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GS Paper: GS3-17.Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.

  • Muons and their use to analyse large structures

    muon

    As per a new study, researchers are examining the fortress wall of Xi’an, an ancient city in China, by using tiny outer space particles ‘Muon’ that can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces.

    What are Muons?

    • Muons are subatomic particles raining from space.
    • They are created when the particles in Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays — clusters of high-energy particles that move through space at just below the speed of light.
    • About 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface a minute.
    • These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive.
    • Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”. Because muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos.
    • In comparison, electrons can penetrate through only a few centimetres. Muons are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.

    What is muon tomography or muography?

    • Muography is conceptually similar to X-ray but capable of scanning much larger and wider structures, owing to the penetration power of muons.
    • As these high-energy particles are naturally produced and ubiquitous, all one needs to do is place a muon detector underneath, within or near the object of interest.
    • The detector then tracks the number of muons going through the object from different directions, to form a three-dimensional image.

    Muons and archaeology

    • The technique was first used in the late 1960s, when Nobel Laureate and US experimental physicist Luis Alvarez joined hands with Egyptologists to search for hidden chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre, Giza.
    • Nothing was found at the time.

    Recent feats achieved

    • In 2017, modern archaeologists repeated the experiment with more sophisticated and advanced muon detectors and stumbled upon a major finding.
    • By placing several detectors, the archaeologists were able to discover a previously unknown chamber at least 30 metres long.
    • It was the first major inner structure to be found in the pyramid since the 19th century.

    Uses of muography beyond archaeology

    • Apart from archaeology, muography has found use in customs security, internal imaging of volcanoes and others.
    • Around 2015, scientists used the technique to look inside the Fukushima nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
    • As the site was highly radioactive, they put the two muon detectors in 10 centimetres thick boxes to protect them from radiation and then carried out the scanning.
    • Muography is also being used by researchers to analyse Mount Vesuvius, a volcano in Italy.

     

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  • Artificial intelligence(AI): An immediate challenge flagged by ChatGPT

    AI

    Context

    • With the launch of Open AI’s ChatGPT late last year, the impending changes in the nature of work, creativity and economy as a whole have moved from being the subject of futuristic jargon to an immediate challenge.

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    Background

    • Since at least 2015 when Klaus Schwab popularised the term Fourth Industrial Revolution at that year’s World Economic Forum terms like 4IR, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things, Future of Work, entered the lexicon of politicians, bureaucrats, consultants and policy analysts.

    Sample developments over just the last few days

    • A judge in Colombia included his conversations with ChatGPT in a ruling;
    • Microsoft is integrating the bot with its search engine, Bing, and other products;
    • Google is reportedly trying to launch a similar tool and there are reports that ChatGPT can already code at entry level for Google engineers.

    What are the Concerns?

    • Lifestyle may become redundant: Concerns about plagiarism in universities and beyond, as well as the fear that many white-collar jobs may become redundant in the coming years, as AI becomes more ubiquitous and sophisticated.
    • Implications on labour, education and authenticity: The AI revolution is likely to have serious implications on labour, education, authenticity of content and its authorship, and much else.
    • Case of Social media’s influence in US elections: The concerns around social media’s influence on politics and society became sharp in the aftermath of the 2016 US presidential elections and accusations of voter manipulation by foreign agents. Much of the world is still struggling with the questions raised then.

    AI

    Do you what exactly ChatGPT is?

    • Simple definition: ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a large-scale transformer-based language model that is trained on a diverse dataset of text and is capable of generating human-like responses to prompts.
    • A human like language model: It is based on GPT-3.5, a language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.
    • It is more engaging with details: However, while the older GPT-3 model only took text prompts and tried to continue on that with its own generated text, ChatGPT is more engaging. It’s much better at generating detailed text and can even come up with poems.
    • Keeps the memory of the conversations: Another unique characteristic is memory. The bot can remember earlier comments in a conversation and recount them to the user.
    • Human- like resemblance: A conversation with ChatGPT is like talking to a computer, a smart one, which appears to have some semblance of human-like intelligence.

    AI

    Anticipating possible futures requires engagement with the opportunities

    • The Struggle to keep up with technology in policymaking:
    1. Governments worldwide face a challenge in creating policies that keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement.
    2. Policymakers should understand that they must work to bridge the gap between technology and regulation, as a growing divide could lead to problems.
    • Preparing for technological change in education and workforce:
    1. In addition to creating regulations that support innovation, it’s crucial to plan for the changes that new technology will bring to education and employment.
    2. This includes anticipating new job types and skills required, as well as updating the education system to prepare future workers.
    • Importance of Preparing for technological change for India:
    1. India has been facing the challenge of balancing privacy and regulation in the handling of data for several years.
    2. Successfully adapting to technological changes is crucial for India to make the most of its large, young workforce. If not addressed in time, the consequences could be severe

    Conclusion

    • The transformations the new technology is bound to bring about must be met with swift adjustments in the broader national and international legal and policy architecture. The lag between technology innovation and policy that was seen with the rise of Big Data and social media can serve as a lesson.

