accepted the recommendations made by the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Corruption in its First Report, aimed at fast-tracking of cases against public servants accused of corruption. The report was accepted on September 6, 2011.
The Government had, on 6th January. 2011. constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM) to consider measures that can be taken by the Government to tackle corruption, under the chairmanship of Union Finance Minister, Shri Pranab Mukherjee. The terms of reference of the GoM were as under:-
(i) To consider all measures, including legislative and administrative, to tackle corruption and improve transparency;
(ii) In particular, the GoM may consider and advise on the following:-
(a) State funding of elections:
(b) Fast tracking of all cases of public servants accused of corruption:
(c) Ensuring full transparency in public procurement and contracts. including enunciation of public procurement standards and a public procurement policy:
(d) Relinquishing discretionary powers enjoyed by Ministers at the Centre:
(e) Introduction of an open and competitive system of exploiting natural resources:
(f) Amendment to Article 311 of the Constitution to provide for summary proceedings in cases of grave misdemeanor or blatant corruption by public servants: and
(g) Consideration of relevance/need for section 6(A) of the Delhi Special Establishment Act, 1946.

The GOM has so far held five meetings on 21.1.2011, 14.2.2011, 16.3.2011, 16.06.201 1 and 06.09.2011. Based on the deliberations in its first three meetings, the Group of Ministers had submitted its First Report to the Government in April. 201 1. After due consideration by DoPT, Cabinet Secretariat and PMO, the Government has, on Tuesday, accepted the recommendations made by the GoM in its First Report with minor changes.

These decisions, which cover items (ii)(b), (ii)(f) and (ii)(g) of the term of reference (ToR) of the GOM, are as follows:-
(a) Dispensing with the Second Stage Advice of the Central Vigilance Commission. (However, in those cases where consultation with UPSC is not required under the extant rules, the second stage consultation with CVC should continue.)
(b) Departments/ Ministries should primarily use serving officers as Inquiry Officers (IDs) & Presenting Officers (POs) and in important cases, they may request CVC to appoint their Commissioners for Departmental Inquiries (GDIs) as lOs. CVC to maintain a panel of lOs/POs from amongst retired Government officers after due process of screening and empanelment. These officers could be engaged on advice of the CVC.
(c) In all cases where the Investigating Agency has requested sanction for prosecution, it will be mandatory for the competent authority to take a decision within a period of 3 months from receipt of request, and pass a Speaking Order, giving reasons for the decision. In the event of refusal of sanction to prosecute, the competent authority will have to submit its order including reasons for refusal, to the next higher authority for information within 7 days. Wherever the Minister-in-charge of the Department is the competent authority and he decides to deny the permission, it would be incumbent on the Minister to submit, within 7 days of passing such order denying the permission, to the Prime Minister for information. Further, it will be the responsibility of the Secretary of each Department/Ministry to monitor all cases where a request has been made for permission to prosecute. Secretaries should submit a certificate every month to the Cabinet Secretary to the effect that no case is pending for more than 3 months and, in case any such request is pending, the reasons for such pendency and the level where it is pending may also be explained.
(d) Expediting the setting up of Special CBI Courts already sanctioned by Central Government, by actively pursuing the matter with the State Governments;
(e) Setting up of a Committee headed by a retired Judge of the Supreme Court and having as its Members, a retired CVC, retired Director of CBI and another person of impeccable reputation who could be drawn from the Civil Society, to look into old CBI cases which are pending for more than 10 years, particularly those under the Prevention of Corruption Act and suggest ways for their speedy disposal, including withdrawal, if need be.
(f) Strengthening of vigilance administration of Central Ministries/Departments and, in particular, the strengthening of vigilance wing of the Department of Personnel and Training, with requisite manpower to ensure effective monitoring of vigilance matters.
(g)Continuation of minor penalty proceedings against public servants even after retirement with provision for a ceiling of 10% cut in pension for a period not exceeding five years. Such cut in pension in minor penalty proceedings would, however, be non-mandatory.
(h)Change in the present penalty of 'compulsory retirement' (with full pension) to 'compulsory retirement with a cut in pension upto 20%".

ubiquitous

u·biq·ui·tous
Present, appearing, or found everywhere

The software giant has described Windows 8 as the most significant
upgrade to its ubiquitous operating system since the company adopted
the desktop, mouse and the graphical user interface with Windows 95.

SAFEPED helps cities fix dangerous intersections

sample output from the "SAFEPED" computer application. Credit: AFTAU

• Traffic planners and engineers worry about "black spots" — intersections that experience a high incidence of traffic accidents. But when it comes to designing safer roads, they lack effective tools to determine what turns a junction into a danger zone for cars and pedestrians alike.
• Now Ph.D. student Gennady Waizman of Tel Aviv University's Geosimulation Lab at the Department of Geography and the Human Environment and Porter School of Environmental Science has developed SAFEPED, a computer simulation that integrates robotics and statistics on driver and pedestrian behavior to determine the environmental features which lead to these black spots. 
• Based on real-world data, SAFEPED is more true-to-life than other computer traffic models.
• SAFEPED allows traffic planners and engineers to analyze and fix dangerous intersections. It also permits these engineers to test and rearrange the architecture of a planned junction and design it for optimal safety. The model has been presented at the Transportation Research Board Conference on Safety and Mobility in Jerusalem, and this July at the Geocomputation 2011 conference in London.

Countdown to collision

SAFEPED considers each car and pedestrian an autonomous "agent," with the ability to reason and react based on its individual predictions of how surrounding agents will behave. This is a significant improvement on other computer models of traffic, which do not account for the human ability to see the world in three dimensions, predict the actions of others, and react accordingly.

"Because drivers and pedestrians behave according to the same habits and rules at any intersection they approach," Waizman explains, "we presumed that the problem lay in the environment. With this program, we can model a real intersection in the simulator, and make modifications to the environment or traffic regulations to see how they impact the safety of the junction."

But the researchers knew that it was not enough to place traditional robotic agents into the environment. Such non-thinking robots could not give them an accurate indication of how a changed traffic architecture could affect accident rates. Instead, Waizman's team based their simulator on a theory of visual perception developed by the cognitive scientist James J. Gibson. When humans move through a given environment, Gibson theorized, they analyze their "optic flow" as they move, taking into account their anticipated time of collision with other objects or people.

Averting a crash before it happens

In SAFEPED, all agents move and think individually, and they determine their actions based on visibility and the movement of the other agents. Depending on what they perceive and predict, agents slow down, accelerate, or divert. The researchers can see an accident from the viewpoint of any agent to determine where visibility was impaired or an agent made a wrong decision. They can also rewind a virtual accident and determine if a change in regulations or architecture could have averted the crash.

