The Thread

deneb

Well-Known Member
#1
Will be posting news , articles and comments (stock related and otherwise) which are found interesting. Please feel free to post.

ITC, the new hot stock on the block

ITC is turning into a favourite of the Dalal Street. The cigarette maker, in which British American Tobacco owns a 25.4% stake, this week overtook traditional blue chip Reliance Industries as the biggest weighting in the Sensex.

To many fund managers in India's version of Wall Street, ITC provides both safety as a consumer staple stock and growth potential as the rising purchasing power of Indian consumers will allow the company to raise cigarette prices.

By contrast, Reliance Industries has suffered a multitude of recent downgrades due to doubts about its natural gas output and its refining margins.

Consequently, ITC shares have surged 20% this year as of Wednesday's close, versus a 8% gain in Reliance shares.

"ITC provides safety and growth while Reliance Industries is getting bogged down by lack of triggers, government intervention, falling margins and tepid earnings growth," said Andrew Holland, CEO of Investment Advisory at Ambit Capital.

"From buy-side perspective, ITC is better than Reliance to hold for next 1 year," he added.

Analysts expect ITC to post strong double-digit earnings-per-share growth in fiscal 2013 and 2014, compared to far lower single digit growth for Reliance Industries, according to estimates compiled by StarMine.
Seems like people have found a new leader.Now worries at this time since the company is growing and meeting and exceeding expectations as of now.
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#2
Perils and pleasures of living alone in India

Just come back any time with madam to approve the kitchen design, the beaming modular kitchen consultant told me.

I explained patiently, again, that there was no madam available and that I would be approving my own modular kitchen, cabinet colours and all.

He nodded and said, But we can wait few days if needed for madam.

When it finally dawned on him that there was no madam at all, he was aghast. I dont know what shocked him more that a man might approve a kitchen design, or that I lived alone or that a man who lived alone wanted a kitchen.

Living solo

A recent story in The Guardian about the global rise in living solo says while countries like Sweden have the most number of singletons (47%), the countries where single person households are growing the fastest are Brazil, China and India.

Apparently that statistic has not percolated its way down to the kitchen design store at our furniture mall in Kolkata.

Living solo has usually been regarded as something profoundly abnormal, especially in a culture where a parents job is not done until the children are settled, ergo married. We like to think we were designed to live communally even if its in shared misery. Our saas-bahu television soaps with their feuding extended families hammer that point home endlessly. Living solo carries with it the pathos of abandonment the lonely widow sitting alone in front of a flickering television watching those soaps of great bickering families, her own children long gone to America and Australia, leaving her easy prey for robbers and thieves.

But as Eric Klinenberg, the author of Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, points out, Living alone, and being alone are hardly the same, yet the two are routinely conflated.

In fact, who is truly more alone here? The couple sitting across each other at the dinner table, completely wordless, each engrossed in their own BlackBerry or the single person, alone at home, juggling four chats on Facebook and MSN messenger?

Klinenberg spells out all the reasons why so many more of us are living on our own today. More of us can afford it. We have better internet. But most importantly we are viewing it not as a sign that we are losers but as an investment in the self. Today, young solitaires actively reframe living alone as a mark of distinction and success, he writes. This is the natural progression of what Emile Durkheim, the late 19th century sociologist, called the cult of the individual which was marked by the transition from the tight-knit rural community to a more anonymous urban one.

When I first moved to America as a graduate student, I could not wait to live alone. It signified freedom, independence, and a sense of my own space something Id never known in India. The feeling of liberation of a town where no one knew your name was utterly enthralling. Not having to answer about where you were going and when you were coming back (even to a roommate) was exhilarating. Of course it also meant no more hot meals ready when you came home exhausted, bathrooms that didnt clean themselves, and laundry that kept piling up in the corner.

Yet as a society, the West is still geared towards singletons. In the, US you can do almost everything online. Dishwashers and vacuum cleaners are commonplace. You are apt to be far more isolated if you dont drive rather than if you live alone.

How alone is alone?

