Sunday 26 August 2018

Important Current Affairs 18/8/2018 to 20/08/2018

Short News-
1. ‘Panini Language Laboratory’ has been set up at Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI) in Mauritius.

2. HELINA is indigenously developed Helicopter launched Anti-Tank Guided Missile. The Missile is guided by an Infrared Imaging Seeker (IIR) operating in the Lock on Before Launch mode. It is one of the most advanced Anti-Tank Weapons in the world.

3. Exercise Pitch Black 2018 was held at RAAF(Royal Australian Air Force) Base Darwin, Australia. The Indian Air Force for the first time participated with fighter aircraft in Exercise.

4. Exercise Maitree 2018 was held in Thailand.

5. Government of Telangana has launched for the first time Disaster Response Force (DRF) vehicles in the Hyderabad city.

6. Microcystallites - These are a new type of gold in the form of very small crystals developed by researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.The microcystallites were synthesised by decomposing an organic complex containing gold and other ions under controlled conditions.

7. Bru tribes are native  of Mizoram.


THE GLOBAL LIVEABILITY INDEX:
Top 5 cities to live in the world are:
1.Vienna
2.Melbourne
3.Osaka
4.Calgary
5.Sydney
It is the first time that a European city has topped the rankings. only New Delhi and Mumbai could make it to the list with:New Delhi at 112th position,Mumbai at 117th position.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) 2.0

Launched by - National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

New features will allow users to link their overdraft account to UPI, creation of one-time mandates and pre-authorisation of transactions for payment at later date and checking the invoice sent by merchant prior to making payment.

UPI) is a system developed by the NPCI and the RBI to aid instant transfer of money using a cashless system. Using UPI services, one just requires a smartphone and a banking app to send and receive money instantly or to pay a merchant for retail purchase. In the long run, UPI is likely to replace the current NEFT, RTGS, and IMPS systems as they exist today.

11th World Hindi Conference

Held at Mauritius 2018, held once in three years.

Theme: “Vaishvik Hindi Aur Bharatiy Sanskriti“.

10th World Hindi Conference was held in Bhopal, India in September 2015.

The first World Hindi Conference was held in 1975 in Nagpur, India.

The MEA has also set up the World Hindi Secretariat in Mauritius.

Mauritius
Image result for Mauritius
The capital and largest city is Port Louis. It is a member of the Commonwealth, La Francophonie and the African Union.

Formerly a Dutch colony (1638–1710) and a French colony (1715–1810), Mauritius became a British colonial possession in 1810 and remained so until 1968, the year in which it attained independence..

President -Barlen Vyapoory
Prime Minister -Pravind Jugnauth

Prompt Corrective Action

To ensure that banks don't go bust, RBI has put in place some trigger points to assess, monitor, control and take corrective actions on banks which are weak and troubled. The process or mechanism under which such ac tions are taken is known as Prompt Corrective Action, or PCA. 

Currently, 11 out of a total of 21 state-owned banks are under the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework.

भारतीय रिज़र्व बैंक के संशोधित पीसीए फ्रेमवर्क के मुताबिक, नियामक को बैंकों पर कुछ विशेष प्रतिबंध लगाने की अनुमति मिल सकती है जैसे शाखा विस्तार को और लाभांश भुगतान रोकना, बैंक की ऋण सीमा को किसी एक इकाई या क्षेत्र में सीमित करना, एकीकरण, पुनर्निर्माण, बैंक को बंद करना या अनिवार्य कार्रवाई जैसे कि प्रबंधन मुआवजा और निदेशकों की फीस पर प्रतिबंध लगाना शामिल है।

Caspian Sea Agreement

The Caspian Sea is a geopolitical strategic body of water, both in terms of its location and its resources. 

Situated in a transcontinental zone between Europe and Asia, it has historically been a key trade and transit corridor between eastern and western powers.

 

The Supreme Court has accepted the Centre’s proposal to use hologram-based coloured stickers on vehicles

Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR)

Colour Codes:

The Hologram-based sticker of light-blue colour will be used for petrol and CNG-run vehicles.

Sticker of orange colour will be used for diesel-driven vehicles.

 Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) 

 It is the regulator for the securities market in India. It was established in the year 1988.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India was established on April 12, 1992 in accordance with the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992.

International Conference on Recent Advances in Food Processing Technology (iCRAFPT)

International Conference on Recent Advances in Food Processing Technology (iCRAFPT) 2018 is being held at Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology, Thanjavur in Tamilnadu.
Theme: Doubling farmers’ income through food processing.

International Nitrogen Initiative

The International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) is an international program, set up in 2003 under sponsorship of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) and from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP).

The INI holds a conference once in every three years.

Nitrogen was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772.

Nitrogen occurs in all organisms, primarily in amino acids (and thus proteins), in the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and in the energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate.

The human body contains about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element in the body after oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

The extremely strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen (N≡N), the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide (CO),[2] dominates nitrogen chemistry. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N2 into useful compounds, but at the same time means that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to form nitrogen gas releases large amounts of often useful energy. 