The agents' behavior is based on traffic statistics provided by the Israeli police force and on hours of observation by M.A. student Eilon Blank-Baron, who recorded videos of intersections, analyzed the behavior of the moving drivers and pedestrians, and integrated the resulting data into SAFEPED to make the simulator more realistic. Two synchronized cameras observed how cars and pedestrians reacted to one another.

The SAFEPED research has already led to many important findings. The probability that pedestrians will cross a busy road, for example, is based on how they estimate the velocity of an approaching car. If they believe the car will cross the intersection in less than 2.5 seconds, people will not cross. At 5.5 or 6 seconds, however, most people will cross the road. It also found that the further back a white stop line is set in an intersection, the smaller the chance that a pedestrian will be struck by a car.

Over 50 new exoplanets discovered, some potentially habitable

• Astronomers have discovered more than 50 new exoplanets, including 16 super—Earths, one of which orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star, thanks to ESO's world—leading exoplanet hunter HARPS.
• "The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super—Earths and Neptune—type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better - the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating," said Mayor.
• In the eight years since it started surveying stars like the sun using the radial velocity technique, HARPS has been used to discover more than 150 new planets.

HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher)

The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle spectrograph installed in 2002 on ESO's (European Southern Observatory) 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. It is a second-generation radial-velocityspectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments.

Geobacter bacteria (Microbes, nuclear waste and power)

• With implications that could eventually benefit sites forever changed by nuclear contamination, researchers at Michigan State University have unravelled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals.Details of the process, which can be improved and patented, are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• "Geobacter bacteria are tiny micro-organisms that can play a major role in cleaning up polluted sites around the world," said Gemma Reguera, who is an MSU AgBioResearch scientist. "Uranium contamination can be produced at any step in the production of nuclear fuel, and this process safely prevents its mobility and the hazard for exposure."
• The ability of Geobacter to immobilize uranium has been well documented. However, identifying the Geobacters' conductive pili or nanowires as doing the yeoman's share of the work is a new revelation, according to a Michigan State University press release. Nanowires, hair-like appendages found on the outside of Geobacters, are the managers of electrical activity during a cleanup.

Delegated legislation

Delegation of Power and its Limitations

Introduction:

According to the traditional theory, the function of the executive is to administer the law enacted by the legislature, and in the ideal state the legislative powers must be exercised exclusively by the legislature who are directly responsible to the electorate. Apart from the pure administrative function executive also performs legislative and the judicial function also. In England theoretically it is only parliament, which can make laws. Even in the United States of America where the doctrine of the delegated legislation has not been accepted in principal, in practice the legislature has entrusted legislative powers to the executive. Administrative legislation met with a rapid growth after World War II and in India during 1973 to 1977.

Delegation of powers – meaning:

Delegation of powers means those powers, which are given by the higher authorities to the lower authorities to make certain laws, i.e., powers given by the legislature to administration to enact laws to perform administration functions. The law legislate by the administration with the powers given by the legislature is called delegated legislation. Or we can say that when an instrument of a legislative nature is made by an authority in exercise of power delegated or conferred by the legislature is called subordinate legislation or delegated legislation.

History of Delegation of Powers:

Pre – constitutional Position:

The history of delegation of powers can be traced from the charter stage of 1833 when the East India Company was regaining political influence in India. The of 1833 vested the legislative powers exclusively in Governor – General – in council, which was an executive body. He was empowered to make laws and regulations for repealing, amending or altering any laws or regulations, which were in force for all persons irrespective of their nationality.

In 1935 the Government of India Ac, 1935 was passed which contained an intensive scheme of delegation. The report of the committee on ministers' powers was submitted and approved which fully established the case for delegation of powers and delegation of legislation was regarded as inevitable in India.

Present Position:

Though, our constitution was based on the principal of separation of powers, a complete separation of powers was not possible hence it maintained the sanctity of the doctrine in the modern sense. The Indian Constitution does not prohibit the delegation of powers. On the other hand there are several provisions where the executive has been granted the legislative powers. For example the legislative powers of the president under the Indian Constitution are conspicuous. Under Article 123 the president has the power to promulgate the ordinances and unrestricted power to frame regulations for peace progress and good government of the union territory under Article 240. The Supreme Court of India has also upheld the delegation of legislative powers by the legislative to the legislative to the executive in the case of Raj Narayan Singh v. Chairman Patna Administration Committee.


Growth of Delegation of Power and its Reasons:

Many factors are responsible for the rapid growth of delegated legislation in every modern democratic state. The traditional theory of 'laissez faire' has been given up by every state and the old 'police state' has now become a 'welfare state'. Because of this radical change in the philosophy as to role to be played by the state, their functions have increase. Consequently, delegated legislation has become essential and inevitable.

Some of the reasons of the growth of the Delegation of Powers are as follows:


Pressure upon Parliamentary Time:
As a result of the expanding horizons of the state activity, the bulk of legislation is so great that it is not possible for the legislation to devote sufficient time to discuss all the matters in detail. Hence there is need for a delegation of power.

Technicality:
Sometimes, the subject – matter on which legislation is required is so technical in nature that the legislator, being himself a common man, cannot be expected to appreciate and legislate on the same, and the assistance of experts may be required. Hence this lead to the growth of delegation of power.

Flexibility:
At the time of passing any legislative enactment, it is impossible to foresee all the contingencies, and some provision is required to be made for these unforeseen situations demanding exigent action. Hence there is a need for flexibility which leads to the growth of delegation of power.

Experiment:
The practice of delegated legislation enables the executive to experiment. The method permits rapid utilization of experience and implementation of necessary changes.
Emergency:

In the time of emergency, quick action is required to be taken. The legislative process is not equipped to provide for urgent solution to meet the situation. Hence there is need for delegation of power.

Delegation of Powers under the Indian Constitution:

The Legislature is quite competent to delegate to other authorities. To frame the rules to carry out the law made by it. In D. S. Gerewal v. The State of Punjab, K.N. Wanchoo, the then justice of the Hon'ble Supreme Court dealt in detail the powers of delegated legislation under the Article 312 of Indian Constitution. He observed:

"there is nothing in the words of Article 312 which takes away the usual power of delegation, which ordinarily resides in the legislature. The words "Parliament may by law provide" in Article 312 should not be read to mean that there is no scope for delegation in law made under Article 312…."

In the England, the parliament being supreme can delegated any amount of powers because ther is no restriction. On the other hand in America, like India, the Congress does nit possess uncontrolled and unlimited powers of delegation. In Panama Refining Co. v. Rayans, the supreme court of the United States had held that the Congress can delegate legislative powers to the Executive subject to the condition that it lays down the policies and establishes standards while leaving to the administrative authorities the making of subordinate rules within the prescribed limits.

