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निर्धारित पैरामीटर 20 अरब डॉलर से अधिक है। साथ ही भारत का फॉरेन एक्सचेंज का नेट पर्चेज 64 अरब डॉलर रहा जो 2.4 फीसदी है। दो पैरामीटर लागू होने के चलते भारत को करंसी मैनिपुलेशन मॉनिटरिंग (Currency manipulation) की लिस्ट में रखा गया है  हाल ही में अमेरिका ने भारत, ताइवान, थाईलैंड, चीन, जर्मनी, इटली, सिंगापुर और मलेशिया जैसे देशों को करंसी मैनिपुलेटर की लिस्ट में डाल दिया है। करीब डेढ़ साल पहले भी भारत को इस लिस्ट में डाला गया था और अब फिर से भारत को इस लिस्ट में डाल दिया गया है। आइए समझते हैं कि आखिर भारत ने ऐसा क्या किया कि उसे इस लिस्ट में डाला गया। जानते हैं कि क्या होता है करंसी मैनिपुलेशन (Currency manipulation) और अमेरिका किन देशों को इस लिस्ट में डालता है। क्या है करंसी मैनिपुलेशन? जब भी अमेरिका को ऐसा लगता है कि कोई देश गलत तरीके से कोई करंसी प्रैक्टिस कर रहा है, जिससे अमेरिकी डॉलर की कीमत पर असर पड़ रहा है तो अमेरिकी सरकार का ट्रेजरी डिपार्टमेंट उस देश को करंसी मैनिपुलेटर का लेबल दे देता है। यानी इसमें देश जानबूझकर अपनी करंसी की वैल्यू को किसी तरह कम करता है, जिससे दूसरे देशो...

   Gesundheit! You step out into bright sunshine after spending a couple of hours in a dark movie theater and immediately experience a sneezing fit. Does this happen to you often? Does it happen to your children? The Sun induces sneezing in 10 percent of the U.S. population, says Louis J. Ptácek, a neurologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland and a professor at the University of California at San Francisco. Just how and why this happens, though, has remained a mystery ever since Aristotle raised the question some 2,300 years ago.       Research suggests that the photi wec sneeze reflex, or PSR, is inherited, but scientists have yet to pinpoint the gene or genes responsible. “There’s precious little known about PSR, and part of that is because it’s not a disease,” Ptácek says. “No one dies from it.”     One theory is that the gene involved— whatever it is—crosses wires in the brains of those with PSR. For these people, light entering ...

          If you’ve ever chugged a carbonated drink, felt overwhelmed by fear, or experienced a bloated stomach, you might have hiccuped soon after.  These and other actions and conditions can trigger hiccups, and sometimes they start for no clear reason at all. Hiccups—singultus in the medical world— occurs during the breathing process when the diaphragm breaks out of its normal rhythm of moving up and down and suddenly contracts involuntarily. When this happens, air rushes down the throat and hits the vocal cords as they shut, creating the “hic” sound.       Although hiccups are a common occurrence, they don’t seem to have any real biological purpose. As to why they happen, one theory is that the nerves that control the vocal cords and the diaphragm get out of whack, for some reason scientists don’t understand. The malfunction could result from damage or irritation to those nerves. From an evolutionary standpoint, hiccups may have once bee...

      Ponce de León sought the fountain of youth. People today pin their hopes on diets, supplements, exercise, or plastic surgery. It’s a fact: Humans age, and lots of us don’t like how aging makes us look or feel. But what if we were able to slow the aging process?    Scientists call the process of aging senescence. Why we age, according to Marquette University professor Sandra Hunter, is rather simple: “Cell death… eventually leads to systems malfunctioning and whole body death.” For example, muscle fibers and nerves connected to them gradually die, leading to a loss of strength that begins at age 50 and continues steadily thereafter.   A deeper question for scientists is, why do the cells die? They’ve come up with several theories, and most likely a combination of them explains the aging process. One theory rests on oxidative damage. Normal cell processes release harmful molecules called oxygen free radicals. Substances in the body called antioxidants...

