A very good evening aspirants welcome to Hindi newspaper analysis brought to you by Shankaray's Academy for the date 27th of December 2022. Displayed here are the list of articles that we are going to discuss today without any delay let's get into the article discussion. Now look at this snow filled picture from Amhist, New York. See this picture came in the front page of the newspaper. See this condition is due to the recent bomb cyclone named Elliot. So in our discussion today we will see about bomb cyclone, how it is formed, its effects and finally how it differs from normal cyclones. See first of all you have to know that bomb cyclones are associated with temperate cyclones. So they mainly occur in temperate region where the warm air mass meets with the cold air mass. What is an air mass? See air mass is a large volume of air with uniform temperature and moisture. See when air stays over a surface for a long period of time it gets the characteristics of the surface. To understand this let us look at the winter months in North America. See during winters in North America the land area becomes extremely cold very fastly but the Atlantic Ocean stays relatively warm. So the air above the land mass becomes very cold and it has less moisture and this is the cold air mass. And the air above the Atlantic Ocean is warm and it has more moisture and this is the warm air mass. When the warm air mass and the cold air mass meet two fronts are formed. They are the warm front and the cold front. If the cold air mass is moving towards the warm air mass a cold front is formed and if the warm air mass is moving towards the cold air mass a warm front is formed. And this process of formation of friends is called as Frontogenesis. See when pressure drops along the front the warm air moves northwards and the cold air moves towards the south and due to Coriolis force the motion is in anticlockwise direction and this is how a temperate cyclone originates in normal conditions. In some special cases when the pressure drop is very significant that is when the pressure difference with the high pressure and low pressure area is above 24 millibars then we experience very strong winds. And due to the presence of such a huge pressure difference between two air masses the speed of wind rapidly increases. And this process of rapid intensification has a name which is nothing but bombogenesis and this leads to bomb cyclone. See the higher the pressure difference the higher the intensity of wind will be. So basically a bomb cyclone is a highly intensive temperate cyclone that is formed due to a huge pressure difference. See in the case of cyclone Elliot which is now in the news the pressure difference is 85 millibars and this is why the impact of this cyclone is very huge. See the Elliot cyclone caused blizzards, extreme low temperatures near zero visibility whiteouts and ice covered roads. Here blizzards are nothing but a severe snow storm which results in strong winds and low visibility. See these are all the impacts of the bomb cyclone. Now how are bomb cyclones different from normal cyclones? See bomb cyclones are temperate cyclones that occur in the temperate region while normal cyclones they are tropical cyclones that occur in the tropical region and this is the first difference. Secondly bomb cyclones occur over both land and oceans but the tropical cyclones it occurs only over the oceans. When a tropical cyclone reaches the land it starts dissipating and we saw that this process is called as land fault. So this is the second difference. Thirdly bomb cyclones impact a very huge area but the impact of tropical cyclones is very limited and this is the third difference. See these are some of the differences between a normal cyclone and a bomb cyclone. Now with these points we have come to the end of this particular news article discussion. In this discussion we saw about air mass and we understood how temperate cyclones are formed and we saw the conditions that are needed for bomb cyclone and finally we ended our discussion by seeing the differences between bomb cyclones and normal cyclones. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next news article. Now for our next discussion we are going to take this text and context article. See it talks about a case of trademark infringement filed against Sadar laboratory's private limited for their product Dil Afsa. See the court ruled in the favour of Hamdad National Foundation the makers of Roo Afsa. See Roo Afsa is an old sherbet brand selling their range of products. A relatively new brand Dil Afsa came to market with a similar product. So the former company filed a case of trademark infringement against the later. Now the Delhi High Court has ruled in the favour of Roo Afsa and asked the Dil Afsa to stop their protection until the disposal of the suit and this is the background of the news article given here. Now we will learn about the trademark from UPSC perspective. So what's a trademark basically? A trademark is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image or a combination of these elements. Now see this image here. Can you associate this image with anything? Yes. Once you see the symbol you can immediately say that it is Facebook right? And this is a trademark. Now why do brands have trademark? Because it protects the owner against unfair competition and it prevents the damage to the reputation of owner. Suppose if you are buying a shoe from X brand which is from a well reputed company. Another counterfeit product manufacturer also puts the same logo of brand X on his low quality product. Now as a customer you will not be able to differentiate between the two products. Now if you buy the low quality shoe thinking that it's from brand X and if it did not last long then what you will do? You will spread a bad word about the brand X right? And you will tell everyone that brand X is not good. And this would affect the sales of brand X shoes. Am I right or not? But now if the original brand X manufacturer can file a case against the fake product maker and then it will keep away other such manufacturers from imitating the brand X logo. And now you know how it protects the owner against unfair competition and it prevents the damage to the reputation of owner. Adding to this in a way it ensures the consumer welfare as well. Once a trademark is fixed to a particular product then there will be no confusion for the consumers right? And this is about the trademark in general. Now you should know how it works in India. In India, trademarks are governed under Trademarks Act 1999. It comes under the department of promotion of industry and internal trade under the Ministry of Commerce. See trademark is defined in Trademark Act 1999. It is defined as a mark capable of being represented graphically and which is capable of distinguishing goods or services of one person from those of others and it may include the shape of goods, their packaging and combination of colours. And such a mark may include numerous things such as signatures, names, labels, headings etc. So when can we file a case of copyright infringement? See according to the Act a trademark is infringed. If the trademark is a copy of registered trademark with a few additions or alterations. So this means that you cannot add some star to the F and say that you can use this mark. No, it is reserved for Facebook only. With few additions or alterations you cannot say this symbol is yours. And secondly if the infringed mark is printed or used in advertisements then also it is said to be copyright infringement. And thirdly if the infringed mark is used in the course of trade. If a particular trademark is used in trade then it is also considered to be copyright infringement. And finally, if the mark used is so similar to a registered mark that it is likely to confuse a consumer while selecting a category of product then also it is considered as infringement of copyrights. Also note that the period of trademark in India is for a period of 10 years as per section 25 in Trademarks Act 1999. So these are some of the important aspects that you should know about trademark. And with this we have also come to the end of this particular article discussion. In this discussion we saw about the background of the news article and after that we saw what is trademark and we saw why brands have trademark and we saw about the provisions of trademark in India, the legal provisions of it and we saw the conditions which are related to the infringement of trademarks. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now let us take this business page article. See this article reports about the increase in interests of government securities. Subsequently in terms of ownership the government of India bonds owned by RBI fell to a 2 year low of 15.3 percentage and this is due to the fact that privates are interested in buying the government securities due to increase in interests. And this is the crux of the news article given here. In this context let us learn about government securities and its types. Firstly let us see about the term security in the financial sense. See a security is a certificate that has monetary value which can be traded. This is in the financial context. It is nothing but a certificate which has monetary value and this certificate can be traded. And there are two types of securities which includes private and government securities. See in this discussion we are going to see only about the government securities. A government security which is shortly referred as GSEC is a tradable instrument issued by central government or the state governments. See this government security it acknowledges the government's debt obligation. It is nothing but the government is obliged to pay you and such securities can be short term or long term. Here note that the government securities carry practically no risk of default at all and because of this reason they are called as risk free guilt edged instruments. Now this is about the government security let us move on to see about the types of securities. As I already said the government securities are of two types. One is short term securities and the other one is long term securities. Firstly let us see about short term securities. See these short term securities are also called as treasury bills and they come in 3 tenors. And what are those 3 tenors? The first one is 91 days and the second one is 182 days and the third one is 365 days. See the important thing that you have to note about the treasury bill is that they are zero coupon securities and they pay no interest and instead of this they are issued at a discount and they are redeemed at a phase value at maturity. It means they are issued at a less value and at the end of the tenure they are brought back at high value. See still it may sound a little bit confusing for you. I will explain it with an example. For example let us take 91 day treasury bill of rupees 100 ok and this will be issued at the rate of 28.20 rupees. This means it is issued at the discount of 1.80 rupees. Now at the end of the tenure the treasury bill will be redeemed at the phase value of 100 rupees. So the government will pay you back rupees 100. And this is what is meant by issued at a discount and redeemed at phase value. And this is all with respect to short period of the government. Now coming to the long term securities they are called as dated securities. So what are these dated securities? See government paper with tenure beyond one year is known as dated security. These securities carry either a fixed interest rate or floating interest rate and this is paid on the phase value on a half early basis. These securities ranges from 5 years to 40 years and this is all about the dated securities. Now let's see how these government securities are issued. See government securities are issued through auctions conducted by the RBI and these auctions are conducted on the electronic platform called the E-Cube which is the core banking solution platform of RBI. Now who are all the members of this electronic platform? Commercial banks, scheduled urban cooperative banks, primary dealers insurance companies and provident funds who maintain funds or current account and securities account with the RBI are the members of this electronic platform. See this is all about the government securities and with this we have also come to the end of this particular article discussion. In this discussion we saw about security in the financial context. We saw the two types of securities. In that we concentrated on government securities. We saw what is government security, the two different types of government securities. We saw what is the short term government security under that we saw about Treasury Bill and under the long term government security we saw about dated securities. And finally we ended our discussion by seeing the platform through which the government securities are issued. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now let us take this editorial article. See in August 15 this year 11 men who were convicted of the horrific gang rape and mass murder was released from Godra Sub-Jail. And these men were convicted in the Bilkis Banu case. See the release of the convicts was based on a May 2022 Supreme Court judgment. Bilkis Banu requested the Supreme Court to review its judgment. And the Supreme Court on December 13, 2022 dismissed her review petition. See this editorial article discusses the various issues in the Supreme Court's dismissal of the review petition of Bilkis Banu. And we are going to see the sequence of events in this case and the points discussed in the article and finally about rid petitions in our discussion today. But before that I have displayed here the syllabus regarding this discussion. Quickly go through it okay. Now let's start by looking at the sequence of events. See after the horrific incident Bilkis Banu approached the National Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court. In December 2003 the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the case. And in the year 2004 based on the request of Bilkis Banu the Supreme Court ordered that the trial of the case must be taken up in Mumbai instead of Gujarat so that the judicial process is not under any external influence. And the third sequence is that in the year 2007 a trial court in Mumbai found 13 out of the 20 accused as guilty. And of them 11 were awarded life sentences for their heinous crimes and 7 others were acquitted for the want of evidence. See in May 2017 the Bombay High Court upheld the conviction and life imprisonment of all 11 convicts of the Bilkis Banu case. And in July 2017 the Supreme Court also reiterated the conviction and life imprisonment of all 11 convicts of the Bilkis Banu case. But in the year 2019 one of the 11 convicts approached the Gujarat High Court seeking remission. Now you may have a question why did the convict file his remission petition in Gujarat High Court. See he tried to file the remission plea in Gujarat High Court because 1992 remission policy of Gujarat government allowed for early release of prisoners who served 14 years in jail. And this is exactly why the convict approached the Gujarat High Court. But what happened was the Gujarat High Court in the year 2020 rejected the remission plea saying that since the case proceedings took place in Maharashtra the remission plea should be filed in the Bombay High Court. So after this the convict filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the Gujarat High Court order. And the Supreme Court after hearing the plea gave two directions. First the Supreme Court said that it was the Gujarat High Court government that was competent to examine the remission plea since the crime had occurred there. The Supreme Court also said that even though the trial was held in Maharashtra since the crime was committed in Gujarat the policy that is applicable in the state of Gujarat only will be applicable here also. And secondly the Supreme Court said that the 1992 remission policy of Gujarat government can be used to issue a premature release of the convict. Actually in the year 2014 the state of Gujarat issued a new remission policy according to 2014 policy in case of heinous crimes like rape and murder there is no provision for premature release of the convicts. But the Supreme Court said that when the crime was committed in the year 2002 the 1992 remission policy only existed. So based on the 1992 policy if a convict has served 14 years in prison then he may be released and these are the two directions given by the Supreme Court after hearing the plea. And this was pronounced as judgment in May 2022. And based on this judgment the Gujarat government formed a panel considering of Godra collector and four other members. See these four members were from ruling party and the panel anonymously decided in the favor of remission of those convicted and forwarded its recommendations to the state home department. See the state government accepted the recommendation of the panel so on August 15 the 11 convicts of the Bilkis Banu case walked free from the Godra sub jail. And after this Bilkis Banu filed a petition in the Supreme Court asking it to review the May 2022 judgment and recently in December 2022 the Supreme Court rejected the plea of Bilkis Banu and this is the sequence of timeline of events that happened in the Bilkis Banu case. See the author of this editorial cites an issue with the May 2022 judgment of the Supreme Court. The major issue cited by the author is regarding the validity of the Gujarat government to grant the remission. For this the author citing the constitution bench decision in union of India v. Shri Haran 2015 case. See in this case the constitution bench stated that if an offense is committed in a state A but the trial takes place and the sentence is passed in state B it is the government of state B which is the appropriate government. So in the Bilkis Banu case it is the government of Maharashtra that should have considered the remission plea and not the government of Gujarat and this is the major issue. See in 1976 Madhya Pradesh v. Ratan Singh case also the court held that it is the state where the accused was convicted has the power to grant remissions for the sentences. So the author states that May 2022 judgment of Supreme Court does not concur with the previous judgments. Here he goes on to say that Supreme Court had a chance to remedy its mistake but by rejecting the plea of Bilkis Banu the Supreme Court missed the opportunity and these are all the major points mentioned in the article that you should know. See throughout this discussion I have mentioned remission a number of times so before concluding this discussion let us see some important points about remission. Firstly what is remission? Remission is shortening of a sentence without changing its character. For example, if a person is sentenced to 15 years rigorous imprisonment through remission his punishment can be reduced to say 10 years of rigorous imprisonment. Here the nature of punishment is not changed but the time of sentence is reduced. Now what are all the articles that comes to your mind when you hear remission? It is article 72 and article 161 right? See article 72 of the constitution empowers the president to grant remission and article 161 gives similar power to the governor and this is the constitutional provision regarding remission. But think about it no. Is this the only type of remission available? Actually no. As per law there are three kinds of remissions constitutional, statutory and those earned in accordance with jail manuals. See article 72 and article 161 deals with the constitutional remission. And section 432 of Code of Criminal Procedure deals with the statutory remission. See it lays down rules for the state governments to suspend or remit sentences. So what does this mean? This means that section 432 of CRPC empowers the appropriate government to suspend or remit the sentence of a prisoner. Section 432 clause 2 of CRPC provides that the government may seek opinion of the judge who convicted the prisoner on whether the application for remission must be objected or accepted. And this is about the statutory remission. And the last type is the remission earned in accordance with the jail manuals. See prison is the subject under the state list of the seventh schedule of the constitution. So the management and administration of jails falls under state governments. So the state government might frame rules to regulate its remission policy. See we saw before itself right. We saw the 1992 and 2014 remission policy of Gujarat right. Like that each state government can frame its own policy regarding remission. And this type of remission comes under remission earned in accordance with jail manuals. See these are the major types of remission granted in India. And this is all regarding the editorial article given here. In this discussion we saw about the timeline of events that happened in the Bill Kisbanu case and after that we saw about the major issue in the Supreme Court judgment by the author. And finally we ended our discussion by seeing remission and the three types of remission which includes constitutional remission, statutory remission and remission earned in accordance with the jail manuals. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now have a look at this opinion page article this news article talks about the new heritage act of Telangana government. See this act was enacted five years back and now the Telangana government appears to have changed the course. See the author is saying that because the Telangana government started concentrating on a few premier sites outside the core heritage zone. And this is the crux of the news article given here in this context. Let us understand about the UNESCO World Heritage sites and its eligibility criteria. But before that the syllabus relevant to this article is highlighted here for your reference. Quickly go through it. Now let's start with the question. What are these UNESCO World Heritage sites? See before knowing about the World Heritage sites you should know about UNESCO. UNESCO is expanded as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and it was born on 16th November 1945. See it is a specialized agency of United Nations. And its main objective is to promote world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, science and culture. See UNESCO has 195 members and 8 associate members and it is governed by General Conference and the Executive Board. See the secret area of UNESCO is headed by Director General and the secret area only implements the decision of General Conference and the Executive Board. Now this is a brief about UNESCO. Now let's move on to see about the UNESCO World Heritage site. See the building of Azwan High Dam served as the main catalyst for the adoption of World Heritage Convention. See the Azwan High Dam is one of the world's largest embankment dams which was built across the Nile in Azwan Egypt. See the large lake that would develop behind the new dam in Azwan would submerge and destroy many historic sites. So in order to save the historic sites and monuments of Egyptian Nubia, the governments of the United Arab Republic and Sudan turned to UNESCO in the year 1959. See United Arab Republic is now Egypt and Syria ok? So after this UNESCO responded by appealing to the international community for help and this resulted in the largest archaeological rescue operation in the history. So the World Heritage site is nothing but an area or object inscribed in the UNESCO's World Heritage list. See it can be any place or any object but such a place or object should have outstanding value to humanity. And along with the outstanding value to humanity it should also have distinct cultural or physical significance. Remember the sites are designated as having outstanding universal value under the convention concerning the protection of world cultural and natural heritage and this document was adopted by UNESCO in the year 1972 and it officially entered into force in the year 1975 after being ratified by 20 countries. So the convention provides a framework for international cooperation in preserving and protecting the cultural treasures and natural areas throughout the world. So from this what is our take away? The places or objects having outstanding universal value are designated under the convention concerning the protection of world cultural