Control Mechanism of Delegated Legislation in India:
Parliamentry Control
Every delegate is subject to the authority and control of the principal and the exercise of delegated power can always be directed, corrected or cancelled by the principal. Hence parliament control over delegated legislation should be living continuity as a constitutional necessity. The fact is that due to the broad delegation of legislative powers and the generalized standard control also being broad, the judicial control has shrunk, raising the desirability and the necessity of parliamentary control.

In the USA the control of congress over delegated legislation is highly limited because neither is the technique of laying extensively used nor is there any congressional committee to scrutinize it.

In England due the concept of parliamentary sovereignty the control exercised over delegated legislation is very broad and effective.

In India the parliamentary control of delegated legislation is implicit as a normal constitutional function because the executive is responsible to the parliament.

Procedural Control

Parliamentry control over administrative rule is admittedly weak because the legislaters are sometimes innocent of legal skills. A constant search therefore is on for an alternative mechanism which besides providing an effective vigil over administrative rule making can guarantee effective people participation for netter social communication, acceptance and effectively of the rules.

Procedural control mechanism has the potential to met the above noted requirements for allowing specific audit of rules by those for whose consumption they are made. Procedural control mechanism operates in three components:
Drafting
Antenatal publicity
Consultation
Postnatal publicity

Judicial Control
In India the judicial review of administrative rule making is subject to the normal rules governing the review of administration action. This judicial review of administrative rule making cannot be foreclosed in any manner by the enabling act. In State of Kerala v. K.M.C. Abdullah & Co. the S.C. held that the validity of such a phrase as "shall not be called in question in any court" in the enabling act. In the same manner in G.O.C. v. Subash Chandra Yadav the S.C. held that an act providing that rules made there under on publication in official gazette would be 'as if enacted' in the act. Cannot take away judicial review. Grounds of invalidity may arise on the following counts:
That the Enabling Act is Ultra-vires the Constitution
The Administration Legislation is ultra-vires the Constitution
That the Administrative Legislation is ultra-vires the Enabling Act

Limitations to Delegated Legislation:

It is now settled by majority judgments in Delhi Laws Act, 1912, Re, that there is a limit beyond which delegation may not go. The limit is that essential powers of legislation cannot be delegated. The essential legislative power consists of the determination or choice of the legislative policy and of formally enacting that policy into a binding rule of conduct. The legislature, therefore, may not delegate its function of laying down legislative policy to an outside authority in respect of a measure and its formulation as a rule of conduct. So long as a policy is laid down and a standard or limit established by statue no unconstitutional delegation of legislative power is involved in leaving to the executive the making of subordinate rules within the prescribed limits and the determination of facts to which the legislation is to apply.

The next question arises as to what is the constitutional basis on which prohibition of delegation of law making powers rests. There is no specific provision in the constitution prohibiting the delegation. The Constitution of U.S.A embodies the doctrine of separation of powers, which prohibits the executive being given law making powers.

In Edward Mills Co. v. State of Ajmer it was explained where a legislature is given plenary powers to legislate on a particular subject there must also be an implied power to make laws incidental to the exercise on such power. It exercise of a power is included in the grant of power.

In Devi Das Gopal Krishnan v. State of Punjab, Subba Rao, C.J. provided another justification for delegated legislation that the Constitution confers a power and imposes a duty on the legislature to make laws, but in view of the multifarious activities of a welfare State, it cannot presumably work out all the details to suit varying aspects of a complex situation. The legislature must necessarily delegate the working out of details to the executive or any other agency.

http://www.lawyersclubindia.com/articles/print_this_page.asp?article_id=1569

Turkey gets tough with Israel

• Turkey's decision to expel Israel's ambassador and downgrade its own mission in Israel to second-secretary level is a sign of the country's rising weight in the region. 
• Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is furious about Israel's refusal to apologise for killing eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American aboard the Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in an aid flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010. Israel has offered only compensation and an expression of regret for the deaths. A United Nations investigation headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer concluded that Israeli troops had used "excessive and unreasonable" force and that the government had offered no adequate explanation for "forensic evidence showing that most of the deceased were shot multiple times, including in the back, or at close range."
• Turkey has suspended all defence-related dealings with Israel — which include buying weapons — and says it will go to the International Criminal Court to challenge Palmer's most controversial conclusion, namely that Israel's blockade of Gaza does not violate international law. Mr. Erdogan has even said that Turkish naval vessels will henceforth be "seen more often" in the Eastern Mediterranean.

What makes the current tensions different from many others in West Asia?

• This is the fact that Turkey has the political and economic weight to damage Israel. Ankara, which recognised the Zionist state in 1949, waived its veto so that it could join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2010. 
• Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and a major regional ally of the U.S. This gives it some room for manoeuvre. 
• The Erdogan government has suffered no sanctions for refusing to regard the elected Palestinian representative group Hamas as a terrorist organisation. 
• Furthermore, Ankara can make life harder for ordinary Israelis by imposing tougher security searches on the thousands who, banned from several countries in the region, take their holidays in Turkey. 
• Finally, Turkish influence in West Asia and North Africa could be decisive in the continuing U.N. negotiations on whether or not the issue of Palestinian statehood should be voted on at the world body. True to form, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not seem to have got the message, and even public criticism in Israel has had no effect on his intransigence over the Palmer report. His fellow-citizens will discover the consequences the hard way.

SCs, STs do not have much access to public infrastructure: report

The Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and minorities do not have access to functional infrastructure facilities as they are 'merely situated in the general or backward classes habitations,' according to the National Infrastructure Equity Audit done by the Social Equity Watch.

The audit is a first-of-its-kind study determining the access of different social groups to public infrastructure in about 1,000 caste/religious habitations across five States. While village-level infrastructure investment has been crucial in developmental programmes, they are seldom equitably distributed. This equity audit has been done in 125 Gram Panchayats in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa and Rajasthan.

Releasing the report here on Friday, Tom Thomas, CEO of Praxis (Institute for Participatory Practices) — the secretariat of Social Equity Watch — said there were still many SC/ST habitations which were left uncovered and people in these habitations had to travel longer distance than prescribed in official norms. The equity gap is severe in certain Gram Panchayats.

"At places where the infrastructure facilities are located in SC/ST habitations, a sizable percentage of the service providers are from the general or backward classes category. Further, most of these infrastructure facilities are in private lands or buildings," Mr. Thomas said.

The public infrastructure include, primary school, anganwadi centre, health sub-centre, drinking water, primary health centres, community centre, Panchayat Bhavan, road, Public Distribution System, post office, secondary school, telephone and information kiosk.

