on 29-Nov-2020 (Sun)

Tropical Storm Eta has formed in the Caribbean, tying the record for most named storms in a single Atlantic hurricane season.

Eta is the 28th named Atlantic storm this season, tying the 2005 record for named storms. However, this is the first time the Greek letter Eta is being used as a storm name because in 2005, after the season ended meteorologists went back and determined there was a storm that should have gotten a name, but didn’t.

Izmir (Turkey)

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD

Two teenagers were killed Friday on the Greek island of Samos and at least 19 others were injured.

The quake triggered a small tsunami in the Seferihisar district of Izmir

At least 37 killed in Aegean Sea earthquake that hit Turkey and Greek island

Typhoon Goni hit the island province of Catanduanes at dawn with sustained winds equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane

A powerful super typhoon slammed into the eastern Philippines with ferocious winds on November 1, killing at least seven people and causing volcanic mudflows to bury houses before weakening as it blew toward Manila, where the capital’s main airport was shut down, officials said.

Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages, swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million in the central Philippines in November 2013.

metropolitan Manila

MANILA, Philippines

France is under high security alert after the killing of three people at a Nice church

France is under high security alert after the killing of three people at a Nice church

the Strategic Trade Authorisation (STA)- 1 categorisation for India; the first 2+2 dialogue; the signing of the COMCASA in a shape acceptable to us; the approval by Congress for a general waiver provision in the CAATSA; a (temporary) waiver for India on Iran oil purchases and Chabahar... A very impressive list of strategic gains

“The U.S. has treated India far more gently than Mr. Trump has treated China, or even U.S. allies, and despite several opportunities to train his guns on India, other than the removal of the GSP, he didn’t do very much on penalising India,” said noted analyst Ashley Tellis at a seminar organised by Carnegie India this week.

Unlike India, in the US, there is no universal requirement of voter identity cards. In a country that has millions of documented and undocumented non-citizens, the integrity of the election can be easily called into question.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage will relaunch the group as an anti-lockdown party called Reform UK in an attempt to fight anti-coronavirus measures imposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government.

The Brexit Party was set up in early 2019 by Mr. Farage, whose years of campaigning against membership of the European Union played a major part in delivering the 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to leave the bloc.

New Zealand’s new Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson will be the country’s first openly gay man

The Labour Party nevertheless signed a “co-operation agreement” with the Green Party on Sunday, which says the two parties will work together on climate, environment and child-wellbeing issues.

This comes after a consortium of businesses decided to hit pause on advertising with Facebook in July, keeping in mind the social media platform’s inability to curb hate speech.

The 'Stop Hate For Profit' movement was participated by an alliance of more than 1000 members including large companies like Unilever, Verizon, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft, Volkswagen and Adidas.

Edward Snowden aims to become dual U.S.-Russian citizen

Pakistan PM Imran Khan to launch ‘CPEC City’ project in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province

“We have decided to grant provisional provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan, which was a long-standing demand here,” Mr. Khan said in a speech in Gilgit city on Sunday.

China has spent years building infrastructure projects in Gilgit-Baltistan, home to an estimated 1.3 million people, including a long stretch of the Karakoram Highway, a key component to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

New Delhi condemned Mr. Khan’s announcement, saying it would “bring material changes to a part of Indian territory”.

“Such attempts by Pakistan, intended to camouflage its illegal occupation, cannot hide the grave human rights violations, exploitation and denial of freedom for over seven decades to the people residing in these Pakistan-occupied territories,” India’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Shri Anurag Srivastava said in a statement.

Thousands in Dhaka rally against France

Five killed in Vienna shooting; attacker sympathised with IS

In contrast to the strong reaction to India’s Jammu and Kashmir reorganisation move last year, China on Wednesday refrained from voicing its opposition to Pakistan’s announced move to accord “provisional provincial status” to Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

China had also opposed the creation of Ladakh as Union Territory. While Delhi had conveyed to Beijing the move neither changed external boundaries nor territorial claims, China said it was “always opposed to India’s inclusion of the Chinese territory in the western sector of the China-India boundary into its administrative jurisdiction” referring to Aksai Chin.

