Book Review: Psychology by Robert A Baron

One of the most read books by psychology students is “Psychology – Robert A Baron”. It should not be confused with Social Psychology by the same author.

The book definitely is a wonderful one which explains the concepts in psychology in a lucid fashion. The writing style is such that the reader won’t feel the pages being flipped away.

I would concentrate on the utility of the book with regard to Psychology optional examination by UPSC. There are few things to keep in mind in case you have chosen this as a primary book for psychology.

CLICK TO BUY

Firstly, Its fun to read this book. But don’t miss the concepts which we may miss while reading leisurely. This is a book with lot of icing along with cake. Don’t just have the icing and miss the cake.

Secondly, Its not for all kind of learners. Some aspirants like just the points to be given. There are some who like to read book with seriousness. Then this may not be their book.

Thirdly, You may need to supplement certain areas with reading from other books. Morgan and King’s Psychology book is a popular choice to fill the weaker areas in this book.

Fourthly, In some areas, the concepts are crowded in a small area. eg: Shaping, Chaining etc are in close paras in operant conditioning. Don't confuse the importance of topic with font size in Baron's Psychology!

This book is a good one for civils exam, but do keep in mind its limitations too. 

India’s shale gas policy

What is shale gas?

Shale is a sedimentary stone formation. In the shale formations, natural gas is trapped which is known as shale gas.

source:www.bbc.co.uk

Why suddenly shale gas is in picture?

Countries especially US has developed technology (horizontal drilling+hydraulic fracturing) which has made extraction of shale gas viable. It has made US gas importing country into gas exporting country.

Geo-politics (get more info from net)

• The OPEC countries have been riding high with their control over energy sources. This is challenged. 
• Power equations between nations change with new energy production
• Natural gas is safer, so the shale gas production has role in climate change.

source:www.wikipedia.org

Challenges for Shale gas production

• Technology – A viable business model and technology is needed to develop these fields
• As the OPEC nations aren’t lowering production of oil, the oil prices have lowered. This makes it    challenging, as the shale gas production price would go up J
• Fear of environmental hazards. The technology of fracking uses water jets to open up spaces having gas. This requires tonnes of water – water scarcity. It is feared it would cause water contamination too.

Shale gas in India

In India, ONGC and OIL have been asked to carry out explorations for shale gas production. In first phase only govt run companies have permission to explore in their blocks. In the  next phase other companies would come in to participate.

India’s potential areas -  Cambay (in Gujarat), Assam-Arakan (in the North-

East), Gondawana (in central India), KG onshore (in Andhra Pradesh), Cauvery 

onshore and Indo-Gangetic basins  [six basins]

 

200 words

• Write about the recent trends in world energy production?
• Role of shale gas in Indian/world economy (or) geo-politics
• Discuss the prospects and problems of Shale gas use in India.

50 words:

Fracking - Drilling down into the earth. Then a jet of water,chemicals,sand is injected at high pressure to enable the gas to flow out of head of well.(first pic in this article)

Geo-political significance of Indian Ocean

Geo-political significance of Indian Ocean

The Indian ocean has been important in geopolitical aspect of world from early times. The discovery of the sea route in Indian ocean and subsequent trade as well as colonization has changed the world. The imperialism, spread/change of trade/agriculture etc  has occurred from times immemorial due to the routes in Indian ocean.

In modern times, the significance of Indian ocean has increased many fold.

First, Geological location – (put a small sketch here showing Indian ocean region). The IO serves not only bigger nations like India, China but also littoral states. The land locked countries like Bhutan also depend on Indian ocean for their day to day activities.

source:www.japanfocus.org

Trade-(Put small sketch for trade routes – mallacca / Suez Canal) large volumes of trade in Oil/steel/textiles/pharmaceuticals etc occur from Asia to West and East through the Indian Ocean. The trade has been increasing as the nations like India are rapidly progressing. This makes IOR very important.

Resource- Many areas in Indian Ocean are rich in minerals/oils etc. The mining of these natural resources will change the future of the nation which does it. As a result the technology/political power in this region is of importance.

Terrorism- the IOR is important in the security point of view. The Mumbai attacks has reminded us of the cost for neglecting IOR security. Now India has strengthened its coast guard and navy to meet needs of IOR.

Illegal trade – the illegal trade/narcotics etc has IOR as play ground. The golden crescent/ golden triangle are adjacent to the IOR.

source:www.wikispooks.org

The attempt of nations like US to continue the presence through Diego Garcia ( command over sea ) indicates the significance of IOR.

The rising ocean pollution (put few eg’s) need the cooperation of all nations. In such a situation the IOR and laws governing the disposal of wastes including nuclear waste in ocean assumes large geopolitical significance.

