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College Physics for AP® Courses

# Section Summary

### 3.1Kinematics in Two Dimensions: An Introduction

• The shortest path between any two points is a straight line. In two dimensions, this path can be represented by a vector with horizontal and vertical components.
• The horizontal and vertical components of a vector are independent of one another. Motion in the horizontal direction does not affect motion in the vertical direction, and vice versa.

### 3.2Vector Addition and Subtraction: Graphical Methods

• The graphical method of adding vectors $AA size 12{A} {}$ and $BB size 12{B} {}$ involves drawing vectors on a graph and adding them using the head-to-tail method. The resultant vector $RR size 12{A} {}$ is defined such that $A+B=RA+B=R$. The magnitude and direction of $RR size 12{A} {}$ are then determined with a ruler and protractor, respectively.
• The graphical method of subtracting vector $B B$ from $AA$ involves adding the opposite of vector $BB$, which is defined as $−B−B size 12{ - B} {}$. In this case, $A–B=A+(–B)=RA–B=A+(–B)=R$. Then, the head-to-tail method of addition is followed in the usual way to obtain the resultant vector $RR$.
• Addition of vectors is commutative such that .
• The head-to-tail method of adding vectors involves drawing the first vector on a graph and then placing the tail of each subsequent vector at the head of the previous vector. The resultant vector is then drawn from the tail of the first vector to the head of the final vector.
• If a vector $AA size 12{A} {}$ is multiplied by a scalar quantity $cc size 12{A} {}$, the magnitude of the product is given by $cAcA size 12{ ital "cA"} {}$. If $cc size 12{c} {}$ is positive, the direction of the product points in the same direction as $AA size 12{A} {}$; if $cc size 12{c} {}$ is negative, the direction of the product points in the opposite direction as $AA size 12{A} {}$.

### 3.3Vector Addition and Subtraction: Analytical Methods

• The analytical method of vector addition and subtraction involves using the Pythagorean theorem and trigonometric identities to determine the magnitude and direction of a resultant vector.
• The steps to add vectors $AA size 12{A} {}$ and $BB size 12{B} {}$ using the analytical method are as follows:

Step 1: Determine the coordinate system for the vectors. Then, determine the horizontal and vertical components of each vector using the equations

A x = A cos θ B x = B cos θ A x = A cos θ B x = B cos θ alignl { stack { size 12{A rSub { size 8{x} } =A"cos"θ} {} # B rSub { size 8{x} } =B"cos"θ {} } } {}

and

A y = A sin θ By = B sin θ . A y = A sin θ By = B sin θ . alignl { stack { size 12{A rSub { size 8{y} } =A" sin"θ} {} # B=B suby " sin "θ {} } } {}

Step 2: Add the horizontal and vertical components of each vector to determine the components $RxRx size 12{R rSub { size 8{x} } } {}$ and $RyRy size 12{R rSub { size 8{y} } } {}$ of the resultant vector, $RR size 12{R} {}$:

$R x = A x + B x R x = A x + B x size 12{R rSub { size 8{x} } =A rSub { size 8{x} } +B rSub { size 8{x} } } {}$

and

$Ry=Ay+By.Ry=Ay+By. size 12{R rSub { size 8{y} } =A rSub { size 8{y} } +B rSub { size 8{y} } } {}$

Step 3: Use the Pythagorean theorem to determine the magnitude, $RR size 12{R} {}$, of the resultant vector $RR size 12{R} {}$:

$R=Rx2+Ry2.R=Rx2+Ry2. size 12{R= sqrt {R rSub { size 8{x} } rSup { size 8{2} } +R rSub { size 8{y} } rSup { size 8{2} } } } {}$

Step 4: Use a trigonometric identity to determine the direction, $θθ size 12{θ} {}$, of $RR size 12{R} {}$:

$θ=tan−1(Ry/Rx).θ=tan−1(Ry/Rx). size 12{θ="tan" rSup { size 8{ - 1} } $$R rSub { size 8{y} } /R rSub { size 8{x} }$$ } {}$

### 3.4Projectile Motion

• Projectile motion is the motion of an object through the air that is subject only to the acceleration of gravity.
• To solve projectile motion problems, perform the following steps:
1. Determine a coordinate system. Then, resolve the position and/or velocity of the object in the horizontal and vertical components. The components of position $ss size 12{s} {}$ are given by the quantities $xx size 12{x} {}$ and $yy size 12{y} {}$, and the components of the velocity $vv size 12{v} {}$ are given by $vx=vcosθvx=vcosθ size 12{v rSub { size 8{x} } =v"cos"θ} {}$ and $vy=vsinθvy=vsinθ size 12{v rSub { size 8{y} } =v"sin"θ} {}$, where $vv size 12{v} {}$ is the magnitude of the velocity and $θθ size 12{θ} {}$ is its direction.
2. Analyze the motion of the projectile in the horizontal direction using the following equations:
$Horizontal motion ( a x = 0 ) Horizontal motion ( a x = 0 ) size 12{"Horizontal motion " $$a rSub { size 8{x} } =0$$ } {}$
$x = x 0 + v x t x = x 0 + v x t size 12{x=x rSub { size 8{0} } +v rSub { size 8{x} } t} {}$
$vx=v0x= v x =velocity is a constant.vx=v0x= v x =velocity is a constant. size 12{v rSub { size 8{x} } =v rSub { size 8{0x} } =v rSub { size 8{x} } ="velocity is a constant."} {}$
3. Analyze the motion of the projectile in the vertical direction using the following equations:
$Vertical motion ( Assuming positive direction is up; a y = − g = − 9 . 80 m /s 2 ) Vertical motion ( Assuming positive direction is up; a y = − g = − 9 . 80 m /s 2 ) size 12{"Vertical motion " $$"Assuming positive direction is up; "a rSub { size 8{y} } = - g= - 9 "." "80"" m/s" rSup { size 8{2} }$$ } {}$
$y = y 0 + 1 2 ( v 0y + v y ) t y = y 0 + 1 2 ( v 0y + v y ) t size 12{y=y rSub { size 8{0} } + { {1} over {2} } $$v rSub { size 8{0y} } +v rSub { size 8{y} }$$ t} {}$
$v y = v 0 y − gt v y = v 0 y − gt size 12{v rSub { size 8{y} } =v rSub { size 8{0y} } - ital "gt"} {}$
$y = y 0 + v 0 y t − 1 2 gt 2 y = y 0 + v 0 y t − 1 2 gt 2 size 12{y=y rSub { size 8{0} } +v rSub { size 8{0y} } t - { {1} over {2} } ital "gt" rSup { size 8{2} } } {}$
$vy2=v0y2−2g(y−y0).vy2=v0y2−2g(y−y0). size 12{v rSub { size 8{y} } rSup { size 8{2} } =v rSub { size 8{0y} } rSup { size 8{2} } - 2g $$y - y rSub { size 8{0} }$$ } {}$
4. Recombine the horizontal and vertical components of location and/or velocity using the following equations:
$s = x 2 + y 2 s = x 2 + y 2 size 12{s= sqrt {x rSup { size 8{2} } +y rSup { size 8{2} } } } {}$
$θ = tan − 1 ( y / x ) θ = tan − 1 ( y / x ) size 12{θ="tan" rSup { size 8{ - 1} } $$y/x$$ } {}$
$v = v x 2 + v y 2 v = v x 2 + v y 2 size 12{v= sqrt {v rSub { size 8{x} } rSup { size 8{2} } +v rSub { size 8{y} } rSup { size 8{2} } } } {}$
$θv=tan−1(vy/vx).θv=tan−1(vy/vx). size 12{θ rSub { size 8{v} } ="tan" rSup { size 8{ - 1} } $$v rSub { size 8{y} } /v rSub { size 8{x} }$$ } {}$
• The maximum height $hh size 12{h} {}$ of a projectile launched with initial vertical velocity $v0yv0y size 12{v rSub { size 8{0y} } } {}$ is given by
$h=v0y22g.h=v0y22g. size 12{h= { {v rSub { size 8{0y} } rSup { size 8{2} } } over {2g} } } {}$
• The maximum horizontal distance traveled by a projectile is called the range. The range $RR size 12{R} {}$ of a projectile on level ground launched at an angle $θ0θ0 size 12{θ rSub { size 8{0} } } {}$ above the horizontal with initial speed $v0v0 size 12{v rSub { size 8{0} } } {}$ is given by
$R=v02sin2θ0g.R=v02sin2θ0g. size 12{R= { {v rSub { size 8{0} } rSup { size 8{2} } "sin"2θ rSub { size 8{0} } } over {g} } } {}$

• Velocities in two dimensions are added using the same analytical vector techniques, which are rewritten as
$v x = v cos θ v x = v cos θ size 12{v rSub { size 8{x} } =v"cos"θ} {}$
$v y = v sin θ v y = v sin θ size 12{v rSub { size 8{y} } =v"sin"θ} {}$
$v = v x 2 + v y 2 v = v x 2 + v y 2 size 12{v= sqrt {v rSub { size 8{x} } rSup { size 8{2} } +v rSub { size 8{y} } rSup { size 8{2} } } } {}$
$θ=tan−1(vy/vx).θ=tan−1(vy/vx). size 12{θ="tan" rSup { size 8{ - 1} } $$v rSub { size 8{y} } /v rSub { size 8{x} }$$ } {}$
• Relative velocity is the velocity of an object as observed from a particular reference frame, and it varies dramatically with reference frame.
• Relativity is the study of how different observers measure the same phenomenon, particularly when the observers move relative to one another. Classical relativity is limited to situations where speed is less than about 1% of the speed of light (3000 km/s).

