#India-EU

[reasonsforhope]

The World's Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think

You might be surprised to discover... that many of the world’s woodlands are in a surprisingly good condition. The destruction of tropical forests gets so much (justified) attention that we’re at risk of missing how much progress we’re making in cooler climates.

That’s a mistake. The slow recovery of temperate and polar forests won’t be enough to offset global warming, without radical reductions in carbon emissions. Even so, it’s evidence that we’re capable of reversing the damage from the oldest form of human-induced climate change — and can do the same again.

Take England. Forest coverage now is greater than at any time since the Black Death nearly 700 years ago, with some 1.33 million hectares of the country covered in woodlands. The UK as a whole has nearly three times as much forest as it did at the start of the 20th century.

That’s not by a long way the most impressive performance. China’s forests have increased by about 607,000 square kilometers since 1992, a region the size of Ukraine. The European Union has added an area equivalent to Cambodia to its woodlands, while the US and India have together planted forests that would cover Bangladesh in an unbroken canopy of leaves.

Logging in the tropics means that the world as a whole is still losing trees. Brazil alone removed enough woodland since 1992 to counteract all the growth in China, the EU and US put together. Even so, the planet’s forests as a whole may no longer be contributing to the warming of the planet. On net, they probably sucked about 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year between 2011 and 2020, according to a 2021 study. The CO2 taken up by trees narrowly exceeded the amount released by deforestation. That’s a drop in the ocean next to the 53.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases emitted in 2022 — but it’s a sign that not every climate indicator is pointing toward doom...

More than a quarter of Japan is covered with planted forests that in many cases are so old they’re barely recognized as such. Forest cover reached its lowest extent during World War II, when trees were felled by the million to provide fuel for a resource-poor nation’s war machine. Akita prefecture in the north of Honshu island was so denuded in the early 19th century that it needed to import firewood. These days, its lush woodlands are a major draw for tourists.

It’s a similar picture in Scandinavia and Central Europe, where the spread of forests onto unproductive agricultural land, combined with the decline of wood-based industries and better management of remaining stands, has resulted in extensive regrowth since the mid-20th century. Forests cover about 15% of Denmark, compared to 2% to 3% at the start of the 19th century.

Even tropical deforestation has slowed drastically since the 1990s, possibly because the rise of plantation timber is cutting the need to clear primary forests. Still, political incentives to turn a blind eye to logging, combined with historically high prices for products grown and mined on cleared tropical woodlands such as soybeans, palm oil and nickel, mean that recent gains are fragile.

There’s no cause for complacency in any of this. The carbon benefits from forests aren’t sufficient to offset more than a sliver of our greenhouse pollution. The idea that they’ll be sufficient to cancel out gross emissions and get the world to net zero by the middle of this century depends on extraordinarily optimistic assumptions on both sides of the equation.

Still, we should celebrate our success in slowing a pattern of human deforestation that’s been going on for nearly 100,000 years. Nothing about the damage we do to our planet is inevitable. With effort, it may even be reversible.

-via Bloomburg, January 28, 2024

[beardedmrbean]

TOKYO -- A Japanese spacecraft touched down on the moon early Saturday, making Japan the fifth country to reach the lunar surface. But officials said they still needed to analyze the pinpoint accuracy of the landing.

Hitoshi Kuninaka, head of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said they believe that rovers were launched and data were being transmitted back to Earth. But there could an issue with the power supply.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed at about 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time on Saturday (1520 GMT Friday). Japan follows the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India in reaching the moon.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Japan’s spacecraft arrived on the surface of the moon early Saturday, but it wasn’t immediately clear if the landing was a success, because the Japanese space agency said it was still “checking its status.”

More details about the spacecraft, which is carrying no astronauts, would be given at a news conference, officials said. If the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

SLIM came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday).

As the spacecraft descended, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's mission control said that everything was going as planned and later said that SLIM was on the lunar surface. But there was no mention of whether the landing was successful.

Mission control kept repeating that it was “checking its status" and that more information would be given at a news conference. It wasn't immediately clear when the news conference would start.

SLIM, nicknamed "the Moon Sniper," started its descent at midnight Saturday, and within 15 minutes it was down to about 10 kilometers (six miles) above the lunar surface, according to the space agency, which is known as JAXA.

At an altitude of five kilometers (three miles), the lander was in a vertical descent mode, then at 50 meters (165 feet) above the surface, SLIM was supposed to make a parallel movement to find a safe landing spot, JAXA said.