heritage and natural heritage which came into force in the year 1975. So under this convention UNESCO tries to encourage the conservation identification and maintenance of natural and cultural heritage around the world. And this is about the UNESCO World Heritage site. Now how places or objects are selected for this list? See to be included on World Heritage list the sites must be with outstanding universal value and it should meet at least one out of the ten selection criteria. See these criteria are explained in the operational guidelines for implementation of world heritage convention. So what is this guideline? See world heritage committee is the main body in charge for the implementation of convention and they only developed precise criteria for the inclusion of properties on the world heritage list. And these criteria serves as the guideline for the provision of international assistance under the world heritage fund. And these criteria they are all included in a document called as operational guidelines for the implementation of world heritage convention. See this document is regularly revised by the world heritage committee to reflect new concepts, knowledge or experiences. Now I have given here the ten criteria for the assessment of outstanding universal value. You just give it a glance, ok. Read it, understand the essence of it. You need not memorize it, ok. Now coming back to the article the article in the opinion page also says that the government have spent large sums of money on restoration of heritage sites. For example, in the year 1935 Moazam market was restored at a cost of 16 crore and Bansilalpet Stepwell was restored at the cost of 2.6 crore. And these large sums of money that are spent by the government did not go in vain. How am I saying this? See last year Ramappa temple near Warangal was given the UNESCO World Heritage Site and two other sites the Golconda Stepwells and the Fort where the winners in UNESCO's Asia Pacific Awards for cultural heritage conservation in the year 2022. So from this we can say that the conservation efforts have led to the winning of UNESCO's Asia Pacific Awards. The article also mentions that Telangana is in a hurry to achieve UNESCO World Heritage city status for Hyderabad like the Ahmedabad and Jaipur. So what it is doing that see if a particular city gets the status of UNESCO World Heritage city then it will boost tourism right. And for that only Telangana is in a hurry to achieve UNESCO World Heritage status for Hyderabad. Now here you should know about the UNESCO World Heritage city program and about the UNESCO's Asia Pacific Awards for the cultural heritage conservation. Now we will see them one by one. Let's start with the World Heritage city's program. See the World Heritage city's program is formally approved and monitored by the World Heritage Committee and it came into force in the year 2001. See the main aim of the program is to assist the state parties in the challenges of protecting and managing their urban heritage. See since historic urban areas are amongst the most abundant without proper attention such an arrangement is made to the urban heritage. See the program is constructed along a two-way process. First is the development of a theoretical framework for the urban heritage conservation. And the second one is provision of technical assistance to the state parties for the implementation of new approaches and schemes. First one is theoretically you are constructing a framework and the second one is you are assisting them with the technical knowledge. So if the city is identified as World Heritage city then the city will gain the broadest possible international support. So this is about the World Heritage city's program. Here I have a task for you. Go and find out what are all the cities in India that are recognized as the World Heritage cities. Now let's move on to the UNESCO's Asia Pacific awards for the cultural heritage conservation. See this award was started in the year 2000. See the purpose of the award is to recognize the efforts of private individuals and organizations in restoring, conserving and transforming structures and buildings of heritage value in the region. So if someone is making efforts to conserve the structures or buildings of heritage value then they should be rewarded right? And for that only this award was started. Know that the award consists of five categories. The first one is award of excellence, the second one is award of distinction and the third one is award of merit and the fourth one is honorable mention and the fifth one is award for new design in heritage context. And the important thing that you have to know is this year India got awards in three categories. It got the award of excellence for Chhatrapati, Shivaji Maharaj Vastu, Sangrahalia Mumbai and it got the award of distinction for stepwells of Golkonda Hyderabad and it got the award of merit for Domokonda Fort Telangana and Baikula station Mumbai. Now that's all for this article discussion. In this discussion we saw about UNESCO and also we saw about the UNESCO World Heritage Convention we saw about the UNESCO world heritage site list and the criteria for selecting places or objects under the UNESCO's world heritage site list and after that we moved on to see about the world heritage city program and finally we ended our discussion by seeing the UNESCO's Asia Pacific Awards Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now take a look at this article. It reports about a recent order by SEBI for the attachment of bank DMAT accounts of the Sahara group to recover 6.42 crore for violating regulatory norms in the issuance of optionally fully convertible debentures and this order by SEBI is related to a 2008-9 case and this is the essence of this small article given here. In this context let us learn about the terms given in the news article. First of all let us see what is meant by DMAT account. See DMAT account is an account that is used to hold shares and securities in an electronic format. See the full form of DMAT account is the dematerialized account. Know that it is a necessary account to hold financial securities which may be equity or debt in a digital form. It is used not only for holding shares but also to trade shares for the share market. See if you want to buy shares of a company you need to have a DMAT account and if you don't have a DMAT account you cannot buy any shares. In India the DMAT accounts are maintained by two depository organizations. The first one is National Securities Depository Limited and the Central Depository Services Limited. See a depository participant such as a bank is an intermediary between the investor and the depository organizations. Know that in India a depository participant is described as an agent of the depository. See here you may ask what is a depository participant. They are nothing but banks in stock brokerage firms. See various banks and stock brokerage firms act as the depository participant. One of the famous depository participants in India is Zeroda and this is all about the DMAT account. Now let's come to the next term which is nothing but the debentures. See we have already discussed about government securities in today's discussion. Now this debentures which we are going to see is a type of private security issued by the companies and private corporations. See debentures are debt financial instruments which are issued by the private companies but it does not require collateral or physical asset to back them up. But it is not the case with the private bonds. See private bonds are debt financial instruments issued by large corporations and financial institutions that are backed up by collateral or physical assets. So this private bond is entirely different from debentures does not require collateral or physical asset. So what does this mean? This means that debentures are high risk instruments when compared to the private bonds because there is no collateral associated with them. But at the same time also note that these debentures are high yielding securities when compared to the private bonds due to the amount of risk involved. As we all know if more amount of risk is involved then there will be high yield. So as per this norm debentures are high yielding securities and this is all about the debentures. Now know that there are many types of debentures. But on the basis of convertibility debentures are classified into convertible debentures and non convertible debentures. Now I will explain what they are. See debentures that can be converted into equity after a specific period of time is called as convertible debentures. See we saw that these are securities right. But if they can be converted into equity or shares then they are called as convertible debentures. And further these convertible debentures are classified as fully convertible or partially convertible. Fully convertible means debentures are fully converted to shares. Partly convertible means a portion of debenture is converted to shares and the remaining part stays a security itself. So this is about the convertible debentures. See when it comes to convertible debentures the conversion may be either compulsory or optional. So if the investors have the option of converting the debentures into shares or equity then that debenture is called as optionally fully convertible debentures. And this term is only mentioned in the article here okay. For explaining this term only I told you about convertible debentures fully and partly convertible debentures. I hope you understand now. See this is about the convertible debentures. I told you there is another type right. There is non convertible debentures also. See this is the exact opposite of convertible debentures. Non convertible debentures remind us of the debentures itself. They cannot be converted into shares or equity. Now that's all about this news article discussion. In this discussion we discussed about two important terms that is mentioned in the article. The first one is DMAT account and the other one is optionally fully convertible debentures. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now take a look at this another front page article. It reports the speech of Indian Prime Minister at the Virbal Divas. Previously Prime Minister had announced that December 26 would be Virbal Divas every year. See it is done to mark the martyrdom of the 10th Sikh Gurus, Young Sons, Baba Zorava Singh and Baba Fateh Singh. The article reports about the speech of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi at the first Virbal Divas which was held yesterday. And he said that the concocted history has led to the sense of inferiority complex among the younger generation. And he also said that New India was correcting the mistakes of the bygone decades by restoring its long lost cultural legacy. And this is the crux of the news article given here. In this context let's learn about Guru Gobind Singh and the contributions made by him to Sikhism. See before starting our discussion let's look at the term Bhakti movement. See Bhakti movement refers to the ideas that emerged in the medieval era on love and devotion to religious concepts built around gods and goddesses. So it is nothing but ideas on love and devotion to god and goddesses. See this Bhakti movement reached against the caste system using the local languages. We all know the significance of local languages right? See only if local languages are used then the message will easily reach the masses. And that's what happened here also. See before the emergence of Bhakti movement had more ritualistic linkages to it. It means that religions means many rituals will be conducted. But after the Bhakti movement personalized and devotion based worship came into existence. And this devotion based worship replaced the rituals. See Bhakti movement in India can be broadly classified into two types. One is Nirgunabhakti and the other one is Sargunabhakti. Here Nirgunabhakti means the worship of formless god without any physical form. So what will be Sargunabhakti? It is the practice of devotion to God in a physical form. Know about this background? I'm telling you this because Guru Gobind Singh and the sect of Sikhism comes under Nirgunabhakti category. And this is