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# Tag Info

15

Actually there are terminological subtleties when you are talking about that. Particles in the accelerator's tube are gathered in a sequence of little "bunches". For the proton-proton mode there was roughly ~3000 bunches per beam. And each bunch contained roughly $\simeq 10^{11}$ protons. So, at the largest level what you actually have during the ...

11

It's c for constant or celeritas, which means speed in Latin. Everyone uses it because it's convention. You could use $\xi$ or $\zeta$ or $\gamma$ or any other symbol you wanted, but then you'd have to explain what it meant, and people would have to go through the trouble to remember this every time they read your papers. Better to go with convention and ...

10

Indeed most examples of unambiguously labeling chiral states fall back on having another pre-labeled chiral object on hand. For a long time it seemed as though "left" and "right" were entirely interchangeable labels. This symmetry is known as parity. However it turns out there is a way to distinguish left from right in a fundamental way; parity is not ...

9

A theory is a collection of concepts, laws, and equations in science that is meant to explain some particular subset of observations. It's also used for theories describing gedanken worlds that differ from ours. There is also a related word "model" that differs by a theory by being really specific while a "theory" may leave some details adjustable, and ...

9

The no-go results from Algebraic and Constructive QFT you mention deal with related but slightly different matters. (Edit: the previous version of the following paragraph was slightly misleading - Haag's theorem is actually stronger than I stated before; see below for details) Haag's theorem (which actually slightly predates the inception of Algebraic ...

8

A particle is said to be on-shell if it satisfies the relativistic dispersion relation, $$E^2 = p^2 +m^2$$ in units wherein $c=\hbar=1$. If you graph it, you obtain a parabolic surface for massive particles, and a cone for massless particles, like a photon. This is known as the mass shell, it is quite literally a shell or surface. The momentum of a real ...

7

People have essentially explained the details, but let me make an attempt to formulate it in a language more familiar to a mathematician. I will ignore subtleties that enter for more general Lie superalgebras. Let $\mathfrak g$ be a Lie superalgebra with the $\mathbb Z_2$ grading $\mathfrak g = \mathfrak g_e\oplus\mathfrak g_o$, where the two factors are ...

7

Lenses and glass bottles are transparent. As you quoted above, the different has to do with diffusion. Here is an example of an image through a transparent object: Here is an example of a translucent object: This is an example of how diffusion causes translucency: As light passes through a translucent object, it either enters or exists a rough ...

6

An ultra-relativistic particle is any particle you observe to have almost all its energy stored in the form of momentum. In other words, we are talking about particles that have only a very tiny fraction of their total energy stored in (rest)mass. The relativistic mass-energy-momentum relationship $$E^2 - c^2 \ p^2 \ = \ c^4 \ m^2$$ is valid for a ...

6

Lasers typically operate in two regimes: as CW or continuous wave (the radiation leaving the laser cavity or resonator continuously by a partially reflecting mirror, or as you put it, forming an uninterrupted wave) or as a laser pulse (the radiation leaving the cavity during a short time at a repetition rate, that is, as a burst of short pulses very separted ...

6

The quadrature is a process – any process – of turning something into a "square". "Quadro" in Latin is "make square", "quadrus" is a "square". It comes from "quattors", four, because that's the number of vertices of a square. So integration of a function is also known as "quadrature" because we are calculating the area i.e. looking for a well-known area ...

5

$H$, sometimes called the Hubble "constant" should actually be called properly: the Hubble parameter. It is a function of the scale factor $a(t)$ of the Universe or of the redshift $z=1/a-1$ and depends on the cosmological parameters. It gives the rate of change of the size of the Universe with respect to its size. Through the Friedmann equations it is ...

5

It is a matter of confusing terminology , at the present times when so much differentiation has happened in physics related scientific disciplines. Radiation was a general terminology assigned to transfer of energy radially, to start with with waves: acoustic waves, waves in water. Then came Maxwell's equations and the discovery of electromagnetic waves, ...

5

User twistor59 has addressed the part regarding the "generator" terminology, but let me give a bit more detail on the second part of the question. I'm going to restrict the discussion to matrix Lie groups for simplicity. Some background. Given a Lie group $G$ with Lie algebra $\mathfrak g$, there exist two mappings $\mathrm{Ad}$ and $\mathrm{ad}$, both ...

5

"They" are probably talking about symplectic integrators. Most numerical integrators for (partial) differential equations do not specifically consider the energy of the system; they are generic integrators capable of solving any set of DEs, and not all DE's have a concept like "energy". When these are applied to a classical dynamics problem concerning ...

5

I know we've had this discussion on the Astronomy SE site, but let me try to elaborate on my answer. Dark matter is an altogether different component of the universe from baryonic matter. It does cause the same overall dynamics when it comes to the universe as a whole. What I mean by this is that the hubble parameter: $$H(a) = H_0 ... 5 In signal processing, the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem says you need at least 2 samples of a frequency to be able to perfectly reconstruct it. So in your question, a sampling rate of 200\: \mathrm{MHz} means you can perfectly reconstruct frequencies in the range of 0 - 100\: \mathrm{MHz}. So what happens when frequencies above 100\: \mathrm{MHz} ... 4 The terminological mismatch arises because different physicists use the terms differently in different contexts. For example, here is how Landau and Lifshitz define an adiabatic process in the context of thermodynamics: Let us suppose that a body is thermally isolated, and is subject to external conditions which vary sufficiently slowly. Such a process ... 4 To uplift a solution to the field equations (such as Einstein's equations or their generalizations) or to uplift any other construction or argument means to find a solution of a higher-dimensional theory (or the analogous construction or argument) given the known solution of a lower-dimensional theory. This is possible if the lower-dimensional theory may be ... 4 Yes, Newton was definitely using the term "mass". His Principia were written in Latin but the English translation of his Latin definition of gravity said: Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the particles and inversely proportional to the square ... 4 The neutral current is electrically neutral. To see why, one must first understand what the current is. It is a composite field or (in the quantum theory) an operator, something like$$ J^{\mathrm{(NC)}\mu}(f) = \bar{u}_{f}\gamma^{\mu}\frac{1}{2}\left(g^{f}_{V}-g^{f}_{A}\gamma^{5}\right)u_{f}, $$where u_f is the Dirac field for the fermion f. Note that ... 4 The doppler shift causes a shift in wavelength at the origin of the wave (the frequency of the source never changes). This results in a shift in frequency for the observer. In the link below you can see the emission of the wave for a moving source causes the wavelength to be shorter in front and longer behind. The actual source isn't changing in ... 4 Some examples come to my mind: Fourier's law of heat conduction \vec{J} = -c\vec{\nabla}T in crystalline solids is a good example of a phenomenological law. It is an ampirical law easy to verify in a broad range of materials in various phases and yet, as explained in this presentation, there is no derivation of it from first principles in solids and ... 4 It started with conservation of quantum numbers, from baryon number when we did not know about quarks, to lepton number, when we discovered the positron.For the neutrino momentum and energy conservation played a role too, since it is only seen as a missing mass. In time the symmetries in the assignments of the quantum numbers became more and more evident ... 4 Such an ordering arises from the fact that are arranged chronologically, i.e., according to the dates they were "discovered". The principle quantum number n entered the picture with Bohr's theory of the Hydrogen atom in 1913.Bohr introduced n in his quantization of angular momentum postulate where n is the allowed orbit. Mathematically, L = n{h ... 4 Refs. 1 and 2 define a canonical transformation (CT)$$\tag{1} (q^i,p_i)~\longrightarrow~ (Q^i,P_i)$$[together with choices of Hamiltonian H(q,p,t) and Kamiltonian K(Q,P,t)] as satisfying$$ \tag{2} (p_i\mathrm{d}q^i-H\mathrm{d}t)-(P_i\mathrm{d}Q^i -K\mathrm{d}t) ~=~\mathrm{d}F$$for some generating function F. On the other hand, Wikipedia (March ... 4 The term "shell" originally derives from the non-relativistic version of the answer by @JamalS. In a non-relativistic theory, a free particle satisfies the following dispersion relation$$ E = \frac{ {\bf p}^2 }{ 2m } $$For a fixed energy a particle satisfies$$ {\bf p}_x^2 + {\bf p}_y^2 + {\bf p}_z^2 = 2 m E  In momentum space, this is precisely the ...

