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Ever since 1962, when soldiers from the People's Republic of China inflicted a humiliating defeat on Indian forces, India and China have maintained an uneasy coexistence along the world's longest disputed frontier. While certain aspects of the Sino-Indian security dynamic have improved markedly, others have given rise to growing unease. On the positive side of the ledger, the two nations have succeeded in avoiding a direct, armed conflict since a bloody skirmish in 1967, and have developed a number of confidence-building measures to prevent isolated incidents from spiraling out of control. Similarly, neither country any longer actively sponsors proxies or foments insurgencies on the other's soil. Analysts also have pointed to the relative stability of the Sino-Indian nuclear dyad, which does not appear to present the same escalatory risks as the India-Pakistan strategic relationship. Other issues and developments, however, are cause for concern.

Concerns over nuclear escalation in the event of another Indo-Pakistani conflict refocused Washington's attention on South Asia and triggered the longest-sustained level of bilateral Indo-American engagement in history. This had the unexpected benefit of enabling both democracies finally to find common ground, after many years of acrimony, chronic mistrust, and squandered opportunities. Fears of mass terrorism in the wake of September 11 and subsequent revelations of extensive proliferation emanating from Pakistan added urgency to Western desires to preserve a modicum of crisis stability in South Asia, as well as to prevent any form of escalatory behavior that could spiral into nuclear conflict or further the spread of radioactive material. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the quest for a nuclear deterrent has frequently been viewed as an imperative for second-rank powers desirous of maintaining a degree of strategic autonomy with respect to prospective adversaries that have vast nuclear or conventional superiority.

The analysis of geopolitical trends in the Indian Ocean has always constituted a uniquely challenging undertaking. For decades, strategic pundits have cyclically recognized the region’s growing importance, yet struggled to define both its boundaries and its precise geopolitical significance. Part of the difficulty lies, no doubt, in the very conceptualization of the region. Should the Indian Ocean be construed as a unified geopolitical space or simply as a series of overlapping, but distinct, strategic spheres? Is it an economic thoroughfare characterized first and foremost by trade and cooperation or a breeding pool for future great-power rivalry, where growing fears of

The law of the sea is one of the structural pillars of the international order. The complex rules and norms that govern freedom of navigation and maritime economic activity have played a crucial role in maintaining the global commons free from policies of enclosure, coercion, and expropriation.1

[...]Jeff Smith from the American Foreign Policy Council accompanied me on a research trip to the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and succeeded in locating the only decent bottle of whisky in Port Blair. INTRODUCTION FOR MUCH OF its modern history, the Indian Ocean has been remarkably free of naval nuclear friction.1 Even during the second half of the Cold War, when both the United States and the Soviet Union expanded their military presence throughout the region, the bulk of their naval nuclear interactions occurred elsewhere, in the heavily patrolled Gulf of Finland or in the frigid waters of the Sea of Okhotsk.2 South Asian military competition, for its part, has traditionally been primarily a terrestrial, rather than a maritime phenomenon.

Rehman reviews The Forgotten Front: Patron-Client Relationships in Counter-Insurgency by Walter C Ladwig III.

[...]most modern militaries have sought not only to shelter their elite forces from looming budget cuts, but in many cases, have also expanded their numbers, enabling capabilities and intelligence support structures.

Around the world, countries are integrating photovoltaic generating systems to the grid to support climate change initiatives. However, solar power generation is highly uncertain due to variations in solar irradiance level during different hours of the day. Inaccurate modelling of this variability can lead to non-optimal dispatch of system resources. Therefore, accurate characterization of solar irradiance patterns is essential for effective management of renewable energy resources in an electrical power grid. In this paper, the Weibull distribution based probabilistic model is presented for characterization of solar irradiance patterns. Firstly, Weibull distribution is utilized to model inter-temporal variations associated with reference solar irradiance data through moving window averaging technique, and then the proposed model is used for irradiance pattern generation. To achieve continuity of discrete Weibull distribution parameters calculated at different steps of moving window, Generalized Regression Neural Network (GRNN) is employed. Goodness of Fit (GOF) techniques are used to calculate the error between mean and standard deviation of generated and reference patterns. The comparison of GOF results with the literature shows that the proposed model has improved performance. The presented model can be used for power system planning studies where the uncertainty of different resources such as generation, load, network, etc., needs to be considered for their better management.

The resistance to therapy and relapse in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is highly attributed to hepatic cancer stem cells (HCSCs). HCSCs are under microenvironment control. This work aimed to assess the systemic effect of ellagic acid (EA) on the HCC microenvironment to decline HCSCs. Fifty Wistar rats were divided into six groups: negative control (CON), groups 2 and 3 for solvents (DMSO), and (OVO). Group 4 was administered EA only. The (HCC-M) group, utilized as an HCC model, administered CCL4 (0.5 mL/kg in OVO) 1:1 v/v, i.p) for 16 weeks. HCC-M rats were treated orally with EA (EA + HCC) 50 mg/kg bw for five weeks. Biochemical, morphological, histopathological, and immunohistochemical studies, and gene analysis using qRT-PCR were applied. Results revealed elevated liver injury biomarkers ALT, AST, ALP, and tumor biomarkers AFP and GGT, and marked nodularity of livers of HCC-M. EA effectively reduced the biomarkers and restored the altered structure of the livers. At the mRNA level, EA downregulated the expression of TGF-α, TGF-β, and VEGF, and restored p53 expression. This induced an increase in apoptotic cells immunostained with caspase3 and decreased the CD44 immunostained HCSCs. EA could modulate the tumor microenvironment in the HCC rat model and ultimately target the HCSCs.