The rating of services by SC/ST and minorities in accessing these facilities was much lower than their backward class and general counterparts in the same habitations. The satisfaction gap was largely due to location of services in other habitation.

"From the findings, it emerges that the task ahead is to monitor the location of new infrastructure in such a way that the existing equity gap can be filled over the years. This would be crucial for scarce resources such as drinking water and certain newer infrastructure such as internet kiosks in the coming years," Mr. Thomas said.

The findings of audit will be presented before the Planning Commission as a run-up to the 12th Plan. The Praxis team has also sought an appointment with the Rural Development Minister.

Uses for Superconductors

Magnetic-levitation is an application where superconductors perform extremely well. Transport vehicles such as trains can be made to "float" on strong superconducting magnets, virtually eliminating friction between the train and its tracks. Not only would conventional electromagnets waste much of the electrical energy as heat, they would have to be physically much larger than superconducting magnets. A landmark for the commercial use of MAGLEV technology occurred in 1990 when it gained the status of a nationally-funded project in Japan. The Minister of Transport authorized construction of the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line which opened on April 3, 1997. In December 2003, the MLX01 test vehicle (shown above) attained an incredible speed of 361 mph (581 kph).
Although the technology has now been proven, the wider use of MAGLEV vehicles has been constrained by political and environmental concerns (strong magnetic fields can create a bio-hazard). The world's first MAGLEV train to be adopted into commercial service, a shuttle in Birmingham, England, shut down in 1997 after operating for 11 years. A Sino-German maglev is currently operating over a 30-km course at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China. The U.S. plans to put its first (non-superconducting) Maglev train into operation on a Virginia college campus. Click this link for a website that lists other uses for MAGLEV.

MRI of a human skull.

An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what's going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body's water and fat molecules are forced to accept energy from the magnetic field. They then release this energy at a frequency that can be detected and displayed graphically by a computer. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) was actually discovered in the mid 1940's. But, the first MRI exam on a human being was not performed until July 3, 1977. And, it took almost five hours to produce one image! Today's faster computers process the data in much less time. A tutorial is available on MRI at this link. Or read the latest MRI news at this link.

SQUID

The Korean Superconductivity Group within KRISS has carried biomagnetic technology a step further with the development of a double-relaxation oscillation SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) for use in Magnetoencephalography. SQUID's are capable of sensing a change in a magnetic field over a billion times weaker than the force that moves the needle on a compass (compass: 5e-5T, SQUID: e-14T.). With this technology, the body can be probed to certain depths without the need for the strong magnetic fields associated with MRI's.

      Probably the one event, more than any other, that has been responsible for putting "superconductors" into the American lexicon was the Superconducting Super-Collider project planned for construction in Ellis county, Texas. Though Congress cancelled the multi-billion dollar effort in 1993, the concept of such a large, high-energy collider would never have been viable without superconductors. High-energy particle research hinges on being able to accelerate sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light. Superconductor magnets make this possible. CERN, a consortium of several European nations, is doing something similar with its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recently inaugurated along the Franco-Swiss border.

     Other related web sites worth visiting include the proton-antiproton collider page at Fermilab. This was the first facility to use superconducting magnets. Get information on the electron-proton collider HERA at the German lab pages of DESY (with English text). And Brookhaven National Laboratory features a page dedicated to its RHIC heavy-ion collider. 

Electric Generators

     Electric generators made with superconducting wire are far more efficient than conventional generators wound with copper wire. In fact, their efficiency is above 99% and their size about half that of conventional generators. These facts make them very lucrative ventures for power utilities

     An idealized application for superconductors is to employ them in the transmission of commercial power to cities. However, due to the high cost and impracticality of cooling miles of superconducting wire to cryogenic temperatures, this has only happened with short "test runs". 

UNCTAD Report !!

The UNCTAD's Trade and Development Report gives a fresh perspective to the policy challenges that governments around the world have been facing since the 2008 global financial crisis.

It questions the prevailing orthodoxy, the growing practice of governments resorting to tight monetary and fiscal policies. In the recovery phase, economic growth has been uneven across the world. The "two speed" recovery — developing countries have outstripped the developed ones and remain the engine of growth — is based on different sets of economic circumstances prevailing in the two broad categories. Most striking is the vast difference in domestic demand. In developing countries, strong wage growth and public support have sustained the recovery in investment and consumption demand. 

For countries such as India, the task before policymakers is to rebalance demand from consumption to investment by inducing more people to save. On the other hand, in most developed countries, private demand is subdued because of stagnating wages and high unemployment. The report disapproves of the fiscal-tightening measures the developed countries led by the United States seem keen on adopting. At this juncture not only will such belt-tightening be counter-productive, but when adopted by some of the biggest economies, it will pose a major risk for the global economy.

Policymakers do not appear to have learnt the right lessons from the crisis. There is hardly any justification for the current shift towards austerity, says the report. Fiscal imbalances were not the cause, but the consequence, of the crisis. Fiscal retrenchment, especially the moves to cut the fiscal deficits, and curbing public debt are inappropriate responses and, when projected as something that needs to be done to regain the confidence of the financial markets, self-defeating. The much anticipated reform of the global financial and monetary systems, especially the regulatory aspects, has been slow in coming. It is well recognised that financialisation of commodity markets has affected the prices of such basic goods as food staples and energy. Urging greater transparency in derivatives, the report wants an internationally-coordinated, tighter regulation of financial investors. To remove the disconnect between foreign exchange markets and macroeconomic fundamentals, the report calls for a rules-based system to monitor exchange rate movements at the multilateral level. These suggestions are by no means original. But seldom has a U.N. agency so eloquently called for a check on the unbridled expansion of global finance as UNCTAD has done now.

Draft Guidelines for new Banks

1. Eligible promoters: Entities/groups in the private sector, owned and controlled by residents, with diversified ownership, sound credentials and integrity and having successful track record of at least ten years will be eligible to promote banks.

In a significant move, the RBI has barred groups having even an exposure of 10 per cent (by way of assets or income or both) in real estate and/or broking activities over the past three years. Evidently, these sectors are 'speculative' in nature and the business model adopted in such businesses will be 'misaligned' with that required by a bank.

2. Corporate structure: New banks will be set only through a wholly-owned non-operative holding company (NOHC), which will be registered with the RBI as a non-banking finance company. All financial activities of the promoter group will come under the NOHC. The idea is to ring fence the financial interests of the group from its other business activities and give a measure of protection to the bank's depositors.

3. The minimum capital requirement will be Rs.500 crore. The NOHC will hold a minimum 40 per cent of the capital for five years from the date of licensing. The aggregate non-resident shareholding will not exceed 49 per cent for the first five years.