the background of Bhakti and its various types. Now let's move our attention towards Guru Gobind Singh. See Guru Gobind Singh was the 10th and last Sikh Guru. See he was formally installed as the leader of Sikhs when his father who is the 9th Sikh Guru was executed by Aurangazib. His father was Guru Tegh Bahadur and when he was executed by Aurangazib Guru Gobind Singh was formally installed as the leader of Sikhs at the age of 9 itself. So after this he became the 10th and final human Sikh Guru. See he had four biological sons and they all died in the Guru Gobind Singh lifetime itself. Two of the sons died in battle and the remaining two were executed by the Mughal Governor Vazir Khan. The article reports about the execution of two of his sons by the order of Aurangazib. That we saw in the introduction. See the two sons namely Baba Zorava Singh and Baba Fateh Singh they were forced to convert to Islam by Aurangazib's men. When the young children declined they were executed. And to commemorate the valor of these young children only Virbal Divas was celebrated yesterday. And this is about the article. Now coming to the contributions of Guru Gobind Singh to the Sikh religion. See Guru Gobind Singh was the Guru who organized the Sikh community into a warrior class called the Khalsa. Guru Gobind Singh created and initiated the Khalsa as a warrior community with the duty to protect the innocent from religious persecution. See the founding of Khalsa started a new phase in Sikh tradition. See it contains an initiation ceremony and rules of conduct for the Khalsa warriors. Additionally the Khalsa provided a political and religious vision for the Sikh community. And this is all about Khalsa which was initiated by Guru Gobind Singh. Now coming to the next important contribution. See the concept of five K's was introduced by him. He commanded the Khalsa Sikhs to always wear the five K's. See the five K's were nothing but Kesh, Kanga, Krippan, Kachera and Kara. Kesh is nothing but unshaved hair and beard. Kanga is nothing but comb for the Kesh. Usually it is made of wood. And Krippan is the small curved sword of any size, shape or metal. And Kachera is short breeches. And Kara is a bracelet usually made of iron or steel and it is worn on the wrist. See these five K's need to be worn by a practicing Sikh all the time. And this concept was introduced by Guru Gobind Singh to distinguish the Sikhs from other people. And it was also introduced to instill a sense of brotherhood among the Sikhs community. So these are all the important contributions of Guru Gobind Singh to Sikhism. Now coming to the importance of these contributions. See with the creation of Khalsa Guru Gobind Singh abolished all the existing social divisions in line with the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev. Who is Guru Nanak Dev? He is the first Sikh Guru. And this led Sikhism to develop as a religion which promoted social oneness and togetherness. And this is the significance of contribution of Guru Gobind Singh. And with this we have also come to the end of this particular article discussion. In this discussion we saw about Bhakti movement, its types. We saw about Guru Gobind Singh, how his son died in his lifetime. And after that we moved on to see some important contributions of Guru Gobind Singh to Sikh religion. And we ended our discussion by seeing the significance of the contributions of Guru Gobind Singh. Now with these points in mind let us move on to the next article discussion. Now this is the last article for today's discussion. This news article reports about a warning given by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to civil society organizations. See what the civil society organizations did was for the sake of organizing. They used representative visuals depicting the development issues like malnutrition. So the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights issued a directive to the non-governmental organizations, NGOs not to depict vulnerable children and rice fund. So this is the crux of the news article given here. In this context let us quickly go through NCPCR. See National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, it is abbreviated as NCPCR. Know that it is a statutory body set up in the year 2007 under the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act 2005. See it is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. See the commission's mandate is to ensure that all laws, policies, programs and administrative mechanisms are in line with the Child Rights Perspective as enshrined in the Constitution of India and also in the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. Here by the word child, whom does the act refer to? For that you should know the definition of child. See a child is defined as a person between the age group of 0 to 18 years. And this is a brief about the NCPCR. Now moving on to the functions and powers of NCPCR. See under the Right to Education Act 2009, NCPCR can enquire into compliance about violation of law. It can summon an individual and it can demand evidence and it also can seek a magistral enquiry. It can file a repetition in High Court or Supreme Court. It can approach the government concerned for the prosecution of the offender. It can recommend interim relief for those affected. So these are all the powers of NCPCR under the Right to Education Act 2009. See apart from this it also monitors the implementation of protection of children from sexual offenses Act 2012. Now this is about the functions and powers of NCPCR. Now talking about the composition of the commission. See this commission has a chairman and six members of which at least two should be women. All of them are appointed by Central Government for three years. The maximum age to serve in commission is 65 years for chairman and 60 years for the members. See as I already said the chairman and other members hold office for a period of three years and also know that the chairman and members shall not hold office for more than two terms. And the salary, allowances and other terms of service for the chairperson and members shall be prescribed by the Central Government. So that's all regarding this NCPCR that is the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. See in this discussion we saw about NCPCR it is a statutory body set up under Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act 2005. We saw about the definition of child, we saw about the powers of NCPCR under Right to Education Act 2009 and we saw the important functions of NCPCR and finally we ended our discussion by seeing the composition of the commission. Now with these points in mind, let us move on to the next part of the discussion that is the practice prelims question discussion. See aspirants today we have five prelims questions, I'll solve four of them and one of them is a quiz question for you. Now let us take this first question, consider the following conditions. Statement 1 warm air mass meets cold air mass during peak of winter. Statement 2 frontogenesis results in the formation of cold front and warm front. Statement 3 there is a pressure drop by at least 24 millibars. The above condition leads to which of the following cyclone Option A tropical cyclone Option B temperate cyclone Option C bomb cyclone and option D super cyclone. See we have discussed about this elaborately in our bomb cyclone discussion. Think about it all these conditions are the requirements for the occurrence of bomb cyclone. So the correct answer to this question is option C bomb cyclone. Now moving on to the second question see this is a previous question which was asked in the year 2018. Consider the following statements. Statement 1 the Reserve Bank of India manages and services the Government of India securities but not any state government securities. See this statement is incorrect. See flotation of state government loans also known as state development loans are done by RBI as per the RBI Act 1934 and the RBI may by agreement with any state government undertake the management of public debt of a state. Accordingly the RBI has entered into agreements with 29 state governments and one Union Territory that is Union Territory of Puducherry for the management of their public debt. So the statement 1 is incorrect because it says that RBI manages and services only Government of India securities and not any state government securities. Now coming to statement 2 Treasury bills are issued by Government of India and there are no Treasury bills issued by state government. See in India the central government issues both Treasury bills and bonds or the dated securities while state governments issue only bonds or the dated securities which are also called as state development loans. So statement 2 is correct. Now coming to statement 3 Treasury bills offer or issued at a discount from the par value. See this is correct. This we saw in our discussion itself. Treasury bills are issued at a discount from the par value. So the correct answer to this question is option C 2 and 3 only. Now moving on to the third question see this is also a previous question which was asked in the year 2021. With reference to India consider the following statements. Statement 1 retail investors through DMAT account can invest in Treasury bills and Government of India debt bonds in primary market. See here the keyword is retail investors. See Government of India allowed the retail investors to invest in Treasury bonds from the year 2021. It was already allowed for the individual investors to invest in the Government of India bonds. So statement 1 is correct. Now coming to statement 2 the negotiated dealing system order matching is a government securities trading platform of the Reserve Bank of India. See this statement is correct. It is a government securities trading platform of Reserve Bank of India. If we know that these two statements are correct we can easily say that the correct answer is option B 1 and 2 only. See for our clarification let's see the statement 3 also. The Central Depository Services Limited is jointly promoted by Reserve Bank of India and Bombay Stock Exchange. See this statement is incorrect because Central Depository Services Limited was promoted by Bombay Stock Exchange but later it divested its stakes among the Nationalized Banks. So the statement saying that CDSL is jointly promoted by RBI and Bombay Stock Exchanges incorrect. It was promoted by Bombay Stock Exchange but now it divested its stakes among the Nationalized Banks. So the correct answer to this question is option B 1 and 2 only. Now moving on to the next question. Arrange the following Sikh Gurus chronologically. Guru Nanak, Guru Tegh Bahadur Guru Har Gobind, Guru Arjan Dev. See if you had listened to our discussion very carefully you should know that Guru Tegh Bahadur will come at the last because there is no Guru Gobind Singh right. He is the last Sikh Guru. So if he is not here in the option Guru Tegh Bahadur will only come at the last. So by doing this we can easily eliminate option C and D. Know that Guru Arjan Dev was before Guru Har Gobind. See Guru Arjan Dev was the fifth Sikh Guru while Guru Har Gobind was the sixth Sikh Guru. We all know who is the first Sikh Guru right. It was the Guru Nanak. So what is the correct chronological order here? It is 1, 4, 3 and 2. So the correct answer to this question is option B 1, 4, 3 and 2. See aspirants I have given here the list of the Sikh Gurus in the chronological order. Go through this and also note the contemporary Mughal ruler to the Sikh Gurus. It will be very helpful in your prelims examination ok. Now let us move on to the final question. See aspirants this is only the quiz question for you. Pause the video. Think about the question for a minute and post your answer in the comment section. Aspirants I have displayed here the practice mains questions. So interested people write it and post your answer in the comment section. And if you have any queries related to the articles that we discussed it today, post that also in the comment section. And with this we have come to the end. If you find the video useful, like, share and comment and do subscribe to Shankarae's Academy's YouTube channel for further updates. Thank you.


