📰 Sri Lanka: India opts to wait
Govt. prefers to watch developments including Parliament vote, weighs options
•Even as the European Union and the United States expressed concern over the manner in which Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena withdrew support to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and swore in former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place, and China chose to congratulate Mr. Rajapaksa, New Delhi chose to maintain a studied silence on Saturday.
•With Prime Minister Narendra Modi away on a visit to Japan, the Ministry of External Affairs would prefer not to jump the gun on developments, especially given the fact that two separate Prime Ministers are now laying claim to the official residence at Temple Trees. A final outcome would probably only be known after a show of strength in Parliament and it is better to let each play out their hand, said officials.
•The UPA government never lived down its decision in 2012 to call and congratulate Mohamed Waheed, hours after he deposed President Mohamed Nasheed in a coup and a repeat of that in Sri Lanka would have been inadvisable.
•The NDA government has also been quite displeased with the way it was dragged into the internal politics of Sri Lanka in recent weeks, with both Mr. Sirisena and Mr. Wickremesinghe reaching out to Prime Minister Modi to explain their version of events after a stormy Cabinet meeting on October 14.
•The government’s reticence is in sharp contrast to a more strong-arm policy in the neighbourhood over the past few years. It is likely that New Delhi has found that taking credit or being blamed for every political development in the neighbourhood is, over time, detrimental to the “Neighbourhood First” policy it espouses, with accusations of interference being made by parties in Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives. Playing a card either way during Sri Lanka’s current turmoil would not be seen as helpful to India’s long-term interests in the region.
•Also, there is New Delhi’s extremely volatile relationship with Mr. Rajapaksa himself. When he lost power, Mr. Rajapaksa had blamed the R&AW for facilitating the opposition’s unity efforts, and the relationship with the former President had been fraught for a while. While Mr. Rajapaksa has softened his stand, telling The Hindu last month that it was time to “move on” from past differences, New Delhi is unsure of just where it may stand with him.
📰 China will review new inputs on Azhar
Delhi says no anti-Chinese activity will be allowed in India
•China has assured India that it will, in future, consider any additional information that is provided on Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar to designate him as an international terrorist.
•The assurance was given by Minister of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, Zhao Kezhi, to Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a high-level meeting held in New Delhi last week.
Dalai Lama’s visit
•On its part, India said its territory would not be used for any political activity against China, when Beijing raised the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh in 2016.
•The Doklam stand-off between the armies of the two countries at the China-Sikkim-Bhutan tri-junction last year, which lasted for over two months, was not raised by either side.
•China had blocked India’s proposal to designate Azhar as an international terrorist at a UN sanctions committee. “The Chinese Minister also promised action on United Liberation Front of Assam leader Paresh Baruah, who is said to be hiding in China. He said they would consider any fresh information provided by India on both Azhar and Baruah,” said a senior government official.
•China considers Arunachal Pradesh a disputed territory and has referred to Tibetan leader Dalai Lama as a “separatist.” China was categorical that no protests or demonstrations should be organised by the Tibetans here.
‘A spiritual leader’
•“They wanted to raise the so-called disputed status of Arunachal Pradesh, but we did not agree to include it in the agenda. The Chinese delegation was assured that no political activity against the Chinese will be allowed from any Indian territory and as far as the Dalai Lama is concerned, he is a spiritual Tibetan leader who was given shelter in India,” said the official.
•Beijing also raised the unrest in Xinjiang province and sought India’s cooperation on the movement of Uighur militants.
‘No Uighur militants’
•“There is no evidence of the movement of Uighur militants in India, but the Chinese raised the subject as they have an apprehension that they may use India as a transit. They were assured that no such activity will be allowed,” said the official.
•On October 22, India and China signed an agreement to “strengthen and consolidate discussions and cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, organised crime, drug control and other such relevant areas.”
•A Memorandum of Understanding had been signed in 2005 with China, but that lapsed two years ago.
📰 S.K. Mishra is ED’s interim Director
•The Centre appointed Indian Revenue Service officer Sanjay Kumar Mishra as interim Director of the Enforcement Directorate for three months on Saturday.
•The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared his name on the last day of the tenure of the incumbent Karnal Singh. Mr. Mishra has been appointed Principal Chief Director of the ED. He will be the interim Director for three months or till further orders, says a notification issued by the Department of Personnel and Training.
📰 Scientists turn to AI for early earthquake warnings
They can analyse data faster, help anticipate where the next big one will strike
•Some of the world’s most destructive earthquakes — China in 2008, Haiti in 2010 and Japan in 2011, among them — occurred in areas that seismic hazard maps had deemed relatively safe.
•Now, with the help of artificial intelligence, a growing number of scientists say changes in the way they can analyse massive amounts of seismic data can help them better understand earthquakes, anticipate how they will behave, and provide quicker and more accurate early warnings.
•“I am actually hopeful for the first time in my career that we will make progress on this problem,” said Paul Johnson, a fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory who is among those at the forefront of this research.