In India, first, you have to rejigger the very definition of living alone. My uncle, a bachelor, lived alone after my grandmother died. In our family lore, he was always held up as the cautionary tale of what happens if you do not get married. The fact is he lived alone with a cook and a maid and a mixed breed dog, not to mention the washerwoman next door whose children ran around the house all day and his electrician friend from across the street who visited every day. It is also a fact that he outsourced the management of the household to my mother who took hisaab every day from the cook about how much oil he had bought and how much fish.

If you do try to live truly alone in India, society seems to actively conspire to thwart you.

The postman doesnt deliver anything anymore. Everything from magazines to bills to checks comes by courier. Make that a wide assortment of couriers. Unless someone is around to sign for you, nothing will ever reach you. Unless someone is at home, nothing will get repaired, nothing will get painted.

The doorbell rings all day long and it always tolls for thee. Theres the cable guy, the electric meter check guy, the water filter guy, the inverter battery servicing guy, the furniture delivery guy, the ironing guy and the you-are-screwed-if-you-miss-him gas cylinder delivery guy. Sir, I am standing outside your door and ringing the bell for a long time, says the air conditioning service man plaintively. But I am in a temple in Chidambaram, I tell him. I told you to call before you came. I know. But there is no one else at home, sir, to let me in? he asks.

Even the traffic signals are against single living. Please cross the road carefully. Remember someone is waiting for you at home, intones a mournful female voice all day long in various languages at the traffic light near my apartment. As if one should immediately fling oneself into the path of an oncoming minibus if one was going home to an empty apartment.

Perhaps the only thing that is singleton-friendly are our sabzi markets. You can still buy a few potatoes, a handful of onions, loose spices, two eggs and even a single cigarette. You dont need to get a shrink-wrapped value pack of a dozen apples and watch them slowly molder in your refrigerator.

Do you cook?

But the biggest hurdle to living on your own is that we are a culture that actually thrives on this sense of dependency. We need this sense of interdependency to function, to feel alive. In a country of a billion-plus, we both crave to get away and at the same time are addicted to the warmth of a human body. An Indian friend who broke up with his partner in America said he could not bear the thought of coming home to a dark house. He put out an ad for a roommate not because he needed the money but because he needed someone, anyone to be there.

That could be spouse, roommate, mother or maid. Anytime I talk about living alone, the first amazed question is always the same. But what do you do about food? Do you cook?

Yes, I do when I need to. But its also true that try as I might, I am only a part-time soloist. I spend a chunk of the week at my mother and sisters place because its incomprehensible that after years abroad on my own Id now live in the same city as the family and still not physically be with the family. When I come back after three days, its almost the same as when I came back after a year abroad.

American friends would tell me that living with someone was such hard work, so much adjustment, all that divvying up of kitchen cabinets and bathroom shelves. But its really not half as tough as trying to live alone in India. Now that you have to really work hard at.
http://www.firstpost.com/living/perils-and-pleasures-of-living-alone-in-india-266169.html
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#3
Vodafone gives the game away
Call it Freudian slip or whatever, Vodafone has clearly guilt-tripped and given the game away, at least morally.

Before the Supreme Court, its contention was that the Bombay High Court was wrong in imposing capital gains tax on transfer of shares of a Camay Island-controlling company on the ground that these shares, in fact, represented the Indian telecom company's assets.

It pleaded that there was no way that the transfer of a foreign company's shares could be brought to tax in India in the absence of a clear provision to this effect in the Indian income tax law.

The following provision of law contained in Section 9(1) of the Income-Tax Act, 1961, found to be adequate to apply the pincer on Vodafone by the Bombay High Court, was not found to be adequate by the Supreme Court:

“The following incomes shall be deemed to accrue or arise in India :-

(i) All income accruing or arising, whether directly or indirectly, through or from any business connection in India, or through or from any property in India, or through or from any asset or source of income in India, or through the transfer of a capital asset situated in India.”
Inclusive Law

It is common for a legislature to make an inclusive law, as opposed to an exhaustive law.

The above provision is clearly inclusive when it talks of all income arising abroad being roped into the Indian income-tax net, should there be a direct or indirect nexus between such incomes through business dealings in India.

The Bombay High Court found this to be enough to tax Hutchison on the capital gains earned abroad through the effective transfer of controlling interest in the Indian operating company through transfer of controlling interest in the Cayman Island company that effectively controlled the Indian operating company.