There are around 87 Navy buildings on Masawa Air Base, and maintaining all these facilities falls on the shoulders of the Seabees at Masawa's Public Works Department. The whole maintenance process starts when they receive work orders. We get the work requests and I send them out to our different skilled workers within my division. So we have painters, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and we mainly do the simple tasking that is required to meet our short facilities operational needs. Once Trotter divvies out the day's requests, his Seabees go to work. Without the Public Works Department, the facilities would not be able to perform their work safely. Without us, commands wouldn't be able to do their jobs. Petty Officer Ben Larshide, Masawa Air Base, Japan.


Good afternoon. I'm here with Michael Snyder. He is the Commissioner of the Vermont Forest Parks and Forest and Parks and Forest Parks and Recreation. And recreation, there you go. All right. I got it. And he's just written this book called Woodwise, Woods Wise, and we're really excited because we like to spend a lot of time in the woods And we thought this would be a fun spring interview to do. So thanks so much for coming Michael. I'm happy to be here Thanks for having me. How did you become Commissioner of Forest Parks and Recreation? Well, that's that's an appointed position by the governor. Governor Scott re-appointed me when he came into office and after I had served for three terms under Governor Shumlin, who first appointed me in 2011 and that happened. I came to that position after after having worked in the department as County Forrester right here in Chinin County for about 14 years and then was promoted to commissioner in 2011 been here since.  Well, it's a it's a big change. I'd like to think that I'm still a Forrester because I'm super into that and But it has changed in the way. I do it. What I do but it's mostly It's a significant change whereas I was a County Forrester working with private land owners giving technical assistance into towns and communities working with school groups. It was a day-to-day a lot of time outdoors interacting in the woods with people and this is Decidedly lacking in tree time. Yeah, this is more meetings and as you say administering and so, you know, I've had a career that's been in the woods and Forest Science, Forest Management, Forest Policy I think at its best would try to combine Forest Science and Forest Management. And so that's kind of an interesting opportunity I have is to Spend some part of my career trying to do Forest Policy by again integrating Forest Management, the realities of life interacting with the planet and Science, Forest Science and understanding of the planet particularly forested parts. And where did your love for the forest and the outdoors come from? Well, I think it's been there all along I mean sometimes I joke or like I think I must have been born this way It's earliest memories just really liking to be outside I think associations with people who were and worked outside and then a really notable experience Around the time when I realized you have to grow up at some point and have a job I was lucky enough to meet a forester and He was amazing. He had well I had a cool truck and he had the vest with all the gear and measuring devices and he knew so much and Had this easy way in the woods that I just thought you mean you can do that I'm doing that and I set out to do that and took every class that was related went to UVM forestry school And have worked in forest forestry in a variety of different ways ever since so it's just Lucky to have found something that I really love personally and in so many ways that you can actually make a career in a living doing It in a variety of different ways And I would encourage young people to think about that because I don't know that it's really well known It's possible to have a really great life In the woods or related to the woods What are the biggest threats that the Vermont woods face? We're lucky to be so heavily forested in the state about three-quarters of the state is forested and we get a lot of benefit from that But and it's largely in really good shape Fairly healthy. There are health threats to forest health that are natural Ciclic occurring threats forests have evolved with them. That's really those aren't the Really scary threats, but we have some new kinds of threats so invasive plants paths pests and pathogens notably the emerald ash borers a great example more recent Which threatens to kill ash trees it kills ash trees and it's devastating in other states and Ash is a relatively small but significant part of Vermont's forested ecosystem and losing it is a real problem and That's one example of kind of the changing landscape and globalization and a variety of those kind of forest health threats and I think threats to The culture of people living with and working with forests is another big one and a threat of conversion of forest to non forest Those are the big ones Frankly and what is that conversion rate in Vermont where three-quarter forested? But how much are we digging into that forest? Not all that much if you know in gross terms, which is really good news But and and we've had a history of people working with forests going all the way back to first European contact It was largely forested. It's kind of the original native Vermonters of forests and the things that live in forests and Human settlement kind of contained in waterways and relatively small But then people doing subsistence agriculture and then bigger agriculture you know in the peaking in land clearing in the early to mid 1800s and then a couple of waves of regeneration regrowth and cutting since right so We had this long history and In the sort of modern history say in the 1900s to present we've enjoyed an aggrading growing expanding forest and For the first time in a hundred years A few years ago there was a documented change where we're actually losing forest land And I think it's about 70,000 acres was the estimate over a 10-year the last 10-year measurement period And so that's not huge and it's definitely not caused really the sky is falling But I think it says something that for the when you start going the other way after a hundred years of growing and expanding in area and age and size that is It's sort of saying well, I think it's called it's asked us it's suggested We should probably pay attention and many people are and thinking about how do we Continue the benefits we have from a forested landscape ecological cultural economic They're significant and we want to keep that going and so we're trying to have a more intentional approach about planning for human habitation and growth in a way that is that that can work with large continuous contiguous blocks of forests and connected areas and healthy forests and And that's going to take a mix of approaches and I believe strongly that it includes people being connected to the land through working forests Good civil culture and logging and outdoor recreation There's people being part of the forest and kind of holding it all together using wood locally and being proud of it So you wrote this book I think is a way to educate the community about forests right and their value and how to live in them I think so I'd hope to think that's a big part of it I mean, it's probably worth telling the book came about it is a compilation of essays that I wrote over many years Mostly as County Forester as kind of an outreach tool to based on questions. I would get from actual Vermont landowners Northern Woodlands magazine was good enough to give me a place one page in every issue to kind of address these landowner questions under a heading called Woods wise And I did that for I guess 17 years and this is a collection of 63 of those essays That reflect interest from people and answer addressing their questions all along it was about trying to help people connect and putting it together and having it You know more available I think it's still in that same vein where it's real to have it out there and hope people enjoy it as a Gateway to a lot more so if you were to categorize the the categories of questions in this book How do they fall? They're they're heavy to three subject areas Which reflects my personal interest and which is about forest management Silviculture and logging and how do you choose and which ones and why and how do you do it right? There's a lot of questions and answers about those kind of topics and and a whole lot about how to forest work How do trees grow and why do they do this and why do they look like that? Which is I think helps people get to know forests in another way and to realize there's so much that we know through Really fascinating science done in some cases by people right here in Vermont UVM the Proctor Maple Research Center, you know on and on and that We know a lot. It's really good to know a lot It's it helps us do do things and manage and live and coexist better And then there's also all this wonderful mystery and I even say magic that that remains that we can't explain it all And I think that's pretty fun too because I think some you know New people will come along with different perspectives and different experiences and we'll leave some things for them to answer So when you come into the woods, it's springtime. It's beautiful You know that everything's alive and you walk into a woods. How do you what do you look for? How do you read the environment? How do you tell that things are thriving? The natural world is thriving or not? All of it at the risk of turning people off by sort of saying I have to know everything Because you really don't I think it is all about sort of seeing the whole thing and that it's it's it's there's parts And there's pieces and there's processes and you try to see it all and as much as you can and look for clues everywhere You can there's obvious. There's less obvious So for me, that's something that I take maybe most pride in and personally as as professional as being a forester is that I think foresters Have to integrate so much of the net physical features of a place slope steepness soil type On and on and then there's the biotic things all the organisms the plants and the organisms animals microbes insects that all that are there and Understand their patterns and how they interact, you know sort of the physical the Living the once living and then that's still you're still not done. You still have to understand the people and Economy and culture and and so I think that's when you walk in you're trying to read the history of the place You're looking for clues for what's there right now What does it say about where it was and try to make a prediction about where the trajectory of where it might be heading and They listen to the person who are you with who's the landowner saying here's what I think and what I like And you try to match all that up to get them what they like in a way that is Consistent with the I'll call it the ecological capabilities of the place and that's that's the art of the science of forestry is integrating and Looking for clues and then putting them together in a intelligent way that's kind of grounded in practical reality So that a so that a landowner in which most of the forests are owned by either the state or by people Most by family owners. That's a great point to make where seventy five percent forested and probably eighty five percent of that is Family ownership non-government non-public non-industrial Non-commercial it's like family ownership mostly and so they want to do the best they want to make the most economical and environmental Decisions they have a lot of reasons for owning their land. We know that fruit through lots of surveys and listening to people Making money as part of it most folks will tell you it's a bunch of other things first privacy aesthetics connection to wildlife recreation repeated landowner surveys Reflect that they it's about eight or nine ten maybe down the list of reasons for owning that they say I like making some money too That said there's an awful lot of them who in my own experience you walk around I'd say to a landowner Why what can I what am I here? What do you what are you interested? Well? I want to know it's healthy. I want to make sure it's good for the wildlife And at some point during the visit There's a point where they stop and say well how much is this tree worth everybody gets there eventually because it's real and the timber is Viable and there's there's real money and it and it it's really the only thing that does pay everything else costs and so forestry, silviculture logging forest products the marketplace that results Kind of keeps everything else going in the woods trails access paying taxes Being able to hold on to the land making it available for hunting fishing protecting clean water All of those things cost Timber pays so in Burlington we get really exercised when trees for example City Hall Park I don't know if you've been following that when trees are marked cut down or behind our house up in the south end UVM cut down all these trees. So you know, they're not that many of them So we get quite worked up but in the woods I was recently up in Craftsbury or Greensboro in the woods and they are were all these trees that were marked It was very swampy very woodsy a lot of marked trees that looked like they were coming down and the owner said they were softwood trees and So tell sort of tell us about what happens in a situation like that Why would a person want the softwood