About a half-hour after its presumed landing, JAXA said that it was still checking the status of the lander.

SLIM, which was aiming to hit a very small target, is a lightweight spacecraft about the size of a passenger vehicle. It was using “pinpoint landing” technology that promises far greater control than any previous moon landing.

While most previous probes have used landing zones about 10 kilometers (six miles) wide, SLIM was aiming at a target of just 100 meters (330 feet).

The project was the fruit of two decades of work on precision technology by JAXA.

The mission's main goal is to test new landing technology that would allow moon missions to land “where we want to, rather than where it is easy to land,” JAXA has said. If the landing was a success, the spacecraft will seek clues about the origin of the moon, including analyzing minerals with a special camera.

The SLIM, equipped with a pad to cushion impact, was aiming to land near the Shioli crater, near a region covered in volcanic rock.

The closely watched mission came only 10 days after a moon mission by a U.S. private company failed when the spacecraft developed a fuel leak hours after the launch.

SLIM was launched on a Mitsubishi Heavy H2A rocket in September. It initially orbited Earth and entered lunar orbit on Dec. 25.

Japan hopes a success will help regain confidence for its space technology after a number of failures. A spacecraft designed by a Japanese company crashed during a lunar landing attempt in April, and a new flagship rocket failed its debut launch in March.

JAXA has a track record with difficult landings. Its Hayabusa2 spacecraft, launched in 2014, touched down twice on the 900-meter-long (3,000-foot-long) asteroid Ryugu, collecting samples that were returned to Earth.

Experts say a success of SLIM's pinpoint landing, especially on the moon, would raise Japan's profile in the global space technology race.

Takeshi Tsuchiya, aeronautics professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, said it was important to confirm the accuracy of landing on a targeted area for the future of moon explorations.

“It is necessary to show the world that Japan has the appropriate technology in order to be able to properly assert Japan's position in lunar development,” he said. The moon is important from the perspective of explorations of resources, and it can also be used as a base to go to other planets, like Mars, he said.

SLIM is carrying two small autonomous probes — lunar excursion vehicles LEV-1 and LEV-2, which will be released just before landing.

LEV-1, equipped with an antenna and a camera, is tasked with recording SLIM's landing. LEV-2, is a ball-shaped rover equipped with two cameras, developed by JAXA together with Sony, toymaker Tomy and Doshisha University.

JAXA will broadcast a livestream of the landing, while space fans will gather to watch the historic moment on a big screen at the agency's Sagamihara campus southwest of Tokyo.

[a-go-ni-a]

[PT] Fiz mais broches do Aranhaverso: Miles e Pavitr. O último será a aranha do Miguel. Aqui estão os primeiros.

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[ESP] Hice más prendedores de Spiderverso: Miles y Pavitr. El último será la aranã de Miguel. Acá están los primeros.

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[ENG] I made more Spiderverse pins: Miles and Pavitr. The last one will be Miguel's spider. Here are the first ones.

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

I knew everyone has been calling 2024 the year of elections and everything but damn it really has just been one after another

[bogusfilth]

holy shit is it ever election season globally rn

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

(early) torchwood and facism

[head-post]

Largest global IT outage in history did not affect Russia

A global technology outage caused by a software update from US cybersecurity company Crowdstrike caused chaos around the world on Friday, with flights suspended and healthcare, banking and ground transport systems facing major disruptions.

George Kurtz, president and CEO of Crowdstrike, said Friday morning that the company is “actively working with customers affected by a flaw discovered in one content update for Windows hosts” – a glitch that affected Microsoft users around the world. He also added:

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.”

The Financial Times explained that Crowdstrike is “one of the world’s largest providers of “endpoint” security software, used by companies to monitor for security problems across a huge range of devices, from desktop PCs to checkout payment terminals.”

Troy Hunt, a security consultant, wrote on social media that “this will be the largest IT outage in history.” He also added:

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time.”

The impacts of the outage cascaded rapidly. Wired noted that “in the early hours of Friday, companies in Australia running Microsoft’s Windows operating system started reporting devices showing Blue Screens of Death (BSODs).” It continued:

“Shortly after, reports of disruptions started flooding in from around the world, including from the UK, India, Germany, the Netherlands, and the US: TV station Sky News went offline, and US airlines United, Delta, and American Airlines issued a “global ground stop” on all flights.”

