you're working with.  Locked this intersection here in Phillips Casino for destination. He's getting in my, not a job to do, but nobody seems to care. They're all parked right in my way. Look at this. This is a really long red light too. You guys notice that? I'm actually very surprised that there's not a long line of cars driving right up to the cones at the light up there and then trying to cut in front of everybody. Well, like these guys right here, you'll see them in a second. Oh wait, no. Oh yeah, this guy here. A minivan. Always a minivan. Cones here. How much you want to bet?   I don't like being behind big trucks either when I'm in my pickup. So I get it. So far everybody is in line behind me. Wow, aren't we so Canadian? Look at us. All following the rules, being polite and stuff. That's weird, isn't it? Does it work that way in other parts of the world too? Look at that.  I guess I'm used to driving in the US. I see. Main Street runs north-south from downtown Northward towards Selkirk and it follows the Red River on the east side. No, the west side. Sorry, Henderson's on the east side. If I can get myself on to Higgins Avenue here. Careful, bud. They're not American standards. I mean, Europeans, I know. I tell you, watch out. Here comes Winnipeg. So I'll stare them down. That's right. You drive away. That's right. You keep driving. You go that way. I'll go to Hyatt. I just don't want to waste my time with them. There's stuff to do. People need their stuff. Yeah, he just wanted to confirm that he knew I was here that he was going to unload me now so that I don't move. I didn't know. I'm walking around looking for the receiving door. I don't know what's going on. I haven't been here before. So I couldn't find a receiving door. So I called into their office and I'm like, hey, just letting you know I'm here now. I'm in dock three. Yeah, yeah, we know. We see you there already. We got people on the dock unloading you right away. Don't worry. You can just wait in your truck. Nice on the ball. So they saw me and sent the guys to unload me right away. And then a guy came out here just to confirm that he's going to be unloading me now just so that I don't move away while he's unloading. And then when he's done, he's going to come back out again and confirm that he's done. Do the paperwork stuff. And then I go. So this is one of those places where you stay in your truck. I mean, you don't have to.  So this whole virus has just changed a lot of stuff. It's not big changes. It's not that bad either. It's actually a lot easier for us now because now we just we just stay in the truck mostly and they do all the work, whereas we used to have to go in there and unload it ourselves. All right. After this, I'm pretty sure I'll be done. It'll be about it's about five o'clock right now. Yeah, everything's closing down now. So it's another day tomorrow. They're taking the heaviest stuff off me now. The stuff that was weighing me down the most. They say on here is about 5500 pounds or is that I'm pretty sure they meant to say kilos. It was heavy, but it was nice. It's nice firm ride all the way home. You know that feeling when you have a lot of weight in the trailer and you just feel planted to the road. It's a much smoother ride. Everything's just goes a lot better. I don't know. I like having a full trailer. Makes me feel good. I can hear them talking in there while they talk loud. I told them what to unload and what was theirs and they should know and they were right at the back. So it's not like they should be wondering what's theirs. I haven't felt them actually unload any of them yet because they're such heavy pallets. I would definitely feel it when they left the trailer. Seems like they're just in my trailer just talking. So many people are in such a hurry to get nowhere. There's another one. Tailgate and light crazy.  I just go a steady pace the whole time. I'm not going to stomp on my accelerator. Why do I need to get to the next light faster? So I realized that my audio is terrible in the truck. The truck is very noisy compared to my voice and the camera's picking up so much of the truck. Not enough of my voice. So what I've done is I've gone and ordered myself a new microphone. I used to have a microphone for this camera and then it broke. So I went and ordered another one just now as I was editing this video. Right here. So it should be here Saturday. So the rest of this week it's still going to be a little bit sketchy with the audio. I apologize for that. I hope you can understand what I'm saying. Next week we'll have the microphone and we'll have it mounted on the dash somewhere and you'll be able to hear me more clearly because it's driving me nuts not having proper audio. And everything is mounted in the truck. Everything is hands-free and the microphone will also be in its own little mount. I ordered the mount forward as well and it should make things a lot better. So I hope you enjoyed the video today. I enjoyed making it. It was a lot of fun. We had a good day today. Tomorrow we're going to have another good day. And if you're ready for a good day, I hope you tune in tomorrow. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss it and we'll see you then.