3

The Hubble-constant gives the rate at which the universe expands at the present. Since the expansion of the universe hasn't been constant this is indeed not the case. So yes, the Hubble-constant is actually a time-depandant value (the name constant dates back to the time people believed the universe was static). The behaviour in time of the hubble constant ...

3

There is no consistent usage of these words among scientists. Usually, when someone says "law" or "principle", they are referring to a general idea that has been found to apply to many different situations, but not always. More speculative ideas are generally called theories, but use of the word "theory" does not always mean that an idea is speculative. ...

3

If you have a basis for the Lie algebra, you can talk of these basis vectors as being "generators for the Lie group". This is true in the sense that, by using the exponential map on linear combinations of them, you generate (at least locally) a copy of the Lie group. So they're sort of "primitive infinitesimal elements" that you can use to build the local ...

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Authors: Ming-Chang Yang, Yuan-Hao Chang, Tei-Wei Kuo, and Po-Chun Huang

Abstract:
Address mapping for flash storage devices has been a challenging design issue for controllers because of rapidly growing device capacity. In contrast with existing mapping methods, this study proposes a capacity-independent address mapping method to decouple the required on-device RAM space from the capacity of a flash storage device. Especially, the required RAM size of the proposed method depends only on the user accessed data set, which is also referred to as the working set, while the page-level performance can be nearly achieved. In addition, a simple but practical wear-leveling design is proposed with the capability in lifetime estimation of flash storage devices. Experiments of the proposed scheme obtained encouraging results.
Current Research Results
"Compressed Sensing-Based Clone Identification in Sensor Network," IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, To Appear.
Authors: Chia-Mu Yu, Chun-Shien Lu, and Sy-Yen Kuo

Abstract:
Clone detection, aimed at detecting illegal copies with all of the credentials of legitimate sensor nodes, is of great importance for sensor networks because of the severe impact of clones on network operations, like routing, data collection, and key distribution. Various detection methods have been proposed, but most of them are communication-inefficient due to the common use of the witness-finding strategy. In view of the sparse characteristic of replicated nodes, we propose a novel clone detection framework, called CSI, based on a state-of-the-art signal processing technology, compressed sensing. Specifically, CSI bases its detection effectiveness on the compressed aggregation of sensor readings. Due to its consideration of data aggregation, CSI not only achieves the asymptotically lowest communication cost but also makes the network traffic evenly distributed over sensor nodes. In particular, they are achieved by exploiting the sparse property of the clones within the sensor network caused by the clone attack. The performance and security of CSI will be demonstrated by numerical simulations, analyses, and prototype implementation.
"Enabling Sub-blocks Erase Management to Boost the Performance of 3D NAND Flash Memory," ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 2016.
Authors: Tseng-Yi Chen, Yuan-Hao Chang, Chien-Chung Ho, and Shuo-Han Chen

Abstract:
3D NAND has been proposed to provide a large capacity storage with low-cost consideration due to its high density memory architecture. However, 3D NAND needs to consume enormous time for garbage collection because live-page copying overhead and long block erase time. To alleviate the impact of live-page copying on the performance of 3D NAND, a sub-block erase design has been designed.With sub-block erase design, this paper proposes a performance booster strategy to extremely boost the performance of garbage collection. As experimental results shows, the proposed strategy has a significant improvement on the average write response time.
"DigitSpace: Designing Thumb-To-Fingers Touch Input Interface for One-Handed and Eyes-Free Interactions," ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI), March 2016.
Authors: D.-Y. Huang, S. Yang, F. Wang, R.-H. Liang, L. Chan, D.-N. Yang, Y.-P. Hung, B.-Y. Chen.

Abstract:
Thumb-to-fingers interfaces augment touch widgets on fingers, which are manipulated by the thumb. Such interfaces are ideal for one-handed eyes-free input since touch widgets on the fingers enable easy access by the stylus thumb. This study presents DigitSpace, a thumb-to-fingers interface that addresses two ergonomic problems: hand anatomy and touch precision. Hand anatomy restricts possible movements of a thumb, which further influences the physical comfort during the interactions. Touch precision is a human factor that determines how precisely users can manipulate touch widgets set on fingers, which determines effective layouts of the widgets. Buttons and touchpads were considered in our studies to enable discrete and continuous input in an eyes-free manner. The first study explores the regions of fingers where the interactions can be comfortably performed. According to the comfort regions, the second and third studies explore effective layouts for button and touchpad widgets. The experimental results indicate that participants could discriminate at least 16 buttons on their fingers. For touchpad, participants were asked to perform unistrokes. Our results revealed that since individual participant performed a coherent writing behavior, personalized \$1 recognizers could offer 92% accuracy on a cross-finger touchpad. A series of design guidelines are proposed for designers, and a DigitSpace prototype that uses magnetic-tracking methods is demonstrated
"Precise Player Segmentation in Team Sports Videos Using Contrast-Aware Co-segmentation," IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, March 2016.
Authors: T.Y. Tsai, Y. Y. Lin, H.Y. Mark Liao, and S. K. Jeng

Abstract:
Player segmentation in team sports videos is challenging but crucial to video semantic understanding, such as player interaction identification and tactic analysis. We leverage the appearance similarity among players of the same team, and cast this task as a co-segmentation problem. In this way, the extra knowledge shared across players significantly reduces unfavorable uncertainty in segmenting individual players. We are also aware that the performance of co-segmentation highly depends on the used features, and further propose a contrastbased approach to estimate the discriminant power of each feature in an unsupervised manner. It turns out that our approach can properly fuse features by assigning higher weights to discriminant ones, and result in remarkable performance gains. The promising results on segmenting basketball players manifest the effectiveness of our approach.
Current Research Results
Authors: Hui-Yin Chang, Ching-Tai Chen, T. Mamie Lih, Ke-Shiuan Lynn, Chiun-Gung Juo, Wen-Lian Hsu, Ting-Yi Sung

Abstract:
Efficient and accurate quantitation of metabolites from LC-MS data has become an important topic. Here we present an automated tool, called iMet-Q (intelligent Metabolomic Quantitation), for label-free metabolomics quantitation from high-throughput MS1 data. By performing peak detection and peak alignment, iMet-Q provides a summary of quantitation results and reports ion abundance at both replicate level and sample level. Furthermore, it gives the charge states and isotope ratios of detected metabolite peaks to facilitate metabolite identification. An in-house standard mixture and a public Arabidopsis metabolome data set were analyzed by iMet-Q. Three public quantitation tools, including XCMS, MetAlign, and MZmine 2, were used for performance comparison. From the mixture data set, seven standard metabolites were detected by the four quantitation tools, for which iMet-Q had a smaller quantitation error of 12% in both profile and centroid data sets. Our tool also correctly determined the charge states of seven standard metabolites. By searching the mass values for those standard metabolites against Human Metabolome Database, we obtained a total of 183 metabolite candidates. With the isotope ratios calculated by iMet-Q, 49% (89 out of 183) metabolite candidates were filtered out. From the public Arabidopsis data set reported with two internal standards and 167 elucidated metabolites, iMet-Q detected all of the peaks corresponding to the internal standards and 167 metabolites. Meanwhile, our tool had small abundance variation (≤0.19) when quantifying the two internal standards and had higher abundance correlation (≥0.92) when quantifying the 167 metabolites. iMet-Q provides user-friendly interfaces and is publicly available for download at http://ms.iis.sinica.edu.tw/comics/Software_iMet-Q.html.
Current Research Results
Authors: Chih-Hao Fang, Yu-Jung Chang, Wei-Chun Chung, Ping-Heng Hsieh, Chung-Yen Lin and Jan-Ming Ho