Russia’s top diplomat said Tuesday that about 2,000 fighters from the Middle East have joined the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, the worst outbreak of hostilities in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in more than a quarter-century.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a war there ended in 1994. The latest outburst of hostilities began Sept. 27 and has left hundreds — perhaps thousands — dead, marking the worst escalation of fighting since the war’s end.

Azerbaijan has relied on strong support from its ally Turkey, which has trained Azerbaijani military and provided it with strike drones and long-range rocket systems. Armenian officials accuse Turkey of being directly involved in the conflict and sending mercenaries from Syria to fight on Azerbaijan’s side.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has insisted that Azerbaijan has the right to reclaim its territory by force after three decades of fruitless international mediation. He said that Armenia must pledge to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh as a condition for a lasting truce.

Once the FPCA is approved, a trial is conducted. The county clerk who manages elections in the astronaut's home county sends a test ballot to a team in the Space Center. They then use a space station training computer to test whether they're able to fill out and send it back to the county.

After a successful test, a secure electronic ballot generated by the clerk's office of the various counties in Texas is uplinked to the Johnson's Mission Control Center to the voting crew member. An e-mail with crew member-specific credentials is sent from the county clerk to the astronaut. These credentials allow the crew member to access the secure ballot.

Last week, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins cast her vote for the U.S. Presidential Election 250 miles above the Earth's surface. She cast her vote for the first time from International Space Station's voting booth in the 2016 election when she was an Expedition 48-49 member, making this year her second time voting from a low-Earth orbit.

Voting from space has been possible since 1997 when a bill was passed to legally allow voting from space in the U.S. state of Texas. That year, NASA astronaut David Wolf became the first American to vote from space on the Mir Space Station.

Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI)

Sethukarai coast in the Gulf of Mannar.

Sethukarai coast in the Gulf of Mannar.

Camouflaged within the seagrass meadows, the band-tail scorpionfish (Scorpaenospsis neglecta), well-known for its stinging venomous spines and ability to change colour, was found during an exploratory survey of the seagrass ecosystem.

This was the first time that the particular species was found alive in Indian waters, said a press release.

“During the underwater survey, this species was first sighted as a coral skeleton.

On first look, its appearance was totally confusing and we doubted if it was a fish or fossilised coral skeleton covered with bivalve shells.

The fish is called ‘scorpionfish’ because its spines contain neurotoxic venom.

Neurotoxic

“When the spines pierce an individual, the venom gets injected immediately and it can be extremely painful,” Mr. Jeyabaskaran said, adding that eating the fish would lead to death.

Aptly themed ‘Time for Nature’, the focus of World Environment Day 2020 is on how humankind is on the verge of a breakdown and why it is time to save our resources and reconnect with nature. Hosted by Columbia, in partnership with Germany, June 5

Blue Cross of India, Chennai

Since March, the animal welfare charity continued to keep its rescue activities open (for critical animals) and focussed on treating, feeding and maintaining the approximately 1,800 animals at the shelter. The lockdown fundraising kickstarted with a ketto campaign in early March (over ₹14 lakh has been raised till date) and has been followed by community volunteer initiatives.

SAI (Save Animals Initiative) Sanctuary Trust, Coorg

With over 300 acres under their protection, Pamela Malhotra and husband Anil have always encouraged people to visit their sanctuary in the Kodagu district. This year has been different as the eco-tourism wing had to be closed in March. “A majority of our expenses are paid from our own pockets and donations are few and far between [even smaller donations have stalled now],” says Pamela.

“Asian small-clawed river otters are found at SAI and this year, I documented Eurasian otters that have not been seen in the region for over a century. Both have been listed as ‘Schedule 1’, meaning ‘most endangered’.” The duo is now pushing for a river otter sanctuary which, with the enhanced protection for the area, will also help local communities with purer and unpolluted river water for drinking.