A very good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis brought to you by Shankar IA's academy for the date 7th of October 2022. Displayed here are the list of news articles that we have chosen for today's discussion. See today we have five articles for our discussion and it is very much useful for both your preliminary as well as main examination. Okay now without wasting much time let's get into the first news article discussion. Have a look at this news article it says that Vaimutra the humanoid designed and developed by ISRO is undergoing pre-flight ground test and this is at the ISRO inertial system unit. As per the article the IISU that is ISRO inertial system unit has successfully integrated it with the computer brain. This enables it that is this enables the Vaimutra to read the control panels about the unmanned test flights and communicate with the ISRO ground stations. So this is the crux of the news article given here and in this context let us understand about Vaimutra in detail. So who is this Vaimutra? See Vaimutra is a half humanoid. She was developed by the Indian space research organization and if you know the meaning of the name then it is easy for you to understand its purpose. In Vaimutra, Vaima means space and Mitra means friend. So she was designed and developed to fly aboard unmanned test missions ahead of the Gaganian human space flight mission which is expected in 2024. See this is like a test run or the trial for the Gaganian mission which is going to carry humans and to simulate the conditions of carrying a human. This humanoid is designed and it will be sent in the test missions. Okay now coming to the question of what is a humanoid? See humanoid is basically a robot and it is with the appearance of a human being. Like any robot a humanoid's function are determined by the computer systems to which it is connected. Now why is Vaimutra called as half humanoid? Is it because Vaimutra is half human and half animal in appearance? See it is a big no. See she is called as half humanoid because she will only have a head, two hands and a torso and she will not have lower limbs. See the image here this is not the sitting pose of Vaimutra. She really does not have lower limbs. Okay and why ISRO has developed Vaimutra for the test mission? As we all know India is planning to send humans into space that is only the Gaganian mission and this is expected to be done by 2024. So ISRO is trying to develop a crew model and rocket systems that will ensure the safe travel and return of the Indian astronaut. See other countries know they have sent animals for conducting tests of their rockets and crew recovery systems. But India is using a humanoid to test the efficacy of the GSLV MK3 rocket to transport a human to space and back. Once flown into space Vaimutra will be able to test systems in the crew model meant for the survival and safe travel of the first Indian astronaut. Okay and apart from this the rocket and the crew model they are undergoing improvisation to ensure that it is human-rated that is declared safe to transport a human being to space. Now coming to the task that will be performed by Vaimutra in space to understand easily know try to remember the science fiction movie Interstellar. It is about space and time travel and the central character in the movie is an artificial intelligence and robotics powered computer system called TARS. It will talk to the astronauts assist them in mission functions and even rescue them in times of crisis. So the Vaimutra humanoid which will test the ground for the human spaceflight will be a very basic version of a TARS. The activities performed by Vaimutra include studying procedures to use equipment on board the spacecraft's crew model such as safety mechanisms and switches then receiving and acting on commons sent from ground stations then attaining launch and orbital postures then responding to the environment generating warnings replacing carbon dioxide canisters operating switches then monitoring of the crew model then receiving voice commands responding via speech etc etc all these are the activities that are going to be performed by Vaimutra. Apart from this she can also provide audio inputs on aspects like the health of the spacecraft during the launch then landing and orbital phases of the manned mission. She will also report back to earth on the changes occurring in the crew model during the spaceflight and return such as you can say heat radiation levels. See all these functions performed by Vaimutra will help to enable ISRO to understand the safety levels required in the crew model that will eventually fly a human being. So this is the significance of the humanoid. So that is all about this news article. In this news article we had covered a very important science topic which is about the Vaimutra and it will be very much helpful for your upcoming preliminary examination as well as you can utilize these points in mains to enhance your answer and show how our scientific mission and vision is growing okay. So these key points in mind now let us move on to the next news article discussion. Take a look at this news article it says that India's thermal power plant operators were unable to comply with norms that required them to mix coal with a certain proportion of biomass. See the reason cited for this inability is the inadequate supply chains. So this is the crux of the news article given here and in this context let us understand about the biomass in preliminary perspective. First of all what is biomass? See in ecological terms biomass refers to any type of organic matter when it comes to energy biomass is any organic matter that can be used to generate energy. So broadly it includes materials such as wood, forest and agricultural residues or plant materials. Specifically the biomass materials used for power generation include bagasi, rice husk, cotton stock, coconut shells, soya husk, de-oiled cakes, coffee waste, jute waste, ground nut shells, sawdust etc etc. Now what is the significance of this biomass? See biomass has always been an important energy source for the country considering the benefits that it offers. It is renewable, widely available and carbon neutral and apart from this it has the potential to provide significant employment in the rural areas and the main significance here is the power generation. Now you may wonder how rice husk and coconut shells can be converted to electricity. See it is in the same way how coal is converted to electricity. Yes exactly it is done by thermal conversion. Now what is the basis behind this thermal conversion? See biomass contains energy derived from the sun. As we all know plants observe the sun's energy through photosynthesis the energy from these organisms can be transformed into usable energy through direct and indirect means. Direct way includes burning the biomass to create heat and convert it into electricity. Then the indirect way includes processing the biomass into biofuel and then generating power or burning in automobiles. Now coming back to thermal conversion see as we saw earlier thermal conversion includes burning of biomass to produce energy. Different methods are used to extract energy from biomass. They include direct firing, co-firing, pyrolysis, gasification etc. Through these methods know both direct and indirect means are achieved. See indirect firing biomass is burnt and the heat is utilized to produce electricity. In the pyrolysis bio oil is produced and in the gasification process sin gas is produced and which is then utilized to produce energy. Apart from thermal conversion anaerobic decomposition also provides ways to convert biomass into useful energy. In this process biogas is produced. It consists of methane