4. Corporate governance: At least 50 per cent of the directors of the NOHC should be independent directors.

5. The business model should be realistic and viable and should address how the bank proposes to achieve financial inclusion. The bank should have a fourth of its branches in unbanked rural areas. The RBI will have the powers to vet the business plan and pull up the promoters for any deviations.

6. Amendments to the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, will be carried out to give the central bank extensive powers in a wide range of matters necessary for effective supervision. The bank shall get its shares listed on the stock exchanges within two years of licensing.

scurrilous

scur·ri·lous

adj.

1. Given to the use of vulgar, coarse, or abusive language; foul-mouthed.

2. Expressed in vulgar, coarse, and abusive language.

Making or spreading scandalous claims about someone with the intention of damaging their reputation

Mayawati was clearly under the illusion that Julian Assange was an inventor of scurrilous gossip rather than merely a purveyor of it, and therefore erroneously deemed him fit to be an inmate of the asylum in Agra. 

Nuclear Safety Bill introduced

• A Bill to establish a legal authority and regulatory bodies for nuclear radiation safety was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
• The Bill was aimed at achieving the highest standards of nuclear safety based on scientific approach, operating experience and best practices followed by the nuclear industry.
• According to the objectives of the Bill, it will ensure that the use of radiation/atomic energy in all applications is safe for the health of workers of such nuclear establishments, public and the environment. It will enable establishment of a Council of Nuclear Safety (CNS), under the Prime Minister's chairmanship, to oversee and review the policies relating to radiation/nuclear safety.

REGULATORY BODIES

The Bill provides for establishment of regulatory bodies for the purpose of national defence and security. It seeks to empower the CNS to constitute an appellate authority to enable the Central government or any person aggrieved by an order of the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority to file an appeal.

The authority will be headed by a Supreme Court Judge or the Chief Justice of a High Court and have two eminent nuclear/atomic scientists as members.

Once the Parliament approved the legislation, it will be mandatory for the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, constituted under the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 , to notify, within 15 days, occurrence of any nuclear incident in India. If the Board is satisfied that the gravity of threat and a risk involved in a nuclear incident is insignificant, it shall not be required to notify such nuclear incident.

Immediately after issuing the notification the Board should give wide publicity to such nuclear incident.

As per the Bill, all offences under this Act are cognisable under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, but no action will be taken in respect of any person for any offence under the Act except on the basis of a written complaint made.

The law could also regulate the manufacture, custody, transport, transfer, sale, export, import, use or disposal of any radioactive substance.

How do we measure Earth-Sun distance?

How is the distance between Earth and any planet, measured?

Take for example the planet nearest to the Sun, namely, Venus. This distance to Venus can be obtained at any time during its travel by radar measurements.

For this, a pulse of radio wave is transmitted from Earth and is received when it bounces off Venus and comes back to Earth. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, by measuring the total time taken for the pulse to come back, the distance can be calculated as: Distance = 0.5 X (time taken by radar pulse to travel both ways)X (speed of light)

Now we come to the other question, namely, the measurement of distance between earth and sun. Obviously we cannot use the earlier radar measurements since the sun itself is a source of intense electromagnetic waves and in addition it is too far away from the earth.

But our measurement of distance between planet and earth will become useful for this important measurement. Let us assume that the distance between Earth and the Sun is 'R.' To first approximation, the orbits of Earth and Venus are perfect circles around the Sun. Now, let us consider the orbit of Venus. There are two places where the Sun-Venus-Earth angle is 90 degrees.

At these points, the line joining Earth and Venus will be a tangent to the orbit of Venus. These two points indicate the greatest elongation of Venus and is the farthest that Venus will get away from the Sun in the sky with respect to an earth observer. Now, by making observations of Venus in the sky, one can determine the point of greatest elongation. One can also measure the angle between the Sun and Venus in the sky at the point of greatest elongation. In the diagram, this angle will be the Sun-Earth-Venus angle marked as in the right angled triangle. Now, using the trigonometry, one can determine the distance between Earth and Sun R, in terms of the Earth-Venus distance at this time: R= (Earth–Venus distance at point of greatest elongation)/ Cos . We get the distance between the Sun and Earth to be 1.496x10{+1}{+1}metres (nearly 150million kilometers or 93 million miles!).

Geobacter bacteria (Microbes, nuclear waste and power)

• With implications that could eventually benefit sites forever changed by nuclear contamination, researchers at Michigan State University have unravelled the mystery of how microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste and other toxic metals.Details of the process, which can be improved and patented, are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• "Geobacter bacteria are tiny micro-organisms that can play a major role in cleaning up polluted sites around the world," said Gemma Reguera, who is an MSU AgBioResearch scientist. "Uranium contamination can be produced at any step in the production of nuclear fuel, and this process safely prevents its mobility and the hazard for exposure."
• The ability of Geobacter to immobilize uranium has been well documented. However, identifying the Geobacters' conductive pili or nanowires as doing the yeoman's share of the work is a new revelation, according to a Michigan State University press release. Nanowires, hair-like appendages found on the outside of Geobacters, are the managers of electrical activity during a cleanup.

Geobacter is a genus of proteobacteria. Geobacter are an anaerobic respiration bacterial species which have capabilities that make them useful in bioremediation. The geobacter was found to be the first organism with the ability to oxidize organic compounds and metals, including iron, radioactive metals and petroleum compounds into environmentally benign carbon dioxide while using iron oxide or other available metals as electron acceptor.

Research on the potential of Geobacter is underway and on-going. Geobacter's ability to consume oil-based pollutants and radioactive material with carbon dioxide as waste byproduct has already been used in environmental clean-up for underground petroleum spills and for the precipitation of uranium out of groundwater. Geobacter metabolize the material by creating pili between itself and the food material.

It has been shown that species of Geobacter are able to cooperate in metabolizing a mixture of chemicals that neither could process alone. Provided with ethanol and sodium fumarate, G. metallireducens broke down the ethanol generating an excess of electrons which were passed to G. sulfurreducens via "nanowires" grown between the species, enabling G. sulfurreducens to break down the fumarate ions.

The production of electricity during this process has also led scientists to theorize that Geobacter could act as a natural battery. This natural battery could use renewable biomass such as compost materials, or be used to convert human and animal solid waste into electricity. There are also potential applications in the field of nanotechnology for the creation of microbial nanowires in very small circuits and electronic devices. The nanowires could also be connected, creating a microscopic power grid.

Nice article on governance

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/b-k-chaturvedi-corruption-mythreality/448374/

The Richter Magnitude Scale

Seismic waves are the vibrations from earthquakes that travel through the Earth; they are recorded on instruments called seismographs. Seismographs record a zig-zag trace that shows the varying amplitude of ground oscillations beneath the instrument. Sensitive seismographs, which greatly magnify these ground motions, can detect strong earthquakes from sources anywhere in the world. The time, locations, and magnitude of an earthquake can be determined from the data recorded by seismograph stations.