Trunk Call Foundation, Maharashtra

TREE Foundation, Chennai

India Project for Animals and Nature (IPAN), Masinagudi

Karbi Anglong adjoins the southern edge of the 898 sq. km. KNP, which has about 2,400 rhinos. The jungles on the hills of Karbi Anglong are a refuge for animals of the park when it is flooded during the monsoon months.

Manipur’s Churachandpur

Karbi Anglong, adjoining Nagaland, has several extremist groups — some engaged in talks with the government, some dormant.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bhutan for cooperation in the field of environment protection and management of natural resources.

The MoU will cover air, waste, chemical management, climate change and other areas and will remain in force for 10 years from the date of signing.

“On an average, reduction in particulate matter (PM) concentrations over southern part of India is around 50-60%, and over the Indo-Gangetic basin, including Delhi, UP, Bihar, West Bengal etc it is as much as 75%,” he said.

Mr. Varghese noted that the lockdown has also resulted in effects that people cannot see, like the gradual repair of the ozone hole.

Large reduction in air-traffic resulted in a significant reduction in particulate matter and greenhouse gas emissions in the upper atmosphere, some of which are already shown to impact the stratospheric ozone layer through self-lofting of these pollutants emitted by airplanes, Mr. Satheesh explained.

Considering the Brown Rock Chat (or Indian Chat, Oenanthe fusca) lives most of its life in and around older settlements, we hardly see it in Delhi anymore. It is known as an Indian endemic (found in the Indian Subcontinent, though absent in the extreme south).

Both sexes are alike, so impossible to tell apart on the field. They do not show flocking behaviour and are thus found mostly singly or at most in pairs.

The bird is mostly found in the plains, frequenting ruins, abandoned buildings, old brickyards, and low rocky hills. In the days of city bungalows, it was bold enough to enter homes and build nests in a vacant shelf, but today it is mainly found on the outskirts, where such houses are still constructed.

‘Chee’ while raising and fanning its tail and often a harsh ‘check-check’ when alarmed.

Lockdown improved coastal ecosystems of Gulf of Mannar, says study

“Generally, fish tend to migrate in the summer due to high temperatures. But, despite the high water temperature due to climate changes and subsequent coral bleaching this summer, the fish population has increased, thanks to less human disturbance during the lockdown period,” he says.

“The Scarus ghobban, a herbivorous reef fish that feeds on seaweeds, plays a highly significant role in maintaining the ecological balance in the coral ecosystem. The increase of herbivore fish population between April-June 2020, is expected to increase the coral cover,” he says.

eight locations along the coast -- Manapad, Tiruchendur, Thoothukudi Harbour beach, Inigo Nagar, Muthunagar beach, Therespuram, Vellapatti and Tharuvaikulam.

Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar launched the Nagar Van or Urban Forests with 200 corporations and cities across India

This year’s target for tree plantation is 145 crores. We should take a serious pledge to protect forests and minimise the use of natural resources. Mother earth and nature have given signals which must not be ignored,” Mr. Supriyo said.

Give your Netflix and Amazon Prime Video a break today and pick these virtual safaris from South Africa’s many parks and sanctuaries instead. Tune in for elephant sightings, wild buffalo herds and more.

Kruger National Park: From wilderness trails to self-drive adventures, their virtual safaris have been popular among wildlife enthusiasts from across the world this lockdown.

Kruger National Park is a South African National Park and one of the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of 19,485 km² (7,523 sq mi) in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in northeastern South Africa, and extends 360 km (220 mi) from north to south and 65 km (40 mi) from east to west. The administrative headquarters are in Skukuza. Areas of the park were first protected by the government of the South African Republic in 1898, and it became South Africa's first national park in 1926.

To the west and south of the Kruger National Park are the two South African provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, respectively. To the north is Zimbabwe, and to the east is Mozambique. It is now part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, a peace park that links Kruger National Park with the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, and with the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique.

“Carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas that is emitted as a result of the production and use of services and products that affect the earth and cause pollution and change in the climate,” she explains. Burning of fossil fuels is the most common example. It gives rise to copious amounts of carbon dioxide. The next is methane that comes from the rearing of animals in farms, agriculture and from the garbage and landfills.

An average person in India leaves behind two tonnes of carbon footprint in a year.

We fought for conservation of Dehing Patkai after which it was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2004.

3,097 MW Etalin hydroelectric project in Dibang Valley district.

3,097 MW Etalin hydroelectric project in Dibang Valley district. The project is feared to divert 1,150.08 hectares of land, fell 2.7 lakh trees and destroy the culture and heritage of local indigenous communities, particularly the Idu Mishmis.

“The Environment Ministry’s move to green-light the Dehing Patkai mining project is at odds with this forward-looking approach. It is a step backwards for the country and suggests poor inter-departmental alignment on India’s aspirations as a global leader in renewables

About 28% of the Sunderbans has been damaged by Cyclone Amphan, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee

She said 1,200 sq km of the 4,263 sq km forests had been “destroyed”. The Indian Sunderbans, an area south of the Dampier Hodges line, is spread over 9,630 sq km, of which the mangrove forest accounts for 4,263 sq km.

On trees turning yellow and red in the Sunderbans after the cyclone, he said the phenomenon was mostly due to salinity. “The trees that turned yellow were not mangrove trees, it was mostly due to the dense fog of saline water. We are not sure whether the trees will survive. Maybe, if the salinity of the soil comes down, some trees can survive,” he said.

Asian small-clawed river otters were found at SAI Sanctuary Trust in Coorg this year. They will be pushing for a river otter sanctuary, to protect this endangered species.

Blue Cross of India has approximately 1,800 animals at their shelter. Over 95,000 animals have been fed by the organisation.

Case formula- tions are not based on aprioriassessments but rather evolve and emerge, particularly through the early stages of therapeutic exploration. As therap y progresses, working hypotheses are developed about underlying mechanisms related to presenting problems. In EFT, process is privileged over content, and process diagnosis (Goldman & Greenberg, 2015) is privileged over person diagnosis. Process-oriented, case formulation takes into account both the moment and the in-session context as well as understanding the narrative of their lives. The present moment is given priority in the performance of case formulation

Megalogomphus superbus Fraser, endemic to the Western Ghats, has been photographed for the first time in nine decades

Last week, a photograph of a dragonfly in grass-green, yellow and reddish-brown colour and bottle-green eyes trended on odonate forums in India.

“We saw the rarely spotted lyrical white-rumped shama, a resident bird of the Western Ghats locally called solaipaadi. Also a yellow-browed bulbul, lesser yellownape woodpecker and Tickell’s blue flycatcher. Later, we walked to a nearby stream.

Megalogomphus superbus Fraser is a narrowly distributed endemic species, says Kalesh. “You can see them only on the pockets along the Tamil Nadu- Kerala border.

Common Hooktail (female), and photographed the most attractive dragonfly, the Asiatic Blood Tail, which appears in eye-catching colours, the blue and green Ground Skimmers, and the Tricolour Marsh Hawk cloaked in green, yellow and brown. and the colourful Stream Ruby and the Black-tipped Forest Glory.

Odonates are aquatic insects and can always be spotted along streams and other water bodies. All these species can be spotted along the Western Ghats. It shows that the ecosystem is intact

dragonfly belongs to gomphidae family which has six dragonflies – two in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, one in Sri Lanka and three others in the North East

The number of Asiatic lions in Gujarat's Gir forest has risen. It has grown by almost 29% over the last five years. The lion population now stands at 674, according to the State Forest Department.

The number of Asiatic lions in Gujarat's Gir forest has risen. It has grown by almost 29% over the last five years. The lion population now stands at 674, according to the State Forest Department.

This includes 161 male, 260 female, 45 sub adult male, 49 sub adult female, 22 unidentified and 137 cubs. There has been a consistent increase in the population over the years.

