Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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4,400-year-old tomb discovered outside Cairo

News:

• Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 4,400-year-old tomb near the country’s famed pyramids at the Giza plateau just outside Cairo.

Beyond News:

• The Antiquities Ministry said that, the latest discovery that authorities hope will help revive the country’s staggering tourism sector.
• It likely belonged to a woman known as Hetpet, who archaeologists believe was close to ancient Egyptian royals of the 5th Dynasty.
• The tomb is made of mud brick and includes wall paintings in good condition depicting Hetpet observing different hunting and fishing scenes.
• Other scenes also depict a monkey in pharaonic times, monkeys were commonly kept as domestic animals picking fruit.
• According to the ministry’s statement,similar scenes have been found in other tombs belonging to the later 12th dynasty.
• Throughout 2017, the Antiquities Ministry made a string of discoveries across Egypt including some in the southern city Luxor known for its spectacular temples and tombs spanning different dynasties of ancient Egyptian history.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Kerala, Punjab, T.N. top NITI Aayog’s health index report.

News:

• Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu were the top rankers in NITI Aayog’s latest Health Index report which has, for the first time, attempted to establish an annual systematic tool to measure and understand the heterogeneity and complexity of the nation’s performance in the health sector.

Beyond News

• The document, developed by NITI Aayog with technical assistance from the World Bank and in consultation with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, indicates that Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh showed the maximum improvement in indicators such as Neonatal Mortality Rate, Under-five Mortality Rate, full immunisation coverage, institutional deliveries, and People Living with HIV (PLHIV) on Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART).
• The next report will be released in June this year and district hospitals too would be ranked.
• Manipur registered maximum incremental progress in indicators such as PLHIV on ART, first trimester antenatal care registration, grading quality parameters of Community Health Centres, average occupancy of key state-level officers and good reporting on the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP).
• Lakshadweep showed the highest improvement in indicators such as institutional deliveries, TB treatment success rate, and transfer of National Health Mission funds from the state treasury to implementation agency.

State nod awaited for child rescue project roll out.

News:

• Having set up a district task force earlier this week to monitor the implementation of Operation Sarana Balyam, a project aimed at rescuing children from labour and begging, Social Justice Department officials in the district are awaiting a direction from the government for the district-level rollout of the project.

Beyond News

• The project is now being run in Pathanamthitta, Kollam, Kottayam and Alappuzha districts, with the government proposing to expand it across Kerala state.
• Minister for Social Justice told the Assembly that 41 children vending various goods and housed in unhygienic conditions had been rescued under the project in the past two years.
• The district task force chaired by the District Collector and the District Child Protection Officer as convener also has representatives of police, Health, Education, SC/ST Development and Forest departments.
• Once a tip-off is received on child labour or beggary, the children will be rescued with police protection, if it so warranted, and produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC).
• Social Justice Department sources said that,it was fully set to implement the project in the district upon receiving directions from the government.
• Apart from checking child labour and beggary, the project aims at identifying the whereabouts of destitute migrant children found in streets and deporting them back to their homes. That again calls for temporary shelters.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Scientists grow human eggs to full maturity in laboratory.

News:

• Scientists have succeeded for the first time in growing human eggs in a laboratory from the earliest stages in ovarian tissue all the way to full maturity — a scientific step that had previously been taken in mice.

Why this news Important?

• This latest work, by scientists at two research hospitals in Edinburgh and the Center for Human Reproduction in New York, is the first time human eggs have been developed outside the human body from their earliest stage to full maturity.

Beyond News:

• Scientists from Britain and the United States said that, it could one day help in developing regenerative medicine therapies and new infertility treatments.
• In previous studies, scientists had developed mouse eggs in a laboratory to the stage where they produced live offspring, and had also matured human eggs from a relatively late stage of development.
• It could in future help cancer patients wishing to preserve their fertility while undergoing chemotherapy treatment, improve fertility treatments, and deepen scientific understanding of the biology of the earliest stages of human life.

Drones can help structure urban development: KTR

News

• An all-women team and its solution for women’s security walked away with top honours at the finals of ‘Hackadrone 2018’in Hyderabad(Telangana), the country’s first UAV hackathon.

Beyond News:

• The solution, developed by Team Drone Force comprising an engineering student from the city and two of her assistant professors Fatima and Swapna Bhandari, comes into play as soon as victim sends an alert from a mobile app.
• The solution sends real-time alerts to the control station and the victim’s guardians. The control station would then deploy a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) to the location and start beaming images thereby promoting the response.
• Information Technology Minister said that, drone technology can play a major role in various areas, especially urban development and mining.
• Some of the areas in which drones can be of immense help were in the project to rejuvenate the Musi river, to monitor mining activities and even assess building violations without being intrusive.

Strongest solar magnetic field measured on Sun.

News

• Astronomers in Japan have observed the strongest magnetic field ever directly measured on the surface of the Sun.

Sunspots

• Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic fields. A sunspot usually consists of a circular dark core (the umbra) with a vertical magnetic field and radially-elongated fine threads (the penumbra) with a horizontal field.

Beyond News

• HINODE’s continuous high-resolution data allowed us to analyse the sunspots in detail to investigate the distribution and time evolution of the strong magnetic field and also the surrounding environment.
• The researchers using the HINODE spacecraft determined that the field was generated as a result of gas outflow from one sunspot pushing against another sunspot.
• Magnetism plays a critical role in various solar phenomena such as flares, mass ejections, flux ropes, and coronal heating.
• The penumbra harbours an outward flow of gas along the horizontal threads.
• The darkness of the umbrae is generally correlated with the magnetic field strength. Hence, the strongest magnetic field in each sunspot is located in the umbra in most cases.

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