trees to come down? Any number of reasons I don't know this particular one and But when you say they've been marked I'm assuming that there's like some paint on the tree or something designated for harvest that Likely suggests someone's had a thoughtful approach and plan that choosing which ones that's good it could be a lot of reasons and generally there's kind of Can I just go back and say I really like your point about the trees in your yard and your backyard and in the neighborhood in City Hall That's what we call community forestry and it's connected to the forest We think of it as a continuum from the green places where we live to the green places where we play and and on There's this so they're all part of forestry We have an urban and community forestry program some of the essays in the book are about Street and shade trees and community trees And it's great when people care enough to say why are those coming down and that's again emerald ash borer threatens a lot of these Planted trees which were ash so it's good to have community engagement and people sharing in the responsibility for stewardship of Kind of the urban and community landscape So That seems a little bit more so we're gonna take these trees down Maybe because they're a threat to property or safety because of some they're compromised by an insect infestation And maybe people could that's that's an that's a reason and a justification in the woods You might say wow, how do you think about all this these happen to be certain softwoods? There are many different species of softwood in our state Mostly we have species mixes growing and not so many pure stands of one thing. There's certainly some softwood plantations in this case, I can't say but I would say this to be helpful like Choices is the silvicultural choices of which trees to keep Growing in which trees to remove are generally based on the current condition of trees Generally elevat measuring some sort of risk will this tree be here being as good a tree as it is right now Or better 20 years from now if not I'm gonna think about this one being one of the ones that goes away And when I think about taking this tree away, I'm gonna think if I do what's gonna benefit, okay? We might make something out of it somebody might make some money, and that's good What else is gonna happen? Will these trees around it have more light and be able to expand their crowns and then grow more in diameter and Maybe produce more nuts for the animals or produce better firewood faster That's the idea is making decisions about groups of trees growing together and their competitive relations and their current vigor and Value and a forester assesses all that through the lens of what did the landowners say they care about out here? And what's this place capable of and you make these intelligent choices about? Which trees to take which trees to leave and it really I think to kind of put it to really oversimplify it But again to kind of provide just a helpful framework Generally, we're thinking about am I gonna work with what's here and try to maybe take out diseased or Compromise trees or trees of low vigor that aren't gonna make it anyway and do something with them To better what remains that's called a thinning or stand improvement And the other avenue broadly is I'm not gonna start over and and maybe this it's it's it's nice big mature trees And nothing in the understory and no brushy habitat Say for songbirds to nest in certain kinds and we want to regenerate this piece of our forest That's so as opposed to thinning or tending That's about regeneration and establishing a new cohort of mix of trees seedlings and saplings to come in from underneath Those are two broad kind of categories of what we think about when deciding which trees to put the paint on for removal So one of the essays you have in here are why it's about why birch trees are white some birch trees are white Yeah, why is that it's fun? It's endlessly fascinated think why does that tree look that way the way things look? We tend we're tempted to think there must be a reason and there probably is Often it's it can be just because there isn't a reason for it not to look that way the way selection works In evolution in the case of white birch or paper birch It's so white and so distinct you have to say like in beautiful like why what why does that? Why is that the tree in fairness? There's some other trees that have light bark but nothing like that beautiful white and The best explanation if not a direct answer is that Well, it has a chemical Called betulin and that's related to the name of the Latin name of the of betula for birch That may have all kinds of Physiological roles, but I think the speculation is that if you consider that paper birch is what we call transcontinental in its range it grows sort of circumpolar all around the globe at a certain at high Elevation latitude and so it's a northern species and it lives otherwise in cold places and It's a little counterintuitive, but in a cold place where you whereas you might think well the more light and heat that you can absorb The better not if you spend most of the time in winter where a cloud comes over that Sun and it's really cold instantly this is The best gas explanation is that it's white to reflect light away white is what color our eyes see when all the colors are reflected back In other words, it's not absorbing anything And so the tree doesn't want to absorb heat in the winter because if it does and then freezes it gets at the cells become active under the bark and then was literally with a cloud passing the temperature drops back to below zero or Whatever and they freeze and they don't want to become active until it's safe to become active again come spring so This idea basically it's highly reflective and that's would seem to suit where they tend to grow At these northern latitudes around the planet and oak trees grow roughly the same places as birch trees Is that right? Well, they can and often do you see oak birch in mixtures But not at those sort of that classic northern edge of the range. There's no Oaks if there are any oaks I'd be very surprised and I would guess that they're extremely small little dwarf things and I'm not aware of anything So they they don't they don't really mix at those high latitudes So I guess my question is if there are other trees up there with the birch like maybe pine or There's not much else at those latitudes. Really sure. There are some some softwood trees depending on, you know, we're telling Northern Canada or in Russia or where have you but The numbers of species that live at those extreme Places dwindles, there's we are blessed here with this collision of forest types We have southern types northern types central types We've got lowlands and uplands and wetlands and drylands and So we really have this rich assemblage of species and we forget that on the margins on the edges of the liveable parts of the planet the species that can hack it Are very few and so you're explaining that these birch trees are part of those few species and this is their Adaptation so they can hack it right and it also but they it doesn't hurt them to live when they live here either In fact, it might help them because they're so beloved that maybe people will you know plant them take care of them and treat them Well, so maybe they're white so people think they're cute, right? So why do when do people know when to tap maple trees? That's another little essay you have sure it's an age-old question You know when's when's the best time? Well, the best time to tap is I suppose when you're ready and when right before the big Gushers start or any the sap runs and that's the thing is The timing of sap flow and initiation the timing the extent It's a highly variable whether dependent other to you know soil moisture and other conditions so It's kind of a there was this tradition of kind of town meeting March 1st and But as sugaring opportunities expand and there's been some bigger ones Maybe they don't have they have so many acres to cover and trees to tap They got to get started a little earlier The issue is you don't want to just go tap early Forever the concern was if you put holes in the tree and then there's no sap flow for a while Those holes will kind of dry up or start to close and or become infected with microorganisms and then that comes up the whole thing So you want to time it right you want to be ready to tap and tap just before it starts to as it's starting to flow And you can't really predict that and it does vary From year to year and I guess it seems like the tapping in becomes seems like it comes earlier and earlier There are many here. I would guess that most large-scale sugar makers are tapping in in January or even early January at this point and Being ready. You don't want to miss this great run in right? and and with the evolution of pipeline and tubing and Spouts that and drills that are you know sort of high-end and really precise. I think my sense is That maybe there's less risk of those other things going sideways Taphole closure or drying up or microbes because you've got this closed system and you're ready to go So we didn't haven't talked about global warming specifically But what has been the impact of global warming on this Vermont's forests? I mean the ash borer it might be an example of that but through you know What should we be looking for as stewards of our state? Forests are heavily involved in the whole climate change conversation and really in two ways one Forests are indeed vulnerable to climate change trees can't get up and move They're built to figure out what's going on and to kind of change with changing weather And that's fine as long as the changes are within the normal range of their abilities. You have odd rates of change and You know global weirding The trees may be not So examples being Storms that are coming say frost events in spring when the trees thought it was safe to be growing Changes that they can't keep up with they're vulnerable to that kind of thing They're vulnerable to changes in hydrology. We're seeing those things. So they're vulnerable the other big piece in the climate change Conversation is that forests are also Basically our best hope and solution because they take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into trees and tree parts And then we turn it into durable wood products that hold carbon trees are about half carbon by weight So it's a really good deal And they're part of the solution every study or panel or committee that's ever convened to look at ways to mitigate Atmospheric carbon start with keep forest forest healthy forests are the best thing And that's so they're vulnerable to these kind of changes And we have to be adaptive to how we expect forests how to work and interact with forests based on climate change And we're also wise to keep as much forest forest and healthy and intact because it really is our best hope for mitigating Climate change so I want to just remind people woods wise an exploration of forests and forestry This is a wonderful book if you're if you love the forest if you're curious about nature if you're a naturalist if you're a Volunteer forest person human a human you would this is really interesting if you're a student This is just it's great and the way that you've packaged the information in these short essays is really Helpful, and I actually can't wait to read this book as a lover of forest forest I'm a forest bather. There you go. That would be my relationship from the forest. I do forest bathing So before we close, I just want to say you seem to be a very optimistic person and you know the sort of if you really Listen to the news you can become quite Disparing of the future of the natural world But you just seem to have a positive outlook, and I wonder what you would Just say to us in closing about our state and how we can Support it to be as healthy as possible. Well, I appreciate that. I hope so. I think it's important and I Mean to be clear. I mean I'm not Pollyannish about this I'm pretty serious and and can can get it bummed out as bummed out as anyone and frustrated for sure and maybe impatient but I feel it's more productive to just focus on what we can do and I think to your question about for Vermont and where we are and what I mean That's I think we have reason to be optimistic because we still have a chance We enjoy we are forest strong I like to say in addition to being Vermont strong a big part of that is being forest strong. We enjoy Just these amazing benefits from forest that we don't even really know about And we still have a chance to keep that going I think and we have a culture of People being forest people and of all kinds and I think a sense that it takes all kinds and That we can figure that out and I think we're gonna have to because I think it's kind of our last best hope Michael Snyder. Thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks We've been talking with Michael Snyder the author of woods wise and also the commissioner of forest Parks and recreation in the state of Vermont and we're so glad to have them here and thank you so much for watching


because your all one is located here. All right, if somebody gets hurt, conduct first aid buddy aid until a health can arrive. Call it up. All right, air medevac is a lifeline or eyesight. I'm gonna almost shoot. Guys, you get one in front of the other. Somebody's gonna miss out. All right, let's be equal about it. Take care of each other. Watch each other's back, and let's have fun. Right? No.


