My Science School

Tension between India and China escalated over the disputed Doklam on June 16, 2017, When Chinese troops tried to extend a border road through the Doklam area. Indian troops objected to it and the stand-off continued for a couple of months till Aug 28. The stand-off was resolved following mutual withdrawal of troops. The Indian Army is planning to institutionalise the key war committee that was created during the Doklam stand-off. Doklam is an area with a narrow plateau and a valley lying on the Bhutan-China border, near India. An area of strategic importance to all three countries, Doklam in Western Bhutan is disputed between China and Bhutan. India supports Bhutan’s claim.

The Bhutanese government told China that “the construction of the road inside Bhutanese territory is a direct violation of the agreements and affects the process of demarcating the boundary between our two countries.” On June 30, the Ministry of External Affairs said: “Such construction would represent a significant change of status quo with serious security implications for India.”

The Chinese government released a map to accuse India of trespassing into its territory, and in a detailed statement in the first week of August, it said “India has no right to interfere in or impede the boundary talks between China and Bhutan.”

 

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The Goods and Services Tax, which came into effect on July 1, 2017, is an indirect tax levied on the supply of goods and services across the country. Simply put, it is one uniform indirect tax for the entire country. A comprehensive tax, it has done away with cascading taxes and consolidated Central and State levies. Under the GST, the customer is in a position to source from any supplier and the latter is in a position to access markets across the country.

GST would be levied on the basis of the destination principle. Exports would be zero-rated, and imports would attract tax in the same manner as domestic goods and services. In addition to the IGST in respect of supply of goods, an additional tax of up to 1% has been proposed to be levied by the central government. The revenue from this tax is to be assigned to the origin states. This tax is proposed to be levied for the first two years or a longer period, as recommended by the GST Council.

 

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For the first time, the annual budget for the Union Government was presented on February 1, 2017, a month earlier than usual, by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Lok Sabha. Also, the 92-years-old tradition of presenting the Railway budget ahead of the general budget was discontinued and the Railway budget was merged into the general budget. The decision was taken as part of the government’s budgetary reforms. According to a NITI Aayog report, as the size of the Railway budget had shrunken compared to the general budget, a separate Railway budget was not required.

 This was the largest allocation in the history of Indian Railways. This was a historic moment for the Indian Railways. In the budget of 2017, Jaitley paid special attention to passenger safety, development works, cleanliness and finance and accounting reforms. At the same time, in an unprecedented initiative, Jaitley also proposed listing of railway subsidiaries like IRCTC, IRCON and IRFC in the market.

 

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The past decade witnessed several protests by the people for a variety of reasons.

2011: When anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare began a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar on April 5, 2011, it led to the resignation of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar from the group of ministers charged with reviewing the draft Jan Lokpal Bill.

2017: On January 8, 2017, the people of Tamil Nadu erupted in protest against a Supreme Court ban on Jallikattu following complaints of animal cruelty. Contending that the traditional bull-taming sport is quintessential to their cultural identity, people from all walks of life converged near Chennai’s Marina to express solidarity with the protesters. The protests gained momentum and soon spread all over the state. The Tamil Nadu government legalized Jallikattu on January 23, 2017.

2018: Thousand of farmers across the country began their march to Parliament on Nov. 30, 2018 to highlight the worsening agrarian crisis. They wanted their demands – better crop prices, drought relief and loan waivers- discussed in the winter session that year.

2019: Protests continue to rage in the country following the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in December 2019 and the proposed pan-India NRC.

 

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In September 2016, India inked a deal with France’s Dassault Aviation for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets as an estimated cost of Rs 59,000 crore or 7.8 billion. The original plan of the previous UPA govt was to buy 126 jets of which 18 would be in flyaway condition and the rest would be assembled in India by the state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). However, the deal fell through. In order to upgrade the ageing fleet of the IAF, the Modi government entered into the new deal for jets with India-specific enhancements. Besides, an offset clause was added under which France would invest 30% of the 7.8 billion in India’s military aerospace research programmes and 20% into local production of Rafale components. Ever since, questions were raised about the cost agreed upon for the aircraft, violation of procurement procedures, and the choice of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence Ltd as an offset partner over the experienced HAL. However, in December 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed all petitions alleging irregularities in the deal. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh received the first of the 36 jets at a ceremony in Paris on October 8, 2019.