After some lions were infected with Canine Distemper Virus, measures were taken to protect them.

161 males vs 260 females. This population estimation exercise was carried out on the night of June 5

After some lions were infected with Canine Distemper Virus, measures were taken to protect them

In fact, exactly such an effect was experimentally verified in an 1895 study of Axel Oehrn*. While subsequent experiments have confirmed this result, it depends sensitively on the type of material being memorized, on the exact time intervals, and many other variables. Now, in some sense this contradicts the Ebbinghaus exponential forgetting curve. In practice, a pretty good heuristic is that the Ebbinghaus curve holds approximately, but there are exceptions, usually over limited times, and for very specific types of materials. I don't mention this to undermine your belief in the Ebbinghaus model. But rather as a caution: memory is complicated, we don't understand many of the big picture questions well, and we should be careful before we put too much faith in any given model.

As a consequence, system designers must look elsewhere, to informal experiments and theories. Anki, for example, uses a spacing algorithm developed by Piotr Wozniak on the basis of personal experimentation*. Although Wozniak has published a number of papers, they are informal reports, and don't abide by the norms of the conventional cognitive science literature. In some sense, this is not satisfactory: we don't have a very good understanding of what spacing schedule to use. But a system has to use some schedule, and so designers do the best they can. This seems likely to work much better than naive approaches, but over the long run it'd be good to have an approach based on a detailed theory of human memory.

Appendix 1: analysis of Anki study time

* The reason is that Anki allows you to specify that you found a card “easy” or “hard” when you review it, in addition to the generic “good” (meaning you got it right) or “again” (meaning you got it wrong). Those additional options vary the exact rate of interval expansion. In practice, I nearly always choose “good”, or tell Anki that I got the card wrong

When a card is initially entered, Anki requires reviews after just 1 minute and then 10 minutes. After those reviews the interval between reviews rises substantially, to 1 day. The interval expansion rate after that may vary a little*, but for my cards the typical expansion rate is by a factor of about 2.4 for each successful review. That means that successful reviews will raise the interval to 2.4 days, then to 2.4 * 2.4 = 6.76 days, and so on. On average, I get about 1 in 12 cards wrong, so by the 12th card we're up to about 2.4 9 = 2,642 days between reviews. Note that we raise to the 9 th power rather than the 12 th power, because it's not until the third repetition of a card that the interval reaches 1 day. If you sum those intervals all up, it suggests the typical time between failed reviews is about 12 years. Note, however, that I haven't been using Anki for nearly that long, and this estimate may be over-optimistic. We can get a lower bound on the time between failures by observing that my mean interval between card reviews is already 1.2 years. To achieve an interval of 1.2 years requires about 0.9 years of successful prior reviews, so on average my cards involve at least 2.1 years between failures. However, the real number may be much higher, since there's no reason to assume my next review on most of those cards is going to fail. So let's say that a conservative estimate is a mean time between failures of between 4 and 7 years. If we assume the mean time between failures is 4 years, then over 20 years that means 5 failures, and reviewing 5 failures * 10 reviews per period = 50 times, for a total of 50 * 8 seconds = 400 seconds, or about 7 minutes. If instead we assume the mean time between failures is 7 years, then over 20 years that means roughly 3 failures, and reviewing 3 failures * 11 reviews per period = 33 times, for a total of 33 * 8 seconds ≈ 260 seconds, or about 4 minutes. Note that in Anki's model a failure resets the review interval back to 10 minutes, then to 1 day, 2.4 days, and so on. In practice, that seems much too conservative. After one or two failures with a card I usually catch on, and it would be better if Anki wasn't so draconian in resetting the review schedule. A better review schedule would reduce the total study time, and I wouldn't be surprised if a typical commitment of ˜2 minutes was possible.

Appendix 2: Using Anki to learn APIs

I probably err on the side of just making things happen… I get so much of a thrill bringing things to life… as soon as it comes to life it starts telling you what it is. - Dan Ingalls