Thus Indian Ocean region has high geopolitical significance in today’s situation due to trade, location, assertion of marine control by world powers, security and environmental reasons.

The above question can be put in words like

Q: Why is Indian ocean called modern maritime silk route?

Q: What is relevance of Indian ocean with regard to China/India?

PS: Add small sketches especially in geo-optionals.

Orion spacecraft SAFAR

Orion

It is a space craft built by NASA aiming to carry humans beyond moon. The mars is a probable destination for the next human landing.

www.wonderfulengineering.com

System of Air quality Forecasting And Research (SAFAR)

Why?

Due to the high level of pollution which is rapidly rising in India day by day., we need a constant monitoring system.

Who developed?

IITM

What is use?

Used for almost real time testing of air quality and forecast. It is complemented by weather forecasting system.

Churyumov–Gerasimenko

Churyumov–Gerasimenko

It is a comet on which recently lander 'philae' investigated. The philae is part of rosette mission by european space agency. The rosetta mission is aimed at investigating the comet nucleus. The comet is also known as 67P

Tibetan Plateau - Role in Indian Monsoon

Tibetan plateau has considerable importance with regard to monsoon in Asia. This along with its repeated presence in news makes it a hot topic. In the past few years there have been many research findings regarding – the elevation change in Tibetan plateau, role on Indian monsoon, the change in the glaciers of Tibetan plateau etc.

How Tibetan plateau affects monsoon?

The Tibetan plateau is a vast structure extending long and wide. The heating or cooling of such a large geophysical structure leads to change in the jet streams during summer and winter. The change is the jet streams are due to 1) tilt of the earth changing with season 2) uplift of air from the Tibetan plateau. These changes in the jet stream in winter and summer results in change in wind over the peninsular region. As you would know when wind flow from the equatorial region to the subcontinent, then rainfall will occur. The rate of heating, duration of heating of Tibetan plateau has considerable influence on Monsoon.

The role of the Tibetan plateau has been given in Savindra Singh’s Geography book .In case you have a friend with geo optional, just have a glance over it.

source:novascience.wordpress.com

The above psychedelic diagrams shows the flow of jet streams in winter. The lower arm disappears in summer. This results in monsoon flow. 

Why important?

We have been trying to predict the Indian monsoon correctly for years. One of the parameters (among several others) is the Tibetan plateau. So unless we clearly get a knowhow of this parameter, it is difficult to make accurate predictions.

News regarding Tibetan plateau 

News one (must read)

News two  (optional reading )

News three  (optional reading)

Unnat Bharat Abhiyan

Unnat Bharat Abhiyan

It is the government of India programme aimed at rural upliftment.

How?
The coveted IITs and other institutions will create technological solutions to problems of India. The focus of the abhiyan will be on areas like water management, organic farming, infrastructure, rural livelihood, renewable energy and employment. The research knowledge will be converted to social capital through this programme. 

source:http://www.unnatbharatabhiyan.in/

Teams will be formed in the institutes which will visit villages and create projects which will directly as well as specifically solve the worries. Once this solutions are derived, then it can be adapted to other villages. The aim is to capitalise the know how of the research community and convert it into action on ground.

Who all?
The HRD ministry and institutes as well as other departments like rural development. 
You can see the details here (click here)

Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System

What is IRNSS? What are its uses?

IRNSS stands for Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).

 It is regional satellite navigation system being developed by India. India will complete it by 2015. It is the Indian version of GPS. It will have two functions 1)civilian use – SPS (standard positioning service) 2)restricted for military use (RS). IRNSS will consist of seven satellites, three in geostationary orbit and four in inclined geosynchronous orbit, and will mainly cover the area around India.

IRNSS will have
a) 7 satellites
b) Ground segment
On the date this article is written, India is working on the launch of the satellites to complete the seven. By 2015 we would have send 7 satellites to create our positioning system.

source:www.ISRO.org

Applications of IRNSS:

• Navigation-Terrestrial, Aerial and Marine Disaster Management
• Vehicle tracking and fleet management
• Integration with mobile phones
• Accurate Timing
• Mapping and Geodetic data capture
• Terrestrial navigation aid for hikers and travellers
• Visual and voice navigation for drivers

National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy

The drug pricing and issues surrounding it has been in news recently. In this article two basic concepts in national pharmaceutical pricing policy are explained.

