📰 Japan to fund mass rapid transit systems in Gujarat, Haryana
$4.5 billion soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency to boost $100 bn Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project
•Funds from a Japanese government loan will soon be utilised for the first time in the $100 billion, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project. So far, the mega-project was being developed only with the Indian government’s financial assistance.
•The DMIC spans six States (Uttar Pradesh, Delhi National Capital Region, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra). It uses ‘the 1,500-km-long, high-capacity western Dedicated Railway Freight Corridor (DFC) as the backbone’ and aims to be ‘a global manufacturing and investment destination’.
Several rail links
•A soft loan (with concessional conditions) to the tune of $4.5 billion to be extended by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), will shortly be utilised to develop two Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS) — one each in Gujarat and Haryana — that will be part of the DMIC, official sources told The Hindu .
•The JICA is the Japanese governmental agency in charge of implementation of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) — with the main objective of ‘promoting economic development and welfare in developing countries. The interest rate of the loan (in Japanese Yen) will be kept ‘very low’ (at 0.1%) and have a ‘long’ repayment period (at 40 years, including a 10-year grace period).
•According to JICA, its “ODA to India started in 1958” and so far around “Rs. 2.75 lakh crore in ODA loans have been committed for development across various sectors.” As per JICA, it is “India’s biggest bilateral donor.”
•Incidentally, a JICA loan worth Rs. 88,000 crore, on similar terms , will be used to build the Rs. 1.08 lakh crore Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project. JICA loans/assistance are being used to facilitate development of Metro rail networks including in Delhi and the Western DFC. The MRTS in Gujarat will be ‘at grade’ (ground level) and link Ahmedabad to the Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR).
📰 Pak. repeatedly rejected offer of talks: Sushma
‘We are fighting poverty but neighbour is fighting us’
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always sought dialogue and peace but Pakistan has turned its back on the offer, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday.
•Mr. Modi, “from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace and friendship,” to Pakistan, the Minister said, adding that Islamabad must answer why it spurned this offer. “We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us,” Ms. Swaraj said, adding that Mr. Modi had radically changed the approach to poverty alleviation in India.
•The Minister said demonetisation was “a courageous decision to challenge one of the by-products of corruption,” and, as a result, black money has “disappeared from circulation.”
‘Exporting terror’
•Her 22-minute speech, delivered in Hindi, sought to contrast India’s progress — that is helping the world deal with a multitude of challenges — with Pakistan’s, which, she said, had become nothing more than a country that exports terrorism.
📰 India third in nuclear power installations: study
But share of energy generation stagnates globally, and several countries shut down nuclear reactors in 2017
•India is third in the world in the number of nuclear reactors being installed, at six, while China is leading at 20, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2017, released this month, shows. The number of nuclear reactor units under construction is, however, declining globally for the fourth year in a row, from 68 reactors at the end of 2013 to 53 by mid-2017, the report says.
•The latest report further reveals that most nuclear reactor constructions are behind schedule, with delays resulting in increase in project costs and delay in power generation. There are 37 reactor constructions behind schedule, of which 19 reported further delays over the past year. In India itself, five out of the six reactors under construction are behind schedule. Eight nuclear power projects have been under construction globally for a decade or more, of which three have been so for over 30 years.
•In the foreword, S. David Freeman, an American energy policy expert who led the Tennessee Valley Authority under U.S. President Jimmy Carter, writes that the debate regarding the value of nuclear energy “is over”. “The most decisive part of this report is the final section — Nuclear Power vs Renewable Energy Development. It reveals that since 1997, worldwide, renewable energy has produced four times as many new kilowatt-hours of electricity than nuclear power,” he writes, concluding, “The world no longer needs to build nuclear power plants to avoid climate change and certainly not to save money.”