The UK has been hit by a glitch

As The New York Times observed, the National Health Service in the United Kingdom “was crippled throughout the morning on Friday, as a number of hospitals and doctors offices lost access to their computer systems.”

Whitehall crisis officials were coordinating the response through the Cobra committee that deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption. Ministers were in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failure, and the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said she was working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights were affected, The Guardian reported.

In the US, flights were grounded owing to communications problems that appear to be linked to the outage. American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines were among the carriers affected. Berlin airport temporarily halted all flights on Friday, while in Australia, Melbourne airport advised customers it was “experiencing a global technology issue which is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines.”

Global flight cancellations

There had been more than 1,000 flight cancellations worldwide so far due to the IT failure, according to the aviation analysis firm Cirium.

Long lines formed at airports in Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations. News outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours. Hospitals and doctor’s offices had problems with their appointment systems, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.

At Hong Kong’s airport, Yvonne Lee, 24, said she only found out her flight to Phuket in Thailand was postponed to Saturday when she arrived at the airport, saying the way it was handled would “affect the image of Hong Kong’s airport very much.” Her already short five-day trip would now have to be further shortened, she said.

In India, Hong Kong and Thailand, many airlines were forced to manually check in passengers. An airline in Kenya was also reporting disruption.

Some athletes and spectators descending on Paris ahead of the Olympics were delayed as was the arrival of their uniforms and accreditations, but Games organisers said disruptions were limited and didn’t affect ticketing or the torch relay.

In Germany, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport halted flights for several hours due to difficulties in checking in passengers, while landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights in Hungary, Italy and Turkey disrupted.

The Dutch carrier KLM said it had been “forced to suspend most” of its operations.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport warned that the outage was having a “major impact on flights” to and from the busy European hub. The chaotic morning coincided with one of the busiest days of the year for Schiphol.

Israel said its hospitals and post office operations were disrupted.

In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing nationwide service disruptions as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards in stores. The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down as well.

Shipping was disrupted too: A major container hub in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Poland, the Baltic Hub, said it was battling problems resulting from the global system outage.

Russia was unaffected by the outage

Meanwhile, Russia was less affected by this outage, mainly due to sanctions, import substitution strategy and technological sovereignty.

The global IT failure of devices running the Windows 10 operating system did not affect the operation of Russian airports and airlines, with flights running as scheduled. There are no problems with the information systems of Russian Railways.

“Rosatom” reported that the systems of the concern “Rosenergoatom” work on “import-independent software,” so there are no problems in operation. The disruption in Microsoft’s work will not affect the operation of Russia’s energy system in any way, the agency said.

Read more HERE

[railsistem]

Alstom to Supply 312 Metro Cars for Delhi Metro Phase IV

Alstom to Supply 312 Metro Cars for Delhi Metro Phase IV

Alstom has been awarded a contract by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to supply and commission 312 standard gauge metro cars for the Delhi Metro Phase IV expansion. This order is valued at 312 million EUR and includes the design and manufacture of 234 standard gauge metro cars for Delhi Metro’s Line 7 and Line 8 extensions. In addition, the contract includes 78 standard gauge metro cars…

[meumundocriatiivo]

Netflix revela mais detalhes do TUDUM e libera lista de convidados.

Olá pessoal, tudo bem? Nos próximos dias 16,17 e 18 de Junho acontece em São Paulo o evento da Netflix, o TUDUM e hoje a Netflix liberou mais informações sobre o evento. Vem conferir tudo neste post as informações que eu recebi da Netflix: Continue reading Untitled

[obamaonaunicorn]

My wall of flags looks good so far, I'll continue to post. I have friends from almost all of these places, and I love them more than anything.

[familythings]

How We Can Permanently Change Our Eyes’ Color

When I was a small kid, I admired Liz Taylor, the famous actress. She was so beautiful and charming in the movies. After some years, she became even more famous as we heard she changed her eye color to purple. At the time, it was unimaginable for me to think that one could change their eye color permanently. But as technology kept developing very few things have remained in the area of unable…

[ikrispharmaa]

Contract Manufacturing Companies in India

In contract manufacturing one firm outsources its products to be manufactured by another organization by entering into a contract which is signed by both the parties for a certain period of time. It’s a business agreement where one company pays another to provide the necessary components to assemble finished goods, or even manufacture the product in its entirety. Contact manufacturers are third-party providers, and most only work as subcontractors or sell their products to other businesses.