Alla God, a Ukrainian living in Canada who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians in World War II. SS Waffen. Nazi. Cheryl, he's Ukrainian and they don't know that he fought the Soviets as a Nazi rather than as a Ukrainian. That part came out after. Oh, Cheryl, don't believe him. Look into who Kristina Freeland is. Reed Scott Ritter's article. Kristina Freeland has a Nazi problem. She does.  Right? They're lying.  They didn't know that a huge chunk of some of the worst Nazis there ever was were stationed in Ukraine, in Western Ukraine, Galicia region where they took over Poland. They didn't know that these people were Nazis. They didn't pay attention to all the news that came out over the last ten years since the 2014 coup in Ukraine that even the Guardian published in 2014 that Ukraine has a Nazi problem, right?


Felly ni oes, dwi wedi'u bwysigol ydym ni'n mynd i gweithio i ni. Mae'n ddiddordeb yn ddiddordeb i ni, ddim wedi'u brifuddwyr. Mae'n ddiddordeb i ni i gweithio i ni i'n ddiddordeb i ni. Dwi'n… Dwi'n… Dwi'n… Dyna'r wneud i'r ystafell a gennym eu rhai cyfnodi'tau a dwi'n gwneud y Llywodraeth Cymru, ynddyn nhw'n cyffredig pwnghㅗs i'r sefydlu y bwysig cyddur. The previous3ver, astud yn llwydiol, byddwn yn fwy ffoci feddwl i'r cychwynfyr yn ymgau bydd y Llywodraeth Cymru, i'n fath o'r fath o'r tydd i'w newid. I'm also doing a linking of two different data sets, which might be interesting for some people to learn about as well. So just a really quick introduction to myself in my kind of context in which I'm doing this research. The fourth year of my PhD, hoping to finish quite soon, and my entire PhD looks at low pay and progression in the UK. So you might know that in the UK there are quite a lot of low paid workers, and there's also some evidence that the ability out of low paid jobs into slightly higher paid jobs, better jobs, is relatively low in the UK. So I'm interested to find out more about what sort of things influence that progression from low pay, and particularly when it comes to the local labour market environment that the workers are in. So I'll talk to you a little bit more about the specifics of this study that I'm doing at the moment, which I've looked at another aspect to do with local labour markets in progression. In the first part of my PhD I'll talk to you about this study here for which I'm using the LS, and I'll talk to you about why I chose to use the LS in combination with the LFS. And then some of the five experiences of applying for the data using it and so on. This probably will mirror to some extent what you've already heard, but anyway, and I'll share some early results as well, and tell you a bit about what I'm currently working on and planning to do next. So this graph hasn't quite, you know, worked out the way that I am. Let me see if I can just resize it slightly so you can read. So the kind of general premise of my research is that in the UK and also in many other countries over the last couple of decades we've seen this sort of hollowing out of the labour market in terms of the proportion of employment in what you could call sort of intermediate or middle wage occupations as slowly declined relative to employment in relatively low paid and relatively high paid occupations. So you can see it, this is based on our data, just divided all occupations into some broad categories. So we've got low paid here on the left, we've got intermediate, we've got social professional, major and professional, and the average wage associated with each of these groups tend to sort of go up. As you move forward to the right and you can see that from 2001 to 2011 there's quite a big relative decline in the employment share in intermediate occupations. And this has happened since about the 1980s and one of the reasons, one of the main reasons is because of the influence of computer technology on the workplace. So this tends to affect occupations like sort of administrative, secretarial occupations as well as some types of manual occupation where machinery is replaced. A lot of tasks that workers used to do, there might be other causes as well, but I'm not so much interested in the causes. I'm interested more in what are some of the implications of this trend. Obviously the trend in itself has been studied quite widely and it's interesting just to observe the sort of changing structure of the labour market. But given my interest in progression and low pay, I wondered, well what does this mean for workers who are in relatively low paid jobs who might be looking to kind of move up the occupational ladder is the fact that we now are perhaps relatively fewer intermediate jobs available potentially. Does that mean that they are finding it more difficult to achieve that sort of upward occupational ability? And given also my interest in local labour market areas and recognising that different areas of UK are quite different occupational structures, this way that I've thought about investigating this is by exploiting the geographic variation in this sort of polarising trend that has happened. So this sort of job polarisation of employment in both low and high paid occupations relative to middling occupations has affected different areas of the UK differently. And so you can compare if you like occupational mobility from low paid occupations between these different types of areas. So if you live in an area where there's still quite a lot of these intermediate jobs, is your mobility affected in a positive way compared to if you live in an area where there's been more of a hollowing out of these intermediate occupations? So to investigate this I needed to find the right data and I sort of in my head divided it up into two main types of data that I needed to suppose. So I needed to first of all look at occupational mobility that's kind of my depending on outcome variable. And then I also needed to have some data on the degree of job polarisation at the local level. So for the first one the occupational mobility data obviously I needed longitudinal data because you need to observe changes in occupations and it needed to have quite a large sample size because I'm looking at a specific group of workers, workers who are initially start off in quite a low paid occupation like I don't know being a sales assistant or a cleaner or something like that. And because there's relatively little occupational mobility if you just look from one year to the next you need to look at it over quite a long period of time. Again this wasn't really formatted very well is it? Anyway I'll just talk. So you need to look at it over a relatively long time period especially workers in low paid occupations they don't tend to do jobs all that often and occupations even less frequently. I needed to also have occupational data obviously and preferably occupational data that is consistent over time. So you need to, those of you who've worked with occupational data before might know that over the years there's been various different classifications. So the first introduced standard of occupational classifications has been like in 1998 or 1990s or something and they've updated it since. So there's a 1999 version, there's a 2000 version and there's a 2010 version. So as nature occupations change they update you which is a good thing because you need to reflect the occupations that people are actually doing. But it makes things very difficult when you're trying to look at changes over time because you want to observe them according to the same classification system and both the start and the end of your period to see whether they've made a change in occupation. And the last thing is that I needed to know where people lived in terms of what their local labour market area was in order then to identify whether their local labour market was polarised or not. And then for the area level data I needed similar criteria so also relatively large sample size because small areas so you need to have a sufficient number of observations within each area. Obviously it needs to go over the same time span as the other data set. Also you need occupational information and also you need to have the information available at the same geographical areas. So why did I choose the LS for the occupational mobility part of the research or the data requirements anyway? Well it kind of meets all the criteria that I just set out. It has a lot of sample size because it's collected every 10 years even if you just use two ways. You already have 10 years worth of observing people's lives so in that period quite a lot of people change occupations which is good. They conveniently have occupations in the same classification system although it's imputed data for one of the ones I think. But it allows you to observe that mobility that I was talking about and you have quite relatively small area level geographic variables. I'm using travel to work areas in my case which were available in both the 2001 and the 2011 data set which was great. And then I chose to use the LFS for the other part the local level data about polarization but also because it meets all the requirements that I set out. You know relatively large sample size and so on especially because you can pool data for multiple years. And unlike the LS it also has earnings information which was important because I wanted to look at the wages associated with occupation in order to kind of construct my measure of polarization and a big plus is that you can access it through the secure lab which I think someone mentioned before this is the online sort of secure system that you can use wherever you are. You just need to get it set up which just take a long time but then you can use it wherever you're having to study your work which is more convenient than traveling to London. So I probably don't have a lot of time left but I'll just sort of reiterate the things that have already been said. Obviously there is an application procedure to access the LS so you have to take some time for that but it didn't take nearly as long as my secure lab application for the LFS so I just wanted to mention that it's relatively good. And as others have also mentioned this is quite good documentation about the variables and so on available which