and carbon dioxide which is utilized for energy production. In today's article we saw about co-firing right? See biomass can be co-fired or burned with a fossil fuel. It is most often co-fired in coal plants. Why it is done like this when we have the option of directly burning the biomass? See co-firing eases the demand for coal. This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels. These factors are very crucial for us because global warming is causing n number of disasters. And that is why India has set a target of replacing 5% of coal demand of coal power plants through co-firing. And the article today says that several operators not meeting the target of replacing 5% of their coal with biomass. Only 39 power plants had co-fired biomass pellets. Now coming back to energy conversion of biomass. Wait a minute did you notice the fault here? We saw that biomass is burnt and energy is extracted right? But biomass contains moisture. Then how can it be used? For this reason only biomass is processed before it is utilized. The processing of biomass includes drying. It involves a chemical process called torfaction. During torfaction biomass is heated to about 200 to 320 degrees Celsius. The biomass dries out completely such that it loses the ability to observe moisture or rot. It loses about 20% of its original mass but retains 90% of its energy. And during torfaction biomass becomes a dry blackened material and these blackened material is compressed for the convenience of usage. It can be compressed into pellets or briquettes etc. See these are made using missions. For example pellets are produced by compressing the biomass by passing it through a hammer mill to provide a uniform daft like mass. This mass is fed into a press where it is squeezed through a die having holes of the size required. And I have given the benefits of the biomass pellets here. You just go through it. Okay so that's all about this news article. So through this news article we saw about what is this biomass and what are the benefits of biomass. Then we saw how it is co-fired with coal. See all these can be directly asked in your preliminary examination. As well as you can use these points to enhance your main sciences whenever environment related questions are asked. Okay so these key points let's move on to the next news article discussion. Look at this editorial article. This article talks about the corporate social responsibility. In short we say it as CSR. The article says that even though CSR spending has risen from 10,065 crore in 2015 to 16 to 24,865 crore in 2020 to 2021 there is no data to confirm whether this growth is proportional to the increase in earnings of Indian and foreign companies or not. See according to the article there were 2,926 companies in 2020 to 2021 with zero spend on CSR. While companies spending less than the prescribed limit of two percent have also increased the number of companies participating in CSR has declined as well. So this is the crux of the news article given here and in this background let us understand what is this CSR and the issues regarding the CSR and we will end up this discussion with a way forward. Okay and it will be very much helpful for your preliminary as well as means examination. Okay before that the syllabus relevant to this news article is given here for a reference just go through it. Now let's begin with what is CSR. See the corporate social responsibility broadly refers to the work and activities undertaken by corporates towards issues related to social causes and development then environment disaster relief and community support. The CSR was made mandatory for companies in India by the Companies Act 2013. Okay and this act also made it mandatory for companies to publish their CSR report along with their annual report and business responsibility report. Okay remember the Ministry of Corporate Affairs keeps a track of CSR related expenditure done by those companies which fall in the ambit of Companies Act 2013. Now how does it work? Why the government of India made spending on CSR mandatory? We shall find that now. See CSR is not charity or mere donations. It is a way of conducting business by which corporate entities visibly contribute to the social good. See we know that companies take resource in the form of raw materials, human resources etc etc from the society. Am I right? So by performing the task of CSR activities the companies are giving something back to the society. So here the concept of CSR rests on the ideology of businesses giving back to society as they grow and benefit. Some companies even use CSR to integrate economic, environmental and social objectives with the company's operations and growth. So this is how it works. Okay and here comes the question who needs to spend on CSR? See the companies which fall in the ambit of the three criteria displayed here are required to spend on CSR. First is net worth of the company to be rupees 500 crore or more or the turnover of the company to be thousand crore or more or you can say the net profit of the company to be five crore or more. So these are the three criteria to spend on CSR. Okay remember such companies are required to do CSR, spend amounting to two percent of their average annual profit over the last three years. Okay so having this basic understanding about CSR now let us see some of the issues associated with this CSR in India. Firstly the author says that the CSR spending of two percent of their average annual profit over the last three years is minimal. See there is this provision also that is if a company spends an amount in excess of the minimum two percent the extra money is liable to be deducted from expenditures in the following three financial years. So this provision no further weakens the idea behind CSR because two percent itself very minimal and if it is set off against spending in the succeeding three financial years then the spending will be very very minimal. See ideally companies should be encouraged to spend more than this but many private companies have established their own foundations or trust to which they pass the required CSR funding for use. Whether such act is allowed under the company's act or CSR rules is also unclear. And the second issue is geographical bias. See the first provision to section 135 under clause 5 of the act says that the company should give preference to local areas or areas around it where it operates. But a report by Ashoka University Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy says that 54 percentage of CSR companies are concentrated in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat and they receive the largest CSR spending. While the populous Uttar Pradesh and Vagya Pradesh receive little. So here there is absence of clear percentages of local spending and other area spending which is an issue here. And the third issue is the percentage of spending on environment is low. See item 4 of schedule 7 of the act deals with broader environmental issues to create a countervailing effect. But an analysis of CSR spending that is from the year 2014 to 18 says that while most CSR spending is in education that is nearly 37 percentage and health and sanitation is 29 percentage and only 9 percentage was spent on the environment. And the fourth issue is with the monitoring system. See under the existing regulation monitoring is by a board led disclosure based rigid that is companies just report their CSR spending annually to the corporate affairs ministry. This is through filing of an annual report you know that okay. Whether these reports are reviewed and the corporations involved are held accountable is a question here. So here the major issue is it focuses an output rather than quality of the expenditure