Bihar has gone ahead to be the first state in India that would enable voters to vote through a mobile application. The facility was launched in the midst of municipal by polls and elections of six Nagar Panchayats that allowed senior citizens, people with disabilities and pregnant women, to cast votes at home. It was held in districts, such as Patna, Buxar, Rohtas, and East Champaran, and mobile voting techniques could be utilized together with normal voting channels.

Context:

• India has now initiated its first mobile-based e voting- system in Bihar where citizens can vote through mobile in the municipal elections of the six councils in Patna, Rohtas, and East Champaran. 

• This is an initiative to help the elderly people, women carrying a child and the disabled who can not attend the electoral polling booths.

Key Points

• Introduction to Mobile Voting: The state of Bihar in India is the first Indian state to have introduced the concept of e-voting on mobile as an app for the municipal elections.

• Target Groups: The special target population in mobile voting service is senior citizens, handicapped persons, and expecting women, who are unable to come to the polling stations.

• App Development: The E-SECBHR app is the one that runs the e-voting system, and it was developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

The Procedure of the E-Voting System

• App Installation: Voters will be required to install the E-SECBHR App which is available to the Android users at the moment.

• Verification Process: The user connects a mobile number (which is registered in the voters list) to the app, and once verified, he or she will be able to cast the vote on the day of elections through the app or the website of official Bihar Election Commission.

Tampering- Prevention Security Measures

• Limitations of Logins: Two registered voters will be allowed to log in through one mobile number.

• Voter identification: Voters Ids would be confirmed by entering a vote I D number.

• Blockchain Technology: The block chain ensures that the votes have been captured safely and will not be easy to tamper with, this offers an unhackable system.

• Facial Recognition: The app contains facial recognition to identify voters before the voting.

Participation and Adoption

Voter Registration: There were approximately 10,000 voters to date who registered to vote using the app and further about 50,000 would vote using the web-app.

Conclusion

The introduction of mobile voting in Bihar is a major step towards the process of digitization of the elections and democratization of the process of voting. The initiative has allowed remote and efficient voting to be available and it is supported with the use of better security measures and technology; in addition, it has made remote and efficient voting open to vulnerable groups. Yet it is not clear whether this facility will be continued to the Assembly elections to come too.

Digital fossil-mining of a new study revealed valuable data on the evolutionary history of squids, which is hard to trace since it has a soft body. Through non destructive scanning of rocks through complex technology scientists managed to extract small beaks of squid using a scan and were able to retrieve them and extract the beaks of the ancient squid in Cretaceous era rocks that were millions of years old. This discovery can shed light on the fact that squidelines existing far in a deeper sea and coast were in existence much earlier than what the world had thought before.

Context

The evolutionary history of Squid had been unveiled by a computerized fossil-mining process which discovers fossils subsumed within the rocks. The paper indicates that squids, which include the contemporary deep-sea and near-shore squids, lived 100 million years ago as against what was predicted, which is 30 million years earlier.

Key Points

• Digital fossil-Mining: Scientists employed something termed digital fossil-mining, where we grind rocks through but with detailed photographic techniques. Such images were merged to come up with 3D models of these contents such as fossils.

• Fossil beaks: The researchers concentrated on squid beaks, tiny yet vital chitin mouthparts. With the method, they were able to pull out digitally 263 lower squid beaks in rocks during the Cretaceous era.

• Finding Species: The squid beaks were found in at least 40 species (23 genera and 5 families) and this indicates an earlier and far wider diversity in the evolution of squids than was traditionally believed.

• Evolutionary Implications: The results demonstrate that existing squids, in the modern lineages such as deep-sea and coast-based species, existed as early as 100 million years ago with the high rate of diversification in only 6 million years.

• Effect on a Marine Ecosystem: By the Late Cretaceous, squids had proliferated and were overtaking shelled cephalopods such as ammonites. This shows that the squids existed in the marine ecosystem long before the mass extinction that occurred 66 million years ago.

What are the Squids? 

• Squids are a wide range of cephalopods, most of which (more than 300) belong to the order Teuthoidea (or Teuthida). 

• Squids live in the coastal and the ocean waters and differ in size, habitat, and life styles to include rapid swimming and floating plankton. 

• They are ecologically relevant and very essential in the food chain.

• Structure: Squids are tube-shaped with double-headed bodies which are compact. They have two of their 10 arms specialised in the form of long slender tentacles each with four rows of suckers and toothed and horny rings.

• Internal Shell: The majority of squids have an internal, feathery-shaped structure that is shaped out of a horny material and this gives them strength and buoyancy.

• Eyesight: The squid eyes are very complicated which is nearly similar to the human one; the eyes are usually placed on the sides of the head.

Reproduction and Life Cycle

• Egg Attachment: The location and mode of attachment of eggs in different species of squids occur differently. Others have them fastened to floating weeds and others on the sea bed.

• Development: In some species the young squid are used at hatching and the others have a planktonic larval phase.

• Bioluminescence: some of the squids have light organs and a fascinating part of their behavior is known as bioluminescence, and it assists them in communication, prey attraction and to recognize various things.

Ecological Role

• Food Source: Squids are food to a large number of predators such as the sperm whales, bony fishes, and human beings.

• Size Diversity: The vastness of squid distribution begins with the size because the smallest squid species, i.e. Southern pygmy squid, is only 1.6 cm in length and on the other end, we have the squids that cannot get larger than 43 feet i.e. the giant and colossal squids, and the latter has been reported to grow much bigger at approximately over 65 feet although there are unconfirmed records of it growing to over 65 feet.

Giant squid (Architeuthis)

• Size and Rarity: The giant squid is one of the largest living invertebrate forms. An entire giant squid carcasses have been discovered that were 3.2 meters long but there are reports to suggest that they could have been as long as 5.5 meters without losing their tentacles.

• Place and Research: Giant and colossal squid have been estimated to live in the deep ocean waters, and many studies on biology and behavior are ongoing, but work to find these and study them continues.

Conclusion

The fossil-mining innovation made by this digital breakthrough also expands the squid evolutionary history and emphasizes their initial dominance within the marine food webs. It is found that squids were major sea actors in the oceans way before marine mammals emerged, and this has made marine wildlife so diverse and intelligent than it was before.