Suo-moto pricing and Pro-rata pricing

Suo moto

Under the pricing policy, companies are asked to report the price of the bulk drugs/formulations within prescribed time. If the companies fail to  do so, the NPPA can fix the price by itself (suo-moto). Eg: the price of a component goes down or if the tax decreases naturally the price of the medicines has to go down. The companies may not be very interested in lowering price. To improve and correct this lack of interest, NPPA prescribes suo-moto pricing.

photo : www.niper.ac.in

Pro-rata

Pro-rata means A method of assigning an amount to a fraction, according to its share of the whole. Here based on the ceiling price of formulations, the companies can calculate the price of the products. This enables them to calculate price of a product without always coming back to NPPA.

Read more (click here)

Supreme Court guidelines on fake encounters

These guidelines have been given to protect right to life (Art 21), and improve transparency in policing.

16 guidelines are given to prevent fake encounters. The ones of prime importance are given below.

SC said that every police encounter must be followed by immediate registration of an FIR.
 
If it involved death, then an inquiry should be carried out by a Magistrate as required under Section 176 of the Criminal Procedure Code. 

When it entailed only injury, it should be investigated by a Policeman from a different Police Station above the rank of the leader of the raiding party which conducted the encounter. The aim is to see that justice is done by reducing biasness and bringing in transparency.

The court ruled that no policeman involved in encounter death should be given out of turn promotion or gallantry awards by the government till the investigations establish that it was a genuine encounter.

After every encounter, the FIR should be registered and family members should be informed.

The DGP should twice report the number of encounter killings to court.

Restructure the training of police force to imbibe values. (police reforms)

Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

Jan Dhan Yojana

Why this scheme?

India has very low banking penetration. Crores of our citizens do not have a bank account. There are plenty of reasons for this.

The banks do not find it economically feasible to operate full fledged in rural area. (Money is needed to bank!)

The rural population in many places sees it out of their league( accessibility, awareness)

The informal systems have deep route and people rely on them.( Leads to loads of black money in predatory lenders)

 What is scheme about?

Universal access to banking facilities (key word)

The citizens can open zero account bank account in any bank. The private and public players are roped in for this. It provides for overdraft facility as well as both life and accident insurance with every account.

The scheme has very easy Know the customer rules.  Aadhaar card, NREGA cards, voters’ ID card etc are accepted as documentary proofs.

Providing Basic Banking Accounts with overdraft facility of Rs.5000 after six months and RuPay Debit card with inbuilt accident insurance cover of Rs. 1 lakh and RuPay Kisan Card

Financial Literacy Programme

In second phase, the micro insurance, credit guarantee etc will be included.

Read more

Bottle necks/ views

Like every scheme there will be bottlenecks and concerns about this scheme also. The main thoughts from various quarters are

1.        Will the accounts created generate enough ‘dhan’.

2.       Problem of fake accounts.

3.       Will full coverage be possible as many persons may not have an id card

4.       The insurance part lacks clarity

 

credit: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Your thoughts on aspects of the scheme and its bottle necks (as well as solutions) needed for exam.

RuPay:

It is a payment gateway platform created by National Payment Corporation of India. India is the fourth country in the world after the US, Japan and China to have its own national payment gateway, in RuPay.

Clinical trials in India

Clinical Trials In India

India has been in focus as a hub of clinical trials. Many Indian cities and villages have centres which do clinical trials. There are two questions :

1) Do India need to allow the clinical trial

2)ethical issues

3) Is there heavy exploitation in name of clinical trial.

The clinical trials are done by mostly big pharma companies. It is difficult for these companies to get permission in their respective nations for the trials. The pharma companies have a great opportunity to have their trials in India due to high population/ lesser activism against trails/ more persons willing to take trials (lack of alternative)

                                      The heavy exploitation where the middle men in India

 ( agencies/doctors/outsourced companies) bag the money while the person who takes the trial getting a pittance is another sad side. There are complaints that people are brought into the trial through half-truths about the interventions they are to undergo.

source: padisysmobileclinicaltrials.wordpress.com

Why india is a favoured destination?

India has diversity in population and also all diseases. The poor people and easy access to people due to lack of proper health care. All diseases – communicable and non communicable are present in large numbers in india. India has lot of patients who cannot afford medical care. They are lured into the drug trials since they have no other option for treatment.

How is clinical trial conducted in India?

The company has to get the clearance from DGCI and the clinical trial is conducted under scheduleY of drug and cosmetic rules. The pharmaceutical companies deploys CROs(contract research organisations) for conducting researches. The permission of local ethics committee has be acquired before conducting clinical trial.

Is the present system sufficient?

The DGCI's monitoring system is flawed. There is not enough staff or enough expertise to check the plan design or the impact of clinical trial.

Time and over again NGO's/ journalists/ social media have questioned the ease with which many companies got permission for the trials. The incidence where 5 persons undergoing trials at Khamman Andhrapradesh died turned focus on the safeguards of the trials. The SC had also come heavily against the unethical trials. (click here).