Vodafone successfully argued before the Apex Court that this was not enough, despite knowing that an inclusive legislation is designed to give a wide berth or amplitude to the taxman.

After all, the Parliament cannot legislate for every contingency and situation.

An inclusive legislation obviously cannot spell out everything and is designed to give a long rope to the taxman. Be that as it may.
Clutching at Straws

With the Finance Bill, 2012, the Government is seeking to give itself the explicit power to reach out to deals of such genre — transfer of shares of companies abroad whose substratum exists in India.

Vodafone now says that there is nothing wrong in this proposed amendment, but it should not be retrospective.

The Indian Government, however, says it is not retrospective but clarificatory, as indeed it is, given the inclusive nature of the enumeration of situations in Section 9(1) that should stand legal scrutiny, especially after things are spelt out.

To pre-empt the inevitable passing of this clarificatory amendment by Parliament soon, which would definitely be followed by a fresh notice of demand to pay tax with interest, Vodafone is now clutching at straws — Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPA) between India and the Netherlands — and is in the process giving the game away, morally at least.

How can it take advantage, if at all, on the basis of an agreement between India and the Netherlands merely because Vodafone Holdings, which in turn controls the Camay Island company, is a Dutch company?

Because the Indian tax authorities' contention was precisely on the same lines — the Camay island company's shares effectively represented and subsumed controlling interest in the operations of the Indian company Hutch sold to Vodafone.

It does not lie in Vodafone's mouth to say that the Camay Island company is actually the conduit of the Dutch company and take advantage of the Indo-Dutch agreement, having earlier pooh-poohed the same argument made by the Indian tax authorities — the Camay Island company was a conduit through which foreign investment was channelised into India.

Clearly, Vodafone has not only guilt-tripped but is also guilty of inconsistency in its stand.

If conduits should not be taken note of by the Indian tax authorities, they should not be taken note of by Vodafone as well.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/s-murlidharan/article3336444.ece
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#4
Bharat Gears

Investment Rationale:


Strong foothold in the gear transmission space:

BGL is engaged into gear manufacturing since 1971 and is one of the leading suppliers of gears to the Indian automobile industry. BGL supplies gears to major OEMs in India and overseas for different segments of the automobile industry, like heavy, medium & light trucks, utility vehicles, tractors & off highway vehicles. The company’s strength encompasses world class quality, excellence in customer responsiveness right from metallurgical quality control of basic steel to precision of gear cutting, heat treatment and post heat treatment operations along with state of art machinery. BGL supplies a wide array of automotive parts which includes, automotive clutch and components, turbo chargers and components, driveline products, axle shafts, fly wheel assemblies & rings, propeller shaft components, U-J cross, steering components and differential cages. BGL has gained lots of accreditations and experience gradually till date. BGL is placed well ahead of its competitors primarily on the back of the following advantages it enjoys:


- Expertise in Gear manufacturing.

- Technology leadership.

- Sound engineering capabilities.

- Location advantage: Presence in North & West zone, which are primary zones for commercial vehicles and

tractor manufacturing in India.

- Sound track record of ensuring timely deliveries of quality product at competitive pricing.

- Brand recognition in the market.

- Strong client base, which includes most of the OEMs in the Indian as well as domestic markets.


The above clearly suggests that the company has a strong foothold in the automotive gears and components space in the domestic market. This could enable the company to face competitive pressures.


Constant Focus on technology enhancement helps building reputed client base:

BGL is a leader in the automotive gears industry and hence to maintain its position, the company consistently focuses on technology up gradation and enhancement with a sole objective of enhancing the overall performance. In FY11 BGL introduced the dry cutting technology for the transmission gears and state of the art measuring equipment and blade grinding machines for Bevel gears. Further, BGL also upgraded / added new machines as a process of technology up gradation. In the past BGL has entered into technology collaborations and licensing agreements with world leaders for respective product groups which facilitate access to advanced technology, This has helped BGL to manufacture premium quality products. BGL had in the past entered in to a technical tie up with Holcroft, Michigan, for manufacturing furnaces and collaboration with ZF Friedrichshafen, AG, Germany, for manufacturing gear boxes.