•Data gathered by the authors shows that global nuclear power generation increased by 1.4% in 2016 due to a 23% increase in China, though the share of nuclear energy in electricity generation stagnated at 10.5%. By comparison, globally, wind power output grew by 16% and solar power by 30%. Wind power increased generation by 132 TWh (terawatt hours) or 3.8 times, and solar power by 77 TWh or 2.2 times more than nuclear power’s 35 TWh respectively. Renewables represented 62% of global power generating capacity additions.
•Russia and the U.S. shut down reactors in 2016, while Sweden and South Korea both closed their oldest units in the first half of 2017, the report notes.
Financial crisis
•The report also documents the financial crisis plaguing the industry. After the discovery of massive losses over its nuclear construction projects, Toshiba filed for bankruptcy of its U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse, the largest nuclear power builder in history. AREVA has accumulated $12.3 billion in losses over the past six years.
French bailout
•The French government has provided a $5.3 billion bailout and continues its break-up strategy, the report notes.
•In the chapter on the status of the Fukushima nuclear power project in Japan, six years after the disaster began, the report notes how the total official cost estimate for the catastrophe doubled to $200 billion.
•The lead authors of the report are Paris-based energy consultant Mycle Schneider, who advised the European Parliament on energy matters for over 20 years, and Antony Froggart, energy policy consultant and senior researcher at Chatham House, a London-based non-profit organisation working on international affairs.
📰 is it difficult to grant citizenship to Chakmas?
Why has the issue been raked up?
•On September 13, Home Ministry officials held a meeting with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu and Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, who represents the State in Parliament, on various administrative issues. The subject of granting citizenship to the Chakma-Hajongs was also discussed. After the meeting, Mr. Rijiju said a “middle ground” would be chosen so that the Supreme Court’s 2015 order to grant citizenship to Chakma-Hajong refugees could be honoured and the rights of the local population not diluted. “The Supreme Court order has to be honoured. Chakmas are settled in Arunachal Pradesh since 1964. But the Scheduled Tribe status and indigenous people’s rights won’t be diluted,” he said in a tweet later. This led to widespread outrage in the State and several incidents of violence were reported.
What was the Supreme Court order?
•In September 2015, the court, after hearing a petition filed by the Committee for Citizenship Rights of the Chakmas, directed the State government to grant citizenship to Chakmas and Hajongs within three months. The State government had opposed the move in court. After giving a statement that the order had to be honoured, Mr. Rijiju changed his stand and said it was not implementable. He clarified that since the Home Ministry was the implementing authority for granting citizenship, it would approach the Supreme Court to modify its order.
What is the controversy now?
•After violent protests in the State following Mr. Rijiju’s comments, Mr. Khandu wrote to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on September 18 that the State was not ready to accept any infringement on the constitutional protection bestowed on the tribals of the State. Mr. Khandu said the State’s unique history was governed by a special Act and the Constitution gives special protection rights to the predominantly tribal State. “These provisions were legislated with the singular objective to protect the tribes of the State from the onslaught of alien culture and overwhelming influx of non-Arunachalese in the State,” his letter said.
•Mr. Rijiju blamed the Congress for settling outsiders in a tribal State in the first place. “Originally 2,700 families were settled in Arunachal Pradesh by the then Congress government from 1964 to 1969. The settlement itself was not as per regulations. The settlement violates the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, or the Inner Line Permit system,” he said. Since Arunachal Pradesh is a protected State, any outsider visiting the State needs a permit to do so. Mr. Rijiju had earlier said that Chakma-Hajongs would not get any rights to buy property or land in Arunachal Pradesh.
When did Chakmas flee to India?
•In the 1960s, over one lakh Chakmas and Hajong refugees, Buddhists and Hindus, fled to India from the Chittagong Hill Tract area in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), facing religious persecution. The areas where the Chakma-Hajongs lived was submerged following the construction of the Kaptai Dam. They were made to settle in the Tirap division of Arunachal Pradesh, then known as the North East Frontier Agency, administered by the Ministry of External Affairs through the Governor of Assam. Arunachal Pradesh became a Union Territory in 1972, which coincided with the formation of Bangladesh, and soon local political parties began protesting against the settlement of outsiders in the State. The agitation gained momentum in 1987 when Arunachal Pradesh became a State.