    Mains Question

    Q. With the rapid innovations and launching of Artificial intelligence models everyday will change the nature of work, creativity and economy as a whole. comment

  • Project ELLORA to preserve ‘rare’ Indian languages with AI

    Microsoft’s Project ELLORA is helping small languages like Gondi, Mundari become eloquent for the digital world.

    Project ELLORA

    • To bring ‘rare’ Indian languages online, Microsoft launched the Project ELLORA or Enabling Low Resource Languages in 2015.
    • Under the project, researchers are building digital resources of the languages.
    • They say that their purpose is to preserve a language for posterity so that users of these languages “can participate and interact in the digital world.”

    How is ELLORA creating a language dataset?

    • The researchers are mapping out resources, including printed literature, to create a dataset to train their AI model.
    • The team is also working with these communities on the project.
    • By involving the community in the data collection process, researchers hope to create a dataset that is both accurate and culturally relevant.

     

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  • What is Immune Imprinting?

    A slew of recent studies has shown that a phenomenon in our bodies, called immune imprinting, might be making new boosters vaccines far less effective than expected for coronavirus infection.

    What is Immune Imprinting?

    • Immune imprinting is a tendency of the body to repeat its immune response based on the first variant it encountered.
    • Our body does this through infection or vaccination — when it comes across a newer or slightly different variant of the same pathogen.
    • The phenomenon was first observed in 1947, when scientists noted that “people who had previously had flu, and were then vaccinated against the current circulating strain, produced antibodies against the first strain.
    • At the time, it was termed the ‘original antigenic sin’ but today, it’s commonly known as imprinting.

    How imprinting works for immune system?

    • Imprinting acts as a database for the immune system, helping it put up a better response to repeat infections.
    • After our body is exposed to a virus for the first time, it produces memory B cells that circulate in the bloodstream and quickly produce antibodies whenever the same strain of the virus infects again.
    • The problem occurs when a similar, not identical, variant of the virus is encountered by the body.
    • In such cases, the immune system, rather than generating new B cells, activates memory B cells.
    • This in turn produce antibodies that bind to features found in both the old and new strains, known as cross-reactive antibodies.

    Are the booster doses completely useless?

    • These cross-reactive antibodies do offer some protection against the new strain,.
    • However they are not as effective as the ones produced by the B cells when the body first came across the original virus.

    How to circumvent immune imprinting?

    • Currently, several ongoing studies are trying to find a way to deal with imprinting.
    • Some scientists have said nasal vaccines might be better at preventing infections than injected ones.
    • They believe the mucous membranes would create stronger protection, despite carrying some imprint of past exposure.
    • Researchers are also trying to find if spacing out coronavirus vaccine shots on an annual basis, could help with the problem of imprinting.

     

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  • Aditya-L1: India’s first mission to Sun to be launched soon

    aditya

    The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch the Aditya-L1 mission by June or July this year.

    What is Aditya-L1 Mission?

    • ISRO categorizes Aditya L1 as a 400 kg-class satellite that will be launched using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in XL configuration.
    • It will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
    • The space-based observatory will have seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.

    L1: Behind the name

    • L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
    • Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
    • The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun.

    Major payloads

    • In total Aditya-L1 has seven payloads, of which the primary payload is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), designed and fabricated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.
    • The satellite carries additional six payloads-
    1. SUIT, the solar ultraviolet imaging telescope
    2. ASPEX (Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment),
    3. PAPA (Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya),
    4. SoLEXS (Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer),
    5. HEL1OS (High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray spectrometer) and
    6. Magnetometer — with enhanced science scope and objectives possible by extensive remote and in-situ observation of the sun.

    Why is studying the Sun important?

    (1) To understand space weather

    • To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
    • Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.

    (2) Observing corona

    • The VELC payload will be able to observe the corona continuously and the data provided by it is expected to answer many outstanding problems in the field of solar astronomy.
    • No other solar coronagraph in space has the ability to image the solar corona as close to the solar disk as VELC can.
    • It can image it as close as 1.05 times the solar radius.
    • It can also do imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry at the same time, and can take observations at a very high resolution (level of detail) and many times a second.