The tie-ups enhanced the competitive position of the company in the domestic markets and also helped in improving reputation with clients. BGL’s esteemed client base includes leading OEMs like Tata Motors, New Holland Tractors, John Deere Equipment, VST Tractors, John Deere Coffeyville Works, Ashok Leyland, Man Force, TAFE, Escorts, JCB. BGL also supplies to tier I companies like Dana Corporation, Spicer India and Carraro.


Recommendation:

BGL could be a key beneficiary of the rising demand for tractors and CVs in India and in foreign countries. It has marquee clients who could provide visibility on BGL’s sales. BGL has low but predictable margins, low market-cap to sales but high EV (due to debt that it keeps borrowing to set up new capacities). BGL is attractively priced and provides an investment opportunity from a short-term perspective. If it starts generating better margins and free cash flows, it could become a medium term opportunity. HDFC Securities think that BGL is a good buy at the CMP and could be added on dips to Rs60-65 band (2.75-3.0x FY13E EPS) for a target of Rs87 and Rs98 (4 and 4.5x FY13E EPS) over the next 1-2 quarters.
Disclosure - Have positions

http://www.valuenotes.com/Investment-Strategy/Bharat-Gears-Good-investment-opportunity-from-short-term-perspective/175948/10560001.00/C
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#5
Govt, Coal India working at cross-purposes
It is not common for the government to issue a Presidential order, forcing Coal India to sign fuel pacts with power producers. Now, the board of directors of CIL has created a chapter in the history of corporate governance in government-owned companies in India. It has effectively ensured that the company does not pay for the decisions taken by its promoter.

Taking a cue from the Presidential order that allows the company to decide on the penalty to be imposed, the CIL board has set penal provisions, in the event of failure to honour the supply pacts, at ridiculously low levels. Back of the envelope calculations show that even if the company cannot provide for the minimum requirement of 69 million tonnes of coal against the new FSAs to be signed, it will end up paying a total penalty of approximately Rs 1 crore annually.
SHAREHOLDER INTEREST

Consider a Rs. 50,000 crore balance sheet and you know how much that penalty matters to CIL. The decision is largely credited to the independent directors. There was no way that the board could override their view, as independent directors comprise 50 per cent of board.

The developments reaffirm the importance of issues raised by The Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI), UK, which are wholly directed at enhancing shareholder value — especially that of minority shareholders, who invest their hard earned money in government-owned companies, and then haplessly watch the government compromising the interest of these companies.

The government is unaffected as it collects its share of taxes and, even forces such PSUs to fork out huge dividends, all of which have a questionable impact on the market value of stocks. PSU oil stocks are a perfect case in point, on how minority investor's interest is compromised by the government. And, one may wonder why independent directors on board of these companies are not equally assertive. But that is just one way of looking into the issue.

So far, the Union Government has failed miserably in taking care of wider issues that throttle the growth of the mining sector, under public or private ownership.

Though the National Coal Distribution Policy (NCDP), declared by UPA-I, wanted the Railways to give an undertaking on delivery of coal, the government did not implement it. Politics seems to ensure that different arms of the same government operate in isolation.

CIL was created because government wanted to keep commercial coal production its exclusive domain. It, therefore, follows that the government is responsible for for failing to increase coal production in the country.
EVADING RESPONSIBILITY

Seen in this perspective, the Presidential order was just another way of passing the buck on a company, which was so far pandering to the whims and fancies of the same government.

The intention was questionable, and the CIL board, rightly or wrongly, responded to the directive by expressing its intention to supply coal, but denied accepting full responsibility for the cause.

Just as the government did not spell out how CIL's interests are protected, the independent directors ensured CIL's immediate financial interests are protected, without much regard for the cause of power generation.

It is widely anticipated that the unprecedented board action may now be countered by another directive from the government. The government should now adopt a more holistic approach to the development of the coal sector.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/article3332625.ece
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#7
Nestle's Pfizer acquisition seen as attempt to pre-empt India rivalry
Nestle’s acquisition of Pfizer’s infant nutrition business has an India angle to it. While Pfizer does not have its infant nutrition brands such as SMA Gold, Promil Gold, Progress Gold and Promise Gold in India yet, the threat that it could launch these products in the country was always there, thanks to its strong presence in neighbouring countries such as China, Indonesia and the Philippines.