 

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Demonetisation is withdrawal of a particular form of currency from circulation which means it is no longer legal tender. On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the biggest-ever demonetisation exercise in India. Notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination were scrapped. The move was undertaken to crack down on black money and curb terror funding. Cash shortages ensued, significantly affecting the country’s economy. The RBI’s annual report released months after the exercise said almost 99% (Rs 15.28 lakh crore) of the banned currency notes had been deposited in banks between Nov. 8, 2016 and June 30, 2017. With almost all of the money accounted for, there are doubts whether the exercise was effective.

 

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In May 2015, a scorching heat wave killed more than 1,500 people as temperatures soared above 47ºC. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana were the worst-hit regions with more than 1,100 deaths, mainly caused by extreme dehydration and heat stroke. Extreme weather conditions are set to become more common as greenhouse gases heat up the planet say scientists.

Earlier in the decade too (June 2010), a heat wave struck India and South Asia, when temperatures touched 53ºC, killing hundreds of people. Record temperatures in northern India claimed lives in what was believed to be the hottest summer in the country since record began in the late 1800s. More than 100 people died in Gujarat, 90 in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.

 

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The last decade saw two general elections – in 2014 and 2019 – both of which witnessed the victory of the BJP-led NDA.

The 2014 election, held from April 7 to May 12 saw the BJP-led NDA win a sweeping victory gaining 336 of 543 seats of which the BJP won 282 seats (31%), whereas the Congress won 44 seats (8.1%). It was the first time in the history of the country that a non-Congress party had won a simple majority on its own. It was also the Congress’ worst defeat, as it could not qualify to be the official opposition party for which a party should have gained 10% of the seats.

The country went to polls again in April-May 2019. The results saw a landslide victory for the incumbent BJP-led NDA which won 353 seats (of which BJP won 303 seats, a clear majority), while the Opposition UPA –Congress and it allies – secured 9 seats (of which Congress won 52 seats).

 

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The Vyqapam scam broke out in 2013 after the Indore police arrested 20 people for impersonating candidates in the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, popularly known as Vyapam (Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal). Vyapam held competitive exams for recruitment to government jobs and for admissions to state-run medical colleges. The scam involved recruitment of undeserving candidates who allegedly bribed politicians and officials to get high ranks in the exams. It got murkier when a number of people-whistleblowers, witnesses and alleged beneficiaries-died under mysterious circumstances during the course of the investigations which revealed large-scale fraud committed by multiple rackets for years. In February 2017, the Supreme Court cancelled the degrees of 634 doctors.

 

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In December 2012, Delhi witnessed a horrific crime that sparked anger and outrage across the country. A 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped on a moving bus and assaulted by six persons before being dumped on the road. Nirbhaya did not survive the attack. Changes in the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013 to lay down stringent punishment for sexual offences against women followed. And that’s how the law came to popularly referred to as ‘The Nirbhaya Act’. Subsequently, the Nirbhaya Fund was created to be utilized for projects meant to improve safety of women in public places.

One of the six accused in the Nirbhaya case, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide in the Tihar Jail. A juvenile accused was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term. A Delhi court issued death warrants all four convicts in the case and ordered they be hanged on Feb 1.

 

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Living things inherit characteristics from the generations that have gone before, but each individual is slightly different. Over many generations, the differences that are more successful survive, so that the species gradually adapts. In time, these changes, called evolution, can lead to major adaptations and even new species. All living things have evolved from the simple organisms that began to grow in the Earth’s waters. Many of these, such as the dinosaurs, have since become extinct, although they may have lived successfully on Earth for millions of years.

The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring. 

Evolution by natural selection is one of the best substantiated theories in the history of science, supported by evidence from a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including paleontology, geology, genetics and developmental biology.

The theory has two main points, said Brian Richmond, curator of human origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "All life on Earth is connected and related to each other," and this diversity of life is a product of "modifications of populations by natural selection, where some traits were favored in and environment over others," he said.

More simply put, the theory can be described as "descent with modification," said Briana Pobiner, an anthropologist and educator at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in the study of human origins.

The theory is sometimes described as "survival of the fittest," but that can be misleading, Pobiner said. Here, "fitness" refers not to an organism's strength or athletic ability, but rather the ability to survive and reproduce.