    Why are solar missions challenging?

    • Distance: What makes a solar mission challenging is the distance of the Sun from Earth (about 149 million km on average, compared to the only 3.84 lakh km to the Moon).
    • Heat: More importantly the super-hot temperatures and radiations in the solar atmosphere make it difficult to study.

    Major missions to Sun till now

    • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has already gone far closer — but it will be looking away from the Sun.
    • The earlier Helios 2 solar probe, a joint venture between NASA and space agency of erstwhile West Germany, went within 43 million km of the Sun’s surface in 1976.

     

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  • Ideal Train Profile: Railways’ AI-based project to shorten ticket waitlists

    The Indian Railways has concluded the trial of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program it built to fix a perennial issue — long waiting lists for tickets.

    Ideal Train Profile

    • Ideal Train Profile was made by Railways’ in-house software arm Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS).
    • It was fed with information like how millions of passengers booked tickets on these trains, which origin-destination pairs were a hit and which were flops at what time of the year, which seats remained vacant for what portion of a journey, etc.
    • This project has been in the works for the past two years, wherein the AI has been “taught” ticket booking data and trends of the past few years.
    • It has come up with the best possible combination of how many berths to keep for which sectors and at what time.
    • The combination of “training data” the AI has been fed goes back three years.

    Significance of the project

    • The AI-driven program has, for the first time, allocated vacant berths in over 200 trains in such a way that fewer people need to turn away without a confirmed ticket.
    • The waiting lists on these trains, as a result, have seen a curtailment.

    Need for AI in ticket booking

    • Currently, the passenger is handed out a wait-listed ticket and asked to wait until four hours prior to departure, when the final seat chart is prepared, to see if she made the list.
    • This is because a large number of berths are earmarked for various quotas and various origin-destination combinations of the train’s routes.
    • If there are 60 halts in a long-distance train, then there are 1,800 possible ticket combinations of origin and destination.
    • If there are 10 halts, there are typically about 45 ticket combinations and so on.
    • The Ideal Train Profile’s AI tells the Passenger Reservation System how best to give out confirmed tickets and for which sectors.

    Way forward

    • The AI does data-driven remote location selection, completely automates the process of quota distribution, and suggests optimal quota for different ticket combinations based on historical demand.
    • The project has got the Railway Board excited about the possibility of how it can manage busy season rush, when the demands of confirmed tickets are at a peak.
    • So the coming summer vacation season will be the first big test for the new system.

     

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  • Green Comet appears close to Earth after 50,000 years

    comet

    The rare green comet that last came to Earth about 50,000 years ago has returned to the skies of Earth. C/2022 E3 (ZTF) can be seen with the naked eye if the conditions in the sky are just right.

    What are Comets?

    • Comets are frozen rocky or gas-filled objects that are remnants of the formation of the solar system.
    • Due to their composition, characteristics and the path they move in, they tend to leave a light “behind them”.
    • Here, the comet itself is green (called the head of the comet) and emits a whitish light behind it (often called the tail of the comet).
    • Just like other bodies in space, comets also have orbits.
    • They are sometimes pulled in close to the sun because of the sun’s gravity acting on them.
    • As they orbit near the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet.
    • The remains of dust following this burning up, from a distance, look like a trail of light to humans on Earth.

    What is Green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)?

    • Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was first discovered in March last year by the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility when it was already inside the orbit of Jupiter.
    • While it was initially believed to be an asteroid, it began developing a tail as the Sun’s influence began vapourising the ice.
    • At the time of its discovery, it was shining with a magnitude of 17.3.

    Why is it green in colour?

    • Comets have often been seen giving out blue or whitish light, or even green.
    • In this case, the green glow “is thought to arise from the presence of diatomic carbon – pairs of carbon atoms that are bound together – in the head of the comet.
    • The molecule emits green light when excited by the ultraviolet rays in solar radiation.

    When and where can the green comet be seen?

    • Observers in the Northern Hemisphere will find the comet in the morning sky, as it moves swiftly toward the northwest during January.
    • It’ll become visible in the Southern Hemisphere in early February.
    • In Indian skies, when looking in the northwest direction, one might spot it 16° above the horizon in the Bootes constellation.
    • But with lights from buildings and streetlights on, it can be difficult to make it out without equipment.

    Is the green comet rare?      

    • It last came in the skies above Earth during the Upper Paleolithic period, a time when Neanderthals roamed the planet and early homo sapiens had just come around.
    • Coming under the category of long-period comets, which take more than 200 years to orbit the Sun, the green comet is not easily spotted.
    • With a highly elliptical orbit, the comet will head back to the Oort cloud and make its next appearance roughly 50,000 years later.
    • But given their orbits, it’s not unique for comets to reappear close to Earth only after many, many years.

