KYOTO PROTOCOL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Background

Countries with commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions must meet their targets primarily through national measures. As an additional means of meeting these targets, the Kyoto Protocol introduced three market-based mechanisms, thereby creating what is now known as the “carbon market.” 

The Kyoto mechanisms are:
1 Emissions Trading
2 The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
3 Joint Implementation (JI)

The Kyoto mechanisms:
Stimulate sustainable development through technology transfer and investment
Help countries with Kyoto commitments to meet their targets by reducing emissions or removing carbon from the atmosphere in other countries in a cost-effective way
Encourage the private sector and developing countries to contribute to emission reduction efforts



JI and CDM are the two project-based mechanisms which feed the carbon market. JI enables industrialized countries to carry out joint implementation projects with other developed countries, while the CDM involves investment in sustainable development projects that reduce emissions in developing countries.



The carbon market is a key tool for reducing emissions worldwide. It was worth 30 billion USD in 2006 and is growing.

Annex I Parties must provide information in their national communications under the Protocol to demonstrate that their use of the mechanisms is “supplemental to domestic action” to achieve their targets. This information is assessed by the facilitative branch of the Compliance Committee

Eligibility requirements

To participate in the mechanisms, Annex I Parties must meet, among others, the following eligibility requirements:

o They must have ratified the Kyoto Protocol.


o They must have calculated their assigned amount in terms of tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions.


o They must have in place a national system for estimating emissions and removals of greenhouse gases within their territory.


o They must have in place a national registry to record and track the creation and movement of ERUs, CERs, AAUs and RMUs and must annually report such information to the secretariat.


o They must annually report information on emissions and removals to the secretariat.


ADMIN: LAV

HAPPY EARTH DAY

Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Earth Day is observed on April 22 each year. The April 22 date was designated as International Mother Earth Day by a consensus resolution adopted by the United Nations in 2009.

R.I.P. Human computer & Great Mathematician Shakuntala Devi

She found a slot in the Guiness Book of World Record for her outstanding ability and wrote numerous books like Fun with Numbers, Astrology for You, Puzzles to Puzzle You, and Mathablit. She had the ability to tell the day of the week of any given date in the last century in a jiffy.

In 1977, Ms. Devi extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally.

On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds.



Ms. Shakuntala Devi died at 83 which is a prime number. On 21.04.2013. Sum of digits, 13. Again a Prime number. Numbers rule. Numbers live.
By: Arpit Vaishnavi
https://www.facebook.com/MathsByAmiya/posts/541421569243297

Via: The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/mathematical-genius-shakuntala-devi-no-more/article4640134.ece

July 12 : Malala Day "Girls Education"

Courtesy : ToI Ranchi Edition, April 20 , 2013

Did You Know

Aryabhata

Aryabhata, India’s first satellite, was successfully launched into a near earth orbit on 19 April 1975, from a USSR cosmodrome. The launch of the satellite proved India’s indigenous capability in satellite technology. The satellite also included three scientific experiments. The launch of the satellite not only proved the India’s capability but also created  the expert scientists and engineers who  contributed significantly in launching India’s first mission to Moon, Chandrayaan-I.

Objectives of the Aryabhata Mission,

• Indigenous design and fabrication of a satellite and the evaluation of its performance in orbit
• To have the capability to perform a series of complex operations on the satellite in the orbit
• To have the capability to set-up the necessary ground stations required to communicate with the satellite.
• To test the capability to fabricate, test and qualify the sophisticated spacecraft systems.

Technical Details:

• Total satellite weight – 358 kg
• The capability to maintain the internal temperature between 0 and 40o C.
• Body-mounted silicon solar panels and rechargeable Ni-Cd chemical batteries.
• A PCM/FM/PM down link for communication.
• Total of 91 parameters were monitored
• Real-time data transmission at the rate of 256 bits/sec.
• Non-real time date transmission at the rate of 2560 bits/sec.
• Carrier frequency for the down-link was137.44MHz.
• Carrier frequency for the up link was 148.25MHz.
• Doppler, interferometry and tone ranging systems were used to for the satellite tracking purpose

Scientific experiments:

• X-ray astronomy
  • To investigate celestial x-ray sources primarily in relation to their time variation effect in energy range of 2.5-150 Kev.
• Solar neutrons and gamma rays
  • To detect high energy neutrons and gamma rays from the sun both during quiet times and flares.
• Aeronomy
  • To detect super thermal electrons up to 100ev and to measure the intensities of Lyman alpha and oxygen line at F-region altitudes of the earth’s ionosphere

However, ISRO was forced to switch-off these three experiments due to problems with the power supply.