Abstract:
We developed two subset selection methods for single-end reads and a method for paired-end reads based on base quality scores and other read analytic tools using the MapReduce framework. We proposed two strategies to select reads: MinimalQ and ProductQ. MinimalQ selects reads with minimal base-quality above a threshold. ProductQ selects reads with probability of no incorrect base above a threshold. In the single-end experiments, we used Escherichia coli and Bacillus cereus datasets of MiSeq, Velvet assembler for genome assembly, and GAGE benchmark tools for result evaluation. In the paired-end experiments, we used the giant grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus) dataset of HiSeq, ALLPATHS-LG genome assembler, and QUAST quality assessment tool for comparing genome assemblies of the original set and the subset. The results show that subset selection not only can speed up the genome assembly but also can produce substantially longer scaffolds. Availability: The software is freely available at https://github.com/moneycat/QReadSelector
Current Research Results
"Efficient Victim Block Selection for Flash Storage Devices," IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC), December 2015.
Authors: Che-Wei Tsao, Yuan-Hao Chang, Ming-Chang Yang, and Po-Chun Huang

Abstract:
Motivated by the needs to enhance the performance of garbage collection in low-cost flash storage devices, we propose a victim block selection design to efficiently identify the blocks for erases and reclaim the space of invalid data without extensively scanning flash memory for the data status stored in the storage, so as to improve the garbage collection performance on reclaiming the space of invalid data. Moreover, this design could easily identify and reclaim the space released by file systems. Experiments based on benchmark traces show significant performance improvement of garbage collection with limited system overheads.
Current Research Results
"An Acoustic-Phonetic Model of F0 Likelihood for Vocal Melody Extraction," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, September 2015.
Authors: Yu-Ren Chien, Hsin-Min Wang, and Shyh-Kang Jeng

Abstract:
This paper presents a novel approach to extraction of vocal melodies from accompanied singing recordings. Central to our approach is a model of vocal fundamental frequency (F0) likelihood that integrates acoustic-phonetic knowledge and real-world data. This model consists of a timbral fitness score and a loudness measure of each F0 candidate. Timbral fitness is measured for the partial amplitudes of an F0 candidate, with respect to a small set of vocal timbre examples. This F0-specific measurement of timbral fitness depends on an acoustic-phonetic F0 modification of each timbre example. In the loudness part of the likelihood model, sinusoids are detected, tracked, and pruned to give loudness values that minimize interference from the accompaniment. A final F0 estimate is determined by a prior model of F0 sequence in addition to the likelihood model. Melody extraction is completed by detecting voiced time positions according to the singing voice loudness variations given by the estimated F0 sequence. The numerical parameters involved in our approach were optimized on three development sets from different sources before the system was evaluated on ten test sets separate from these development sets. Controlled experiments show that use of the timbral fitness score accounts for a 13% difference in overall accuracy.
Current Research Results
"Spatial-Proximity Optimization for Rapid Task Group Deployment," ACM Trans. on Knowledge Discovery from Data, To Appear.
Authors: C.-Y. Shen, D.-N. Yang, W.-C. Lee, and M.-S. Chen

Abstract:
Spatial proximity is one of the most important factors for the quick deployment of the task groups in various time-sensitive missions. This paper proposes a new spatial query, Spatio-Social Team Query (SSTQ), that forms a strong task group by considering 1) the group’s spatial distance (i.e., transportation time), 2) skills of the candidate group members, and 3) social rapport among the candidates. Efficient processing of SSTQ is very challenging, because the aforementioned spatial, skill, and social factors need to be carefully examined. In this paper, therefore, we first formulate two subproblems of SSTQ, namely Hop-Constrained Team Problem (HCTP) and Connection-Oriented Team Query (COTQ). HCTP is a decision problem that considers only social and skill dimensions. We prove that HCTP is NP-Complete. Moreover, based on the hardness of HCTP, we prove that SSTQ is NP-Hard and inapproximable within any factor. On the other hand, COTQ is a special case of SSTQ that relaxes the social constraint. We prove that COTQ is NP-Hard and propose an approximation algorithm for COTQ, COTprox, that achieves the best approximation ratio. Furthermore, based on the observations on COTprox, we devise an approximation algorithm, SSTprox, with a guaranteed error bound for SSTQ. Finally, to efficiently obtain the optimal solution to SSTQ for small instances, we design two efficient algorithms, SpatialFirst and SkillFirst, with different scenarios in mind. These two algorithms incorporate various effective ordering and pruning techniques to reduce the search space for answering SSTQ. Experimental results on real datasets indicate that the proposed algorithms can efficiently answer SSTQ under various parameter settings.
Current Research Results
"Cooperative Multicasting in Renewable Energy Enhanced Relay Networks - Expending More Power to Save Energy," IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, To Appear.
Authors: S.-Y. Lee, C.-Y. Liu, M.-K. Chang, D.-N. Yang, and Y.-W. Hong

Abstract:
Abstract—Power and on–off control problems are examined for renewable energy enabled base-stations (BSs) and relay nodes (RNs) in cooperative multicast networks. Renewable energy is utilized at BSs and RNs to reduce the overall grid energy cost. By considering a practical energy consumption model and the statistics of the renewable energy arrival, the optimal transmit powers are first determined by minimizing the expected grid energy consumption subject to an average outage probability constraint at MUs. The optimal solution is found via line search in the general case and is obtained in closed-form at high SNR. In addition, an on–off control policy is also proposed to further reduce the basic operational energy costs. The joint on–off and power control problems are solved approximately using two sequential deflation techniques, namely, the subset-search and the convex-relaxation-based approaches. The power control problem is also extended to the multicarrier scenario with unequal transmit powers and is solved using successive convex approximation. Simulations using the photovoltaic energy arrival model are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes. The results show that expending more power at RNs allows for more efficient use of renewable energy and, thus, increases energy-savings.
"Multicast Traffic Engineering for Software-Defined Networks," IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM), April 2016.
Authors: L.-H. Huang, H.-C. Hsu, S.-H. Shen, D.-N. Yang, and W. T. Chen,

Abstract:
Although Software-Defined Networking (SDN) enables flexible network resource allocations for traffic engineering, current literature mostly focuses on unicast communications. Compared to traffic engineering for multiple unicast flows, multicast traffic engineering for multiple trees is very challenging not only because minimizing the bandwidth consumption of a single multicast tree by solving the Steiner tree problem is already NP-Hard, but the Steiner tree problem does not consider the link capacity constraint for multicast flows and node capacity constraint to store the forwarding entries in Group Table of OpenFlow. In this paper, therefore, we first study the hardness results of scalable multicast traffic engineering in SDN. We prove that scalable multicast traffic engineering with only the node capacity constraint is NPHard and not approximable within delta, which is the number of destinations in the largest multicast group. We then prove that scalable multicast traffic engineering with both the node and link capacity constraints is NP-Hard and not approximable within any ratio. To solve the problem, we design a delta-approximation algorithm, named Multi-Tree Routing and State Assignment Algorithm (MTRSA), for the first case and extend to the general multicast traffic engineering problem. The simulation results demonstrate that the solutions obtained by the proposed algorithm are more bandwidth-efficient and scalable than the shortest-path trees and Steiner trees. Most importantly, MTRSA is computation-efficient and can be deployed in SDN since it can generate the solution on massive networks in a short time.
"Mining Online Social Data for Detecting Social Network Mental Disorders," International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), April 2016.
Authors: H.-H. Shuai, C.-Y. Shen, D.-N. Yang, Y.-F. Lan, W.-C. Lee, P. S. Yu, and M.-S. Chen

Abstract:
An increasing number of social network mental disorders (SNMDs), such as Cyber-Relationship Addiction, Information Overload, and Net Compulsion, have been recently noted. Symptoms of these mental disorders are usually observed passively today, resulting in delayed clinical intervention. In this paper, we argue that mining online social behavior provides an opportunity to actively identify SNMDs at an early stage. It is challenging to detect SNMDs because the mental factors considered in standard diagnostic criteria (questionnaire) cannot be observed from online social activity logs. Our approach, new and innovative to the practice of SNMD detection, does not rely on self-revealing of those mental factors via questionnaires. Instead, we propose a machine learning framework, namely, Social Network Mental Disorder Detection (SNMDD), that exploits features extracted from social network data to accurately identify potential cases of SNMDs. We also exploit multi-source learning in SNMDD and propose a new SNMDbased Tensor Model (STM) to improve the performance. Our framework is evaluated via a user study with 3126 online social network users. We conduct a feature analysis, and also apply SNMDD on large-scale datasets and analyze the characteristics of the three SNMD types. The results show that SNMDD is promising for identifying online social network users with potential SNMDs.
"Optimizing Control Transfer and Memory Virtualization in Full System Emulators," Eruopean Network of Excellence on High-Performance and Embedded Architecture and Compilation (HiPEAC), January 2016.
Authors: Chun-Chen Hsu, Ding-Yong Hong, Cheng-Yi Chou, Jan-Jan Wu, Wei-Chung Hsu, and Pangfeng Liu