Nitrogen is an essential component of nucleic acids, amino acids and thus proteins, and the energy-carrying molecule adenosine triphosphate and is thus vital to all life on Earth.

Liquid nitrogen is often used as a refrigerant. It is used for storing sperm, eggs and other cells for medical research and reproductive technology. 

It is also used to rapidly freeze foods, helping them to maintain moisture, colour, flavour and texture.

Bhitarkanika sanctuary, Gharials and their conservation-

The Odisha government is setting up a world-class interpretation centre at Dangamal near Bhitarkanika National Park to showcase its efforts in protecting crocodiles and preserving its rich mangrove diversity.

The center will be developed both as a tourist attraction and a place for students to learn about the environment.

The project, which has been approved under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project, will be taken up at an estimated cost of ₹3 crore.

Conservation:

Schedule 1 species under Indian wildlife act, 1972.
Project Crocodile began in 1975 (Government of India+ United Nations Development Fund + Food and Agriculture Organization) — intensive captive breeding and rearing program.

What is Natrional Park ?

National park is an area which is strictly reserved for the betterment of the wildlife & biodiversity, and where activities like developmental, forestry, poaching, hunting and grazing on cultivation are not permitted. In these parks, even private ownership rights are not allowed. Their boundaries are well marked and circumscribed. In national parks, the emphasis is on the preservation of a single floral or faunal species.

Natrional Park in Orrisa- 
1. Kanger Ghati National Park
2. Simlipal National Park
3. Bhitarkanika National Park

Where Gharials are found in India?

Today small populations of Gharials are present in Son River,Girwa River,the Ganges, Mahanadi river and the Chambal river. National Chambal Sanctuary is the only place in India where a large wild population of India's special crocodilian Gharial is found.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) is a massive observatory for detecting cosmic gravitational waves and for carrying out experiments. The objective is to use gravitational-wave observations in astronomical studies.

Gravitational waves 

Gravitational waves are the relic gravitational waves from the early evolution of the universe.  

Much like the Cosmic Micro-wave Background (CMB), which is likely to be the leftover light from the Big Bang, these gravitational waves arise from a large number of random, independent events combining to create a cosmic gravitational wave background.  

The Big Bang is expected to be a prime candidate for the production of the many random processes needed to generate stochastic gravitational waves (and the CMB), and therefore may carry information about the origin and history of the universe.  If these gravitational waves truly originated in the Big Bang, these waves will have been stretched as the universe expanded and they can tell us about the very beginning of the universe—they would have been produced between approximately 10-36 to 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang, whereas the CMB was produced approximately 300,000 years after the Big Bang.  

Efforts to detect the gravitational wave background are ongoing. On 11 February 2016, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced the first direct detection and observation of gravitational waves, which took place in September 2015. In this case, two black holes had collided to produce detectable gravitational waves. This is the first step to discovery of the GWB.

In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish for their role in the detection of gravitational waves.

LIGO- India project:
CONEXT- The Environment Ministry has allowed scientists to test the suitability of land in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district to host the India wing of the ambitious Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project.

Known as the LIGO-India project, it is piloted by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The LIGO-India project will be jointly coordinated and executed by three Indian research institutions: the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune and Department of Atomic Energy organisations: Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar and the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.
The project will bring unprecedented opportunities for scientists and engineers to dig deeper into the realm of gravitational wave and take global leadership in this new astronomical frontier.

India urges UN to declare 2018 as 'International Year of Milllets-

International Year of Millets

Firstly we will know that What are Millets?

Millet is a common term to categorize small-seeded grasses that are often termed nutri-cereals or dryland-cereals, and includes sorghum, pearl millet, ragi, small millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet and other millets.

Nutritionally superior to wheat & rice owing to their higher levels of protein with more balanced amino acid profile, crude fiber & minerals such as Iron, Zinc, and Phosphorous, millets can provide nutritional security and act as a shield against nutritional deficiency, especially among children and women.

The anaemia (iron deficiency), B-complex vitamin deficiency, pellagra (niacin deficiency) can be effectively tackled with intake of less expensive but nutritionally rich food grains like millets.

Millets can also help tackle health challenges such as obesity, diabetes and lifestyle problems as they are gluten free, have a low glycemic index and are high in dietary fibre and antioxidants.

What is Gluten?

Gluten is a general name for the proteins found in wheat , Gluten provides no essential nutrients. People with celiac disease have an immune reaction that is triggered by eating gluten. They develop inflammation and damage in their intestinal tracts and other parts of the body when they eat foods containing gluten.

Adapted to low or no purchased inputs and to harsh environment of the semi-arid tropics, they are the backbone for dry land agriculture.

Photo-insensitive & resilient to climate change, millets are hardy, resilient crops that have a low carbon and water footprint, can withstand high temperatures and grow on poor soils with little or no external inputs. In times of climate change they are often the last crop standing and, thus, are a good risk management strategy for resource-poor marginal farmers.


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