In the pharmaceutical industry, there are many options for contract manufacturers to work with drug makers. For example, drug development can be very costly and is often outsourced. Once a drug has been developed, companies will often contract the drug manufacturing itself and the commercial production. Because of the regulations inherent in the industry, the documentation of compliance with the FDA regulatory requirements might be outsourced. Providing formal stability, scale-up and registration batches can be sent to contractors.

Ikris Pharma Network is the certified pharmaceutical contract manufacturing company situated at Noida, India, facilitating pharmaceutical industry by contract manufacturing service worldwide for more than 8 years.

Future of contract manufacturing in Pharmaceutical

India has a strong presence in the pharmaceutical industry’s CDMO (contract development and manufacturing organization) segment. Since India offers world-class quality pharma products at a low price, contract manufacturing is among the fastest expanding areas of the pharmaceutical business. Contract manufacturing for pharmaceuticals requires innovative technologies to keep up with changing market trends. Today, the emphasis is on building resilience in supply chains with multiple facilities across locations to meet the rising and unprecedented demand. According to MarketsandMarkets, the worldwide pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.7%, from USD 100.7 billion in 2020 to USD 146.1 billion in 2025. The ever-expanding demand for generics, increased pharmaceutical R&D spending, and CDMO investments in sophisticated production methods are some of the factors driving the growth of CDMOs today. As a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) supporting key players in the pharmaceutical industry, Ikris Pharma Network (IPN) has prepared for the future by implementing this guidance. Our new multi-product, large-scale fill/finish facility was designed from the ground up with safety, quality and flexibility top of our minds. By investing in best-in-class equipment supported by the latest technology and designing a facility with superior environmental, health and safety, engineering and cross-contamination controls, Ikris can support the varied needs of current and prospective clients now and in the future.

As the entire pharmaceutical manufacturing industry continues to shoulder immense pressure to be more cost-effective and reduce timelines for life-saving medicines, dynamic multi-product facility and equipment design will only grow in prominence. Flexible equipment supported by modern facility design, along with proven processes and controls, reduce risk and can ultimately help eliminate the threat of cross-contamination. With demand growing daily, pharmaceutical companies should take decisive action today to better prepare for tomorrow by investing significant capital in facility and equipment design modernization.

[civilmentor1]

Current Affairs- 3 September 2024

1. Namibia Syllabus: GS 1/PlacesSource: Indian Express Places in News Namibia is facing its worst drought in a century, worsened by El Niño. Status Food availability is critically low. Staple crops and livestock have perished. Approximately 1.2 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity. The government plans to cull 723 wild animals (including elephants, hippos, buffaloes,…

[wanderlustphotosblog]

Italy Entrance Requirements: Everything You Need to Know

Ensure a smooth entry into Italy by understanding the entrance requirements. From passports to visas, to immunizations, I've got you covered.

For many travelers, Italy is a dream destination. With a wealth of breathtaking destinations and countless renowned cultural sites, it’s easy to understand why. However, before you start planning your adventure, it is important to ensure you meet the Italy entrance requirements. This includes being aware of the passport, VISA, and immunization requirements for entry. If you do not meet the…

[rodaportal]

🌍 Orban Urges Europe to RETHINK | Predicts EU DECLINE & Asia's RISE 🌏

The global landscape is shifting! Viktor Orban predicts a significant change in world order, highlighting the West's disintegration and the rise of Asia, including China, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Discover the unexpected alliances forming around Russia and what this means for Europe and the world.

Is the West prepared for this transformation? Will Europe wake up before it's too late? Dive into this insightful analysis and join the conversation.

💬 Share your thoughts in the comments below and let's discuss this global shift together. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe for more updates!

📺 Watch Now: https://youtu.be/kBMSocNRZSI

[head-post]

France overtakes Russia and becomes world’s second largest arms exporter

The latest analysis of arms transfers conducted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that the US led the global arms race, while France outpaced Russia in weapons shipments, according to Politico.

Paris has significantly increased its export market share from 7.2 per cent in the previous five-year period to 11 per cent due to efforts to expand into such regions as India. Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at SIPRI, noted that sanctions imposed on Russia “contributed to the increase in French arms exports.”

France’s rise was fuelled by major deals for Dassault Aviation’s Rafale fighter jet with countries, such as Qatar, Egypt and India.

In the past few years India, Egypt and Indonesia all choose French combat aircraft in competitions that included Russian alternatives.

Read more HERE