and its impact. So which is an issue here. Now let us see some of the way forwards. First is identification of where CSR funds would have the greatest impact across India. And for that it is necessary to create a national platform centralized by the MCA that is Ministry of Corporate Affairs. In that platform all states should be able to list their potential CSR admissible projects. This might also be guided by the corporate social responsibility projects repository. And this is maintained by Invest India on the India investment grid. Okay. Secondly companies need to prioritize environmental restoration in the area where they operate. They should allocate at least 25 percentage for environmental regeneration. Since the government itself have started its own independent programs for education water supply and sanitation action to prevent fraud and duplication is imperative. Okay. And the third way forward is community participation. See all CSR projects should be selected and implemented with the active involvement of communities district administration and public representatives. Okay. And finally to enhance the current monitoring and assessment system recommendations made by the high level committee in the year 2018 should be included into the current CSR framework. Such recommendations include enhancing reporting mechanisms with enhanced disclosures regarding project selections, locations, implementing agencies etc etc. Then bringing the CSR within the purview of statutory financial audit with the details of CSR expenditure included in the financial statement of a company. And then mandating independent third party impact assessment audits is also very much helpful to enhance the current monitoring and assessment systems. Okay. So that is all about this news article. So in this discussion we saw what is the CSR and what are all the issues under the CSR and how the CSR is helpful for the society. And finally we ended up with the way forward to address the issues that we saw in this discussion. Okay. So through this discussion I have taken a holistic view of the CSR for you. So with these key points in mind now let's move on to the next news article discussion. Now have a look at this news article. This news article talks about G20 and the news article says that the President Biden did not rule out meeting with Russian leader Putin during the G20 summit next month in Asia. So in this background let us quickly go through the G20 in preliminary perspective. See the group of 20 or G20 is a grouping of the world's 20 largest economies. Its members include 19 countries, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, then India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, then South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America and the European Union. So G20 members represent almost 90% of global GDP, 80% of international global trade and two-third of the world's population lives in G20 member countries. And note that 84% of all fossil fuel emissions are produced by G20 countries. It was formed in the year 1999 and the primary mandate of the grouping is for international economic cooperation with particular emphasis to prevent future financial crisis that is about to occur across the world. Remember India is one among the founding members of G20. The presidency of G20 rotates annually among its members and do you remember we have discussed about a grouping within G20 called as Troika. See Troika refers to the top grouping within the G20 that consists of the current, previous and the incoming presidencies. Also note that the G20 has no permanent secretariat. The agenda and work are coordinated by representatives of the G20 countries known as Sherpas and the Sherpas work together with the finance ministers and governors of the central banks. G20 plays a significant role in shaping the global economic agenda. So that's all you got to know about this G20 and this is much more enough for your preliminary perspective. So with these key points in mind, now let's move on to the next news article discussion. Now have a look at this image that is taken from the Hindu newspaper. It says that army personnel are proceeding towards the Avalanche site in Uttarkashi. Using this as an opportunity we are going to see in detail about the Avalanche. First of all what is an Avalanche? See an Avalanche is a mass of snow that slides rapidly down an inclined slope. The inclined slope is mostly mountains, hills and even the roof of the buildings etc etc. And the major factor here is the slope gradient. Most of the times Avalanches occur on slopes of 30 to 45 degrees and this degree varies with the location. See generally Avalanches are called as snow slides. Avalanches of rock or soil is considered as landslides. Now let us see what are the factors that are causing these Avalanches. See Avalanches are triggered by either natural forces or human activity. The factors that come under the natural forces include precipitation, wind-drifting snow, then rapid temperature changes, earthquakes etc etc. Human activities that cause Avalanches include skying explosives, mines, snow mobiles, even walking can trigger an Avalanche. Now you may wonder how walking can trigger such a massive disaster. To know that you must know how an Avalanche occurs. See for an Avalanche to occur there should be a surface bed of snow, a weaker layer that can collapse and an overlying snow slab. See the underlying snowpack overloaded by a quick accumulation of snow can cause a weak layer beneath to fracture naturally. See I will tell you in simple words. Here a snowpack is layers of snow that build up in an area in the mountain. In winter no repeated snowfalls build a snowpack dozens of meters thick. This is only the quick accumulation of snow. See the bonds between the layers of a snowpack may be weak. This only causes the weak layer beneath to fracture. So when the condition is like this even a small change can trigger an Avalanche. That's why I said even walking can trigger Avalanche. See when somebody walks or rides over a slab with an underlying weak layer then it will immediately trigger an Avalanche. What happens here is that the weak layer collapses causing the overlying mass of snow to fracture and start to slide. Now an Avalanche has been triggered. What happens next? See a typical Avalanche contains three main features. The starting zone, the Avalanche track and the run out zone. Firstly the Avalanche is launched from the starting zone. The starting zone is the most unstable part of the slope and generally it is located at the top of the mountain. And once the Avalanche starts to slide it continues down the Avalanche track and this track is the natural path it follows downhill. And finally the Avalanche comes to a stop at the bottom of a slope. And this is in the run out zone. This is where the snow and debris pile up. And see when an Avalanche stops the snow becomes solid like concrete and people who are caught inside will be unable to come out. That's why people caught in Avalanche's die from suffocation, trauma or hypothermia. So this is the reason why people are advised to dig the snow as soon as the Avalanche stops. So that it won't settle and become solid. That's all about this news article. See in this news article we had known what is Avalanche and what is causing Avalanche and how this Avalanche will occur. So with these key points in mind now let's move on to the next part of the news article discussion which is the preliminary practice question discussion. See today we have four questions in which three I'll be discussing and one will be a quiz question for you okay. Now look at this first question. See it is regarding the Avalanche discussion okay. Here three statements