What’s the road ahead?
•The logjam persists even as the government looks for damage control. Mr. Rijiju said Chakma-Hajongs were entitled to live anywhere in India but their stay in Arunachal Pradesh would violate the constitutional rights of indigenous tribes protected by Article 37 IH.
📰 Defiant Iran test-fires missile
U.S. has warned that such activities can result in abandonment of nuclear deal
•Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.
•State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday.
•It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 2,000 km and can carry multiple warheads. “As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country's defence capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,” Defence Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement.
•The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where U.S. President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a “rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos”.
•Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered U.S. sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers. Iran, which fought a brutal war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s, sees missiles as a legitimate and vital part of its defence — particularly as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel import huge amounts of military hardware from the West.
•Mr. Trump has threatened to bin the nuclear agreement, saying Iran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal’s restrictions are lifted in 2025.
•He is due to report to the Congress on October 15 on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in U.S. interests to stick by it. If he decides that it is not, that could open the way for U.S. lawmakers to reimpose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the pact.
•Mr. Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it. The other signatories to the deal — Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the EU — have all pushed for it to continue.
European support
•They point out that abandoning the agreement will remove restrictions on Iran immediately — rather than in eight years' time — and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Tehran is meeting its commitments.
•Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 km, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.
📰 Why we need bullet trains
Mega projects, like mega mountains, shape the environment around them
•So far, the proposed Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project is just a piece of stone that has been laid by Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe, but it has already been written off as a white elephant by most analysts and commentators. They are probably right. The project, of course, is alarmingly expensive. And a 0.1% interest on the loan from Japan, despite what the Prime Minister says, is not “practically free of cost”; in fact, it may well be above real interest rates in Japan if you factor in rupee depreciation. Both the fares and the number of passengers have to be unrealistically high if the project is to even come close to breaking even. In fact, with 12 stations on the route, to reach out and touch as many potential voters as possible, it might not even be able to maintain bullet train-levels of average speeds, given the number of starts and stops.
A leap into the unknown
•But I am all for bullet trains. Not because I have an economic model which makes the high-speed train project suddenly viable — frankly, it is difficult to counter the logic of the above-mentioned experts — but because there is a dimension to an ambitiously audacious project like this which is being totally missed in the heat and dust kicked up by the whole bullet train debate. It is the transformative impact that such mega projects can have on the entire ecosystem.
•Every mega project that we have seen — from China’s Great Wall to the Angkor Wat, from the Taj Mahal to the U.S. Interstate Highway System — has represented a leap into the unknown when it first started. Almost every case has faced the same criticism that the bullet train project is facing now — that it was too unrealistic, too expensive, too fanciful, or just plain megalomaniacal.
•But these projects also represent the crowning glories of human achievement. A Taj Mahal is not just one man’s dream; the secret of its enduring appeal is that it is a representation in physical reality of man’s capacity to dream. They also created technologies, processes, and execution capabilities which not only had not existed till then, but had not even been thought of. And in the process, they ended up shaping the world around them forever.
•Some of the largest mega projects under way around the world are epitomes of this ability of humans to surpass the possible. Take the International Space Station. It has so far cost nearly $200 billion, but is also our world’s first and only permanent outpost outside it — in space, the jumping-off point for mankind’s eventual spread to the planets and stars beyond. It is also a magnificent example of international collaboration, and a technology generator of mammoth proportions, sparking innovations which are now part of everyday technology.
Vision and will
•You need vision to think up mega projects, and indomitable will to drive them through. Dubai’s sheikhs have it. They are pumping in north of $82 billion to build the Al Maktoum International Airport, which, when completed next year, will be the world’s largest by a comfortable margin. Could one have imagined that this tiny desert emirate would become a global air travel hub? No. But will it help bring in technologies and services, create tens of thousands of jobs, and probably make Dubai a serious player in the airport-building business (they have already achieved this in seaports)? Yes.