will help you in your application. The sales and staff are excellent. So in my application I had to also explain to both my application for the LS and the LFS what my plan was to eventually link the two data sets together and that I guess just introduces a slightly extra layer of complexity because I was linking at the area level it's relatively straightforward to do but the only slight issue is that although I'm currently doing the analysis of the LFS in secure lab at Coventry University where I study they will not allow any data to be exported from the secure lab or to be released from the secure lab. So I've had to also apply for a secure research service on SRS application for the LFS to then replicate my analysis there on the LFS. So it's a slightly complicated procedure so if anybody is thinking of doing this linking of the data sets it's worth the thinking through in advance how you're going to do that and talk with the support staff they will be able to help you to figure out how to do this. So I haven't yet done this but hopefully very soon I'll be able to do the linking and should I probably stop. Oh okay that's fine. So as I've already said before travelling to London is not ideal I do know that I can't send two files but in my case I really need to be there and look at the data and figure out exactly what there is what needed and what did they look like and my coding is not quite as meticulous as maths is probably so I have a lot of mistakes. So at the moment I've been coming in to do my analysis. I live in Birmingham so it's not that bad travelling to London but obviously just take a bit of time but once you're there the SRS environment is quite nice to work in it's always quite quiet so that makes it a good working environment. Plus the fact that you're on PCs that you can't use the internet on is really good for your discipline because there's no distractions. So I'm super reductive when I go which is great. So as others have also mentioned the LS is a really great data set. It's got a great range of variables. It's got very low attrition compared to I've previously worked with understanding society where you do see higher attrition rates even from year to year. So it makes things a lot easier that like the majority of your sample in one census is still going to be there the next census. And just really briefly I've just looked at the occupational ability of workers who start in a low paid occupation just to sort of get an idea where they ended up ten years later basically. So this is all only for those who are still in employment in 2011. And you can see that like actually the majority are still just over half are still in a low paid occupation ten years later. So this goes back to the point that I was saying there's not all that much occupational ability. And then there's quite a lot of ability to intermediate occupation. You know biggest occupational categories that they tend to move into. But when you add these up like you it's still higher than this. So there's still a relatively large amount of ability for low paid occupations to also you know occupations of the sort of higher end of the sort of skill spectrum and weight spectrum as well. Which is quite encouraging to see. So if anyone has a question. I was just wondering if you've dealt with self-employed at all because I'm thinking the LFS doesn't have wage information on self-employed. The LFS. No I'm looking only at people who are in paid employment. So I can't make things a bit easier. I don't know about the LFS what information they might have on self-employed earnings. I know that it's obviously not as good and reliable as any wage data. Yeah although in the LFS you do observe people over multiple ways. So in terms of that you could maybe do some adjustment if you were interested. But I don't have any experience with that. So I'm not doing the best person to ask. I'm afraid. I was going to say in your sample is that you look at men age 16 to 64 and women age 16 to 60 I guess. In both 2001 and 2011. So obviously those English older in 2001 is going to fall out of your sample because of age. But that also goes the easier in the two. It might help you go to differentiate what you thought sort of like natural progression. So those people who enter the labour market at young they will be a natural progression of going from low to intermediate to those who have been directly affected by this criminalisation process. So what I'm saying is that in any specific analysis of young workers versus primary versus older. Yeah exactly someone at the start of the period is already in their 40s might not necessarily be expected to move all that much anymore at that stage. Although having done some previous work on this with women and men it's slightly different because some women after having children they might return to the labour force and then sometimes they do still have some ability after that. Especially if maybe they go back to education as well. But yeah that's definitely something that I'll be looking at and I did do a little bit more of finding detailed analysis. You know different age groups and so on so you can see differences definitely and you might also just be able to see those differences in the effect of polarization as well on the different age groups. So that's a very good point.


Astronomers know that planets around other stars beyond the solar system are common, but these planets are very hard to see and even harder to study. Fortunately, there is a clever trick that helps to separate the feeble glow of a planet from the dazzling glare of its parent star, exploiting the polarisation of the light reflected from the planet. This method will allow future instruments on ESO's very large telescope in Chile and the European extremely large telescope to see otherwise invisible planets and even to search for signs of life beyond the solar system. This is the ESOcast, cutting-edge science and life behind the scenes of ESO, the European Southern Observatory, exploring the ultimate frontier with our host Dr J, a.k.a. Dr Joe Liske. In this episode of the ESOcast, we'll talk about a very special feature of light and how we can use it to detect planets around other stars. And we'll talk about a powerful new instrument that will exploit this feature, the Planet Finder Sphere, which will be installed at ESO's very large telescope in early 2014. Light is an electromagnetic wave. Usually, the plane containing a light wave can be in any direction, but sometimes one direction is more likely than others and the light is said to be polarised. Several of ESO's telescopes can measure this polarisation, offering exciting opportunities to find and study distant objects, including planets around their host stars. Take any star in the sky. Chances are that this star hosts several planets. One of these planets may even be similar to the Earth, but these planets are very hard to see in the glare from the bright star as they are more than a billion times fainter. Fortunately, we can use polarisation to help us tease out the very weak light of the planet from the dazzling light of its parent star. So how does this work? Well, in many cases, the light we receive from the planet is actually reflected star light that is scattered in the planet's atmosphere. Now, the scattering process produces polarised light, just like the light we receive from the blue sky here on Earth. Now the point is that we can detect this polarisation, that is the preferential alignment of the light caused by the scattering in the planetary atmosphere using state-of-the-art instrumentation on big telescopes. Such an instrument, called Sphere, has been built and will be installed on ESO's very large telescope in 2014. Sphere will take images of exoplanets. It will combine polarimetry with other methods to suppress the overwhelming light from a star and allow the very feeble light from any planet orbiting that star to be picked up and studded. The first requirement is to have a large telescope, such as the VLT, able in principle to take pictures that are sharp enough to allow us to spot any planets next to the star. But the Earth's atmosphere blurs the view, so we also need a clever optical system, adaptive optics, to take out this blurring effect as much as possible and bring most of the starlight together into one bright dot. The centre of this bright dot is then blocked out by introducing a mask into the light beam to avoid swamping the fainter nearby objects. But even after all these tricks, a halo of starlight remains, much brighter than the planets that we are looking for. However, this halo is unpolarised, whereas the light from the planets is generally polarised. The new Sphere instrument will be able to pick out a planet's faint signal of polarised light from the unpolarised stellar halo. This trick, along with several others, will help Sphere to take images of Jupiter-like planets around other stars. However, we don't just want to take pictures of the large exoplanets, we also want to get to the smaller, rocky planets close to their parent stars. But to do that, we need a much bigger telescope, one that collects much more light and provides even sharper images. 39 metre European Extremely Large Telescope, or EELT. This giant telescope will be equipped with a next generation of exoplanet images. They will use all the same techniques as Sphere, but take them to the next level. By using polarimetry as well as other methods, astronomers will be able to image rocky planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars. The polarised signal can also give astronomers vital clues on whether or not a planet has oceans and clouds of liquid water. And for larger, Jupiter-like planets, it should be possible to study the light in enough detail that we will be able to actually see what the planet looks like. The ultimate goal is to one day spot the signatures of life on worlds beyond the Solar System by finding evidence of oxygen, or the typical green signature of vegetation. Looking at exoplanets in polarised light may well turn out to be key in providing us with our very first signs of extraterrestrial life. This is Dr Jay, signing off for the ESOcast. Join me again next time for another Cosmic Adventure.