The Richter magnitude scale was developed in 1935 by Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology as a mathematical device to compare the size of earthquakes. The magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. Adjustments are included for the variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquakes. On the Richter Scale, magnitude is expressed in whole numbers and decimal fractions. For example, a magnitude 5.3 might be computed for a moderate earthquake, and a strong earthquake might be rated as magnitude 6.3. Because of the logarithmic basis of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; as an estimate of energy, each whole number step in the magnitude scale corresponds to the release of about 31 times more energy than the amount associated with the preceding whole number value.

At first, the Richter Scale could be applied only to the records from instruments of identical manufacture. Now, instruments are carefully calibrated with respect to each other. Thus, magnitude can be computed from the record of any calibrated seismograph.

Earthquakes with magnitude of about 2.0 or less are usually called microearthquakes; they are not commonly felt by people and are generally recorded only on local seismographs. Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater - there are several thousand such shocks annually - are strong enough to be recorded by sensitive seismographs all over the world. Great earthquakes, such as the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska, have magnitudes of 8.0 or higher. On the average, one earthquake of such size occurs somewhere in the world each year. The Richter Scale has no upper limit. Recently, another scale called the moment magnitude scale has been devised for more precise study of great earthquakes.

The Richter Scale is not used to express damage. An earthquake in a densely populated area which results in many deaths and considerable damage may have the same magnitude as a shock in a remote area that does nothing more than frighten the wildlife. Large-magnitude earthquakes that occur beneath the oceans may not even be felt by humans.

Krishi Vigyan Kendra opens Agro-biopharmacy

• The Krishi Vigyan Kendra-Kannur (KVK) of the Kerala Agricultural University at Panniyur here has set up an Agro-biopharmacy to promote organics in agriculture.
• KVK officials here said that the major problem faced while adopting organic farming being the non-availability of trustworthy organic products and the cumbersome preparation of organic products, the Agro-biopharmacy enables farmers to reduce harmful agro-chemical load in the environment while providing good quality organic inputs. An array of products ranging from tobacco decoction to pheromone traps are produced and sold at the biopharmacy, they said adding that the labour for the production of these items is provided by a self-help group of KVK trainees.
• Organic manures like vermi-compost and coir pith compost, bio-control agents such as beneficial bacteria are produced and sold here. These are being used extensively by the farmers against plant diseases. Kits of common botanical pesticide formulations such as tobacco decoction and neem oil garlic emulsion are also sold at the biopharmacy.
• "The Agro-biopharmacy is a concept conceived by the KVK and it is aimed at providing inputs required for organic agriculture," said KVK head K. Abdul Kareem. The concept assumes significance in the context of the endosulfan issue and the declaration of the areas in Kasaragod as organic, he said.
• Dr. Kareem said safe use of insecticides is just one of the numerous tools of the Integrated Pest Management recommended by agricultural scientists to safeguard soil and human health. Farmers, however, usually depend solely on chemical insecticides as they think that this is the only practical control measure to obtain quick results. The biopharmacy offers organic substitutes to chemicals.

Harmless soil bacteria can help kill tumours

• Scientists are harnessing a harmless soil bug to kill tumours by using it as a drug delivery vehicle.
• The therapy uses Clostridia sporogenes — a bug found abundantly in soil. Its spores are injected into patients and only grow in solid tumours, where a specific bacterial enzyme is produced.
• An anti-cancer drug is injected separately into the patient. After reaching the tumour site, the bacterial enzyme activates the drug, allowing it to destroy only the tumour cells.
• University of Nottimgham's Nigel Minton, who led the research, said, "Clostridia are an ancient group of bacteria that evolved on the planet before it had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and so they thrive in low-oxygen conditions."
• When Clostridia spores are injected into a cancer patient, they will only grow in oxygen-deficit environments, i.e. the centre of solid tumours, according to a Nottingham statement.
• Any new cancer therapy is required to target cancer cells while excluding healthy cells. The research may ultimately lead to a simple and safe procedure for curing a wide range of solid tumours.
• "This therapy will kill all types of tumour cells. The treatment is superior to a surgical procedure, especially for patients at high risk or with difficult tumour locations," explained Minton.
• The strain is expected to be tested in cancer patients in 2013, says a scientist at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn Conference at the University of York.

World's smallest electric motor measures just 1 nanometre across!

• Chemists at Tufts have developed the world's smallest electric motor made from a single molecule, a development that may potentially create a new class of devices with applications ranging from medicine to engineering.
• In the new study, the Tufts team reports an electric motor that measures a mere 1 nanometre across, groundbreaking work considering that the current world record is a 200 nanometre motor. A single strand of human hair is about 60,000 nanometres wide.
• "We have been able to show that you can provide electricity to a single molecule and get it to do something that is not just random." The study was recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Induced pluripotency

Endangered species set for 'stem cell rescue'


Scientists say they have produced the first stem cells from endangered species, a breakthrough that could make it possible to improve reproduction and genetic diversity for some species, and possibly saving them from extinction. About five years ago, Oliver Ryder, director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo and co-leader of the study and his team had already established the Frozen Zoo, a bank of skin cells and other materials from more than 800 species and wondered if the thousands of samples they had amassed might be used as starting points for the conservation of endangered species.

At the time, although researchers were working with stem cells from embryos, scientists had not yet developed techniques for reliably inducing normal adult cells to become stem cells. But the technology arrived soon after, and scientists now accomplish this feat, called induced pluripotency, by inserting genes in normal cells that spark the transformation.

While professor of developmental neurobiology at Scripps Research Jeanne Loring's team met with Ryder in early 2008, they realized that these newly emerging techniques might be applied to endangered species.

Loring and her colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute then created stemcells from frozen skin cells of two such endangered species - the drill and the northern white rhinoceros.

"The best way to manage extinctions is to preserve species and their habitats, but that's not working all the time," said Oliver Ryder, director of genetics at the San Diego Zoo and co-leader of the study.

The rhinos are a perfect example, he said, because there are so few. "Stem cell technology provides some level of hope that they won't have to become extinct even though they've been completely eliminated from their habitats. I think that if humankind wants to save this species, we're going to have to develop new methodologies," he added.

The study was recently published in the journal Nature Methods.

