URANIUM (LEU) FUEL BANK

The Uranium (LEU) fuel bank is a physical reserve of up to 90 metric tons low enriched uranium (LEU) suitable to make fuel for a typical light water reactor, which is the most widely used type of nuclear power reactor worldwide. Low-enriched uranium (LEU) has a lower than 20%  concentration of Uranium-235 or ( LEU is the basic ingredient to fabricate nuclear fuel). It's made by enriching naturally occurring uranium to improve its ability to produce energy. Enrichment increased the concentration of atoms that can be split to produce heat; heat in turn is used to genrrate electricity and it will be stored in the uranium fuel Bank will be enriched up to 4.95%, suitable to make fuel for a typical light water reactor. LEU can safely stored and transported in strong steel sylinders. it's does not deteriorate and can be safely strored for many years. 

The world suffers no shortage of uranium, the raw material for nuclear energy and nuclear wapons. the Amount of electricity genreated globally by nuclear power peaked amount a decade ago. And no reactors have ever been shut down of lack of fuel. Investers lile Warren Buffett has put the first $50m behind a $150m project on August 2015  to build a uranium bank in Kazakhstan, the world's bigest producer of mineral. it sounds like something a Bond villain might dream up, rather than a philanthropic American billionaie. ThoughThere has been a nuclear non-proliferation treaty since 1970, there is nothing to stop countaries enriching uranium for civilian purposes, But from North Korea to Iran, questions are constantly asked about whether uranium-enrichment facilities built ostensibly to produce low- enriched uranium (LEU) for nuclear power are in fact thinly disguised bomb-making kits- enabling the fuel to be spun into the more highly enriched forms used in nuclear weapons. for two decades the world has agonised over whether Iran's centrifuges were producing more of the uranium-235 isotope than was needed for nuclear power, posing a threat to the world. LEU is available on the open market, but if supply unexpectedly dries up, the bank in Kazakhstan can act as a lender of last resort. To ensure the fule's safety and that it is distributed fairly when the bank opens in 2017, the bank will be owned by the international Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a global nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, but opreated by kazakhstan. its uranium will be available only to IAEA members, and will contain 90 tonnes of LEU rather than the "weapons-grade" form. That is enough to power a 1,000-megawatt reactor taht could power a large city for three years. There is some symbolism to the bank being in Kazakhstan. The country says it was the site of 45 devastating nuclear tests when part of the former Soviet Union. it gave up its own nucler srsenal in 2001, yet remains the world largest uranium producer. The bank will be located in the northeastern city of Oskemen, a centre for nuclear fuel production for 60 years.

No doubt, excuses to to build more centrifuges will persist. Many countries ascribe international prestige to having uranium-enrichment facilities. Some, like Japan, have the capacity quickly to turn LEU into weapons-grade materal. Rogue nations rail at unfairness of being left out the club of nuclear-weapon states. Moreover, no nuclear-power provider will need the bank's services imminently; the World Nuclear Association says uranium supply has expanded significantly in the past decade, prices have slumped, and reactors have become more efficient. yet any country enbrking on a civilian nuclear programme need only look at Russia's stranglehold over gas supplies to Western Europe to appreciate the imporrtance of having a secure LEU backstop. If the Kazakh bank helps to limit the number of centrifuges spinning around the world, it may be one of Mr Buffett's best investment yet. 

INDIAN DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND

This theory is known as the "demographic dividend" a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom. He proposes that when young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country's population, the national economy is affected in positive ways.

Demographic dividend is defined as rise in the rate of economic growth due to a rising share of working age people in a population. This phenomenon occurs with a falling birth rate and the consequent shift in the age structure of the population towards the adult working ages. It is also commonly known as the demographic gift of bonus of demographic window.

   Evolving demographics unambiguously point out that India will remain a  young nation and the largest contributor the next few decades because of rapidly ageing population in the Western countries, and Chin's one-child policy.

A young population is India's demographic dividend. It gives India the potential to become a global production hub as well as a large consumer of goods and services. Further, since the age-group of 45-60 years is the key contributor to household savings, India's savings rate, which has increased rapidly in the decade, will get a further boost thereby supporting investment. 

