January 15, 2020

The team was astonished by just how widespread the plastic contamination

Three city-based NGOs get together to overhaul the plastic disposal system in Mumbai. (Left to right) Tushar Warang, Dr Nilima Gajbhiye of the NSS Unit, Jayesh Harsora and student Disha Dhadve hand over a sapling to a donor. As Mumbaikars clock in the third week of the plastic ban in the city, two NGOs, Vasundhara Club and Angolichi Goli have come up with an effective solution to prevent the dumping of plastic bags into landfills. The NGOs collaborated with the National Service Scheme (NSS) unit of Ramnarain Ruia College in Matunga on Saturday to beat plastic pollution. A desk was put up at the college quadrangle, where students could deposit a minimum of five plastic bags in exchange for a sapling. The collected plastics will now be donated to the Mumbai based Nirbahaya Foundation who will then send it to the G. D. Environmental Pvt. Ltd. plant in Pune, from where, the plastic bags will be incinerated to produce high-speed diesel and biofuel.The idea behind this initiative is to promote a steadfast alternative to mitigate plastic pollution. Recycling plastic alone does not assure that plastic will not end up in the landfills and water bodies across the city and this initiative enables citizens to put their unused plastic to good use. "The reason we are not giving this plastic to the recycler is that only a certain kind of plastic is used by them and after segregation we are still left with heaps of plastic,” says Tushar Warang from the NGO Angolichi Goli."We want to bring forth alternatives for people to dispose their plastic. People still don’t know what to do with the unused plastic and we are here to fill that gap. We also have a track record of every single plastic bag we collect, as also the saplings distributed. We want to provide a valuable and long-lasting alternative,”says Tushar.Jayesh Harsora, the founder of Vasudhara Green Club, is an advocate for both the plastic ban and for spreading the importance of trees, 


We have only learnt to use plastic, but the second thing about plastic is its disposal which we have not learnt. We cannot dump plastics anywhere. The whole concept might be to beat plastic pollution, but I guess to manage plastic is more important. We have to develop a sustainable lifestyle. Just like when you cook food you have to think of all the members of the family. The purpose for giving these saplings is to connect with nature and to create a source of oxygen in a city like Mumbai.”The drive has managed to collect 400 plastic bags with the help of students from the college and has distributed 80 indoor and outdoor plant saplings to the donors.This collection of plastic bags will now be given to the Nirbhaya Foundation that has been championing the elimination of plastic in the city for the last 18 months. "We are a group of 150-200 ladies who started giving information about the plastic menace to people. But only awareness is not enough to convince people. 

When we recycle plastic it turns into a low-grade plastic. So when hot food is put inside recycled plastic containers, the nanoparticles in them dissolve and enter our bodies; which according to research, is the major cause of cancer and infertility. So why depend on others when we can take action ourselves? Other than plastic we also want to eliminate dry waste. So we send this plastic to make high-speed diesel, which can be used in cars, generators and where every diesel can be used. Our tagline ‘my plastic is my responsibility’ speaks for itself,” says Asmita Gokhale, founder of the Nirbhaya Foundation.

While this activity earlier took place at Goregaon’s Patkar college, these NGOs now plan to conduct various such drives at colleges, societies and slums across the city. "Wherever people are willing to eliminate plastics, we will be there,” concludes Tushar.m-18But they realised that during the course of expeditions dating back a decade they had accumulated dozens of specimens of a species of tiny shrimp that lives between 6000-11,000 metres (19,500-36,000 feet) beneath the surface.Cases of plastic ingestion have been reported among the deepest ocean animals. More than 300 million tonnes of plastics are produced annually, and there are at wholesale plastic blow moulding machine least five trillion plastic pieces floating in our oceans." Because plastic contamination is now so widespread, even at extreme depths, the team cautioned that it was nearly impossible to know what effect plastic ingestion was having on bottom dwelling species. (Photo: AFP) Philippines: Animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with plastic fragments in their gut."These particles could just pass straight through the animal, but in the animals we looked at they must be blocking them.Because deep-sea exploration is expensive and time-consuming, most studies on plastic pollution up until now had been close to the surface, showing a widespread level of plastic contamination in fish, turtles, whales and sea birds. "It's off Japan, off New Zealand, off Peru, and each trench is phenomenally deep," Jamieson said. 

