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The study examines the response of the Quad countries (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) to People's Republic of China (PRC)'s predatory acquisition of foreign technologies. This article looks at PRC's science and technology (S&T) policy and its relation to the grand strategy of attaining global superpower status. The meteoric rise of the PRC in the last four decades has amazed many. Innovation and technological advancement and their alignment with government policies are important factors in this rise. The study notes that PRC's S&T policy involves, among others, acquiring foreign technologies through illicit means that include stealing through espionage and sophisticated cyberattacks and forcing overseas companies operating in China to share intellectual property rights with local partners. Alarmed by PRC's predatory strategy, the Quad countries have taken steps to regulate, and in some cases prohibit, the PRC's targeted foreign investments and coercive and opportunistic takeovers. The article argues that the Quad countries need to coordinate their efforts to effectively counter PRC's illicit acquisition of their technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest fires have significant impacts on economies, cultures, and ecologies worldwide. Developing predictive models for forest fire probability is crucial for preventing and managing these fires. Such models contribute to reducing losses and the frequency of forest fires by informing prevention efforts effectively. The objective of this study was to assess and map the forest fire susceptibility (FFS) in the Indian Western Himalayas (IWH) region by employing a GIS-based fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy-AHP) technique, and to evaluate the FFS based on forest type and at district level in the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. Seventeen potential indicators were chosen for the vulnerability assessment of the IWH region to forest fires. These indicators encompassed physiographic factors, meteorological factors, and anthropogenic factors that significantly affect the susceptibility to fire in the region. The significant factors in FFS mapping included FCR, temperature, and distance to settlement. An FFS zone map of the IWH region was generated and classified into five categories of very low, low, medium, high, and very high FFS. The analysis of FFS based on the forest type revealed that tropical moist deciduous forests have a significant vulnerability to forest fire, with 86.85% of its total area having very high FFS. At the district level, FFS was found to be high in sixteen districts and very high in seventeen districts, constituting 25.7% and 22.6% of the area of the IWH region. Particularly, Lahul and Spiti had 63.9% of their total area designated as having very low FSS, making it the district least vulnerable to forest fires, while Udham Singh Nagar had a high vulnerability with approximately 86% of its area classified as having very high FFS. ROC-AUC analysis, which provided an appreciable accuracy of 79.9%, was used to assess the validity of the FFS map produced in the present study. Incorporating the FFS map into sustainable development planning will assist in devising a holistic strategy that harmonizes environmental conservation, community safety, and economic advancement. This approach can empower decision makers and relevant stakeholders to take more proactive and informed actions, promoting resilience and enhancing long-term well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensuring the availability of drinking and irrigation water for populations living in the mountainous environment has been an important challenge for researchers, spatial planners, and policymakers. A stronger contribution to addressing this challenge may emerge from the identification and mapping of groundwater potential zones in undulating terrain. The present study is an attempt to find out the groundwater potential zones using state-of-the-art technologies of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) selecting a study area of the Sainj river sub-watershed (area 81 Km²) in Kullu of Himachal Pradesh, India. The associated thematic layers were generated utilizing Landsat-8 (OLI) satellite data from October 2016, Survey of India (SOI) Toposheet (Scale 1:50,000), and Arc GIS 10.5 software. Seven various thematic layers viz., Geology, Soil, Geomorphology, Land Use Land Cover (LULC), Slope, Lineament, and Drainage Density were applied for the identification of groundwater potential zones. The watershed delineation and contour lines (100 m interval) generation were performed using Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The LULC map was prepared through supervised classification using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method in ENVI (Environmental Visualization Imagine) 5.3 and ERDAS Imagine 2020 (Earth Resource Data Analysis System) softwares. The spatial analyst tool of Arc GIS 10.5 was used to identify groundwater potential zones using the weighted overlay method. The study indicates that the spatial variations in groundwater occurrence are largely controlled by geological structures, landforms, and slopes in the study area. Five groundwater potential zones were identified and mapped in the study area viz. very poor (1.1 Km², 1.36%), poor (7.3 Km², 9.03%), moderate to good (67.2 Km², 83.17%), good (4 Km², 4.95%) and very good (1.2 Km², 1.49%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]