For example, a study on human evolution on 1,900 students, published online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences in October 2017 found that many people may have trouble finding a mate because of rapidly changing social technological advances that are evolving faster than humans. "Nearly 1 in 2 individuals faces considerable difficulties in the domain of mating," said lead study author Menelaos Apostolou, an associate professor of social sciences at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. "In most cases, these difficulties are not due to something wrong or broken, but due to people living in an environment which is very different from the environment they evolved to function in." 

Ever since human beings first lived on Earth they have been finding fossilized remains. But it was really only in the nineteenth century that scientific study of the fossils took place. Until then, people believed that the fossils came from dragons, giants or even unicorns!

Thanks to modern science, we know a lot about the dinosaurs that used to roam Earth. How do scientists know so much? It's not like they can observe them in the wild like they do with modern animals. Instead, they rely upon what dinosaurs left behind. No, not their diaries! Scientists study their fossilized bones and, sometimes, other bodily material.

No one knows when the first dinosaur bone was found. Ancient peoples most likely uncovered fossils of dinosaur bones from time to time, but they had no idea what they had found. Ancient Chinese writings from over 2,000 years ago reference "dragon" bones, which many experts today believe had to be dinosaur fossils.

Even early scientists weren't sure about the fossils they found. For example, in 1676, Reverend Robert Plot, a curator of an English museum, discovered a large thigh bone in England. He believed it belonged to ancient species of human "giants." Although the specimen disappeared eventually, drawings of it remain. Based upon those drawings, modern scientists believe it was probably from a dinosaur known as "Megalosaurus."

Megalosaurus is believed to be the first dinosaur ever described scientifically. British fossil hunter William Buckland found some fossils in 1819, and he eventually described them and named them in 1824. Like scientists before him, Buckland thought the fossils belonged to an ancient, larger version of a modern reptile.

As of that time, the word "dinosaur" still had not been invented yet, and dinosaurs hadn't yet been recognized as distinct creatures that were significantly different than modern reptiles. All that changed when British scientist Richard Owen came along.

In late 1841 or early 1842, Owen viewed the fossil collection of William Devonshire Saul. He was intrigued by a fossilized chunk of spine, which was thought to belong to an ancient reptile similar to an iguana that had been called "Iguanodon."

Owen began comparing the fossils he saw and, within a few months, came to two critical conclusions: (1) that the fossils were from similar creatures; and (2) these were creatures unlike anything on Earth today. He coined the term "dinosaurs," which means "terrible lizards."

The periods when the Earth was forming and early kinds of life were developing have been given names. There is also a short way of saying “55 million years ago”: 55mya.

Prehistory is the time before people began to write. The word comes from the Ancient Greek words (pre = "before") and history. Paul Tournal first used the French word Prehistorique. He found things made by humans more than ten thousand years ago in some caves in France. The word was first used in France around 1830 to talk about the time before writing. Daniel Wilson used it in English in 1851.

The term is mostly used for the period from 12,000 BC – 3000 BC, roughly speaking, the Neolithic. Sometimes the term "prehistoric" is used for much older periods, but scientists have more accurate terms for those more ancient times.

Less is known about prehistoric people because there are no written records (history) for us to study. Finding out about pre-history is done by archeology. This means studying things like tools, bones, buildings and cave drawings. Pre-history ends at different times in different places when people began to write.

In the more ancient Stone Age pre-history, people lived in tribes and lived in caves or tents made from animal skin. They had simple tools made from wood and bones, and cutting tools from stone such as flint, which they used to hunt and to make simple things. They made fire and used it for cooking and to stay warm. They made clothing out of animal skins, and later by weaving. Society started when people began doing specialized jobs. This is called the division of labour. The divisions of labor made people depend on one another and led to more complex civilizations.

Some important sciences that are used to find out more about pre-history are palaeontology, astronomy, biology, geology, anthropology, and archaeology. Archaeologists study things left over from prehistory to try to understand what was happening. Anthropologists study the traces of human behavior to learn what people were doing and why.

After people started to record events, first by drawing symbols (called pictographs) and then by writing, it became much easier to tell what happened, and history started. These records can tell us the names of leaders (such as Kings and Queens), important events like floods and wars, and the things people did in their daily lives. The time when prehistory ended and history started is different in different places, depending on when people began to write and if their records were kept safe or lost so they could be found later on. In places like Mesopotamia, China, and Ancient Egypt, things were recorded from very early times (around 3200 BC in Ancient Egypt) and these records can be looked at and studied. In New Guinea, the end of prehistory came much later, around 1900.