•The new AI-related earthquake research is leaning on neural networks, a complex mathematical system that can learn tasks on its own.
•Scientists say seismic data is remarkably similar to the audio data that companies like Google and Amazon use in training neural networks to recognise spoken commands. “Rather than a sequence of words, we have a sequence of ground-motion measurements,” said Zachary Ross, a researcher in the California Institute of Technology’s Seismological Laboratory who is exploring these AI techniques. “We are looking for the same kinds of patterns in this data.”
•Brendan Meade, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, began exploring these techniques after spending a sabbatical at Google. His project showed that these machine-learning methods could accelerate his experiments. He and his students used a neural network to run an earthquake analysis 500 times faster than they could in the past. What once took days now took minutes.
📰 India home to two new gecko species
They seem to be restricted to very specific high-altitude areas in Western Ghats
•The spot-necked day gecko and the Anaimudi day gecko, both very distinctly-patterned lizards found only in the higher reaches of the Agasthyamalai and Anamalai hill ranges in the Western Ghats, are the latest additions to India's reptile fauna.
•Researchers including Vivek Philip Cyriac of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvanathapuram (IISER-TVM) were surveying reptiles in Kerala's Shola National Parks in 2013 when they came across a predominantly greyish-brown-coloured gecko.
Red iris
•The approximately six-centimetre-long lizard sported an unusual, bright red iris (a thin band surrounding the pupil of the eye) and a long, striking amber line also ran down its dark back: unlike anything the team had seen.
•“We thought it could be a new species, but we had to make sure,” said Cyriac.
•So the team collected and studied the geckos’ morphology in detail. The features they studied included the lengths of various body parts such as tail and fingers, lamellae (fine, plate-like structures on the base of gecko feet that help them scale vertical surfaces) and tubercles (tiny raised projections on their bodies). They compared these with the morphology of other similar-looking lizards to establish Cnemaspis anamudiensis or the Anaimudi day gecko, as a new species.
Spot-necked day gecko
•The team (including scientists at the Zoological Survey of India and National Centre for Biological Sciences) utilized the same method to describe yet another day gecko they spotted at Kollam's Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary – which is part of the Agasthyamalai hill range – in 2016. This gecko had bluish-white spots in a distinct ‘necklace-pattern’ on its nape. While this differentiated the species from the similar-looking Ponmudi day gecko and the Bedomme’s day gecko, the lack of enlarged flat tubercles on its tail was one of the features that ruled out its possibility of being the ornate day gecko. The team named the new species Cnemaspis maculicolis or the spot-necked day gecko.
•Both these diurnal geckos are currently known only from single localities in high-elevation forests located at more than 1,200 metres above mean sea level in the Ghats. There is a possibility that these day geckos could be present in the surrounding hills but more detailed surveys would be required to confirm this, said Cyriac.
•While mountain ranges in general have a rather high diversity of such day geckos, the “accelerated environmental decline” that these regions face are a concern, he added.
📰 World’s smallest optical gyroscope developed
•Scientists have developed the world’s smallest optical gyroscope - a device that helps vehicles, drones and handheld electronic devices know their orientation in 3D space. The new gyroscope, described in Nature Photonics, is 500 times smaller than the current best device.
•Originally, gyroscopes were sets of nested wheels, each spinning on a different axis, said researchers from the California Institute of Technology in the U.S. However, today’s cellphones have microelectromechanical sensor, the modern-day equivalent, which measures changes in the forces acting on two identical masses that are oscillating and moving in opposite directions.
Sagnac effect
•These MEMS gyroscopes are limited in their sensitivity, so optical gyroscopes have been developed to perform the same function but with no moving parts and a greater degree of accuracy using a phenomenon called the Sagnac effect, named after French physicist Georges Sagnac.
•The smallest high-performance optical gyroscopes available today are bigger than a golf ball and are not suitable for many portable applications, researchers said. As optical gyroscopes are built smaller and smaller, so too is the signal that captures the Sagnac effect, which makes it more and more difficult for the gyroscope to detect movement, they said. Up to now, this has prevented the miniaturisation of optical gyroscopes.
•The device developed by Caltech engineers led by Ali Hajimiri can detect phase shifts that are 30 times smaller than the best systems currently available. The new gyroscope achieves improved performance by using a new technique called “reciprocal sensitivity enhancement.” In this case, “reciprocal” means that it affects both beams of the light inside the gyroscope in the same way. Since the Sagnac effect relies on detecting a difference between the two beams as they travel in opposite directions, it is considered nonreciprocal. Inside the gyroscope, light travels through miniaturised optical waveguides (small conduits that carry light).
•Imperfections in the optical path that might affect the beams (for example, thermal fluctuations or light scattering) and any outside interference will affect both beams similarly. Professor Hajimiri’s team found a way to weed out this reciprocal noise while leaving signals from the Sagnac effect intact. Reciprocal sensitivity enhancement thus improves the signal-to-noise ratio in the system and enables the integration of the optical gyroscope on to a chip smaller than a grain of rice.