“Nestle,” says Abneesh Roy, associate director, research, Edelweiss Capital, “has effectively blocked a potential entry by Pfizer with the acquisition”. The point is endorsed by Anand Ramanathan, associate director, KPMG. “Definitely, the attempt has been to pre-empt competition,” he says.

The baby food market in India is about Rs 1,500 crore in size, growing at a clip of 10-15 per cent per annum. With its baby food portfolio including brands such as Lactogen, Nestum, Cerelac, Nan, etc, Nestle commands a market share of about 80 per cent in India. No other company comes anywhere close.

The only other brand that has some equity in India is Farex, the oldest infant nutrition product in the country, now owned by Danone.

It was in August last year that Danone had agreed to buy the erstwhile Farex-owner Wockhardt's nutrition business. Wockhardt itself had acquired Farex from Dumex India in 2006. Dumex, which prior to the Wockhardt acquisition, was controlled by the Netherlands-based Royal Numico, had bought Farex from Heinz in 2005. Heinz, in turn, had acquired Farex from Glaxo in 1994-95.

Thanks to these multiple acquisitions, the once-powerful Farex, which has been in India for over 50 years, has lost steam. The brand is barely visible today on shop shelves unlike a few years ago. In contrast, Nestle has consistently grown its baby food business to become a leading player in a category still perceived premium.

A 750-gram infant-nutrition product, for instance, costs roughly Rs 200-300, which, according to Roy, puts it out of reach for many consumers. “How many people can afford a product at this price point?" he asks. Ramanathan says Indian mothers still tend to depend on what they prepare at home to provide nutrition to infants.

Despite that, companies such as Nestle have continued their efforts at pushing these products in India, riding on growing affluence and a tendency among people in higher income brackets to migrate to better products.

Nestle's infant food business in India contributes about 16 per cent to its Rs 7,514-crore top line, say market experts, which is substantial given that the category is not huge in the country.

When making the announcement today, Nestle's chief executive Paul Bulcke admitted, “Pfizer's strong brands and product portfolio, besides its geographic presence — 85 per cent of its sales are in emerging markets — will complement our existing infant nutrition business perfectly."
http://business-standard.com/india/news/nestles-pfizer-acquisition-seen-as-attempt-to-pre-empt-india-rivalry/472434/
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#8
The price of gold have us going for the Moon

ALMOST a century ago, something strange split the sky across North America. On 9 February 1913, eyewitnesses reported dozens of burning fireballs cutting a swathe across the night sky. It was a display unlike any other meteor shower. Instead of shooting stars raining down in all directions, a train of bright fireballs moved slowly and deliberately over much of the continent.

The first sighting was in Saskatchewan, Canada. Burning red-hot from its passage through the atmosphere and trailing streaks of vapour, the meteor train moved south-east, passing just a few kilometres north of New York and then out over the Atlantic Ocean. Final sightings of the spectacle came from Bermuda and a steamer ship near the equator.

The distance between the first and last observing points was 9200 kilometres. To be seen over such an expanse, the meteors must have been in orbit around our planet. The conclusion was compelling: what people had seen that night was probably the break up of a small, previously undiscovered moon of Earth.

We are now realising that the events of 1913 may not be unique. Computer models of asteroid orbits are showing that small space rocks a few metres across can lodge in Earth's gravitational field if they stray too close. Only a tiny fraction of them break up and hit our planet. Most orbit unseen for months or years, somewhere beyond the moon, before slipping safely and silently back into deep space. But while they remain close, they are mini-moons of Earth. Not only are they turning out to be more common than anyone thought, they could play a vital role in unravelling our solar system's secrets.

It is not unheard of for a planet to capture a small celestial object. Jupiter is a master of the art: it is 320 times more massive than Earth, and also orbits five times farther away from the sun. At that distance, the sun's gravity is much weaker, so Jupiter can wrestle objects away from it and clutch its prey more tightly. Jupiter's most notable recent catch was comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The giant planet's gravity subsequently pulled the comet to pieces and swallowed it in a series of spectacular explosions in July 1994.