The equivalent would be for you to swallow a 2 metre polypropylene rope and expect that not to have an adverse affect on your health," said Jamieson. It's everywhere. Jamieson and his team normally spend their time looking for new species in the depths of the ocean. Now a British team of researchers say they have discovered cases of plastic ingestion among tiny shrimp in six of the world's deepest ocean trenches.In the Mariana Trench east of the Philippines, the deepest depression on Earth, 100 percent of the animals studied had plastic fibres in their digestive tracts. "We are sitting on the deepest dataset in the world, so if we find (plastics) in these, we are done," Jamieson told AFP. A new research showed how manmade pollution reaches into the bowels of the planet.

The team was astonished by just how widespread the plastic contamination at extreme depths proved to be. Microplastic particles are either dumped directly into the seas via sewers and rivers or form when larger chunks of plastic break down over time.He further added, "The salient point is that they are consistently found in animals all around the Pacific at extraordinary depths so let's not waste time. Yet plastic was found in both. "Half of me was expecting to find something but that is huge," said Alan Jamieson, from Newcastle University's School of Natural and Environmental Sciences. For instance, the Peru-Chile Trench in the southeast Pacific is around 15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles) from the Japan Trench.

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January 04, 2020

The chips for the machines are manufactured outside India

The chips for the machines are manufactured outside India. Indians were voting Monday in the fourth phase of a staggered national election. The machines’ software is designed, written and tested at two electronics companies owned by the government of India: Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited.Each machine requires only a connection between a balloting unit and a control unit; there are no provisions to connect an electronic voting machine to a computer network, much less the internet – including wirelessly. When it’s her turn to vote, a polling official uses an electronic voting machine’s control unit to unlock its balloting unit, ready to accept her vote.


The balloting unit has a very simple user interface: a series of buttons with candidate names and symbols.I have been working on the security of electronic voting systems for more than 15 years, and, along with other colleagues, have been interested in understanding how a nation can tally that many votes cast over such a long period.An Indian election official displays a sample paper record of an electronic ballot during a demonstration of how the equipment works. Then the paper is dropped into a locked storage box.Indian voters line up outside a polling booth in Mumbai, India, Monday, April 29, 2019. (Photo:AP)How does it work?When a voter arrives at the polling place, she presents a photo ID and the poll officer checks that she is on the electoral roll. (Photo:AP) 

New Delhi: About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election for their country’s parliament.3 billion people registered to vote, the Indian national election is the world&48 Cavity-Preform Mould Factory39;s largest democratic exercise.After polling concludes, India’s electronic voting machines are sealed with a very old-fashioned technology. However, because no technology can be tamper-proof, each election outcome should be verified by a manual audit, to ensure that the results are correct, whatever they may be.Indian men stand in queue to cast their votes at a polling booth in Bardhaman east constituency, West Bengal state, India, Monday, April 29, 2019.) Opposition parties have asked the Supreme Court to order audits of half of all electronic voting machines, but that may not happen with this year’s election. (This means about 1 per cent or 2 per cent of each constituency’s machines will be tested. With 900 million of India's 1.After the election period is over and it’s time to tally the votes, the electronic voting machines are brought out, the seals opened and the vote counts for each control unit are read out from its display board. 

(Photo:AP)As I and others have observed, when the machines are being made, there are a number of opportunities for someone to physically tamper with an electronic voting machine in ways that preelection device testing might not detect. (Photo:AP)Security protections – and concernsThe Indian electronic voting machine primarily runs on specialized hardware and firmware, unlike the voting machines used in the U.The Election Commission has not made public any independent security evaluations, so it’s unclear exactly what is – or isn’t – possible., which are software-intensive. In particular, the simplicity of the design allows for simple attacks, such as intercepting and modifying the signal carried over the machine’s cable.A woman tests an electronic voting machine in India in advance of that country’s national elections.The whole system runs on a battery, so it does not need to be plugged in.Different areas of India vote on seven different days, over the course of a 39-day election period. To vote, the voter simply presses the button next to the candidate of her choice. Election workers hand-tally these individual machine totals to obtain the election results for each constituency.After each button press, a printer prints out the voter’s choice on paper and displays it to the voter for a few seconds, so the person may verify that the vote was recorded correctly.