are given and you are asked to find the correct statement okay. Now look at statement one. A slab Avalanche occurs when the weak layer of a snowpack is on the top. See this statement is incorrect because slough Avalanche's occur when the weak layer of a snowpack is on the top. A slough is a small slide of dry powdery snow that moves as a formless mass. Sloughs are much less dangerous than slab Avalanche's okay. And now look at the second statement. A slough Avalanche occurs when the weak layer lies lower down in a snowpack. See this statement is incorrect. We just now saw that right. See a slab Avalanche snow occurs when the weak layer lies lower down in a snowpack. This layer is covered with other layers of compressed snow. When the Avalanche is triggered the weak layer breaks off pulling all the layers on top of it down the slope. These layers tumble and fall in a giant block or slab. Once a slab Avalanche starts the slab shatters into many separate blocks. These snow blocks break up into even smaller pieces. Some of the pieces rise into the air as a moving cloud of icy particles. The cloud races downhill at a very high speed so it is very dangerous. The thickness and speed of slab Avalanche's make them a threat to skiers, snowboarders, mountaineers and hikers okay. So this two statement says that the definitions of both are just interchanged okay. Now coming to the third statement, global warming causes Avalanche's in Himalayas. See just by seeing this itself you can understand that this statement is correct. Am I right? Because the warm winters in Himalayas that is occurring due to the global warming is one of the reasons for the occurrence of Avalanche's. The transformation of dry snow packs into wet snow packs is a cause for the release of snow Avalanche's in the region. Specifically the rise in liquid water content of the snow pack makes it unstable and thus prone to trigger wet snow Avalanche's okay. And apart from this other reasons include earthquakes in Himalayas, the plate movements that is occurring so that one then the large slope gradient that is Himalayas is home to many highest peaks am I right? And the sudden precipitation etc are the reasons for Avalanche's in Himalayas okay. Now coming back to the question, see the question is demanding for correct statements so your answer here will be option A 3 only is the correct statement okay. Now moving on to the second question, see it is a two statement type question and they are asking for incorrect statement okay. Now read the first statement Gaganian program envisages undertaking the demonstration of human spaceflight to LEO that is lower earth objects. See this statement is correct. Yes the Gaganian is the first project taken up by the ISRO for demonstrating the human spaceflight capability. This task necessitates three major components namely human rated launch vehicle, crew escape system and orbital module with human presence. And the main objective of the Gaganian program is to achieve autonomy in access to space providing both tangible benefits. As per the mandate of Gaganian two unmanned missions will be undertaken prior to the manned mission okay. So statement one is correct. Now coming to the second statement ISRO's vayumitra is the first of its kind to be developed for space missions. See this statement is incorrect because there have been many missions featuring humanoid robots like vayumitra. And the most recent mission was in March 2019 a mannequin called replay was flown on the dragon crew capsule launched on a SpaceX Falcon rocket. It was sent to the international space station and replay was fitted with sensors to measure forces that act during spaceflight as part of SpaceX preparations. That is preparation of SpaceX to send a human into space in 2020 for NASA okay. And other instances you can take an artificial intelligence robot ball called Simon crew interact to mobile companion was deployed on the ISS by Airbus. Then the int ball a floating camera robot was deployed on the ISS by JAXA space agency. Then the crew boat a humanoid robot astronaut built in Japan was flown to the ISS along with the first Japanese commander of the ISS Koichi Wakata. And this is to serve as the astronauts assistant in conducting experiments on the space station. See the crew boat was equipped with the technology such as speech recognition facial recognition then language processing and telecommunication capabilities. Then I can remember a Russian humanoid robot FIDAR was sent to the ISS in the year 2019. This is to carry out mechanical functions on the space stations okay. So what is the answer for this question? Since the question is demanding for incorrect statements your answer here will be option B 2 only is the incorrect statement okay. I am moving on to the third question which of the following constitute the applications of biomass pellets. See here seven applications are given am I right. All are the applications of biomass pellets okay. So your answer here will be option D 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7. See pellets are burnt in cooking grilling home heating animal bedding then biomass gasifiers and power plants and even in industrial boilers. In animal bedding pellets are laid down in the shelter soft pellets are best choices compared to grass or hay okay. Because they would not absorb moisture and regarding this biomass pellets if you want to know more about it just go back and listen to the discussion once more we would have explained clearly about this biomass pellet okay. So what is the answer here option D and now displayed here is a quiz question for you see go through the question these kind of questions are very frequently asked in your preliminary examination okay. And if you had found the correct answer for this question post your answers in the common section and the correct answer from my side will be posted within 24 hours in the common section itself okay. So that is all for today's preliminary practice question displayed here is a main practice question for you interested aspirants go through the question and try writing answer for this question okay and post your answers in the common section and that is all for today's discussion. If you like this video do like share and comment and don't forget to subscribe to the Shankar IS Academy's YouTube channel. Thank you for listening.


I try not to talk about religion on this channel. In my opinion, nothing is less interesting than someone else's religious views, so I attempt not to inflict mine on others. However, there's a young man I've been subscribed to for some time because I saw him as a rational Christian, someone who could think critically about issues. In his latest videos, I think he's doing his best to prove me wrong. The topic is the comments by YouTuber JesusFreak777 about following the example of Abraham. JF hoped that if God truly appeared to him and commanded him to kill his child that he would do it. It was a very minor comment, a throwaway point, and a long video when viewed in context. As I understand, JF took the video down when all the furor started.  It turns our focus inward and generates a series of opinion videos and flame wars. It's divisive without accomplishing anything. The only reason I'm going to engage on this is that it illustrates a point I've made before, when we take our morality from an external source or an authority figure, when we create a system that punishes doubt, that's when people get hurt.  