Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Indian, U.S. air forces to deepen cooperation in Indo-Pacific region: U.S. Air Force chief

News

• Chief of U.S. Air Force General David L. Goldfein has said Indian and U.S. air forces will significantly ramp up operational cooperation to complement the strategic interests of the two countries in the Indo-Pacific region where China has been expanding its military influence.

Beyond News

• Calling India a “central strategic partner” of the U.S. in pursuing common interests in the region, two of the world’s largest air forces were going to jointly shift the focus on the Indo-Pacific region and asserted that the rules-based order must be preserved in the critical sea lanes.
• India, Japan and Australia would provide for deeper cooperation between the Indian and American air forces.
• In June last year, two Lancer heavy strategic bombers of the U.S. Air Force had conducted flights over the South China Sea, sending a clear message to China against its military build-up in the disputed area.
• Three U.S. aircraft carriers the USS Nimitz, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt  have also been operating in the Indo-Pacific region.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

New AI system can train robots for armies

News

• Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence technique that will teach robots and computer programmes to interact with a human instructor and perform tasks for the army.

Beyond News

• Researchers at the US Army Research Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin considered a specific case where a human provides real-time feedback in the form of critique.
• First introduced by researchers as Training an Agent Manually via Evaluative Reinforcement (TAMER), the team developed a new algorithm called Deep TAMER.
• It is an extension of TAMER that uses deep learning — a class of machine learning algorithms that are loosely inspired by the brain to provide a robot the ability to learn how to perform tasks by viewing video streams in a short amount of time with a human trainer.
• Many current techniques in artificial intelligence require robots to interact with their environment for extended periods of time to learn how to optimally perform a task.
• During this process, the agent might perform actions that may not only be wrong, like a robot running into a wall for example, but catastrophic like a robot running off the side of a cliff.
• Help from humans will speed things up for the agents, and help them avoid potential pitfalls, said Garrett Warnell, a researcher at the US Army Research Laboratory.

22 Indian sailors, ship missing

News

• A fuel tanker with several international crew members, including 22 Indian sailors, has been missing for the past two days near West Africa, the ship’s owners have announced.

Beyond News

• The tanker, loaded with around 13,500 tonnes of gasoline, was last contacted off the coast of Benin in the Gulf of Guinea.
• The ship is owned by Japan’s Yamamaru Kisen.
• The region near Benin, especially the Gulf of Guinea, is known to be pirate-infested, and several ships have been targeted.

Tiger Census begins in Wayanad

News

• An eight-day tiger survey, as part of the All-India Tiger Estimation-2018, began in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (WWS) and two territorial forest divisions in the district in Kerala.

Beyond News

• The survey, commonly known as Tiger Census, is conducted in WWS and South Wayanad and North Wayanad forest divisions.
• The forest area in the district have been divided in to 63 blocks, including 23 blocks in the sanctuary and 21 in North Wayanad and 19 in South Wayanad forest divisions, in accordance with the guidelines issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and the Wildlife Institute of India.

165 staffers at work

• Close to 165 trained field staffers are part of the survey.
• On the first three days, a carnivore sign survey will be conducted along three different trails in each block.
• Direct sighting of four species of carnivores, such as tiger, leopard, wild dog, and sloth bear as well as mega herbivores such as elephant, gaur, sambar deer, and wild pig will be recorded. Indirect evidence of wildlife such as pug marks, scat, and remains of killings will also be collected during the phase.
• The sighting of various species of vultures also will be recorded in the sanctuary, the lone habitat of Asiatic vultures in the State.
• Official said that,the collected data, after a three-day transect line survey scheduled for February 7, 8, and 9, will have to be submitted to the Periyar Tiger Conservation Foundation.

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