About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election. The Election Commission # should certainly continue to improve testing and provide public reports of independent testing. The voting over seven phases ends May 19, with counting scheduled for May 23. (This article featured in 'Global Perspective- The Conversation'). In earlier versions of the machine, the chip manufacturer also wrote the machine code into the chip; today the electronics companies do it themselves. Now they’re used in elections throughout the country, which happen on different days in different areas. Testing can reveal only some problems, and the absence of problems during testing does not mean that problems do not exist.When it’s time for the polling place to close at the end of the voting day, each electronic voting machine device and paper-record storage box is sealed with wax and tape bearing the signatures of representatives of the various candidates in that election, and stored under armed guard.An elderly Indian citizen is assisted by a polling staff as she prepares to leave after voting at a polling center during the fourth phase of general elections in Mumbai, India, Monday, April 29, 2019.The Election Commission of India argues that any manipulation or error would be detected because the electronic voting machine is tested frequently and candidate representatives have opportunities to participate in mock elections immediately before a machine is used in a real election. The Election Commission of India has repeatedly claimed that the electronic voting machines are tamper-proof. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine – as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places, at least some in extremely remote locations.

This design does offer some protections against possible tampering with how votes are recorded and tallied.While the electronic voting machine system is useful and functional, officials and observers shouldn’t assume there’s no way to tamper with the results.In each constituency, five electronic voting machines will have their results audited by comparing a manual count of the printouts with the electronic tallies. A 2013 Supreme Court directive asked the Election Commission to create that process to protect the integrity of the balloting process. It is intended for the single purpose of voting and specially designed for that, rather than relying on a standard operating system like Windows, which needs to be regularly updated to patch detected security vulnerabilities. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine – as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places.The first version of the Indian electronic voting machine debuted in the state election in Kerala in 1982.At any time during manufacture, testing and maintenance, it may be possible to introduce counterfeit chips or swap out other components that could let hackers alter the results. However, it is possible to make changes that will not be detected.Auditing the machines’ resultsThere is, however, a mechanism for detecting attacks – that printed-out paper bearing the vote and stored securely with the electronic equipment. Parties that lose elections often suspect malfeasance and question the equipment. There are roughly 900 million eligible voters, and the country has typically seen about two-thirds of them turn out to polling places.S. However, a scholarly study has demonstrated there are ways to rig the machinesThe chips for the machines are manufactured outside India. Indians were voting Monday in the fourth phase of a staggered national election. 

The machines’ software is designed, written and tested at two electronics companies owned by the government of India: Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited.Each machine requires only a connection between a balloting unit and a control unit; there are no provisions to connect an electronic voting machine to a computer network, much less the internet – including wirelessly. When it’s her turn to vote, a polling official uses an electronic voting machine’s control unit to unlock its balloting unit, ready to accept her vote.The balloting unit has a very simple user interface: a series of buttons with candidate names and symbols.I have been working on the security of electronic voting systems for more than 15 years, and, along with other colleagues, have been interested in understanding how a nation can tally that many votes cast over such a long period.An Indian election official displays a sample paper record of an electronic ballot during a demonstration of how the equipment works. Then the paper is dropped into a locked storage box.Indian voters line up outside a polling booth in Mumbai, India, Monday, April 29, 2019. (Photo:AP)How does it work?When a voter arrives at the polling place, she presents a photo ID and the poll officer checks that she is on the electoral roll. (Photo:AP) New Delhi: About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election for their country’s parliament.3 billion people registered to vote, the Indian national election is the world&48 Cavity-Preform Mould Factory39;s largest democratic exercise.After polling concludes, India’s electronic voting machines are sealed with a very old-fashioned technology. However, because no technology can be tamper-proof, each election outcome should be verified by a manual audit, to ensure that the results are correct, whatever they may be.Indian men stand in queue to cast their votes at a polling booth in Bardhaman east constituency, West Bengal state, India, Monday, April 29, 2019.) Opposition parties have asked the Supreme Court to order audits of half of all electronic voting machines, but that may not happen with this year’s election. (This means about 1 per cent or 2 per cent of each constituency’s machines will be tested. With 900 million of India's 1.After the election period is over and it’s time to tally the votes, the electronic voting machines are brought out, the seals opened and the vote counts for each control unit are read out from its display board. (Photo:AP)As I and others have observed, when the machines are being made, there are a number of opportunities for someone to physically tamper with an electronic voting machine in ways that preelection device testing might not detect. 