          Almost everything that we know about the living things on Earth before humans evolved has been learnt from fossils. Fossils are the remains of dead animals and plants that have been turned to stone over millions of years.

          Because, by definition, there are no written records from prehistoric times, much of the information we know about the time period is informed by the fields of paleontology and archeology—the study of ancient life through fossils and the study of the material left behind by ancient peoples, including the cave painting of Lascaux, and such constructions as Stonehenge in southern England and the huge earthworks at Silbury Hill. There is much that is still unknown about the purpose of these “artifacts,” but the caves show an early ability to create art while Stonehenge demonstrates knowledge of astronomy. It is also possible that religious beliefs and practices were associated with these prehistoric monuments, perhaps involving the winter and spring Equinoxes.

          Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of chronology but in the way it deals with the activities of archaeological cultures rather than named nations or individuals. Restricted to material remains rather than written records (and indeed only those remains that have survived), prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, the cultural terms used by prehistorians, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern, arbitrary labels, the precise definition of which are often subject to discussion and argument. Prehistory thus ends when we are able to name individual actors in history, such as Snofru, founder of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, whose reign began circa 2620 B.C.E.

          The date marking the end of prehistory, that is the date when written historical records become a useful academic resource, varies from region to region. In Egypt it is generally accepted that prehistory ended around 3500 B.C.E. whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently, at around 1900 C.E. The earliest historical document is said to be the Egyptian Narmer Palette, dated 3200 B.C.E.

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          The surface of the Earth is changing all the time. When living things first began to evolve on Earth, there was just one huge continent. Over millions of years, this continent broke up and moved to become the land masses we recognize today. This is why similar dinosaur fossils have been found in very different parts of the world, although dinosaurs were land creatures and could not cross the oceans.

          The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.

          The geological time scale (GTS), as defined by international convention, depicts the large spans of time from the beginning of the Earth to the present, and its divisions chronicle some definitive events of Earth history. (In the graphic: Ga means "billion years ago"; Ma, "million years ago".) Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago, approximately one-third the age of the universe, by accretion from the solar nebula. Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the ocean, but the early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Much of the Earth was molten because of frequent collisions with other bodies which led to extreme volcanism. While the Earth was in its earliest stage (Early Earth), a giant impact collision with a planet-sized body named Theia is thought to have formed the Moon. Over time, the Earth cooled, causing the formation of a solid crust, and allowing liquid water on the surface.

          The Hadean eon represents the time before a reliable (fossil) record of life; it began with the formation of the planet and ended 4.0 billion years ago. The following Archean and Proterozoic eons produced the beginning of life on Earth and its earliest evolution. The succeeding eon is the Phanerozoic, divided into three eras: the Palaeozoic, an era of arthropods, fishes, and the first life on land; the Mesozoic, which spanned the rise, reign, and climactic extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs; and the Cenozoic, which saw the rise of mammals. Recognizable humans emerged at most 2 million years ago, a vanishingly small period on the geological scale.

          The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era, after a geological crust started to solidify following the earlier molten Haden Eon. There are microbial mat fossils such as stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western Australia. Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland as well as "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth … then it could be common in the universe."

          Photosynthetic organisms appeared between 3.2 and 2.4 billion years ago and began enriching the atmosphere with oxygen. Life remained mostly small and microscopic until about 580 million years ago, when complex multicellular life arose, developed over time, and culminated in the Cambrian Explosion about 541 million years ago. This sudden diversification of life forms produced most of the major phyla known today, and divided the Proterozoic Eon from the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era. It is estimated that 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth, over five billion, have gone extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million are documented, but over 86 percent have not been described. However, it was recently claimed that 1 trillion species currently live on Earth, with only one-thousandth of one percent described.

          The Earth's crust has constantly changed since its formation, as has life since its first appearance. Species continue to evolve, taking on new forms, splitting into daughter species, or going extinct in the face of ever-changing physical environments. The process of plate tectonics continues to shape the Earth's continents and oceans and the life they harbor. Human activity is now a dominant force affecting global change, harming the biosphere, the Earth's surface, hydrosphere, and atmosphere with the loss of wild lands, over-exploitation of the oceans, production of greenhouse gases, degradation of the ozone layer, and general degradation of soil, air, and water quality.

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