        While it’s not exactly true that men are from Mars and women from Venus, scientific evidence shows they are wired differently Anecdotally speaking, men tend to gravitate toward math and science disciplines, while women lean toward excellence at language.     To study brain connectivity, researchers use a type of scan called DTI, a technique that maps the diffusion of water molecules within brain tissue, tracing fiber pathways that connect different regions of the brain .Female brains contain about 9.5 times as much white matter, the substance that connects various parts of the brain. The bridge of nerve tissue that connects the right and left side of the brain is stronger in women, perhaps explaining why they are more equipped for multitasking. Women activate both the left and right hemispheres    when listening to language. The frontal area and the temporal area of the cortex are bigger and better organized, helping women score better o...

         At Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading researcher of the science behind love. She divides the process of falling and staying in love into three stages—each driven by corresponding hormones that play a part in directing our actions. First, humans meet someone who excites them sexually, with testosterone—in both men and women—playing a part. Once two people establish a mutual attraction, they move on to romantic love, the head-overheels stage of a relationship.       Working in the brain at this point is dopamine, which creates the emotional high of being in love. At the same time, other chemicals, including adrenaline, make the heart pound a little harder when the beloved is around. The third stage, sustaining a loving relationship, is possible, in part, because of oxytocin. Scientists have studied the role this hormone plays in creating a bond between a mother and her child. Oxytocin also helps build the bonds of attachment be...

            Catch 40 winks, nod off, hit the hay we all sleep, spending roughly one-third of our lives doing it. Why humans need to sleep, though, is a question scientists still haven’t answered.    What’s obvious is that without sleep, we lack energy and our thinking process can become muddled. Sleep deprivation can also lead to accidents on the road or at work, various health ailments, decreased  sex drive, and symptoms of depression, among other problems. And while reported cases of human beings directly dying from lack of sleep are rare, the physiological changes that occur from sleep deprivation can be more detrimental, and possibly fatal, than going without food.    Over the years, scientists have advanced several theories about the role sleep plays in human health. One theory suggests that sleep, and the conservation of energy that goes with it, helped humans and other species evolve. Using less energy for part of the d...

        Perhaps not surprisingly, neither scientist nor philosopher has developed a convincing answer to either question beyond Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). In the 1970s, Tulane University biopsychologist Gordon Gallup developed the “mirror test” of self-recognition. If a person or creature recognizes a red dot on his or her forehead in the mirror, the test presumes that the subject is conscious. The mirror test grew out of a modern interpretation of Descartes’ maxim that knowledge of self implies consciousness.    Yet it remains unclear why some animals (e.g., humans, primates, dolphins, magpies) pass the test and most others don’t. Researchers generally believe that there are specific brain centers that are crucial to awakening and that there is probably something about the complexity of the network of electrical connections in the brain that gives rise to consciousness.    How exactly one leads to the other remains ...

  Phantom limb syndrome is the sensation that an amputated limb is still attached to the body and functioning normally.          Amputees report feelings of warmth, coldness, tingling, itchiness, numbness,cramping or tickling in the missing limb. An estimated 80 percent of amputees report phantom pain in their amputated limb, including shooting, piercing, burning, or stabbing pain.        What is the exact cause of phantom limb syndrome? For many years, the Favoured theory has been that this condition is the result of “maladaptive brain plasticity.” In short, when the brain ceases to receive signals from a missing body part, input from another body part, such as the face according to some research, begins to dominate that region of the brain. This “remapping” of the brain has long been thought to cause the syndrome. Results of a 2013 study conducted by Oxford University neuroscientist Tamar Malkin, however, reveal the opposite. Malkin d...

    Never. We’re probably permanently stuck with our pinky toes, tailbone, and just about all our other evolutionary holdovers. Wisdom teeth could eventually go, but significant changes like losing an appendage (teeth included) take millions and millions of years—who knows if humans will even be around that long? What’s more, most of our seemingly useless vestiges are actually helpful.        The coccyx, or tailbone, “is an attachment point of a number of muscles at the pelvis. We need it for upright locomotion. It would be catastrophic if it went away,” says Kenneth Saladin, an anatomist and physiologist at Georgia College and State University. The pinky toe helps us keep our balance and diffuses impact throughout the foot when we run.    There are only a handful of truly useless parts of our body, but these are hanging on, too. As Saladin puts it, “Since vestiges like the muscles behind our ears have very little impact on reproductive success, ...