Some of the experiments successfully conducted were,

• Voice transmission experiment
• Transmission of weather data

A ground station was also set up at Sriharikota near Madras for command and tracking purpose. The satellite was fabricated at HAL, Bangalore. The most of the components used to build the satellite were imported. However, ISRO did gain valuable experience in thermal and power control systems, stabilization and attitude sensor systems, orbiter prediction, telemetry, tracking and telecommand through in-orbit operation and experiment. It was in the orbit till 11 April, 1981.

Source: http://www.indianspacestation.com/space-alphabet/82-aryabhata.html

For Maths Lover: THE PALINDROME Calculation

A magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale struck Iran today.

What 7.6 meaning and what it actually mean (check image left)

---------------------------------------------------

► How do scientists measure earthquakes?

There are two ways in which scientists quantify the size of earthquakes: magnitude and intensity.

Magnitude is a measure of the amount of energy released during an earthquake, and you've probably heard news reports about earthquake magnitudes measured using the Richter scale. Something like, "A magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale struck Iran today.

The Richter scale was invented, logically enough, in the 1930s by Dr. Charles Richter, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology. It is a measure of the largest seismic wave recorded on a particular kind of seismograph located 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) from the epicenter of the earthquake.

Think of a seismograph as a kind of sensitive pendulum that records the shaking of the Earth. The output of a seismograph is known as a seismogram. In the early days, seismograms were produced using ink pens on paper or beams of light on photographic paper, but now it's most often done digitally using computers. The seismograph that Dr. Richter used amplified movements by a factor of 3000, so the waves on the seismograms were much bigger than those that actually occurred in the Earth. The epicenter of an earthquake is the point on the Earth's surface directly above the source, or focus, of the movement that causes the quake.

Dr. Richter studied records from many earthquakes in southern California, and realized that some earthquakes made very small waves whereas others produced large waves. So, to make it easier to compare the sizes of the waves he recorded, Richter used the logarithms of the wave heights on seismograms measured in microns (1/1,000,000th of a meter, or 1/1000th of a millimeter). Remember, you have to be using a particular kind of seismograph located 100 km from the epicenter when you make the measurement; otherwise, all sorts of complicated calculations have to be made. That's why seismologists spend so many years in college!

► A wave one millimeter (1000 microns) high on a seismogram would have a magnitude of 3 because 1000 is ten raised to the third power. In contrast, a wave ten millimeters high would have a magnitude of 4. For reasons that we won't go into, a factor of 10 change in the wave height corresponds to a factor of 32 change in the amount of energy released during the earthquake. In other words, a magnitude 7 earthquake would produce seismogram waves 10 x 10 = 100 times as high and release energy 32 x 32 = 1024 times as great as a magnitude 5 earthquake.

► The Richter scale is open-ended, meaning there is no limit to how small or large an earthquake might be. Due to the nature of logarithms, it is even possible to have earthquakes with negative magnitudes, although they are so small that humans would never feel them. At the other end of the spectrum, there should never be an earthquake much above magnitude 9 on the Earth simply because it would require a fault larger than any on the planet. The largest earthquake ever recorded on Earth was a magnitude 9.5 that occurred in Chile in 1960, followed in size by the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska (magnitude 9.2), a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Alaska during 1957, and a magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Russia during 1952. Two large earthquakes, one a magnitude 9.0 and one a magnitude 8.2, occurred on Dec. 26, 2004 and March 28, 2005, respectively, along the same fault zone off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

The list of really large earthquakes in the previous paragraph brings up another interesting point. Five earthquakes of magnitude 9 or above have been recorded during the past 45 years, which averages out to one every decade. It turns out that earthquake occurrences seem to follow what is called a power-law distribution, meaning that if there is on average on magnitude 9 earthquake every ten years somewhere in the world, then on average there should be one magnitude 8 earthquake every year, 10 magnitude 7 earthquakes every year, and 100 magnitude 6 earthquakes every year. So, if someone "predicts" that a magnitude 6 earthquake will occur somewhere in the world during the next week, don't be too impressed if it happens because random probability tells us that there should be a magnitude 6 earthquake somewhere in the world every 365/100 = 3.65 days! In reality, things are a little more complicated. 