In religion, doubt is something to be overcome. Doubt is the door to the staircase to hell, they tell us. Faith leads to a blessed reward. The faithful are beloved of God, the doubters are fools who will be cast into the fire. Is it really so straightforward? I want you to imagine an axis. On one end is faith, so strong you can bend steel around it. Faith that moves mountains, faith that motivates one to strap a bomb to one's chest. Faith that brings one to do the will of a God, regardless of consequences. On the other end is perfect doubt, disbelief. If Zeus stepped off a cloud, fired lightning bolts at Medusa, and then poofed into existence a rock so big he can't lift it, you'd still disbelieve, you'd insist on sequencing Medusa's DNA. Most of us fall somewhere between. We accept a mother's love with a high level of faith. We accept that the world exists even when we close our eyes. Maybe we're skeptical of fast-talking salespeople even when we agree with what they're saying. We might have strong doubts about Bigfoot or Leprechauns. If confronted with one, we might say something like, I can't believe my eyes. We distrust the voices in our head if they told us to do something contrary to our nature. Now which end of the spectrum of religious doubt and faith is responsible for the needless deaths of children? For the suicide bombings? For the rise of cults and tyrants, theocracies and despots? Is it too little faith in an external authority or too much? This is not a symptom of religion per se. It's a symptom of fundamentalism, the absence of doubt. Some religions demand faith. They define morality as an absence of doubt in the law given in scripture. They say that true morality, the highest morality, is found in a book. The book must be believed because to doubt it is a sin. The story of Abraham and Isaac is, to me, a perfect example. It's a story about the faithfulness of a man who was so devoid of doubts that he was prepared to commit an act that anyone could see was wrong, the sacrifice of a child. The story is meant to illustrate that the virtue of faith is always rewarded. I find this reprehensible, and I wish I could petition to have it removed from the Bible, along with the story of Job, another person incapable of normal doubts and skepticism about the benevolence of the supernatural. So many people are motivated by this kind of story to do things that they have an inner conviction is wrong. The question put to Jesus Freak specified that there was no doubt with regards to the true identity of the source of the commandment to kill his child. It is his God without doubt. Therein lies the problem. For Jesus Freak 777 to pick up a gun or knife and end his child's life, he would have to have removed sufficient doubt that not only was the source God, but that God was good. That God had a plan, that God's plan outweighed the value of his child's life. JF is weighing his religious doubts against the precious life of an innocent, and hoping he's devoid of any doubt. What are the costs of doubt? Well we might doubt if our actions will have any effect, thus leading to harm by inaction. We might doubt our own position enough to be victimized by someone with greater faith. Imagine a woman unsure if she should speak out against an unjust law. Doubt is not an absolute good, immune from all criticism. We need some faith to get us through the day. I wouldn't want to fall at either end of the doubt-faith spectrum, but somewhere in between. As a general rule, I always have greater faith in my intuitive morality than in scripture or other external sources. If there's a conflict, I always bias towards doubt. This is why I reject the idea of an objective morality, because of the premium it places on faith in external authority. Jesus Freak was celebrating his absolute lack of doubt in a God that is absolute goodness, infallible, and omnibenevolent. I can't admire that. I don't think he poses any harm to his children. But it is the very reason that many children die needlessly. Every year, children are denied medical care, blood transfusions, antibiotics, and they're actively harmed by the very person who should be protecting them. This can come in the form of physical abuse, such as the mutilation of female genitalia, or psychological abuse, such as making children feel worthless or afraid, or it can even be a lethal use of force on a scriptural basis, such as the stoning or burning of children by otherwise rational people who didn't exercise that small modicum of doubt needed to question their own righteousness. Let me be very clear on what I'm saying and not saying. Religion does not cause child abuse. However, fundamentalism or fanaticism do. When people celebrate the virtue of faith, of absolute trust in God's, in scripture, or in authorities, they fail to recognize the great harm it can also do. Faith is not a pure good, but neither is pure doubt. We need both, and the courage to listen to our own hearts, even if our inner convictions violate scripture. Thanks for watching.


Hi, hi, Mike working. Ooh, nice. Hi. Hello My name is Paul and I'm gonna talk with this song called lights home PC action, which is about Essentially how to make the most out of cycles and how I use cycles in my personal projects and how personal projects in cycles ended up landing amongst others and The job which is cool So that's me. Hi. I am Paul. I am 23 and from Barcelona and as you can tell from my humble background as an amateur 2d artist, I am an artist and and I Really like art never thought I could do a career on that but then I did a donut and My life changed because I immediately fell in love with 3d and I decided to study that and Pursue that career and now I have a job at Disney, which is cool So yeah, today I'm gonna tell a story that again starts with a donut. I Started learning 3d Lofted and I just wanted to do everything and I did tons of projects I did a plant tried. This is a video. It should be playing elevator music Second money a row Nice so there's tons of them perhaps some of them we can skip That's unfortunate Well, basically, that's a route. I did a plant. I tried vfx. That's me as a teenager tried sculpting I did a short film about a cookie with suicidal thoughts another plant Fell in love with puppets tried to do a short film with them, but failed. I Did another plant because I'm obsessed Generally, I did I did lots of lots of things. It's not going to the next slide. Damn it So yeah, basically I Was a generalist and I loved doing projects for fun a project that seemed Meaningless and I decided to study 3d animation which I did and when I went to school I found that everything was based around Fitting on a pipeline about doing every speciality in every software that's Industry standard for that task which bucked me a bit.  To which I respond of course, it feels amazing to Can you have a job as an artist and it turns out you can and I thought my best chances would be to I loved the the aspect of crafting images and guiding people through color and visual language So I decided I would be a lighting artist in animation But what do lighting artists do essentially we do pretty renders and rendering for Those amongst you who don't know Is the process where you know 3d animation lives in a 3d scene and Lighting artists place 3d lights that cast 3d light rays Within that that go to a virtual 3d camera that produces an image actually is the other way around it's technical It's boring unless you're here But actually there's the part of making them pretty There's for example, this is a scene with same models same poses Same textures same everything but one could argue one is prettier than the other or at least they evoke different things And that's another conversation which is color perspective contrast And That that really really appealed to me I was an artist after all And sorry for keeping it basic. It's just a family and friends are watching and I think it's you know my chance to Explain what is that thing that I do for a living? So yeah, uh, that was