Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Eight States to implement ‘Ayushman Bharat’

News:

• Eight States and four Union Territories have signed MoUs with the Union Health Ministry to implement the government’s ambitious national health protection mission Ayushman Bharat which aims to provide a cover of ₹5 lakh per family annually to 10 crore vulnerable families, an official said on Saturday.

Beyond News:

• Four States Delhi, Odisha, Punjab and West Bengal  were yet to give a positive response, the Health Ministry official said.
• The eight States which signed the MoUs to implement the Ayushman Bharat: National Health Protection Mission include Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand.
• The Union Territory of Chandigarh is among the four UTs. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Tamil Nadu would sign the agreement soon, the official said.
• Prime Minister expected to roll out the programme on August 15. Union Health Minister had said the initiative would eventually become the world’s largest healthcare programme because of the size of India’s population.
• The scheme will ensure cashless and paperless access to services, costing up to ₹5 lakh per year per family, and will be available at the point of service in public and private empanelled hospitals across India.

China allows India to export non-Basmati rice, renews pact to share Brahmaputra water flow data

News:

• China has renewed its agreement with India on sharing data on the cross-border flow of waters from the Brahmaputra river during the flood season.

 Beyond News:

• Under a Memorandum of Understanding signed , the Chinese side would provide hydrological data from May 15 to October 15 the period when the Brahmaputra is prone to floods. The Chinese side would also provide hydrological data if the water level exceeds a “mutually agreed” level during the non-flood season.
• The two sides also signed a protocol between the Chinese administration of Customs and Department of Agriculture on phytosanitry requirements that would enable all varieties of rice exports from India to China.
• India has been pressing China to allow agricultural exports, to help reduce its adverse balance of payments. The June 9 protocol updates an earlier agreement of 2006. Under the new agreement, India would also be allowed to export non-Basmati rice to China.
• The agreements were signed in the presence of Prime Minster Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit.
• Modi and Mr. Xi held talks to draw a blueprint for deepening bilateral relationship and reviewed the implementation of decisions they had taken at an informal summit in Wuhan, reflecting a renewed momentum in their ties.

Yoga to be introduced in AIIMS across India: Union Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey

News

• The Centre will soon set up yoga centres in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) across the country, Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, said.

Beyond News

• The decision was taken following “encouraging results” of a survey conducted at AIIMS, New Delhi, on the effect of yoga on patients after surgery.
• A year-long survey regarding the effect of yoga on the recovery of patients after surgery was conducted at AIIMS, New Delhi, on 4,100 patients. Seeing the positive outcome patients recovering quickly  they have decided to introduce yoga in AIIMS across the country.

The Centre would set up 20 new medical colleges in the country, out of which five would be in West Bengal.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

NASA rover data shows Mars had organic compounds, methane

News

• Curiosity rover has detected organic compounds on the surface of Mars and seasonal fluctuations of atmospheric methane. The findings released mark some of the strongest evidence ever that Earth’s neighbour may have harbored life.

Beyond News

• But NASA scientists emphasized there could be nonbiological explanations for both discoveries made by the Curiosity rover at a site called Gale crater, leaving the issue of Martian life a tantalizing but unanswered question.
• Three different types of organic molecules were discovered when the rover dug just 5 cm into roughly 3.5 billion-year-old mudstone, a fine-grained sedimentary rock, at Gale crater, apparently the site of a large lake when ancient Mars was warmer and wetter than the desolate planet it is today.
• Curiosity also measured an unexpectedly large seasonal cycle in the low levels of atmospheric methane. About 95 % of the methane in Earth’s atmosphere is produced from biological activity, though the scientists said it is too soon to know if the Martian methane also is related to life.
• The amount of methane peaked at the end of summer in the northern hemisphere at about 2.7 times the level of the lowest seasonal amount. The scientists were surprised to find organic compounds, especially in the amounts detected, considering the harsh conditions, including bombardment of solar radiation on the Martian surface.
• After drilling, Curiosity heats the rock samples, releasing the compounds. Referring to the findings regarding organic compounds and methane.
• The scientists hope to find better preserved organic compounds with Curiosity or other rovers that would allow them to check for chemical signatures of life.

AI system can now identify animals

News

• Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can automatically identify, count and describe animals in their natural habitats.

Beyond News

• Photographs that are automatically collected by motion-sensor cameras can then be automatically described by deep neural networks.
• The result is a system that can automate animal identification for up to 99.3 per cent of images while still performing at the same 96.6 per cent accuracy rate of crowd-sourced teams of human volunteers.
• This technology lets us accurately, unobtrusively and inexpensively collect wildlife data, which could help catalyse the transformation of many fields of ecology, wildlife biology, zoology, conservation biology and animal behaviour into ‘big data’ sciences.
• This will dramatically improve our ability to both study and conserve wildlife and precious ecosystems.
• Deep neural networks are a form of computational intelligence loosely inspired by how animal brains see and understand the world.
• They require vast amounts of training data to work well, and the data must be accurately labelled.

Even small dams have severe impact on river ecology

News

• It seems to stand to reason that small dams cause less environmental problems than large ones. But the first study on small hydropower projects in India proves that they cause as severe ecological impacts as big dams, including altering fish communities and changing river flows.

Findings

• Such hydroprojects, which usually generate less than 25 megawatts of power and consist of a wall that obstructs a river’s flow, a large pipe that diverts the collected water to a turbine-driven powerhouse to generate electricity and a canal that releases the water back into the river, are touted to be better than large dams because they submerge fewer regions and barely impact river flow.
• Such projects receive financial subsidies even carbon credits  for being ‘greener’.
• To see how green such small dams really are, scientists from organisations including Bengaluru’s Foundation for Ecological Research, Advocacy and Learning (FERAL) compared almost 50 kilometres of three river tributaries over one undammed and two dammed stretches  of the Netravathi river in the Western Ghats of Karnataka.
• They studied three zones in detail: above the dam (upstream), in the area between the dam’s wall and the powerhouse, sometimes completely devoid of water (‘de-watered’) and below the powerhouse (downstream).
• Here, they studied differences in water depth and width, which signify how much habitat is available to the river’s denizens, and habitat quality through factors including dissolved oxygen content and water temperatures.
• Their results show that changes in water flow in the dammed sections reduced the stream’s depth and width; water in these stretches was also warmer and had lower dissolved oxygen levels. These changes were most evident in the ‘de-watered’ zones and worsened in the dry seasons.
• This decrease in habitat quantity and quality showed in fish diversity too. The team found that un-dammed stretches recorded a higher diversity of fish species, including endemics (species seen only in the Western Ghats).

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