     

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  • Bimodal Nuclear Propulsion can send missions to Mars in 45 days

    nuclear

    NASA is planning to send mission to Mars in 45 days using the Bimodal Nuclear Propulsion.

    Bimodal Nuclear Propulsion: What is it?

    • NASA relaunched its program to develop bimodal nuclear propulsion a few years ago. Bimodal nuclear propulsion is a two-part system that includes an NTP and NEP element.
    • This system is expected to enable transits to Mars in 100 days.
    • In 2023, the US space agency started a new program named NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and has selected a nuclear concept for Phase I development.
    • This new bimodal nuclear propulsion system will use a “wave rotor topping cycle” that may reduce transit times to Mars to 45 days.

    How will nuclear propulsion work?

    • Nuclear propulsion is based on two concepts Nuclear-Thermal Propulsion (NTP) and Nuclear-Electric Propulsion (NEP).
    • The NTP system includes a nuclear reactor that will heat liquid hydrogen (LH2) propellant and turn it into ionised hydrogen gas (plasma) that will then be channelled through nozzles to generate thrust.
    • NEP depends on a nuclear reactor to provide electricity to a Hall-Effect thruster (ion engine).
    • It will generate an electromagnetic field that will ionise and accelerate an inert gas (for example xenon) to create thrust.

    Benefits offered

    • Nuclear propulsions have major advantages over conventional chemical propulsion.
    • These benefits include fuel efficiency, a higher specific impulse rating and unlimited energy density (virtually).
    • NEP’s advantage over NTP and conventional chemical propulsion systems is that it offers more than 10,000 seconds of Specific impulse (ISP).
    • ISP is a measure of how efficiently a reaction mass engine (a rocket using propellant or a jet engine using fuel) creates thrust.

    Benefits for manned missions

    • A crewed mission to Mars based on conventional propulsion technology may last up to three years.
    • However, A transit time of 45 days will reduce the overall mission time to months instead of years.
    • This will drastically reduce the major risks associated with missions to Mars which include – radiation exposure, the time spent in microgravity and related health concerns.

    Limitations of these nuclear propulsion systems

    • This means NEP systems can maintain thrust for close to three hours.
    • However, the thrust level is lower compared to conventional rockets and NTP systems.
    • In outer space, the thermal energy conversion rate is just 30-40% under ideal circumstances.

     

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  • AI-Generated Art: Paradox of capturing humanity

    AI

    Context

    • Around the end of last year, social media spaces were trending with Lensa-generated images of online users. A subscription app, Lensa, makes graphic portraits, called “Magic Avatar” images, using selfies uploaded by its users. As AI takes a strong foothold over the realm of art, are we equipped with mechanisms to define what is right and what is wrong in this domain in the first place?

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    The case of Lensa app

    • A subscription app, Lensa, makes graphic portraits, called Magic Avatar images, using selfies uploaded by its users.
    • Celebrities worldwide stepped in to show how they looked so perfect in their avatars in a Lensa world.
    • However, a few days later, hundreds of women netizens worldwide started flagging issues with their avatars. They pointed out how their avatar images had their waists snatched and showed sultry poses.
    • Even after these women uploaded different pictures, Lensa generated hyper-sexualised, semi-pornographic images.

    How art is generated using Artificial Intelligence?

    • Uses algorithms based on textual prompts: AI art is any art form generated using Artificial Intelligence. It uses algorithms that learn a specific aesthetic based on textual prompts and, after that, go through vast amounts of data in the form of available images as the first step.
    • Algorithms generate new images: In the next step, the algorithm tries to generate new images that tally with the kind of aesthetics that it has learnt.
    • Role of artists with right keystrokes: The artist becomes more like a curator who inputs the right prompt to develop an aesthetically-fulfilling output. While artists use brush strokes in other digital platforms like Adobe Photoshop, in programmess like Dall-E and Midjourney, all it takes are keystrokes.
    • For example: The generation of an artwork like Starry Night in the digital era. While Van Gogh would have taken days of effort to conceptualise and get the correct strokes and paint, in the AI art era, it is just a matter of the right textual prompts.

    AI

    Can it truly capture the essence of humanity?

    • The impact of AI-generation on the masses’ experience of art: Art is one of the few pursuits that makes life meaningful. It remains to be seen if AI-generated art will alienate the experience of art from the masses.
    • AI takes away the satisfaction of creating artworks: AI-generated art dehumanises artworks. Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of generating an artwork lies in making it.
    • The questions over the capability of AI to capture subtle human emotions: It is also doubtful whether AI art will capture the most subtle of human emotions. How much humour is “humorous” for AI? Can AI express grief and pain in the most profound ways as described by our poets? Can AI capture the enigmatic smile of Mona Lisa that makes one believe that she is shrouded in mystery?

