Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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India to expand polar research to Arctic as well

News

• Three decades after its first mission to Antarctica, the government is refocusing priorities to the other pole the Arctic because of opportunities and challenges posed by climate change.

Beyond News

• This month, it has renamed the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) since 1998, charged with conducting expeditions to India’s base stations to the continent  as the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research.
• It’s also in talks with Canada and Russia, key countries with presence in the Arctic circle, to establish new observation systems, according to a source. Now, India only has one Arctic observation station near Norway.
• Along with the Arctic, India’s earth sciences community also views the Himalayas as a “third pole” because of the large quantities of snow and ice it holds, and proposes to increase research spends towards understanding the impact of climate change in the Himalayas.
• It has already established a high-altitude research station in the Himalayas, called HIMANSH, at Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.
• While annual missions to maintain India’s three bases in Antarcticawill continue, the new priorities mean that there will be more expeditions and research focus on the other poles, the source.
• Sea ice at the Arctic has been melting rapidly the fastest in this century. That means several spots, rich in hydrocarbon reserves, will be more accessible through the year via alternative shipping routes.
• India is already an observer at the Arctic Council a forum of countries that decides on managing the region’s resources and popular livelihood and, in 2015, set up an underground observatory, called IndARC, at the Kongsfjorden fjord, half way between Norway and the North Pole.
• A big worry for India is the impact of melting sea ice on the monsoon. Over the years scientists across the world are reporting that the rapid ice-melt in the Arctic is leading to large quantities of fresh water into the seas around the poles.
• This impedes the release of heat from the water and directs warm water into the seas around India, the theory goes, and eventually weakens the movement of the monsoon breeze into India.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

No confidence notion got defeated.(latest update)

Details will be covered with tomorrow notes.

Fugitive offenders Bill passed

News

• The Lok Sabha passed the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, which will now replace the Ordinance by the same name promulgated by the President in April.

Beyond News

• The Bill empowers special courts to direct the Central government to confiscate all the assets belonging to a fugitive economic offender, including those assets that are proceeds of the crime and that do not belong to the offender.
• The legislation gains importance against the background of high-profile cases where individuals such as Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi escaped the country.
• The ₹ 100 crore limit was placed so that big offenders could be tackled quickly. Offenders below that limit will continue to be tackled by the existing various laws and courts.

TN government sets up 24-hour helpline for inter-caste couples

News

• The Tamil Nadugovernment has informed the Madras High Court that a 24-hour helpline has been set up to investigate issues faced by inter-caste couples and offer them necessary assistance and protection.

Beyond News

• A special cell has been formed in all districts and cities in the state, comprising district-level officers such as superintendent of police and deputy commissioner of police at the city level, to receive complaints of harassment and threat to inter-caste couples, the counter affidavit said.
• There is an online complaint registration facility in both the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems and mobile app for citizens wherein complaints can be given online by aggrieved persons.
• The complaints can be sent to the jurisdictional police station online. This prevents the necessity of the inter-caste couples or even their relatives to physically go to the police station and give a complaint at the very first instance.
• Details regarding the setting up of special cells with 24-hour helpline numbers in all the districts will be uploaded in the official, police and government websites forthwith.
• This is being done in strict compliance with the directions of the court and to ensure the complete eradication of ‘honour killing’ in the state and to create awareness about the steps taken by the government on the matter, the counter affidavit said.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

RBI to issue new lavender colour smaller ₹100 note

News

• The Reserve Bank of India will issue new ₹ 100 notes, which would be smaller in size than the present ones.

Beyond News

• The new denomination has Motif of Rani ki Vav on the reverse, depicting the country’s cultural heritage, the central bank said.
• The base colour of the note is Lavender. The note has other designs, geometric patterns aligning with the overall colour scheme, both at the obverse and reverse. Dimension of the banknote will be 66 mm × 142 mm.
• The existing notes are of the dimension of 73×157.
• The existing ₹ 100 notes will continue to be legal tender.

No effective steps have been taken to clean Ganga; involve the common man as well: NGT

News

• Expressing displeasure of the steps taken to clean river Ganga, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) asked the Uttarakhand government to take “effective measures” and take into account the views of the general public.

Beyond News

• A bench said that information provided “on paper” was different from the “ground reality.”
• Taking note of the compliance report submitted by the state government, the green panel said, Though the compliance affidavit may claim that all steps have been taken, the object of the directions in letter and spirit and effect on the ground is not adequate. It is not possible to accept that the Ganges is pollution free.
• The state government in the compliance report had said that directions had been issued to ban the use of plastic, sewage disposal, demarcation of the flood plains and prohibition of mechanised mining on the river bed.
• Noting that “rigorous monitoring” is required, the green bench further directed district Ganga committees to furnish reports every fortnight, which is to be examined by the executive committee constituted by the NGT.
• The executive committee has also been asked to secure reports of the tested water every month.
• The Tribunal also asked authorities to conduct a survey among the “common man” and take feedback pertaining to the rejuvenation of the river.

Wildlife scientists satellite-collar a dhole

News:

• In a first, wildlife scientists have collared a dhole, the Indian wild dog, with a satellite transmitter to study the habits of the endangered species.

Beyond News:

• With less than 2,500 individuals surviving in the wild globally, the dhole is already extinct in about 10 Asian countries.
• It took a team of scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) over 10 days to to track down a pack of 14 dholes in Bishanpura meadow in the Mukki range of the Kanha National Park.
• The team tranquilised an adult female, tested its health and fixed a tracking collar around its neck as the rest of pack cautiously observed from a distance.
• They don’t know a lot of aspects of their ecology, which makes conserving dholes far more difficult than tigers.
• Conservation ecologists believe the renewed efforts can help protect dholes.

New NASA mini satellite to peer into Milky Way’s halo

News

• A tiny NASA satellite has been deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) that will help scientists search for the universe’s missing matter by studying X-rays from the ‘halo’ of hot gas surrounding our Milky Way galaxy.

Beyond News

• To look for this missing matter, a NASA-sponsored CubeSat mission called HaloSat was deployed from the ISS.
• The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe, radiation from when it was 400,000 years old.
• Calculations based on CMB observations indicate the universe contains 5% normal matter protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles, 25% dark matter – a substance that remains unknown – and 70% dark energy, a negative pressure accelerating the expansion of the universe.
• As the universe expanded and cooled, normal matter coalesced into gas, dust, planets, stars and galaxies. However, when astronomers tally the estimated masses of these objects, they account for only about half of what cosmologists say should be present.
• HaloSat will study gas in the Milky Way’s halo that runs about 2 million degrees Celsius. At such high temperatures, oxygen sheds most of its eight electrons and produces the X-rays HaloSat will measure.
• HaloSat will look at the whole sky, 100 square degrees at a time, which will help determine if the diffuse galactic halo is shaped more like a fried egg or a sphere.
• The halo’s shape will determine its mass, which will help scientists understand if the universe’s missing matter is in galactic halos or elsewhere. HaloSat will collect most of its data over 45 minutes on the nighttime half of its 90-minute orbit around Earth.

On the daytime side, the satellite will recharge using its solar panels and transmit data to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which relays the data to the mission’s operations control centre at Blue Canyon Technologies in Colorado.

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