Thankfully for us, Earth's gravity is much weaker, meaning such violent acts are extremely rare. Most of the objects that do make it to Earth originate in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. However, telescopes designed to identify asteroids that may one day smack into Earth have found growing numbers of objects in orbits across the solar system. Most are small, fragments of once larger objects that have broken up in collisions over the aeons. Any such small body that finds itself passing by on an orbit similar to Earth's is likely to be snagged and yanked onto a course that takes it around our planet instead - if only for a short while.
Moon trackers

Mikael Granvik at the University of Helsinki in Finland and his colleagues are among those dedicated to tracking down these celestial fly-by-nights. Calculations by Granvik's group show that mini-moons are likely to be a few metres across and orbit slowly at up to 12 times the distance of the moon. The course they chart around Earth is a delicate one because of perturbations in the gravitational field from the sun and other planets (see "Mini-moon or quasi-moon?"). As a result, Granvik's model predicts that most captured objects drift off again, spending on average just 9 months in orbit. Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is that such temporary mini-moons are common. "There is probably one up there right now," says Granvik.

Finding a mini-moon is no easy matter because their small size means they reflect little light. Present surveys, such as the one conducted with the Pan-STARRS telescope in Haleakal, Hawaii, are looking for potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids. But they are not really powerful enough to search for metre-sized mini-moons.

What Granvik and others do see often turns out to be space junk masquerading as small asteroids. "Out of six objects we have investigated, five have turned out to be upper stages of rockets," says Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California

That leaves one. On 14 September 2006, the Catalina Sky Survey detected an object in Earth orbit. Designated 2006 RH120, it was calculated to have been captured by Earth in July of that year. As astronomers watched, it made three leisurely orbits over the following 12 months, one of them bringing it inside the orbit of the moon, and then drifted away again.

This time everything fitted. To distinguish it from space junk, Chodas analysed the body's orbit. Asteroids move primarily under the pull of gravity because they are dense, whereas space junk tends to be hollow and gets pushed around by the pressure of sunlight as well. The weight of evidence pointed to 2006 RH120 being an asteroid some 5 metres across. It is now moving away around the sun in a similar orbit to Earth. By 2017, it should be on the opposite side of the sun from us. Its return visit is likely to take place around 2028.

Granvik suspects that astronomers have sighted other bona-fide mini-moons but have simply disregarded them. "When observers see an object in Earth orbit," he says, "they tend to think it is just space junk and so throw the data away." He is hopeful that new surveys will lead to the discovery of many more mini-moons. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope planned for completion on the slopes of Cerro Pachn in Chile, in 2019 is an 8.4-metre telescope that will survey the entire sky once a week looking for asteroids. It should be able to spot mini-moons easily and quickly. "If we do start to routinely find mini-moons in the future, we will have the opportunity to study a population of small asteroids that we have not seen before," says Granvik. "We could easily send spacecraft to them."

The scientific pay-off of such missions would be large indeed. Asteroids are the leftovers of planet formation. They are the fragments of rock and metal that never managed to coalesce into larger worlds. As such, they hold clues about the way the planets formed, such as the raw ingredients that went into those worlds - including the organic components that Earth managed to cook up into life.
Fly me to the moon

Considering the great pains that planetary scientists have gone to in recent years to bring back a few specks of dust from an asteroid, a mission to a mini-moon would offer convenience and bounty beyond their wildest dreams. The Japanese space agency's Hayabusa probe had already suffered its fair share of setbacks and delays when it finally blasted off towards asteroid Itokawa in 2003. It was hit by a violent solar storm that damaged its solar panels, reducing its on-board power and slowing the spacecraft down. On arrival at Itokawa in 2005, moves to stabilise the spacecraft failed and communications were lost during the attempted landing. On top of that, the sampling device did not work correctly. Nevertheless, the spacecraft limped home and delivered its precious cargo of asteroid dust in June 2010.

Instead of a spacecraft taking months or years to journey into space to rendezvous with asteroids, it could be at a mini-moon after only a few weeks, or even days, of travelling time. "At just a few metres across, they are small enough that we could even bring a complete one back to Earth for analysis," says Granvik.

Beyond the value of the science, there could be other - more lucrative - rewards for bringing a mini-moon down to Earth: precious metals.

Asteroids come in three basic types. M-types are largely metal and were once at the hearts of now-shattered protoplanets. S-types are stony asteroids but are noticeably rich in metals such as iron, nickel and magnesium. C-types are the most common and are composed of elements in their average cosmic abundances but without the hydrogen and helium gases. Even though C-types are not notably enriched, they still contain enough precious metals to make them extremely valuable if they were brought to Earth.