•China’s party leaders have this ability and will as well. The South-North Water Transfer Project is the world’s largest hydro-engineering project, involving, among other things, two mega 1,000-km canals. It costs thrice as much as the mammoth Three Gorges Dam project did, but will solve the water problems of 50% of China’s population in one stroke.
An ability to dream big
•We had it too, at one time. In fact, one mega project from the past was, ironically, temporally linked with the bullet train. The Narmada Dam, 56 years after it was started, was dedicated to the nation around the same time the bullet train was announced. Forget all the (again, mostly valid) criticism of the project, the abandonment of dam oustees, and so on, and just look at the project in isolation. Half a century ago, this country had no problems visualising impossible dreams — damming mighty rivers, building steel plants in the middle of jungles, and so on. We lost that capacity to dream big somewhere along the way, as well as the capacity to execute. Bhakra Nangal got built, but Narmada took half a century. Bhilai and Rourkela got built, but a satisfactory version of the Arjun Main Battle Tank is yet to be inducted, despite having been sanctioned in 1974.
•That is why we need more bullet trains. It is not just the one project. Just the technology, engineering and quality levels it brings will alone transform the future of our early industrial age railway system. One showcase team will fire the aspirations of a billion people, just like one Delhi Metro made every city in India try to build one. If we don’t dream big, we will never achieve big.
📰 Aim is to become a universal bank after 5 years: Utkarsh CEO
•Utkarsh Small Finance Bank, which started offering its range of products and services from Friday, is taking steps to become a universal bank in five years, says its MD and CEO, Govind Singh . Excerpts from an interview:
Now that the bank is offering all its products and services to the customers, how will it impact your cost of funds?
•Now that we can accept public deposits, our cost of funds will come down. As a micro finance institution, our cost of funds was 12.5%. Since the soft launch — when products and services are offered to employees and customers in a restricted manner — in January, we have already mobilised Rs. 450 crore of deposits and have seen cost of funds coming down by 100 bps. The deposit base is low as compared to the overall borrowing which is Rs. 2,000 crore.
•We expect cost of funds to reduce another 150 bps in the next one year as we aim to mobilise Rs. 2,000 crore deposits by March ’18.
As a bank, will you look to expand the customer base that you had built as an MFI?
•On the assets side, our specialisation has been at the lower end of the spectrum. We do not have expertise for large-ticket loans. As an SFB, the guideline says 50% of the portfolio cannot be more than Rs. 25 lakh. So, though I can lend more than Rs. 25 lakh, I do not have the capability to offer, say, Rs. 100 crore loan. So, on the lending side, our ticket size will be continue to be low; we will continue to lend in the four segments — microfinance, micro, small and medium enterprises, affordable housing and agriculture.
•On the liability side, we are going for all kinds of accounts from all types of customers.
Are you offering a higher interest rate for savings bank accounts?
•Yes, we are offering a rate higher than public sector banks and most private sector banks do. We offer 6% interest rate on savings bank deposits.
•We will also accept bulk deposits from financial institutions since building retail deposits and current and savings account (Casa) deposits will take a long time.
•Building 30% Casa ratio will take time. So, in the initial phase, we will take such deposits. But we will focus on long-term deposits. Even if we take a bulk deposit, we will go for 1-year deposits.
Are you getting a scheduled bank status?
•The process is on. For small finance banks, RBI comes for an inspection of the systems and processes. Once they have attain a comfort level, they recommend it to finance ministry. Once the ministry approves, RBI includes it in the second schedule. The advantage of a scheduled bank is that the universe, for an institution that can keep deposits, expands. There are a lot of institutions who only deal with scheduled banks. So, the cost of funds could further go down.
Where do you see your loan portfolio by March 2018?