India, world's second largest populated country after China, has 17.5 percent of world's population. With India's population forecast to grow at 1.0 percent  per year, significantly faster than that of China at 0.4 per cent per year, India will become the most populated country in the world by 2030. India's population is likely to rise from 1.21 billion  in 2010 to 1.48 billion by 2030, and further to 1.6 billion by 2050.

By 2050, according to an International Labor Organisation Paper, The Percentage of people above the age of 65 will be 39 per cent in the U.S., 53 percent in Germany and 67 percent in Japan. India, by contrast will have only 19 per cent above age 60.

According to the Census of India, while the proportion of population in the under 14 age group declined from 41 percent in 1961 to 35.3 percent in 2001( that is, by 5.7 percentage points), the proportion of population in the age group 15-59 increased from 53.3 percent to 59.9 percent ( that is, by 3.6 percentage points) during the same period. The proportion of those above 5.6 percent to 7.4 percent ( that is, by 1.8 percentage points). In terms of absolute numbers, the increase in the 15-34 age-group population is even more dramatic; from 174.26 million (31.79 per cent) in 1970 to 354.15 million (34.43 per cent) in 2000.

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

A remarkable discovery has been made by radio astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian center for Astrophysics, Massachusetts. They found evidence of primordial gravitational waves imprinted on the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a field of energy pervading the universe. Gravitational waves are a prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which is the modern theory of gravity. They have never seen directly, though an indirect proof of their existence, based on studying a pair of collapsed stars, was rewarded with the 1993 Novel Prize in physics. This discovery has not changed this state of affairs. But they have inferred the wave presence from their effect on the cosmic microwave background radiation- a faint afterglow of the universe's hot youth that now forms an electromagnetic mist which pervades the cosmos. on February 11, 2016, LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration teams confirmed the directly detection of Gravitational waves from the inward spiral and merger of a pair of black holes. This is one of the biggest discovery of modern theory of gravity. Gravitational waves had previously been observed only indirectly, through their effect on the timing of pulsars in binary systems.

• About 14 billion years ago, the universe was packed into a very small, hot and dense volume that exposed, releasing lots of energy. this is the Big-Bang.

• About 30:36 second later, the universe's expansion briefly accelerated before slowing down. This was the cosmic inflation, described by group of theories.

• About 3,80,000 years later, matter had started to clump together to let energy from the Bang pass through the universe uninhibited. This residual energy is called the cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

• If cosmos inflation had happened; it would have released gravitational waves rippling thought the universe. These waves would have caused some changes to the CMB.

EURO

The euro,the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the US Dollar, was launched in 1999 by the provisions of 1992 Maastricht Treaty. There were both political and economic reasons for creating Euro as single currency. Politically, supporters argue that the euro will strengthen European unity and help to promote stability, peace and prosperity in Europe. And in economic terms, they believe the euro complements the free movement of people, goods, services and capital set up under the European single market. To participate in the currency, member states are meant to meet strict criteria, such as a budget deficit of less than three per cent of their GDP, a debt ratio of less than sixty per cent of GDP (both of which were ultimately widely flouted after introduction), low inflation, and interest rates close to the EU average. Currently 19 countries and Spain using Euro replacing their currencies. Denmark, Sweden and the UK are the only countries in the EU that have not so far adopted the euro.

The euro is also being used by some non EU countries viz. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, the Vatican and French overseas territories, including Martinique and Guadalupe in the Caribbean and Reunion inland in the Indian Ocean. It is also the official currency in Montenegro and Kosovo.

WWW

World Wide Web has many connotations and interpretations. For some, the web is a medium of free expression and for others it is something that merits censorship. But Sir Tim Beners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, in 1998 said “the Web is an abstract (imaginary) space of information”.  However, Sir Tim’s proposal was initially rejected by his boss at the Swiss Physics laboratory, CERN. It wasn’t accepted until he proposed the three technologies HTML (HyperText Markup Language), URI(Uniform Resource Identifier) and HTTP(Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The web was built on the foundation of these three, and they still remain in the use. In the beginning, the webpage were static, read-only text pages. Images world open in another browser window. Its changed when the first user-friendly browser Mosaic was launched. It provide to be critical in the explosion of web. The pages looked better with inline images and it had most of the features that is seen today in a browser. A URI bar, back and forward buttons were first introduced by Mosaic. Netscape Navigator came much later and turned the web on its head. However, what made the World Wide Web even more attractive was that CERN waived its royalties in 1993. This paved the way for innovation and made the web what it is today. 

EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK

The tasks of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and of the eurosystem are laid down in the Treaty establishing the European Community. They are specified in the Statute of the ESCB and of the European Central Bank(ECB).

The primary objective of the ESCB shall be to maintain price stability and support the general economic policies in the Community with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Community. The  ECB also responsible for framing and implementing the EU's economic and monetary policy.

The European Central Bank (ECB, based in Frankfurt, Germany) manages the euro - the EU's single currency - and safeguards price stability in the EU.

These institutes are said to be supranational. Now the question that comes to mind - why these institutions are called supranational ?

The supranational nature of European institutions is due to the independence of the institutions vis-à-vis the mamber states. In other worlds, the European institutions pursue the common European interest. The European Commissioners, the mambers of the European Parliament (EP), the employees of the European Court of Justice and the officials of other European institutions all have a European mandate. The are supposed to deal with the matters submitted  to them and the staff under them without taking any account of their own country of origin.

But, it is believed that the European institutions suffer from 'democratic deficit'. This is the result of various factors, they are complex ways of decision making; the decision-making mechanism still being tilted too much on the side of the Council (the member states ) and the Commission; the power of European Parliament still being limited, as compared to the that of the Council; the unanimous vote method in many fields, which allows one country to block common decision so as to hold on to a decisive advantage; A communications policy that has long been deficient and directed downwards from on high (the "top-down"method) rather than from the ordinary person towards the European institutions ("bottom-up") and lack of transparency. But that dosn't mean that the institutions a such don't have sufficient democratic legitimacy. The process of European Integration has been envolving continuously right from the outset.  

WATER

we drink it, swim in it, wash ourselves with it, use it for cooking; in fact it constitute up to two-thirds of our bodies as well-indeed, no substance is as familiar to us as water. And yet this colourless, odourless fluid continues to puzzle science with its unexpected behaviour. 

water happens to be one of the smallest molecules known to us-just two atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Practically no chemical compound has a lighter and simpler-and yet no substance affects our planet as powerfully as this one does. It influences our weather and climate, is able to carry away high hills, carve out colossal canyons, flood might oceans and cover the land in thick sheets of ice.

And of course, without it there would be no life of any kind on earth. This colourless liquid is present in every organism-two-third of the human body is made up of water. Human can go several weeks without food, but will die in a few days without water. The same applies to most plants and animals. Whether they are bugs, birds or bunnies, trees, mushrooms or bacteria, water keeps the entire biological cycle in motion. Even the spiral DNA molecule would collapse instantly without this fluid.

water is so omnipresent that even those who have no idea whatsoever of chemistry are usually familiar with its formula H₂O - two atoms of hydrogen (H) combining with one atom of oxygen (O). And yet, this substance that we take for granted is anything but simple. Water is a curious paradox: a material that has been researched so extensively that data on it could fill entire libraries, but it also continues to present science new mysteries to puzzle over.

For this little molecule never quite behaves like other chemically comparable substances. Over the centuries researchers have discovered over 70 strange properties (called anomalies) of the H₂O molecule. To unlock its last secrets, scientists have now brought out the big guns: they are putting water under extremely high pressures, bombarding it with high-energy X-rays, forcing it through pipes 7,500 times narrower than the finest blood vessels, and simulating its behaviour on super computers.

The singular properties of this colourless, odourless and tasteless liquid are critical to many processes on our planet. If H₂O molecules looked even a tiny bit different, earth would be a lifeless desert. we all exist only because water has several special features. The most important of these are:

1. Water occurs on earth as a liquid.

2. It evaporates at a boiling point of 100^o C

3. When liquid H₂O freezes into ice, it expands.

4. Water is a perfect solvent.

5. The simple structure of this substance plays a major role in the complex biochemical processes of the body.

After centuries of research  we would like to believe that we know everything about this compound. But, as the renowned scientific journal Nature declared some time ago, "No one really understand water."