The last time people were talking about mining asteroids for mineral resources, the chances are they were wearing a tank top and corduroy flares. It was all part of the Apollo-era optimism about living and working in space - and it collapsed along with NASA's budget sometime in the 1970s. Now the idea, unlike the tank top, is back in fashion.

The reason for the renewed interest is the steady rise in the price of gold and other base metals during the past decade. Back in 1994, William Hartmann at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, estimated that a 2-kilometre-wide asteroid would be worth $25 trillion in metal and mineral resources . That's enough to pay off the US's $15 trillion national debt, use the loose change to settle up for Greece and still make the investors very rich indeed. "I don't see how you can look at any economic study of Earth and not think about the potential resources of the inner solar system," says Hartmann.


The trouble is, of course, that such resources are not exactly easy to reach. Mini-moons could change that. Although they are just a thousandth of the diameter of the asteroid that Hartmann used in his 1994 example, they are far easier to reach. "Once Earth has captured these asteroids, they become accessible to us," says Chodas, although he remains unsure about the practicality of mining in space.

Aerospace engineer Hexi Baoyin and his colleagues at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, are taking the idea further. Having independently identified how small asteroids can be naturally captured by Earth, they have suggested that some closely approaching asteroids could be nudged into Earth orbit, either by slamming projectiles into them or using more subtle methods like erecting solar sails on them. This, they propose, could be one of the best ways to make mining near-Earth asteroids possible (arxiv.org/abs/1108.4767).

As the world's human population increases, so the demand for resources will grow. Some of Earth's resources are already expensive to mine and this may make asteroids increasingly tempting targets - especially if the cost of space missions drops dramatically thanks to the efforts of private space companies such as SpaceXMovie Camera in Hawthorne, California. It is one of several companies in which the US government is investing to try to bring the cost of launching each pound (0.45 kilograms) down to below $1000.

Even so, Chodas is sceptical. "Getting the equipment to these asteroids is expensive, getting the minerals back is even more so," he says. "I'm not sure space travel will ever be cheap enough to make mining asteroids viable."

Even if asteroid mining never takes off, mini-moons are still a source of wonder. Why spend billions travelling to an asteroid when they are gently knocking on our front door? Unseen they may be, yet as we gaze out into the night sky, there is every reason to think that they are up there, taking turns to orbit our planet, like celestial fruit just waiting to be picked.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428611.000-rich-seams-of-earths-secret-moons.html
 

EagleOne

Well-Known Member
#9
Brilliant, Deneb. A thread like this was sorely needed. :thumb:
Best wishes.
 

deneb

Well-Known Member
#10
Where have all the birds gone?
It is April and another Vishu came and is gone. It is the New Year festival of Kerala, and closely related to the beginning of agricultural activities. In the past, immediately after Vishu paddy would be sown, and agricultural activities would start anew. Farmers believed in the rain god and the rains never failed them. But even if the rains played truant, there was one bird — vishupakshi — which never failed to wake up farmers with its vitthum kaikkottum (seed and spade) song. Every year starting in the first week of March, the bird was heard singing its never-ending vitthum kaikkottum. It was a reminder to the farmers and background music to the beginning of farming activities. I have never heard any other bird, except the cuckoo, that sings so beautifully as vishupakshi. And this song would be heard only in March and April.

This summer, the bird might have watched that even if it urges the people to take to the seed and shovel, nobody has seeds to take and it might also have observed that in the district which was once called the granary of Kerala, there is no place for sowing the seeds and it might have decided not to sing or even visit us (I think it is a migratory bird. It sings even at midnight. It perches only on the top of very big trees and their felling may be the reason why the bird did not turn up). Not only are the song and sound of vishupakshi missing today; there are many other birds which won't be seen and heard again.