    Have you heard about Midjourney?

    • Midjourney is an AI based art generator that has been created to explore new mediums of thought.
    • It is an interactive bot, which uses machine learning (ML) to create images based on texts. This AI system utilises the concepts and tries to convert them into visual reality.
    • It is quite similar to other technologies such as DALL-E 2.

    AI

    Arguments in favor of such art

    • Thatre D opera Spatial generated by Midjourney: The question of whether AI art is causing “a death of artistry” was raised, last year, when an entry called “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” generated from Midjourney (an artificial intelligence programme) by Jason M Allen won the Blue Ribbon at the Colorado State Fair.
    • Finding suitable prompts is no less than a genius art: AI artists like Allen think finding suitable prompts to create an artwork amounts to creativity and qualifies AI art as genuine or authentic.
    • AI could democratise art world: Some artists believe AI art could democratise the art world by removing gatekeepers.

    Concerns over the biases in data

    • There is bias in this data available for AI inputs due to a lack of representation of the less privileged communities’ women, people of colour and other marginalised groups.
    • Most of the training data for AI art currently emerges in the Global North and is often mired by the stereotypes of ableism, racism and sexism.
    • Historically, art has performed a political function as a venue for dissent. Can AI art overcome these inherent biases in data to bring out meaningful political engagement?

    AI

    Conclusion

    • AI-generated art can bring new ideas and possibilities to the art world, but it is important to think about how it might change people’s experience of art and if it takes away the human touch. It is also important to question if AI can truly capture the emotions that make art so special. It’s best to approach AI-generated art with an open mind and consider both the good and bad.

  • [pib] First evidence of Solitary Waves near Mars

    In a first-of-its-kind discovery, a team of Indian scientists from the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG) reported the first evidence of the presence of solitary waves around Mars.

     

    Mars

    mars

    • Of the largest Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, being larger than only Mercury.
    • In English, Mars carries the name of the Roman god of war and is often referred to as the “Red Planet”.
    • The latter refers to the effect of the iron oxide prevalent on Mars’s surface, which gives it a reddish appearance distinctive among the astronomical bodies visible to the naked eye.
    • Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, with surface features reminiscent of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth.
    • The days and seasons are comparable to those of Earth, because the rotational period, as well as the tilt of the rotational axis relative to the ecliptic plane, is similar.
    • Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one canyons in the Solar System.

     

    What are Solitary Waves?

    • Solitary waves are distinct electric field fluctuations (bipolar or monopolar) that follow constant amplitude-phase relations.
    • Their shape and size are less affected during their propagation.
    • Solitary waves are known to be responsible for the plasma energization and its transport in Earth’s magnetosphere.

    Unveiling the undercover solitary waves

    • Earth is a giant magnetic entity, wrapped in a magnetosphere generated by the motion of molten iron in its core.
    • This magnetosphere casts a protective layer around our home planet, shielding us from the solar winds coughed towards us by the Sun.
    • But unlike Earth, Mars lacks a robust intrinsic magnetic field, which effectively allows the high-speed solar wind to interact directly with the Martian atmosphere.
    • This interaction suggests that even with a weak and flimsy magnetosphere, the frequent occurrences of solitary waves on Mars remain a possibility.

    Why this is a significant feat for India?

    • Despite several missions to Mars, their presence has never been detected — until now.
    • However, Indian Scientists have successfully identified and reported the first-ever solitary waves detected on Mars.
    • They arrived at this result by analyzing about 450 solitary wave pulses observed by the Langmuir Probe and Waves instrument on NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft.

    Decoding the data

    • Their analysis revealed distinct electric field fluctuations, which lasted for about 0.2-1.7 milliseconds.
    • Such signals were predominant during dawn or between afternoon to dusk at an altitude of 1000-3500 km from Mars’ surface.
    • Further investigation is needed to determine exactly why these waves are dominant during a fixed time of the day.

    Significance of such waves on Mars

    • These pulses are dominantly seen in the dawn and afternoon dusk sectors at an altitude of 1000–3500 km around Mars.
    • Researchers are further exploring their role in the particle dynamics in the Martian magnetosphere and whether such waves play any role in the loss of atmospheric ions on Mars.
    • The study of these waves is crucial as they directly control particle energization, plasma loss, transport, etc., through wave-particle interactions.

     

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