The paper explores the origin and analysis of the so-called Beijings String of Pearls doctrine that refers to the Strait of Malacca, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Maldives, the Strait of Hormuz, Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and IOR. The paper further elaborated on the Indian response to the Chinese String of Pearls Doctrine by countering through Indian Act East Policy, investing in the Iranian Chabahar port and by developing Indo-Pacific alliance with Japan and the USA. This piece of the paper concluded that the Chinese investment in all these ports, islands and chokepoints are a counter strategy to the Malacca Dilemma and to ensure the Beijing Sea lanes of Communication. The study found that the Chinese never used or declared a policy statement about the String of Pearl policy and originally it was coined by the U.S. consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and got popularity with publication in Energy Futures in Asia.

South Asian region could not achieve prosperity and growth until Pakistan and India work together for the development of trade relations. Their cordial trade links would open the gate of opportunities for all. This is only possible if rivalry is removed and supportive environment for trade is introduced. This article is addressing the question whether there is any potential for trade between Pakistan and India or not? An affirmative answer to this question encourages both giants to divert their productive energies towards economic interdependence and regional uplift. Pakistan and India have the potential of trade, though trade has both characters of competitiveness and complementarity while both can lead to prosperous trade relations if sincerely pursued. Competitiveness would result in efficiency of industries and production while complementarity, especially, the emerging one would prove to be an impressive instrument of development and widening of relations.

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A fast, accurate technique for the three-dimensional characterisation of terahertz beams is presented. Using gold-on-glass resolution targets the beam profile, depth of focus and astigmatism of a quantum cascade laser-based imaging system have been measured.ª2007 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 110.4850 (Optical transfer functions); 140.3070 (Infrared and far-infrared lasers) IntroductionThe terahertz portion of the electromagnetic spectrum has long been identified as a spectral region that is well-suited to a range of security applications including stand-off imaging of concealed weapons and sensing of chemical and biological agents. This suitability stems from the transparency of many non-polar materials such as fabrics, plastics and paper to terahertz radiation, coupled with the molecularly-specific absorption features that many chemical compounds (e.g. illicit drugs and explosives) exhibit at terahertz frequencies.Owing to the lack of affordable multi-element sensing arrays with good sensitivity at terahertz frequencies, the majority of imaging systems demonstrated to date adopt a configuration in which the terahertz beam is focused onto a sample, which is then raster-scanned in two orthogonal directions to yield a two-dimensional image. Under these circumstances, the resolution of the system is dictated by the spatial characteristics of the focused beam. In the case of stand-off imaging, particular attention must also be paid to the beam characteristics away from the focal plane since exact positioning of the object under inspection can rarely be guaranteed in practice. Specifically, a large depth of focus and low astigmatism are essential for such applications. A need therefore exists for techniques that can quickly and accurately quantify the spatial properties of focused terahertz beams in three-dimensions. Furthermore, since the emission from terahertz quantum cascade lasers with sub-wavelength cavity dimensions has been shown to be non-Gaussian in profile [1], such techniques must also allow quantification of non-Gaussian beams.The simplest beam profiling technique involves sampling the beam by use of a detector and focal-plane aperture. However, this has the drawback of requiring large optical powers or a sensitive detection scheme for high-resolution sampling. Multi-element pyroelectric or bolometric arrays provide a convenient means of profiling terahertz beams, but these are expensive and provide only moderate sensitivity (~250 nW/pixel), thus also demanding large optical powers. The most commonly-used profiling technique involves scanning a knife-edge across the beam in two orthogonal directions [2]. By performing a fit to the resulting step response function (SRF) one can extract a Gaussian full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM). However, this method does not allow simple quantification of non-Gaussian beam sizes. Differentiation of the SRF yields the line spread function of the beam, but also greatly amplifies noise in the data when high-resolution sampling is employed.In this paper, we demonst...

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