We were an agrarian people. And my main hobby in my early teens was to wander through paddyfields to see the different kinds of birds and how they nest. On the outskirts of the paddyfields, there had been many coconut trees and black palm trees. Beautifully crafted nests of the weaver-birds — thookkanaam kuruvikal — would be seen dangling from the ends of palm leaves. Hundreds of these little birds would land on the paddy to squeeze the milk from the tender rice. They would come to the fields when the young stalks come out of the rice-plants. At this stage of the paddy, my father would send me to our field with a tin-drum to scare these birds away. But often I have enjoyed the sight of these little birds balancing on the tender stalks and squeezing the milk out of the green rice. When the paddy is ripe enough to harvest, flocks of parrots would land there and cut the ripe stalks with their sharp beaks and fly away with the stalks dangling in their beaks. I have always liked to see this sight also.

The nests of parrots were neatly crafted holes in the trunks of palm trees. I continued to wonder how they made these holes on the hard trunks until I saw the patient work of the woodpeckers. They were the carpenters and their long, sharp and strong beaks, chisels. They make the holes (in search of worms inside the weak spots of the trunks) and the parrots occupy them. If I heard the sound tak, tak, tak, I knew it was a woodpecker chiselling a hard trunk. I would go after him. It seems that the woodpecker is the only bird which can walk perpendicularly on the tree trunks! How beautiful the sight was! Its strong legs, red crest, the dark red stripe on the face and black beak and the tak, tak, tak sound used to captivate me.

One of the coconut trees near the pond was thunderstruck. It was a headless trunk for a long time and there were at least three parrot nests on its top. I have seen many parrots entering the holes and coming out to bring food to their little ones. One day, I saw the tree was being cut. I rushed to the site and begged the tree cutters to spare the trunk as it was the home of many a parrot. But I was laughed at and the tree fell with a great thud. I ran to the top end to see two just hatched chicks thrown out of their nest and smashed to death. I looked into all the nests and saw smashed eggs in two of them and one little chick in the other one. Fortunately, the little one survived the fall. I brought it home. The chick can be identified as a parrot only by the shape and colour of its beak. No feathers had come out. I carefully fed it with milk and within two weeks it began to eat bananas; and two months later, it started to fly and I let him fly away. But he wouldn't fly long. He used to linger on the coconut trees in our compound and when I reached home from school, he would fly down and land on my head!

I would show him my finger and he would jump on to it from my head and drink the milk I offered him in a little plate. By putting the sharp end of the upper beak stationary in the plate, he would drink the milk by moving his tongue and lower beak to and fro. Then he would fly on to my shoulder and eat paddy from my palm. He put each grain between his upper and lower beaks and deftly removed the chaff, pressing the lower beak against the upper beak; and swallowed the rice. After filling his little stomach he would go into his cage and sleep putting his head inside his right wing. I will close the cage and put it near my pillow. At 6 sharp in the morning, he would start to be restless and the moment I opened the cage, he would fly on to my head and from there to my hand and then would drink some milk in haste and fly away like an arrow.

When he became a fully grown up one, he began to go far and wide. I didn't know where he went, but after six o' clock in the evening he would be waiting for me on the coconut tree. If I was not home someday, he would not come down. He would roost on the coconut tree and fly away in the morning. The most interesting fact was that all fellow parrots would be there on the coconut tree to take him with them in the morning and all of them accompanied him to the coconut tree in the evening.

They would be wonderstruck at the sight of his landing on my head and fly away together, making musical sounds in a chorus. For more than three years he had been my intimate friend whom I had given all the freedom he was born to. At last, he stopped coming. His family bonds might have become stronger than his friendship with me. Still I miss him, but I am happy that he was not denied the joys and ecstasy of the arboreal life to which he was born.

Today, this real story is the one my five-year-old younger daughter wants to hear again and again. I have recounted the story umpteen times. And every time after hearing it, she asks me to show her a woodpecker which makes nests for parrots.

Alas, they are not seen nowadays! Not only woodpeckers, even the parrots are not seen in our locality. And what happened to the weaver-birds? Not even a single nest is seen today. How can they be seen? Paddy cultivation is disappearing from my village and can these birds, who feed mainly on paddy, survive the man-made ‘climate change' or rather the ‘cultivation change'? But where have all the woodpeckers gone? What happened to them? In the yesteryear, the bird was spotted in pairs almost everyday, but now I have not been able to show my five-year old younger child even a single woodpecker! I have been listening long since to hear the sound — tak, tak, tak…tak, tak, tak…
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article3340120.ece
 

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