Abstract:
Full system emulators provide virtual platforms for several important applications, such as kernel and system software development, co-verification with cycle accurate CPU simulators, or application development for hardware still in development. Full system emulators usually use dynamic binary translation to obtain reasonable performance. This paper focuses on optimizing the performance of full system emulators. First, we optimize performance by enabling classic control transfer optimizations of dynamic binary translation in full system emulation, such as indirect branch target caching and block chaining. Second, we improve the performance of memory virtualization of cross-ISA virtual machines by improving the efficiency of the software translation lookaside buffer (software TLB). We implement our optimizations on QEMU, an industrial-strength full system emulator, along with the Android emulator. Experimental results show that our optimizations achieve an average speedup of 1.98X for ARM-to-X86-64 QEMU running SPEC CINT2006 benchmarks with train inputs. Our optimizations also achieve an average speedup of 1.44X and 1.40X for IA32-to-X86-64 QEMU and AArch64-to-X86-64 QEMU on SPEC CINT2006. We use a set of real applications downloaded from Google Play as benchmarks for the Android emulator. Experimental results show that our optimizations achieve an average speedup of 1.43X for the Android emulator running these applications.
Current Research Results
Authors: Tong-Yen Tsai, Shih-Ying Wu, Cheng-Han Chung, Pang-Yen Yang, Shin-Tang Su, Yu-Hsuan Tseng, Tong-Cheng Wang, Wen-Hsiung Li, Arthur Chun-Chieh Shih*, and Kuo-I Lin*

Abstract:
Using genome-wide approaches, we studied the microRNA (miRNA) expression profile during human plasma cell (PC) differentiation induced by stimulation of human blood B cells with T follicular helper cell–dependent signals. Combining the profiles of differentially expressed genes in PC differentiation with gene ontology (GO) analysis revealed that a significant group of genes involved in the transcription factor (TF) activity was preferentially changed. We thus focused on studying the effects of differentially expressed miRNAs on several key TFs in PC differentiation. Cohorts of differentially expressed miRNAs cooperating as miRNA hubs were predicted and validated to modulate key TFs, including a down-regulated miRNA hub containing miR-101-3p, -125b-5p, and -223-3p contributing to induction of PRDM1 as well as an up-regulated miRNA hub containing miR-34a-5p, -148a-3p, and -183-5p suppressing BCL6, BACH2, and FOXP1. Induced expression of NF-κB and PRDM1 during PC differentiation controlled the expression of up- and down-regulated miRNA hubs, respectively. Co-expression of miR-101-3p, -125b-5p, and -223-3p in stimulated B cells showed synergistic effects on inhibition of PC formation, which can be rescued by re-introduction of PRDM1. Together, we catalogue the complex roadmap of miRNAs and their functional interplay in collaboratively directing PC differentiation.
Current Research Results
Authors: Wai-Kok Choong, Hui-Yin Chang, Ching-Tai Chen, Chia-Feng Tsai, Wen-Lian Hsu, Yu-Ju Chen, and Ting-Yi Sung

Abstract:
Protein experiment evidence at protein level from mass spectrometry and antibody experiments are essential to characterize the human proteome. neXtProt (2014-09 release) reported 20 055 human proteins, including 16 491 proteins identified at protein level and 3564 proteins unidentified. Excluding 616 proteins at uncertain level, 2948 proteins were regarded as missing proteins. Missing proteins were unidentified partially due to MS limitations and intrinsic properties of proteins, for example, only appearing in specific diseases or tissues. Despite such reasons, it is desirable to explore issues affecting validation of missing proteins from an “ideal” shotgun analysis of human proteome. We thus performed in silico digestions on the human proteins to generate all in silico fully digested peptides. With these presumed peptides, we investigated the identification of proteins without any unique peptide, the effect of sequence variants on protein identification, difficulties in identifying olfactory receptors, and highly similar proteins. Among all proteins with evidence at transcript level, G protein-coupled receptors and olfactory receptors, based on InterPro classification, were the largest families of proteins and exhibited more frequent variants. To identify missing proteins, the above analyses suggested including sequence variants in protein FASTA for database searching. Furthermore, evidence of unique peptides identified from MS experiments would be crucial for experimentally validating missing proteins.


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# 28 Oct 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

A. GS1 Related
MODERN INDIAN HISTORY
1. Nagaland split over centenary celebrations of club that united warring tribes
B. GS2 Related
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Sirisena suspends Parliament
C. GS3 Related
ENVIRONMENT
1. As Capital chokes, Centre talks prosecution
D. GS4 Related
E. Editorials
ECONOMY (INFRASTRUCTURE)
1. Railways must be tougher on trespassing (Rail Safety)
POLITY AND GOVERNANCE
1. The lowdown on Jammu & Kashmir crisis (Local body elections in Jammu and Kashmir)
F. Tidbits
1. Banni’s bane
G. Prelims Fact
1. India home to two new gecko species
H. Sunday Revision
I. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
J. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

A. GS1 Related

1. Nagaland split over centenary celebrations of club that united warring tribes

Context

• Kohima, the only theatre of the Second World War in the Indian subcontinent, is gearing up for the centenary of an ethnic club moulded by events during the First World War in faraway France.
• But the Nagaland capital is divided over who has the right to celebrate the special day of the club that unified disparate Naga tribes and laid the foundation of an armed movement for secession from India.
• The stand-off is between the influential Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) and members of the 100-year-old Naga Club. The NSF doubts the credibility of the members since the Naga Club of 1918 became dormant in 1982, while the latter say the students’ body should not dictate terms just because it “took over” the club building in 1983.
• The club building is not far from the landmark Kohima War Cemetery, an iconic reminder of a fierce battle in 1944 between the British-led Allied forces and the Japanese army alongside Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army.

Background

• The British government had during the First World War recruited 2,000 labourers and porters from some 15 Naga tribes and sent them to fight in France between 1914 and 1918.
• Alienated from other British Indian troops on European soil, the Nagas developed a sense of unity.
• Many of them returned, and under the leadership of R.S. Ruichumhao, formed the Naga Club along with some British officials in 1918. The club provided the foundation for the Naga nationalist movement.
• In 1929, members of the club submitted a memorandum to the Simon Commission, proposing self-rule by the Nagas after the departure of the British from India.
• The Naga Club was later overshadowed by the Naga Hills District Tribal Council formed in 1945, which metamorphosed into a political organisation called Naga National Council (NNC). Under the legendary Angami Zapu Phizo, the NNC waged a war of independence against the Indian Union in the 1950s.

B. GS2 Related

1. Sirisena suspends Parliament

Context

• Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday suspended Parliament, a day after he sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, plunging the island nation into political turmoil.
• Through an extraordinary gazette, President Sirisena said Parliament was prorogued until November 16.
• The announcement came just as Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared he had the majority in Parliament.
• The Chinese Ambassador in Colombo met Mr. Rajapaksa and conveyed the wishes of his leadership and government, according to Mr. Rajapaksa’s office.
• India is yet to comment on the recent changes in the neighbouring nation.

Background

• Relations between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have soured since their parties suffered humiliating losses to Rajapaksa’s party in February’s local council elections.
• The pair have disagreed over economic policy and day-to-day administration of the government. Last week, they reportedly clashed during a cabinet session over plans to lease a container terminal to neighbouring India.
• Earlier this year, Sirisena reneged on a pledge not to run for re-election, sparking tensions with Wickremesinghe who is believed to have his own presidential ambitions.
• Sirisena is also thought to be behind a failed attempt to impeach Wickremesinghe in April, when 122 legislators in the 225-member parliament voted to back the now-sacked prime minister.
• The ruling coalition has been further strained in recent days by strong criticism from Sirisena and his allies that ministers from Wickremesinghe’s party did not act properly in investigating an alleged assassination plot to kill the president and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the new prime minister’s younger brother.
• Rajapaksa, who served as president from 2005 to 2015, put down the decades-old Tamil Tiger separatist struggle in May 2009 through a military assault that killed up to 40,000 ethnic Tamil civilians, according to rights groups. His government was also accused of corruption and murdering political opponents.
• Sirisena had pledged accountability for war atrocities, but has faced international criticism for being slow to deliver on justice.

C. GS3 Related

1. As Capital chokes, Centre talks prosecution

Context

• Delhi’s air quality continued to remain “very poor” for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday, with some parts of the city slipping into “severe” category.
• The deteriorating situation, compounded by fears that it may deteriorate further next week due to localised emissions during festival and stubble burning, prompted Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan to announce that the government has decided to initiate criminal prosecution against agencies which do not comply with the directives to check air pollution.
• The overall Air Quality Index of the Capital was recorded at 341 on Saturday. Punjabi Bagh, Mundka, Dwarka Sector 8, Rohini and Anand Vihar were among the most polluted areas in the city where the air quality was recorded in the “severe” category.
• Nearly 20%-30% of the dip in Delhi’s air quality on Friday and Saturday was due to crop burning in Punjab and Haryana, said CPCB officials. The board maintained that lack of wind height and local polluting factors were also contributing to the spiked pollution levels in the city.