Text of agreements signed between Indian and Bangladesh

	Framework Agreement on Cooperation for Development Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation in Renewable Energy Protocol to the Agreement concerning the demarcation of the Land Boundary between India and Bangladesh and related matters Addendum to the MOU between India and Bangladesh to facilitate Overland Transit Traffic between Bangladesh and Nepal Memorandum of Understanding on Conservation of the Sunderban Protocol on Conservation of the Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sunderban Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Fisheries Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation between Doordarshan and Bangladesh Television Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation between Jawaharlal Nehru University and Dhaka University Agreement of Cooperation between National Institute of Fashion Design (NIFT), India and BGMEA Institute of Fashion Technology (BIFT), Bangladesh

ULFA signs peace pact with government

• In its effort to bring lasting peace in Assam, the government on Saturday signed an agreement with the banned ULFA to end violence in the troubled North-eastern State and set the ball rolling for peace talks.
• The Suspension of Operation (SoO) pact, signed by the representatives of Central and Assam governments and ULFA, will ensure that the outfit will not carry out any subversive activities till a solution for the vexed insurgency problem is arrived at, while the security forces will not take any action against the ULFA cadres.
• "We had a very good round of talks. The SoO agreement was signed. The first round spells out the road to political dialogue. It is the harbinger of future talks," Joint Secretary (Northeast) in the Ministry of Home Affairs Shambhu Singh told reporters in New Delhi. The SoO pact will continue during the political talks and till a final agreement is signed.
• Members of the rebel group — numbering around 600 — will be put in special camps which will be called 'nabanirman kendras'.
• Last month, ULFA had submitted to the Centre its 'charter of demands' which sought amendment in the Constitution for finding "meaningful" ways to protect the rights and identity of the indigenous people of Assam. The group also demanded change of laws, saying a solution to their demands was not possible under the provisions of the existing Constitution.
• The other demands of the ULFA include discussion on grounds for "ULFA's struggle and their genuineness", status report on missing ULFA cadres, including those missing since 2005 when the Bhutan government conducted an offensive against the outfit, and other socio-economic issues.
• The SoO agreement on Saturday was signed by those including Joint Secretary Shambhu Singh, Assam Home Commissioner Jishnu Baruah, ULFA's Choudhury, finance secretary Chitrabon Hazarika, and deputy commander-in-chief Raju Baruah.
• This was ULFA's first formal peace talks with the government in its 32-year-old history. So far, only preliminary talks between the ULFA and Centre's interlocutor P.C. Haldar have been held in Guwahati. ULFA's elusive 'commander-in-chief' Paresh Baruah is still opposed to any dialogue with the government.

China honours Indian with highest literary award

• China has conferred its highest literary award on B.R. Deepak for his book, which is a translation of 88 classical Chinese poems into Hindi.
• Prof. Deepak, who is from Centre of Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, was the first Indian to receive the "Special Book Award" for his contribution to Chinese studies, translation, publication of Chinese books and cultural exchange.
• The book is first-of-its-kind translation of 88 classical poems from 11th to 14th Century BC into Hindi that have been selected from various periods of Chinese history starting from Shijing of pre Qin to Xixiangji of the Yuan dynasty, Prof Deepak, currently visiting professor of Chinese and Dean of the School of Languages, Doon University, Dehradun, Uttrakhand told PTI here on Friday.
• The book provides a kaleidoscopic view of the poetic tradition and genres such as Chu Ci, Han Yuefu, Tang Shi and Song Ci to the readers, along with the original Chinese text that has also been provided
  

The Land Acquisition and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2011 Summary

Few points as below

(i) Acquisition of agricultural land: The Bill rules out the acquisition, not of all irrigated agricultural land, but of multi-cropped irrigated agricultural land. That limited exclusion seems rather half-hearted.

(ii) Avoiding or minimising displacement: A serious concern about the trauma of displacement does not seem to be the driving force behind the Bill. The principles of 'no forced displacement' and 'free, informed prior consent' are not mentioned. (Incidentally, the condition of consent by 80 per cent of the land-owners applies only to land-acquisition by the government for companies including PPP cases, and not to governmental acquisition for itself. It appears that there has been no dilution at all of 'eminent domain'.) There are indeed a number of good provisions relating to displacement (SIA, review of SIA by an Expert Committee, consideration of 'less displacing alternative', public hearing, etc.), but the final decision is that of the bureaucracy. If a statutory clearance is needed for cutting a tree or for causing an environmental impact, should it not be required for displacing people? If the National Rehabilitation Commission mentioned in the 2007 Bill had been retained, a statutory displacement clearance by it could have been prescribed, but the present Bill envisages no such Commission.

(iii) Inadequacy of compensation: The present Bill increases the compensation amount significantly. This is welcome. Whether the earlier problems of delays and corruption in the payment process will disappear or diminish, remains to be seen.

(iv) The acquisition of land by the state for private companies: A view, held by many for a long time, is that there is no reason why the state should use its sovereign power to acquire land for private companies which are primarily in business for profit and not for conferring benefits on the public.

The 2007 Bills had sought to reduce the extent of land acquisition by the state for a company to 30 per cent , if the company purchases 70 per cent of the land needed by negotiation. The present Bill does away with the 70:30 formula, but provides for 'partial' acquisition by the state for a company if a company so requests. Presumably 'partial' acquisition could go up to near-full acquisition by the state. This seems a retrograde step.

(v) Private purchase: As for private negotiation, the Minister himself refers in his Foreword to the "asymmetry of power (and information) between those wanting to acquire the land and those whose lands are being acquired", but the Bill provides no mechanism to reduce that asymmetry. It doubtless extends the R&R provisions to private negotiated purchases of land but provides no safeguard against unfair negotiation. (Even the extension of the R&R provisions to negotiated purchases — the legality of which may be challenged — applies only where a company buys 100 acres or more, and that threshold can be easily side-stepped in ways that need not be spelt out here.) One wishes that the Minister had strengthened the hands of the weaker party in the negotiation by providing — this is merely an illustration — that the compensation that the land-owners would have got under this Bill if the land had been acquired by the government (to be determined by the collector) would be the floor below which the price negotiated by the company with the land-owners shall not fall.

(vi) Change of land use: That safeguard might ensure a fair price, but there is also the question of transfer of agricultural land to non-agricultural use and the implications for food security. One possibility might be to say that all acquisition of land, including acquisitions for companies, must be only by the state; but that does not seem desirable and, in any case, it is not really an answer to the problem of land-transfer away from agriculture. Another possibility is that private purchases of agricultural land should be subject to state regulation from the point of view of land-use. That might be open to the objection of undue interference with a landowner's right to sell his land. On the whole, the answer to the question of minimising transfers of agricultural land to non-agricultural use might lie in policies supportive of agriculture rather than in control or regulation over land transactions.