What did people do before the Richter scale was invented? To some degree, one of the same things that we do today. They observed the intensity or effects of an earthquake at different locations. Whereas the magnitude of an earthquake is a single number regardless of where it's felt, intensity will vary from place to place. In general, the intensity will be much greater near the epicenter than at large distances from the epicenter. This decrease in intensity with distance is known as attenuation. Imagine it this way: If I drop a rock into a pool of water, the difference between magnitude and intensity is similar to the difference between the height of the splash exactly where I drop the rock and the height of the waves all over the pool. Earthquake intensity is most often measured using the modified Mercalli scale, which was invented by the Italian geologist Giuseppi Mercalli in 1902 and uses Roman numerals from I to XII. In the United States, we use the modified Mercalli scale, which was adjusted to account for differences in buildings between Italy and southern California. An earthquake intensity of I is generally not felt, and an intensity of XII represents total destruction of buildings. Some kinds of geologic deposits, most notably water saturated muds, amplify seismic waves and may produce intensities much greater than those for nearby areas underlain by bedrock. Thus, after an earthquake seismologists can interview people and make maps showing the intensity of an earthquake in different areas to better understand the influence of rock or soil type on seismic waves.


courtesy : http://tremor.nmt.edu/faq/how.html

HAPPY BIRTHDAY INDIAN RAILWAYS

Happy Birthday Indian Railways.

April 16 1853 : – The first passenger rail opens in India, from Bori Bunder, Bombay to Thane.


A painting of the first train operated on India ran between Bombay to Thane. (Picture taken in the Railway Museum, Delhi, India)

Tan (pi/2)

We most of the time think tan(pi/2) = infinite , 

and our reasoning is 

tan (pi/2) = sin(pi/2) / cos(pi/2) = 1/0 = infinite , this expression is true 

but when we find value of tan(pi/2) its exactly not defined, since it has two values (+/- infinite)[check image] which cannot be of any function [Functions have only one image].

And having two values at (pi/2) we treat this as not-defined.

SO WHEN EVER SOMEONE ASK TO YOU (generally in interviews) :

What is TAN , a function or relation: Answer is Relation

And at odd multiple of (pi/2) "tan" is not defined.

Where the mind

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

ADMIN: LAV

Happy Birth Day Leonhard EULER

13 अप्रैल : जलियांवाला बाग़ हत्याकांड

रक्त-रक्त बिखरा माटी में,

चीख-चीख गूंजे हर ओर |

लाश-लाश का ढेर लगा था,

उत्तर-दक्खिन चारों ओर ||१||

"वैशाखी" का था त्यौहार,

बच्चे सजकर थे तैयार |

पूरा पिण्ड निकलकर आया,

करने खुशियों की बौछार ||२||

भीड़ जमा थी बाग में,

देश जल रहा आग में |

फिरंगियों को लगा डर,

कहीं दम ना करें ये नाक में ||३||

१३ अप्रैल की शाम हुयी,

अंग्रेजी हुकूमत बदनाम हुयी |

हजारों देशवासियों की अमर,

शहादत देश के नाम हुयी ||४||

एक राह पर फौज सवार हुयी,

बाग़ की दुनिया लाचार हुयी |

फिर चली दनादन गोलियां,

मासूमों के सीनों से पार हुयी ||५||

इधर कारतूसों का गुबार,

उधर बिखर रहा था परिवार |

लगी कई छलांगें कुँए में,

पर जीवन का ना था आसार ||६||

बच्चे, बूढ़े राख हुए,

घर के घर ही खाक हुए |

धीरे-धीरे चितायें भी ठंडी हो गयी मगर,

सरकारी आंकड़े ना साफ़ हुए ||७||

जलियाँवाला श्मसान बन गया,

अमर शहीद निशान बन गया |

एक नन्हा "शेर सिंह",

एक रोज "उधम" जवान बन गया ||८||

गया ब्रिटेन, डायर को खोजा,

डायर जो था हत्यारा |

भारत माँ के लाडले ने,

हत्यारे को घर में घुसकर मारा ||९||

माँ भारती के बेटों में उधम का नाम लिया जाता है,

उधम के अफसानों का बच्चों को ज्ञान किया जाता है |

निजी स्वार्थ परित्यागकर जो मुल्क को कुर्बत देते हैं,

ऐसे वीर शहीदों को शत-शत नमन किया जाता है |

ऐसे वीर शहीदों को शत-शत नमन किया जाता है ||१०||

------------------------"जय हिंद"--------------------------

द्वारा --  "आशीष नैथानी"

----------------------------------------------------------------

 http://www.catchmypost.com/Hindi-kavita/q1919-q.html