National Air Quality Index

• In an attempt to make air quality measurement easier to understand, the ministry of environment and forests launched a National Air Quality Index (AQI) . It will put out real time data about level of pollutant in the air and inform people about possible impacts on health.
• The index classifies air quality simply as good, satisfactory, moderately polluted, poor, very poor, and severe. Each band is represented by a colour code to visually express the level of severity that people can grasp easily.
• Eight pollutant have been taken into account to calculate AQI – Nitrogen oxide, Sulpher dioxide, PM2.5, PM 10, Ozone, Carbon monoxide, Ammonia, Lead,

Related Concept – SAFAR

• Ministry of Earth Sciences has recently unveiled state-of-the-art Air Quality and Weather Forecast System– SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting) at Chandni Chowk in Delhi. It is first of its kind and most advanced system in India.
• SAFAR was developed indigenously by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and operationalized by India Meteorological Department (IMD).
• It has been introduced for greater metropolitan cities of India to provide location-specific information on air quality in near real time and its forecast 1-3 days in advance for the first time in India.
• It is integral part of India’s first Air Quality Early Warning System operational in Delhi. It will monitor all weather parameters like temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind speed and wind direction.
• Pollutants monitored: PM1, PM2.5, PM10, Ozone, CO, NOx (NO, NO2), SO2, BC, Methane (CH4), Non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), VOC’s, Benzene, Mercury.
• Monitored Meteorological Parameters: UV Radiation, Rainfall, Temperature, Humidity, Wind speed, Wind direction, solar radiation.

D. GS4 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

E. Editorials

1. Railways must be tougher on trespassing (Rail Safety)

Larger Background:

Note to Students:

The recent tragic incident of around 60 people dying and over 70 getting injured after being run over by a train near Amritsar. has raised several question marks. Most notably from a UPSC point of view, one should look at this issue from the perspective of rail safety.

1. A Note on Safety Measures Taken in Indian Railways:
• Improvement in Rail safety is a continuous process and constant endeavour is made to improve the same.
• Safety Audits/inspections are undertaken at regular intervals on all railway infrastructures with a view to identify weak areas in asset maintenance, safety procedure and systemic defects and to provide ways and means to prevent accidents.
• Besides, periodical safety drives are launched from time to time to indicate safety consciousness amongst staff and to streamline safety aspects including maintenance of assets.
1. Steps for improving Tracks:
• Railway tracks are replaced through track renewal works which is an ongoing process.
• Track renewal works are undertaken as and when stretch of track becomes due for renewal on the basis of criteria laid down in Indian Railway Permanent Way Manual on age cum condition basis viz. traffic carried in terms of gross million tonnes & incidence of rail fracture/failure, wear of rails, and maintainability of track as per standards etc.
• In case any stretch of track is not renewed in time due to various reasons including scarcity of funds, material etc. suitable speed restrictions, if required, are imposed to ensure safe running of trains. Additional funds are being provided through Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) and Mega Traffic Blocks are being arranged for executing these works.

III. Digital type of machines for Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD):

• Testing of rails is being used which are more reliable.
• This technology is being extensively used in Indian Railways to detect flaws in rails and weld failures in advance and take remedial steps to avert train accidents.
1. Electronic monitoring of track geometry is carried out with Track Recording Cars (TRC) and Portable Oscillation Monitoring Systems (OMS):

This is being done to detect track geometry defects for planning maintenance. Maintenance inputs are given to track and bridges as per requirement noticed during manual inspections, TRC & OMS runs and USFD testing to keep track in safe condition.

1. Steps for improving Signaling:
• Electrical/Electronic Interlocking System with centralized operation of points and signals are being provided to eliminate human failure and to replace old mechanical systems.
• Complete Track Circuiting of stations to enhance safety for verification of track occupancy by electrical means instead of human element has been completed at about 5889 stations upto 31.10.2017.
• Axle Counter for Automatic clearance of Block Section (BPAC) to ensure complete arrival of train before granting line clear and to reduce human element have been provided on 4935 block sections upto 31.10.2017.
1. New Safety Technology:

Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS) – Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS) mitigates safety risk of accidents/collisions due to loco pilot’s error of Signal Passing at Danger or over speeding. It is a proven European train protection technology and deployed extensively on World Railways.

The News:

• On October 19, at least 60 people died and over 70 were injured after being run over by a train near Amritsar. The tragedy struck as a group of Dasara revellers gathered on the rail track to watch the burning of a Ravana effigy and were hit by a train from Jalandhar to Amritsar.

Editorial Analysis:

Fixing Accountability:

• Soon after this accident, debates started on who should be held accountable for the accident.
Was it the Railways? the local administration?  the event organisers? or the people themselves for trespassing? These are some of the questions which were asked.
• Following the incident, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh ordered a magisterial inquiry. The report of this magisterial inquiry is expected to be out by mid-November, 2018.
• Experts cite that the Railways washed its hands of any responsibility.
• The Railways said that the people on the track were trespassing.
• Also, they assert that the Railways was not informed of any celebration near the track. In addition, the event was being held adjacent to the track on private property. Since the railway land was not being used, there was no need for a permit from it.
• It is important to note that even as over 40 people on an average are killed every day owing to trespassing on rail tracks, there is no plan to tackle the issue.
• Further, as per official statistics, nearly 50,000 people died on the track from 2015 to 2017. These deaths, the government has said, were largely because of trespassing, violating safety and cautionary instructions, avoiding overbridges, using mobile phones and other electronic gadgets while crossing the track.

The Issue of Unmanned Crossings:

• It is important to note certain important statistics. For example, in April this year, 13 children were killed after a train rammed into a school van at an unmanned railway crossing at Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh.
• As per the available data, accidents at unmanned level crossings accounted for 16.23% of the total train accidents in 2016-17.
• Further, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal recently said the Railways would be eliminating all unmanned level crossings on the broad gauge by December this year, ahead of the March 2020 deadline.
• As of July this year, there were 2,869 unmanned level crossings on the broad gauge. In April 2017, this number stood at 7,000. While for the current financial year, the Railways has earmarked Rs. 73,000 crore for safety out of a total capital expenditure of Rs. 1.48 lakh crore, this mainly covers track renewals, bridge work, signalling, road safety at level crossings and technology upgrade.

Current Situation and Steps being Taken:

• It is important to note that as far as trespassing is concerned, the measures are mainly limited to awareness campaigns.
• Currently, a nationwide campaign has been launched against trespassing, after the Amritsar accident.
• Further, as per the rules, trespassing on the railway premises, including the track, is a punishable offence under Section 147 of the Railways Act, 1989, with imprisonment up to six months and/or a fine of up to Rs. 1,000.
• In 2017, a total of 1,73,112 people were prosecuted for trespassing by the Railways.
• In the wake of this incident, a railway official had pointed out that as part of the awareness campaign, regular announcements were being made at stations, urging passengers to use foot overbridges, and avoid crossing of the track.
• Over and above this, Railway Protection Force personnel are deployed on locations vulnerable to trespass. The official added that the Railways also erected boundary walls or fences at identified locations that were liable to trespass.
• In conclusion, one must note that the Railways is also working on how to use technology to deploy warning systems at unmanned level crossing gates.
• For example, it is testing a satellite-based system, in partnership with the Research Designs and Standards Organisation, Ministry of Railways, and the Space Applications Centre/Indian Space Research Organisation.
• The trials are on at five level crossings.
• Likewise, field trials are on for a radio frequency identification-based system to warn pedestrians against an approaching train.
• If this radio frequency identification-based system is successful, these systems may be utilised to warn trespassers at various points of the track.

1. The lowdown on Jammu & Kashmir crisis (Local body elections in Jammu and Kashmir)

Note to Students:

This editorial coverage is takes into account the recent issue of local body elections in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Students are advised to go through this article as it has a relevance from the perspective of the GS-2 Paper (Polity and Governance).

• Here we have suitably signposted the Editorial Analysis into multiple headings.
• “Larger Background”: This particular section talks about the broader background of the issue, taking into consideration specific points that may have been featured in previous editions of The Hindu. The thought process behind including this section is to give a ‘storyline’ approach to an aspirant when he/she goes through this topic.

• “Editorial Analysis”: This particular section gives an insight towards the specific points covered in the specific editorial that is the subject of our study.

• “The Way Forward/Concluding Remarks”: This sections gives aspirants concluding points that are taken from the article in question as well as some forwarding looking points taken from other articles, as and when required.