(vii) Definition of 'public purpose': An issue that has persistently figured in the debate during the last decade or two is the need to narrow the definition of 'public purpose' and limit it to a few strictly governmental purposes (schools, dispensaries, etc). The present Bill moves in exactly the opposite direction. It defines 'public purpose' very broadly and leaves it to the bureaucracy to decide each case. Is it right to assume that any industry ipso facto serves a public purpose warranting the alienation of agricultural land? For instance, in the Singur episode land acquisition was for 'industry', i.e., Tatas' small car factory; was that 'public purpose'? It can be so declared under the present Bill. Again, 'infrastructure' includes 'tourism', which would permit the acquisition of land for building hotels. It seems desirable to define 'public purpose' somewhat more stringently.

(viii) Coverage of 'project-affected persons': The Bill refers to loss of primary livelihoods but links it to the acquisition of land. The term 'livelihoods' is illustrated by a reference to the gathering of forest produce, hunting, fishing, etc; there is no reference to sellers of goods and services to the people in the project area, who will lose their livelihoods when the people whom they serve move away to resettlement areas. It is not clear whether they will be regarded as project-affected persons.

(ix) Social Impact Assessment: On Social Impact Assessment the present Bill is an improvement on the 2007 Bill, but the idea of SIA still falls short: it does not cover the disappearance of a whole way of life; the dispersal of close-knit communities; the loss of a centuries-old relationship with nature; the loss of roots; and so on. It is good that the SIA will be reviewed by an independent multi-disciplinary expert body, but it should first be prepared by a similar body. The Bill leaves the SIA to be prepared by the "appropriate government."

(x) Rehabilitation package: The rehabilitation package is distinctly inferior to the packages already established in certain projects. The principle of 'land for land' has been abandoned. It figures only in the case of irrigation projects, and there the Bill envisages one acre per family instead of two acres as in the Sardar Sarovar Project. There are two points here. First, it is not clear why the Bill specifies irrigation projects; hydroelectric projects and flood control also have the same impacts as irrigation projects, and in any case many projects are 'multi-purpose' projects. Secondly, compensation and rehabilitation should have reference not to the nature of the project but to the nature of the impact. Whatever be the project, if an agricultural community is uprooted from its land and homestead, it has to be enabled to practise agriculture elsewhere, and not expected to become carpenters or weavers or traders.

(xi) Other matters: A number of officials and institutions are specified in the Bill, such as the Collector, Administrator of R&R, Commissioner of R&R, etc., but it is only in the R&R Committee that there is a significant non-official presence. The National Monitoring Committee is not 'participatory'; apart from officials, it includes only a few experts. As indicated earlier, the idea of a National Rehabilitation Commission has been abandoned.

Incidentally, it is not clear why displacement by natural calamities should be brought within the purview of this Bill. There is a vital difference between unavoidable displacement caused by nature and deliberate displacement caused by human decisions.

Summing up, the Bill seems to be essentially driven by a desire to make land acquisition for industrialisation and urbanisation easier. It is clear that the Bill, which does contain many good features, nevertheless requires substantial improvement.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2366476.ece

vindictive

vin·dic·tive

adj.

1. Disposed to seek revenge; revengeful.

2. Marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt; spiteful.

Incidentally, officially, Kejriwal is still an IRS employee as the department has not accepted his resignation tendered in 2006.

The I-T department maintains that Kejriwal violated bond conditions and his resignation, will be accepted only once the dues are cleared.
Team Anna member Justice Santosh Hegde says the timing seems vindictive.

Bhattarai new Nepal Prime Minister

• Nepal's legislature-parliament on Sunday elected Baburam Bhattarai, Vice-Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), new Prime Minister. The Maoists were supported by the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF), an alliance of five Madhesi parties. In the House of 594 MPs, 575 members participated in the election and around 340 voted for Dr. Bhattarai, helping him secure a simple majority.
• The other candidate, Nepali Congress Parliamentary Party leader Ram Chandra Poudel, got 235 votes. The NC was supported by the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist).
• The UML said it had not received a credible and acceptable peace process proposal from the Maoists. The Maoist victory was made possible, thanks to a last minute 'four-point agreement' with the Madhesi parties on fundamental issues of 'peace, constitution and functioning of a joint government'. The Maoists agreed to 'positively revise' their proposal for the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants.

Japanese Finance Minister wins PM race

Japan's ruling party has elected Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda as its new chief, meaning he will almost certainly become the next Prime Minister and inherit the challenge of rebuilding from the country's disasters.

Mr. Noda, 54, is known as a fiscal conservative. He defeated Trade Minister Banri Kaieda on Monday in a run-off election 215-177 after none of the five candidates won a majority in the first round.

Mr. Noda will inherit a host of daunting challenges, from a sluggish economy to the massive reconstruction after March's tsunami and nuclear crisis.

He will go on to become Prime Minister because the ruling Democrats control the more powerful lower house of Parliament.

Chair of Indian studies at Edinburgh University

• A chair of contemporary Indian studies, to be held by an Indian academic, is to be created at the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) as part of the university's efforts to strengthen academic and cultural links with India.

Underground river 'Rio Hamza' discovered 4km beneath the Amazon

• Covering more than 7 million square kilometres in South America, the Amazon basin is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out we have only known half the story until now.
• Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the Amazon basin – around 4km underneath the Amazon river. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon river but up to hundreds of times wider.
• Both the Amazon and Hamza flow from west to east and are around the same length, at 6,000km. But whereas the Amazon ranges from 1km to 100km in width, the Hamza ranges from 200km to 400km.
• The underground river starts in the Acre region under the Andes and flows through the Solimões, Amazonas and Marajó basins before opening out directly into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Amazon flows much faster than the Hamza, however, draining a greater volume of water. Around 133,000m3 of water flow through the Amazon per second at speeds of up to 5 metres per second. The underground river's flow rate has been estimated at around 3,900m3 per second and it barely inches along at less than a millimetre per hour.
• The Hamza was located using data collected inside a series of 241 abandoned deep wells that were drilled in the Amazon region by the petrochemical company Petrobras in the 1970s and 1980s. Elizabeth Tavares Pimentel and Valiya Hamza of the Department of Geophysics atBrazil's National Observatory led the work and presented their results last week at the International Congress of the Society Brasiliera Geophysical in Rio de Janeiro.
• The researchers used a mathematical model to predict the presence of the underground river, based on the measured changes in temperature down the wells. In the presentation, Piementel said that the flow of groundwater was almost vertical through the rocks to depths of around 2,000m. After this, the water flow changes direction and becomes almost horizontal.
• According to the researchers, the presence of the Rio Hamza river might account for the relatively low salinity of the waters around the mouth of the Amazon.
• Professor Hamza said Piementel's measurements represented preliminary work on the discovery of the new river, but Hamza said he expected to confirm the existence of the flow with additional measurements within the next few years.