great, uh felt amazing. I was doing what I loved you can do a job It's great, but then there can problems That's that's a shot, uh, which I led for a school project done in every industry standard software for every speciality That's took in our schools basically Maya and Arnold pipeline an hour and a half to render And that could be fine if you didn't take into account that this was a shot of 80 frames Which is Roughly three seconds by frame six you reached a full-time day of job Which doesn't sound fair we could only afford that because we had a render farm Which is lots of computers rendering in parallel, but that doesn't sound fair. Do you need an infrastructure? to uh To access a job that allows you to work on an infrastructure. That doesn't seem fair There has to be another way around. I was angry because I wanted to render my stuff on my computer I wanted to do Something that appeals to me and I was angry. There has to be another way to get a job as a lighting Artist and by that time a friend of mine an animator. His name is bell. He's very talented He uh came to me with an animation. He said I wanted to look beautiful Can you do that can can it be done and I was like, yes, it can be done. I can't do it I will uh, I don't know how But I will and then he so showed me the animation he had That's another video that should be playing And it should be playing without audio That's because it's copyrighted We don't we don't want any issues to the channel um as you can tell by the lack of props by Making it beautiful. He didn't only mean Doing lights, but he meant shaders and objects and Virtually everything So that's the animation It's really cool, but my first reaction was fear I mean, it's 340 frames It's moving cameras. No shortcuts possible So I don't know I would need tremendous infrastructure a render engine that's Extremely beautiful yet very fast that lives within a software where I can do shaders objects um Every kind of arrangement possible Where would I find that? Uh, of course, I wouldn't be here And and first reaction was amazing cycles Extremely fast with the gpu and everything Great felt the interactivity in it the noisier I could go faster that means more creative iterations, which means a prettier result But it went shortly followed by frustration because I came from arnold and arnold has lots of Phoenix features where you can tweak Every aspect of a light and I don't know if you can tell by now, but I'm a nerd also And and these things I love so these are a thing five topics Which I thought weren't possible in cycles and I found workarounds or solutions for which I want to spread around so problem number one textures in lights most of you know That in cycles you can put textures in spotlights so they behave kind of like projectors but Most people don't know And how would you approach this where the texture is In the light and it shows up in specular reflections So it turns out you can as for another video, which I will talk over While they look That was possible with workarounds before but now it's there's an elegant solution in 4.0 Where essentially there's this button where you can use notes for lights, which I love This perhaps is going to be slow. I am Okay So yeah, there's there's an area light. It's flat. It's a boring reflection And then you can plug in a texture coordinates. So you get UV coordinates and from that you can of course UV coordinates exactly There's you can put an image texture I have in this case an image of some window just Around casually and now you can have A nice reflection. I'm compensating a bit for the exposure here and Yep It's Works. So, yeah, that's something I discovered. No one.  His name is fran These are also uh videos should be playing. I I'm gonna skip that actually can we skip the video? Yeah, why not? It's a it's a shot, uh, that This is a camera traveling Uh, and following these two characters and I painted somart. I wanted to make these characters go into an eerie kind of Go deeper into a temple and I wanted to Evoke with a light that they are going from a safe place to a tenor And So I start I start by lighting That's that's very rough. That's general brushstrokes Uh, but I'm blocking in the key light which comes from screen left and I generally liked it And then I flip to the end of the shot And now it doesn't work because this light coming from screen left now is bleeding too much in screen right So I'm getting too much light on screen right I need to make lights Decay faster so that it gets darker faster Ta-da, that's that's my favorite note. I place it in a in a single slide because I love it Uh, you you can have all info about light rays everything that that cycles does to access it in the Light shader. We have the ray length and if we use it in a video, uh You can use it to drive anything here. I'm in this video, which we should be oh, yeah, we're seeing No, we're not Sorry here So, yeah, essentially what you can do is to Use this information to create masks to show where the light should be affecting and where it shouldn't Essentially, it gives me a value of how long the ray has traveled in blender units When hitting a surface So you can do masks with that and you can see as I slide this number the light starts to reveal from the light source into the back of the seat Which is I didn't know that was possible Uh And there's another video with we we can skip. It's easy to imagine how you can turn that into a tool where you can do Gradients and have it be a bit more user friendly. But using this technique, uh, which can we go to the next Slide And sorry Here, um, that's yeah, that was before and that is After so see how not only it gets generally darker, but in screen left. It doesn't get that much darker It's just getting darker on screen, right That's the kind of Finneke things we we we nerds love Uh, so yeah, and that gets me again closer to the art. So that's great Problem number three so we can give you all like components. I'm gonna run through this one because it's, um really nerdy but, um, that's a light and blender internally splits it into diffuse rays, which are the ones that Reflect like in a matte manner the shiny ones Uh, the ones that has gone have gone through glass or the material of that sort And the ones that have bounced more than once when hitting the camera the indirect ones and It turns out that again, we can separate them, uh, which is cool, uh between I don't know we have glossy shadow and uh Diffuse transparent transmission all those kind of things and I did a tool, uh, which We could show in a video, um Where essentially with sliders, which is something I missed from Arnold you can Elevator music again, you can essentially increase or decrease certain, uh components of a light For every individual light. So perhaps making a certain light bounce more on the indirect So it feels more room Or perhaps making it more shiny. So perhaps you need less, uh less value overall to explain shape And those are very very very fine, uh tweaks, which I don't generally use but It's cool to for it to be possible because when you need it, you need it next, uh, so that's original and tweaked you can see I'm Interesting a bit more of it's extremely subtle a bit more of indirect I don't know. Let's go to the next one slow volumetrics. We We I think we all can relate to that volumetrics for those who don't know Are these effects where light scatters through an atmosphere? And it's very important composition compositionally use usually because You can see we have a dark house here with a dark environment And we are only separating the house from the environment because of a conveniently placed volumetric behind it and We usually need volumetrics And but the problem here is that cycles perhaps does