The important aspect to note here is that the issue being discussed in the news assumes priority over just the article.

Larger Background:

• The two main regional parties, the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party had given the call for a boycott to the local body elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Their immediate protest was over the legal challenge in the Supreme Court to Article 35(A) of the Constitution that accords special powers to the Jammu and Kashmir legislature to decide who are the “permanent residents” of the State and on whom special rights and privileges can be conferred.
• Thus, it is important for students to have a background on what Article 35A of the Indian Constitution is about.

A Note on Article 35A

• The Article 35A was inserted in the Indian Constitution by the Presidential Order of 1954. The Article 35A yields special rights and immunities to the permanent residents of the Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of Indian citizen.
• In the light of this article a non-permanent resident of Jammu and Kashmir cannot enjoy any Government facilities.
• Article 35A is a provision incorporated in the Constitution giving the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature complete freedom to decide who all are ‘permanent residents’ of the State and confer on them special rights and privileges in public sector jobs, acquisition of property in the State, scholarships and other public aid and welfare.
• The provision mandates that no act of the legislature coming under it can be challenged for violating the Constitution or any other law of the land.

How was Article 35A incorporated?

• Article 35A was incorporated into the Constitution in 1954 by an order of the then President Rajendra Prasad on the advice of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet. The controversial Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order of 1954 followed the 1952 Delhi Agreement entered into between Nehru and the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah, which extended Indian citizenship to the ‘State subjects’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
• The Presidential Order was issued under Article 370 (1) (d) of the Constitution. This provision allows the President to make certain “exceptions and modifications” to the Constitution for the benefit of ‘State subjects’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
• Thus, Article 35A was added to the Constitution as a testimony of the special consideration the Indian government accorded to the ‘permanent residents’ of Jammu and Kashmir.

A Look at the Elections:

There has been a poor turnout in the Kashmir valley for local polls.

• Just over a third of the electorate (35.1% provisionally) turned out to vote in the four-phase urban local body elections
• Experts believe that this is a wake-up call to the Union government.
• It is important to note that the turnout was not expected to be high.
• The two main regional parties, the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party had given the call for a boycott.
• Their immediate protest was over the legal challenge in the Supreme Court to Article 35(A) of the Constitution that accords special powers to the Jammu and Kashmir legislature to decide who are the “permanent residents” of the State and on whom special rights and privileges can be conferred.
• Given the boycott by these two parties and others, there was little political mobilisation in the Valley.
• However, in Jammu, where both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have a strong base and where issues such as Article 35(A) don’t have as much resonance, there was greater participation.
• It is important to note that the absence of any viable political competition in the local body polls in the Valley will only undermine the institutions and the victors.
• Unfortunately, with the collapse of the PDP-BJP coalition government in June this year, the absence of Kashmiri parties from the fray could heighten alienation at the street level.

A Deeper Insight:

• Despite being local body polls, the negligible public participation in them is significant, especially since only four years ago, the State had witnessed the highest voter turnout in 27 years.
• Last week saw only 35.1% turnout for the entire State, with Kashmiri participation dropping to a low single-digit percentage.
• Some experts have blamed this result on pressure from militants.
• However, it is worth noting that although militants often try to violently disrupt State elections, the boycott has rarely been as successful as this time.
• Certain experts have maintained that we must recognise that this boycott was essentially a democratic expression of the people who are frustrated not just by the government but by the entire system. They further assert that to ignore their voice is almost certainly going to lead to disastrous consequences for the State’s already-deteriorating security situation.

Delaying the Election?

• Further, it is important to note that many experts have argued that the solution would have been to delay the elections.
• However, this would have also meant denying the people of Jammu their democratic rights as they did want the elections and have participated in them enthusiastically.
• Some experts believe that instead of solely focussing on stabilising the situation, the administration at the Centre also tried to derive maximum political gains from the situation.

The Dilemma the Centre Faces:

• The dilemma that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing has been experienced by his predecessors as well.
• Critics believe that as the head of the government, they felt it necessary to maintain stability in the State. However, as leaders of large national parties, they also saw Jammu and Kashmir as a fertile political ground which could be used to expand the bases of their parties, even if it was at the cost of stability in the State. They further assert that the trade-off between these two impulses has been always difficult to negotiate.
• It is important to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with any national party pursuing political gains within Jammu and Kashmir as they do in any other State.
• Some people even argue that it is actually preferable if a sensitive State such as Jammu and Kashmir is ruled by a reliable national party than by regional actors.

Tracing the Roots of the Issue:

• Experts believe that even the initial birth of the Kashmir insurgency in the late 1980s can be traced back to Indira Gandhi’s decision to adopt a maximalist approach.
• For example: In 1975, Mrs. Gandhi had established a historic accord with Sheikh Abdullah, making Kashmir’s accession to India final.
Then in a statesman-like move, Indira Gandhi had asked the Congress Chief Minister in the State to step down for Abdullah to assume the position in a gesture of solidarity.
• However, within two years, this desire to put national interest first had evaporated. Defeated in the 1977 general election, Mrs. Gandhi became desperate to regain political ground wherever she could find, which included Jammu and Kashmir.

Situation Post 1970’s:

• The situation changed from the late 1970s. From the late 1970s, the Congress in the State began a steady campaign against the Abdullah government, accusing it of maladministration and corruption.
• This long-running feud weakened the legitimacy of both parties and as a consequence, created the space for extremism to grow.
• Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Kashmiri fundamentalists had begun mobilising and the Abdullah-Congress fight allowed them to gain political traction.

Situation in the 1980’s:

• By the early 1980s, extremists in State politics were becoming prominent enough that even the Central Intelligence Agency took notice.
• Cognisant of this fact, experts believe that Mrs. Gandhi should have taken a conciliatory approach with Abdullah.
• Instead, she decided that emerging security risks made it all the more important to politically replace him with a Congress government.
• For the next few years, the Congress continued to attack the Abdullah government, including in 1984, engineering a coup against Farooq Abdullah, Sheikh’s successor.
• However, by the mid-1980s, both sides had been discredited. The Congress was seen as abusing its power for political gains; Abdullah was seen as a weak leader because of his failed attempt to walk the tight-rope between fighting the government of India and still remaining pro-India.
• The vacuum thus created was filled by extremist groups.
• The Muslim United Front, an alliance of Islamic right-wing parties, expanded its vote share from a mere 6.4% in 1983 to 32% in 1987, in the Valley. Finally recognising this reality, in 1986 Rajiv Gandhi reached another accord with Abdullah which made both parties allies. However, by now it was too late. From a security standpoint it was necessary for the alliance to retain hold of the State; but in its weakened state, neither Abdullah nor the Congress could be sure that they would win the elections.

The Infamous 1987 State Elections:

• The infamous 1987 State elections, were mired in allegations of widespread poll-rigging. Those who felt that the Abdullah-Congress alliance had “robbed” the elections became the first recruits of the incipient insurgency.
• In an effort towards trying to reach for maximum goals, which was security gains and political mileage, the Congress ended up losing both.
• Currently, the ruling party at the Centre, the BJP, finds itself in a similar position, where its political strategy is eroding the long-term security of the State.
• Critics believe that, what compounds matters is that, unlike the Congress in the 1980s, the BJP is actually making political gains. They point out that they must desist from this temptation.
• Sacrificing its short-term political gains, the BJP should look towards the long-term stability of the State by moderating its own political appetite.

Editorial Analysis:

Experts believe that the situation in Kashmir is volatile and drifting into a negative sphere on two counts. These are:

1. rising violence and
2. the shrinking space of regional mainstream parties after the four-phase urban local bodies elections on October 16.
• It is further believed that the spiral of violence showed no sign of let-up even after Governor Satya Pal Malik was sworn in as the new head of the State on August 23, 2018.
• Experts add that there are many markers which the Governor has so far failed to stop the situation from deteriorating and ensure that all alienated sections, especially the Hurriyat, make a positive move.
• Experts point out that there are more worrying trends for security agencies.
• Srinagar, declared a militancy-free zone once, saw the return of house-to-house operations by security forces.
• Four militants and a civilian were killed in a fortnight of heavy gunfights.
• Further, the fear of large-scale street protests during and after the encounters forced the authorities to close all educational institutions and cancel examinations.

Reasons attributed towards heightened violence:

• Some experts believe that the Centre’s decision to hold urban local bodies elections in October acted as a force multiplier for violence.
• They assert that even the mainstream regional parties, National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), decided to boycott these polls, given the “anxiety and alienation” in Kashmir over a number of issues, including the questioning of special status in the Supreme Court.
• It is important to also note that the regional parties described the civic bodies polls as “an imposition by the Centre.”
• It is also important to note that it’s for the first time that urban local bodies polls were held with no regional party fielding any candidate. The new Governor failed to convince the parties to join the fray. Instead, he ticked them off, saying their “boycott was posturing for Assembly elections.”