•Our loan portfolio is Rs. 2,000 crore and and by the end of the fiscal, we expect it touch Rs. 3,000 crore.
Utkarsh is predominantly present in northern India. Are you eyeing other parts of the country?
•Our core geography will remain the same, barring a few locations. U.P. and Bihar constitute 70% of our branches. Two other states [where Utkarsh does business] are Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. There are no banks that are headquartered in these states. This will continue for some time. We also have some operations in Madhya Pradesh with a regional office in Jabalpur. On the liability side, we have gone for some large locations also, such as Lucknow and Kanpur. We have some presence in Haryana and in Mumbai, we have opened a branch and have received a licence for Kolkata also.
What is the next milestone for the bank?
•Five years down the line, our aim is to become a universal bank. There are some advantages of a universal bank such as lower capital adequacy requirement. In the interim, we will keep enhancing our product mix; we could look at gold loans, for example. In five years we will have a much bigger customer base, a wider range of product and services. We are planning our risk structure, governance structure in line with the best practices.
Is there a plan to infuse more capital?
•The capital base of the bank is Rs. 300 crore now, as against the regulatory minimum of Rs. 100 crore. There will be some more capital infusion this month — around Rs. 120 crore. The holding company has enough liquidity which they can pump in as equity.
How did demonetisation affect your bank?
•Historically, our NPA used to be less than 0.25%. But the demonetisation exercise has impacted all MFIs, NBFCs, banks. As a result, currently, our gross NPAs are 9-10%. In our fresh disbursements of the last 4-5 months, delinquencies have come back to normal.
📰 IGIB researchers reverse cancer drug resistance
Small molecules used along with anticancer drug makes cancer cells sensitive to the drug
•Resistance to anticancer drugs is a major problem in oncology affecting a large number of cancer patients. Now, researchers at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), New Delhi have found a way to make cancer cells that are resistant to two commonly used anticancer drugs — doxorubicin and topotecan — to once again become sensitive to the drugs. Improving or regaining the sensitivity of existing anticancer drugs is a quicker way to address the problem of cancer drug resistance than developing new drugs. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports .
•Chemotherapeutic drugs like doxorubicin and topotecan act by inducing DNA damage. Once the DNA damage gets induced it leads to the activation of an important protein called p21, which gets produced in larger quantities. The p21 protein helps stop the growth of cells and triggers senescence or apoptosis in cancer cells thereby killing them. However, in many drug-resistant cancer cells the production of p21 is compromised, thereby preventing the destruction of cancer cells even in the presence of these drugs.
•“A few years ago we and others groups noted the telomere repeat factor 2 (TRF2), which protects the end of human chromosomes called telomeres (much like small clips at the end of shoelaces that keep the ends from fraying), can bind to the genome outside the telomeres,” says Dr. Shantanu Chowdhury from CSIR-IGIB who led the team. “So we wanted to find out where else the TRF2 binds in the genome.”
•That search led the team to the p21 protein and they found that the promoter of p21 protein has a TRF2 binding site. The TRF2 specifically binds to a DNA structure called G-quadruplex (G4) which is present in the p21 promoter.
•“Once we found that TRF2 binds to the p21 promoter, we wanted to know if it also controls how p21 mRNA is made [mRNA produces the p21 protein]. And that led to the basic finding that TRF2 is a repressor and inhibits the expression of p21 mRNA in multiple cell types,” says Dr. Chowdhury.
•Once the researchers understood the mechanism by which the TRF2 binds to p21, they used small molecules that were available (from other researchers) to disrupt the binding of TRF2 to the p21 promoter site. “The small molecules were able to disrupt the binding of TRF2 to the p21 promoter. And when TRF2 is not able to bind to the p21 promoter the expression of p21 does not get compromised,” he says.
•“When the small molecules are given along with the anticancer drug doxorubicin there is increased amount of p21 produced and cancer cells that were unresponsive to doxorubicin once again become sensitive to the drug,” says Dr. Chowdhury.