them too well Because unlike Arnold that uses a cheaper Less realistic approximation of that it works of the volumetrics cycles Really makes the light bounce around and it can hit hard on your render times You may think I don't own a fog machine to support the claim that cycles is more realistic. You may also be wrong So that's with no volumetrics. I might even hear a bit of volumetrics You can see how the Fire blows a bit more how generally the the background is more tight together But that really hits on the on the performance of the render So that's what I do and brace yourselves all you this is a video Sorry for making you work. Thanks for the work you do This is a video and brace yourselves all you nerds and purists Of how things should look because this is perhaps the dirtiest thing I will show today I'm not getting undressed. Um, so it's uh, uh-huh. So, yeah, I'm Putting a cube and I'm plugging an emission shader to a volume That's something they don't sprite right which just gives you a shiny cube which with a gradient texture You can have a glowy thing there in 3d space which Does a trait for composition and and this is a comparison Back to the slides. Thank you This is a comparison for that's with the scattering Technique which is a realistic one and that's with emissive volumes And I'm not trying to perfectly match but you can see you can get volumetric effects from either This is again with emission and I'm here a comparison because the render times aren't that different if you render all together But if you create a layer that's called volumetric and you hide And and you put everything on hold out, but the volume Then the scatter it gives you a kind of noise. It's very hard to Clean or denoise and the emission Eight samples done two seconds As fast as your as your computer takes So that's cool. And some of you may say but volumetric shadows You're not okay. Well, you could you could do that with shaders, but uh, but yeah, generally in Films that are not suspicious of having low budgets When you're using volumetrics per composition, you don't generally need that much of a finessing so it can be done and Problem number five and last one. I'm having a video here blockers There's no easy way like in in Arnold you can Select an area of your scene and make it darker or make it shine more Um, which in cycles we don't have that that's supposed to be a video sorry and Here we don't have it and I was once on a on a blender today chat and it was like pablo I know pablo is a lighter pablo. How do you handle Blockers in the studio and he gave me the dirty solution, which I was very much not pleased But I ended up using it and it kind of is useful and Since in reality, we don't really have The concept of blockers. It ends up feeling very natural. Are we seeing a video? There's no video Okay, well, there's no video Essentially I place objects hide them from everything but the shadow And and just place them there and play with the opacity to to just There's an animation next. Ah, that makes sense And this is a video. My god. I'm sorry You came here for quality That's that's what you get I'm a chirpy So Yeah, that's what I already explained. I The the ball is has the same value than the background. We wanted to separate if the ball were a character That's the note that I would get So I spawn a random plane I give it a material that has some gradient on the opacity and with a color ramp I can I can tweak the opacity so to make it darker I wanted to push it to the you don't notice it but A before and after would reveal like a serious change like I'm getting better read Which is which is cool. That's useful to have. Here's some example Back to those lights Where I use it Every time I have a sun or a directional light I'm using some kind of blocker to shape it because this is looking very flat This is a bit of a nicer Composition is that perfect? No, it isn't I could always ask for more rendering features But it gets the job done and it did and back to the example of the Animation that I was asked to Light I could finish it So that's a video which I would like to play again. No audio, please We would get in trouble Just a heads up This was rendered entirely on my computer. I have a 3080 And I could render this at 4k in about seven minutes per frame And that's it so my my It's not perfect, but um, my point is it can be done by yourself With your computer, uh, which is nuts Uh Then I was finishing my degree in animation by then and I was putting my reel together my demo reel together Which that was the main piece of it And I wanted to spray around I want people to to to see it to for them to hire me eventually So I did a video on youtube. I called it how I rendered a disney Style animation in blender like disney blender clickbait. That's what youtubers do, right? Um And little did I know that Uh, roughly a bit under a year after their series on Unbelievable events and applying with that very same reel. I got a job disney that's me working good So, I don't know. I I myself I've broken some of my convictions that Professional stuff has to be done with industry standard software, which is something we all nerds here Hate to hear and I did that process myself, which I wanted to share So thank you very much for coming. These are some, uh Some general, uh shout outs. I wanted to do Fran who's looking for a job and bell who are both animators that whose works are featured here and Uh, this is a team that did my uh The project for my university and that's me if you want to Talk me anywhere else or find me in the conference for youtube channel. I respond everywhere So that's it. Thank you very much for coming See you around


Hi and welcome to the session on NG Picker here. Let's discuss the question using the property of determinants And without expanding prove that the determinant 2, 7, 65, 3, 8, 75, 5, 9, 86 is equal to 0 Let's start the solution That delta is equal to our given determinant that is 2, 7, 65, 3, 8, 75, 5, 9, 86 We have to prove that delta is equal to 0 by using the property of determinants Again we can rewrite there as delta is equal to 2, 3, 5 Now second column 2 plus 5, 3 plus 5 and 5 plus 4 C3 is as it is 65, 75, 86 Now we can express delta as a sum of 2 determinants that is 2, 3, 5 2, 3, 5, 65, 75, 86 Plus 2, 3, 5, 5, 4 65, 75, 86 As we have the property that if some or all elements of a row or column of a determinant are expressed as sum of 2 or more terms then the determinant can be expressed as sum of 2 or more determinants That is why we have expressed delta is sum of 2 determinants because we have expressed C2 as a sum of 2 numbers So delta can be expressed as a sum of 2 determinants Now this determinant is also equal to 0 because C1 and C2 are identical We have a property of a determinant if any 2 rows or column of a determinant are identical that is all corresponding elements are same then value of the determinant is 0 Therefore we have delta is equal to 0 plus 2, 5, 65, 3, 5, 75, 5, 4, 86 As C1 and C2 are identical R1 goes to R1 minus R2 to delta Now we get delta is equal to this is 2 minus 3 minus 1, 5 minus 5, 0, 65 minus 75 this is minus 10 Now R2 and R3 are same 5, 4, 86 Again by applying R2 goes to R2 plus 3 R1 and R3 goes to R3 plus 5 R1 we get delta is equal to minus 1, 0, minus 10 Now R2 goes to R2 plus 3 R1 that is 3 plus minus 3, 0, 5 this is 45 Again R3 goes to R3 plus 5 R1 we get 0, 4, 36 Now expanding along first column we get delta is equal to minus 1 into determinant 5, 4, 45, 36 minus 0 into minus 0 plus 0 which is equal to minus 1 into 180 minus 180 minus 0 plus 0 which is again equal to 0 Hence we have proved that our given determinant that is delta is equal to 0 hence proved I hope the question is clear to you by and have a good day