The Ranjit Roy report has recommendations for betterment of the system.

Download Ranjit Roy Report (only the recommendations part needed). Read the action taken by government regarding the report.

The links to the recent updates can be found here (click here)

The Action taken report (Click here)

Urband Heat Island

Urban heat Islands

The temperature in urban area is higher than the surrounding lesser urbanised area. This leads to formation of an island of heat (urban area) in sea of cooler region (surrounding lesser urbanised area).

source: EPA 2008, www.urbanheatislands.com

Why is heat island formed?

When an area gets urbanised the normal cover of vegetation is replaced by human built constructions. The human built constructions absorb and retain greater heat than the normal vegetation which earlier covered that area. This leads to rise in temperature. The human constructions/buildings cool off slowly, as a result the night temperature of urban area remains very much higher than surroundings.

Other causes:

• The vehicles emitting heat trapping gases.
• Increased release of body heat due to higher population. (minor)
• Disappearance of water bodies as they get covered during urbanisation.

Impact of Urban Island

Geographical:

The incoming air may rise up rapidly and can lead to higher precipitation.

The heat island may lead to formation of outgoing air waves which repeal incoming moisture laden air leading to lower precipitation.

 In short, the precipitation pattern is affected and it becomes irregular.

source: www.citelighter.com

Energy:

The high heat in urban area increases cooling needs leading to higher consumption of energy as more air conditioners, fans will be operated. The increased energy needs will in turn cause pollution as more fossil fuels will be utilized in power plants for meeting the energy needs.

Human:

Human health and well being is adversely affected. The higher night temperature causes discomfort leading to reduction of sleep. The high temperature in most cities leads to irritation and dissatisfaction.

UPSC Topper Gaurav Aggarwal's Notes

The superman returns

The topper Gaurav Aggarwal has been generous to upload tonnes of meticulously prepared notes in his personal blog. He has uploaded his marks, study methodology and his email id in his blog “The Superman Returns”.

Click here

Update: This is one of the most visited post in this blog, though there is very little text.

Mural Painting in India

Mural paintings in India

Murals are large art work paintings typically done in walls. It showcases some of the earliest efforts of painting in India. The earliest mural works can be seen in ancient and early medieval times eg: Ajanta and Ellora cave paintings.

Nature of art work

The religious themes can be seen in many mural works. The temple murals in Brihadeshwara temple, ekambareshwar temple etc showcases the religious murals. The mural works in eastern india has both Buddhist and non buddist themes eg:mural paintings in arunachal Pradesh. The murals in many places also covers courtlife, family life, scenes from tales, animals etc.

Colors used

Murals are drawn using natural matierials like chalk, terracotta, volcanic rocks etc. The animal, vegetable gum was used as glue.

Significance

They showcase the richness of Indian art. It established that art was very developed in India at very early stage in India. The pan-Indian presence of such paintings is another curious phenomenon. Murals are can be seen in Himachal (north), Kerala(south),Arunachal(East). The large paintings reflect the life and times, beliefs, tales of the ancient and medieval period. Innovative methods were used to illustrate ideas in mural paintings. 

Goods Services Tax India

GST – It is a type of value added tax, which will replace the indirect taxes levied on goods and services.

Value added tax is a multi-stage tax, here tax is levied at each stage of value addition. Eg: - When wood is converted to paper, there is value addition. Similarly when this paper is converted to a greeting card, there is value addition. In VAT, the tax will be levied only to the value added at each stage.

source:www.kinibiz.com

Why GST?

India presently has multitude of indirect taxes. This creates confusion, tax evasion and inefficiency. To reform the present system to create a unified tax collection, GST is being introduced.

GST will :

• ·         Simplify the tax structure (the multitude of the indirect taxes will be abolished after GST)
• ·         Broaden tax base and rationalise tax collection.
• ·         To create a common tax base across states. (States and centre will implement GST)
• ·         Increase growth by increasing export and import

What is objection regarding GST?

States fear loss of revenue and fiscal autonomy.

Solution: Compensation formula after consultation with states.

Gravitational Waves

What are gravitational waves?

They are ripples that carry energy across the universe (ripples in the curvature of space-time continuum). The existence of the gravitational waves was made by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity. Till now there was no direct evidence as these waves are hard to be detected.

source:scienetechdaily.com

 How proved?

By BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) - a telescope at South Pole

Why important?

In proving big bang theory and cosmic inflation.

What is cosmic inflation?

A theory by Alan Ruth that universe expanded very rapidly during its initial formation time.