•The researchers used fibrosarcoma and breast cancer cell lines to test the combination of small molecules and doxorubicin in reversing cancer drug resistance. “The drug sensitivity increases by over 50% when we use small molecules along with doxorubicin. Drug sensitivity becomes as high as over 80% depending on the dosage of small molecules,” he adds.
•“This is a proof-of-concept study to show that cancer cell sensitivity to existing drugs can be regained by using small molecules. This way the existing cancer drugs can be used instead of discovering new drugs,” he says.
•Since existing small molecules were used for the study, the researchers do not rule out the possibility of the small molecules binding to other G4 sites in the genome. So the focus of the team is to design specific small molecules that bind only to the G4 site in the p21 promoter.
📰 How the Indian monsoon shapes butterfly physiology
•Timing is everything, especially when you live for just three months and have to undertake a 350 km journey: female Milkweed butterflies wait till their gruelling migrations — from one side of the Indian peninsula to the other — are over, to invest in reproductive tissues for birth. The Indian monsoon, which prompts these species to migrate to drier areas, shapes the physiology of the female butterflies more than they do to males, reveals a study published inOikos .
•India's Milkweed butterflies undertake a fascinating yearly migration. In April-June, just before the onset of India's intensive southwest monsoon, millions of these butterflies migrate from the wet Western Ghats to the relatively drier eastern plains and hills, across distances of 350-500 km. After migration, they 'swarm' in large numbers: hanging around each other and roosting on plants. They then mate, lay eggs and die. The next generation of butterflies flee from the northeast monsoon that now hits the eastern plains and they migrate to the Western Ghats just as the southwest monsoon retreats from there.
•While non-migratory butterflies do not have to worry about timing, how do these Milkweed butterflies invest in body tissues: do they invest in flight tissues in the thorax to fly better, or reproductive tissues in the abdomen for birth? Scientist Dr. Krushnamegh Kunte and his student Vaishali Bhaumik of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru measured the thorax and abdomens of 934 individuals of ten Milkweed migratory and non-migratory butterfly species and examined 3,734 individuals across Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to see how they invest physiologically in flight versus reproduction, during and after their migration.
•They found that male butterflies across species – whether migratory or not — did not differ in their physiological investments. But the bodies of female migratory butterflies changed drastically: they invested significantly in abdominal tissue in the reproductive phase after migration, without decreasing investment in flight muscles.
•“Our results suggest that female butterflies have more to lose if they do not invest optimally in flight over reproduction during migration. A hiker wouldn’t carry an unnecessarily heavy burden during her trek, and neither would a butterfly,” says the lead author Bhaumik.
•“We hope to concentrate on climatic, behavioural, and genetic aspects of their migration,” says Dr. Kunte. “If there are genetic differences between the migratory and non-migratory populations, studying them will help us understand this phenomenon better.”
📰 Dino-killing asteroid's impact on bird evolution
•Human activities could change the pace of evolution, similar to what occurred 66 million years ago when a giant asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving modern birds as their only descendants. That's one conclusion drawn by the authors of a new study published in Systematic Biology .
•Jacob Berv from Cornell University and Daniel Field from University of Bath suggest that the meteor-induced mass extinction (a.k.a. the K-Pg event) led to acceleration in the rate of genetic evolution among its avian survivors. These survivors may have been much smaller than their pre-extinction relatives, the Cornell University press release says.
•"There is good evidence that size reductions after mass extinctions may have occurred in many groups of organisms," says Berv. "All of the new evidence we have reviewed is also consistent with a Lilliput Effect affecting birds across the K-Pg mass extinction." Paleontologists have dubbed this phenomenon the "Lilliput Effect" — a nod to the classic tale Gulliver's Travels.
•"Smaller birds tend to have faster metabolic rates and shorter generation times," Field explains. "Our hypothesis is that these important biological characters, which affect the rate of DNA evolution, may have been influenced by the K-Pg event."