Concluding Remarks:

• In conclusion, the poll results were disappointing and far below expectations.
• From over 80% polling in the panchayat elections in 2011, the voter turnout came down to 35.1% in the entire State, while the Kashmir Valley and Srinagar saw 5% turnout, even lower than in 1996 when militancy was at its peak.
• The reversal is discouraging as voter turnouts had increased significantly in this decade, growing ever since the mid-1990s.
• Some experts also believe that the winning of the BJP candidates at 35 wards in the boycott-hit and volatile south Kashmir has only added to people’s anxiety.
• It is important to note that even between periods of intense protests, Assembly and parliamentary elections saw increased turnouts despite boycott calls by separatist groups.
• This indicated a willing acceptance of the need to engage in electoral democracy to address civic concerns even if there were substantive differences and anger with the State and Central governments over issues such as security, human rights violations and the status of J&K.
• However, the inability of the PDP-BJP government to come up with a coherent response to the unrest and protests that raged in 2016-17, and the subsequent imposition of Governor’s Rule have only heightened matters.
• Further, experts believe that the work of the Centre’s interlocutor, Dineshwar Sharma, to carry forward a dialogue with various groups and individuals in the State has also not been enough to arrest misgivings in the Valley.
• Finally, it has been suggested that the Centre must see the lack of participation in the polls in the Valley as a serious sign of alienation among the people and double down on ways to forge greater engagement.
• Also, the decision to hold the civic polls has cast a shadow on upcoming elections in the State, including the panchayat polls to be held in November.
• Finally, the State is also awaiting Assembly elections after the PDP-BJP government fell in August this year. Both the NC and the PDP are yet to show any interest in these polls. It strengthens the separatists’ argument that boycott remains the only option for all parties till resolution of the Kashmir issue.

F. Tidbits

1. Banni’s bane

• Situated near the Great Rann of Kutch, Banni, the largest grassland of Asia, spread over 2,717 sq.km, is in the grip of a severe drought as winter sets in.
• While the area is known for its scarce rainfall and semi-drought conditions, it is for the first time in 13 years that the Maldharis, the nomadic natives of Banni, are leaving their villages in droves as water gets scarce.
• Banni, divided into eastern and western parts, is separated by National Highway 341, which leads to the India-Pakistan International Border. Even the bird sanctuary at Chari-dhand, which boasts migratory birds such as flamingo, is facing an acute water shortage.

G. Prelims Fact

1. India home to two new gecko species

• The spot-necked day gecko and the Anaimudi day gecko, both very distinctly-patterned lizards found only in the higher reaches of the Agasthyamalai and Anamalai hill ranges in the Western Ghats, are the latest additions to India’s reptile fauna.
• Both these diurnal geckos are currently known only from single localities in high-elevation forests located at more than 1,200 metres above mean sea level in the Ghats. There is a possibility that these day geckos could be present in the surrounding hills but more detailed surveys would be required to confirm this.
• While mountain ranges in general have a rather high diversity of such day geckos, the “accelerated environmental decline” that these regions face are a concern.

H. Sunday Revision

Diseases in News

Rabies

• Rabies is viral disease that causes inflammation of brain (acute encephalitis) in warm-blooded animals.
• It is zoonotic disease i.e. transmitted from one species to another, commonly by bite or scratch from infected animal such as dogs to humans.
• The rabies virus infects central nervous system (CNS) and ultimately causes disease in brain and death.
• Domestic dogs are most common reservoir of rabies virus.
• Dog-mediated rabies accounts for more than 95% of human deaths.
• Its symptoms include neurological problems and a fear of light and water.
• Vaccination of pets helps to prevent and control rabies.

Zika Virus

• Zika virus is the virus that causes the infection known as zika fever or zika virus disease.
• The virus is a member of the Flaviviridae virus family and the genus Flavivirus.
• It was named ‘zika’ because the virus was isolated for the first time in the Zika Forest which is in Uganda.
• The zika virus is related to the yellow fever, dengue, West Nile and the Japanese encephalitis viruses.
• The zika virus, because it is a Flavivirus, is icosahedral and enveloped. It has a single-stranded and non-segmented, positive-sense RNA genome. It belongs to the Spondweni sero group.

Swine Flu (H1N1)

• Swine influenza, also called pig influenza, swine flu, hog flu and pig flu, is an infection caused by any one of several types of swine influenza viruses. Swine influenza virus (SIV) or swine-origin influenza virus (S-OIV) is any strain of the influenza family of viruses that is endemic in pigs.
• Influenza A (H1N1) virus is the subtype of influenza A virus that is the most common cause of human influenza.
• It is an orthomyxovirus that contains the glycoproteins haemagglutinin and neuraminidase. For this reason, they are described as H1N1, H1N2 etc. depending on the type of H or N antigens they express with metabolic synergy. Haemagglutinin causes red blood cells to clump together and binds the virus to the infected cell. Neuraminidase is a type of glycoside hydrolase enzyme which helps to move the virus particles through the infected cell and assist in budding from the host cells.
• Some strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and cause a small fraction of all influenza-like illness and a small fraction of all seasonal influenza. Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs (swine influenza) and in birds (avian influenza).

Avian Influenza (H5N1)

• H5N1 is a type of influenza virus that causes a highly infectious, severe respiratory disease in birds called avian influenza (or “bird flu”).
• Human cases of H5N1 avian influenza occur occasionally, but it is difficult to transmit the infection from person to person.
• When people do become infected, the mortality rate is about 60%
• Almost all cases of H5N1 infection in people have been associated with close contact with infected live or dead birds, or H5N1-contaminated environments
• The virus does not infect humans easily, and spread from person to person appears to be unusual

Anthrax

• Anthrax is a disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, a germ that lives in soil.
• It affects animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats more often than people. People can get anthrax from contact with infected animals, wool, meat, or hides.
• Anthrax does not spread directly from one infected animal or person to another; it is spread by spores. These spores can be transported by clothing or shoes.
• Respiratory infection in humans initially presents with cold or flu-like symptoms for several days, followed by pneumonia and severe (and often fatal) respiratory collapse.
• Gastrointestinal (GI) infection in humans is most often caused by consuming anthrax-infected meat and is characterized by serious GI difficulty, vomiting of blood, severe diarrhea, acute inflammation of the intestinal tract, and loss of appetite.
• Cutaneous anthrax, also known as Hide porter’s disease, is the cutaneous (on the skin) manifestation of anthrax infection in humans. It presents as a boil-like skin lesion that eventually forms an ulcer with a black center (eschar).
• Occupational exposure to infected animals or their products (such as skin, wool, and meat) is the usual pathway of exposure for humans. Workers who are exposed to dead animals and animal products are at the highest risk, especially in countries where anthrax is more common.
• Anthrax can be contracted in laboratory accidents or by handling infected animals or their wool or hides.
• Anthrax has been used in biological warfare by agents and by terrorists to intentionally infect.
• The standard treatment for anthrax is a 60-day course of an antibiotic. Treatment is most effective when started as soon as possible.
• Although some cases of anthrax respond to antibiotics, advanced inhalation anthrax may not.
• By the later stages of the disease, the bacteria have often produced more toxins than drugs can eliminate.

I. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

Question 1. Which of the following ministries organises the International Buddhist Conclave
biennially?

1. Ministry of Culture
2. Ministry of Minority Affairs
3. Ministry of Tourism
4. Ministry of External Affairs

See

Question 2. Which of the following monumental locations have been accorded with Swacchh
Iconic Place Tag?

1. Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam
2. The Taj Mahal, Agra
3. The Gateway of India, Mumbai
4. Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, Madurai

See

Question 3. Consider the following the statement is regarding Financial Action task Force:
1. It deals with developing policies to combat money laundering and terrorism financing also.
2. It is an inter‐governmental policy making body.
3. It monitors progress in implementing the FATF recommendations through a secretary chosen for this purpose.

Options:

1. 1 and 2 only
2. 2 and 3 only
3. 1, 2 and 3 only
4. 1 and 3 only

See

J. Practice Questions for UPSC Mains Exam

1. The farm loan waiver undermines honest credit culture and discipline. It endangers moral hazard and entails transfer from tax payers. Hence alternative to blanket waivers need to be explored and adapted. Critically examine the statement. (15 Marks; Max – 250 words)
2. The friendship between India and Japan has a long history rooted in spiritual affinity and strong cultural and civilizational ties. Write a note on the contemporary India – Japan relations.

Also, check previous Daily News Analysis

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