Security protections – and concernsThe Indian electronic voting machine primarily runs on specialized hardware and firmware, unlike the voting machines used in the U.The Election Commission has not made public any independent security evaluations, so it’s unclear exactly what is – or isn’t – possible., which are software-intensive. In particular, the simplicity of the design allows for simple attacks, such as intercepting and modifying the signal carried over the machine’s cable.A woman tests an electronic voting machine in India in advance of that country’s national elections.The whole system runs on a battery, so it does not need to be plugged in.Different areas of India vote on seven different days, over the course of a 39-day election period. To vote, the voter simply presses the button next to the candidate of her choice. Election workers hand-tally these individual machine totals to obtain the election results for each constituency.After each button press, a printer prints out the voter’s choice on paper and displays it to the voter for a few seconds, so the person may verify that the vote was recorded correctly.About 600 million Indian citizens are expected to cast their votes over a period of 39 days ending May 19, in the ongoing election. The Election Commission # should certainly continue to improve testing and provide public reports of independent testing. The voting over seven phases ends May 19, with counting scheduled for May 23. (This article featured in 'Global Perspective- The Conversation'). In earlier versions of the machine, the chip manufacturer also wrote the machine code into the chip; today the electronics companies do it themselves. Now they’re used in elections throughout the country, which happen on different days in different areas. Testing can reveal only some problems, and the absence of problems during testing does not mean that problems do not exist.When it’s time for the polling place to close at the end of the voting day, each electronic voting machine device and paper-record storage box is sealed with wax and tape bearing the signatures of representatives of the various candidates in that election, and stored under armed guard.An elderly Indian citizen is assisted by a polling staff as she prepares to leave after voting at a polling center during the fourth phase of general elections in Mumbai, India, Monday, April 29, 2019.

The Election Commission of India argues that any manipulation or error would be detected because the electronic voting machine is tested frequently and candidate representatives have opportunities to participate in mock elections immediately before a machine is used in a real election. The Election Commission of India has repeatedly claimed that the electronic voting machines are tamper-proof. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine – as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places, at least some in extremely remote locations.This design does offer some protections against possible tampering with how votes are recorded and tallied.While the electronic voting machine system is useful and functional, officials and observers shouldn’t assume there’s no way to tamper with the results.In each constituency, five electronic voting machines will have their results audited by comparing a manual count of the printouts with the electronic tallies. A 2013 Supreme Court directive asked the Election Commission to create that process to protect the integrity of the balloting process. It is intended for the single purpose of voting and specially designed for that, rather than relying on a standard operating system like Windows, which needs to be regularly updated to patch detected security vulnerabilities. India uses a domestically designed and manufactured electronic voting machine – as many as 4 million of them at 1 million polling places.The first version of the Indian electronic voting machine debuted in the state election in Kerala in 1982.At any time during manufacture, testing and maintenance, it may be possible to introduce counterfeit chips or swap out other components that could let hackers alter the results. However, it is possible to make changes that will not be detected.Auditing the machines’ resultsThere is, however, a mechanism for detecting attacks – that printed-out paper bearing the vote and stored securely with the electronic equipment. Parties that lose elections often suspect malfeasance and question the equipment. There are roughly 900 million eligible voters, and the country has typically seen about two-thirds of them turn out to polling places.S. However, a scholarly study has demonstrated there are ways to rig the machines

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