Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Bilaspur’s stone age tools link Sivalik cultures

News

• Researchers from the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) have discovered a number of Acheulian artefacts (dated to about 1, 500,000–1,50,000 years ago) along with contemporary Soanian ones from an unexplored site at Ghumarwin in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh.

Beyond News

• The site is close to another site where scientists in the 19th century discovered fossil remains of Sivapithecus, the last common ancestor of orangutans and humans.
• The discovery of stone tools belonging to the Acheulian age in a region known to have rich evidence of the Soanian period, presents the possibility of continuity of the two stone age cultures at the site.
• This is the first time that the AnSI has found a large number of Acheulian artefacts along with the Soanian tools at a same site.
• They have found bifacial hand axes along with cleavers and scrapers, which are clearly tools of the Acheulian age.
• Along with this, tools like various types of choppers, discoids, scrapers, cores, numerous flake types and angular core fragments of Soanian cultural period have also been found at the same site.
• According to experts, the Soanian stone age cultures date to 600 ka (about 6,00,000) years ago.
• Other than over 100 stone tools, the exploration also yielded petrified remains of a number of vertebrate and invertebrate groups.

The petrified remains are under examination by experts and will help in recreating an ecological picture of the area, millions of years ago.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

A floating laboratory to save the famed Loktak Lake

News

• Three days a week, four women in white lab coats traverse the Loktak Lake in a custombuilt motorboat, scooping flaskfuls of water for analysis.

Why its important? 

This news brings loktak lake relevant for upsc. Loktak Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India and is famous for the phumdis floating over it. The lake is located near Moirang in Manipur state, India. The etymology of Loktak is Lok = “stream” and tak = “the end”

Beyond News

• They record changes in the temperature, acidity, conductivity and dissolved-oxygen in the 300-sq km lake.
• Rising urbanisation and land-use change over the years has seen the Loktak Lake, the largest in the northeast, become a dump yard for municipal waste.

 ‘Silent threat’

• Though the Loktak Lake is yet to see worrying levels of pollution, early signs suggest that there’s need to be vigilant.
• Everyone talks about carbon dioxide levels, but nitrogen pollution is a major, silent threat.
• Already there are signs of calcium anomalies in some of the mollusc and other aquatic life in the lake.
• The model of a floating laboratory ties in with a larger initiative by the Centre’s Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to monitor the health of aquatic systems in the northeast.
• The health of the lake also affects the Phumdis, or the unique ‘floating islands’, on the lake.
• The pH level of the lake, as per measurements so far, varies from 6.8 to 7.2 (ideally it should be slightly below 7). Studies of ocean acidification have shown that even a 0.1 increase can cause [harmful] decalcification.

New algorithm may prevent cyber attacks on GPS devices

News

• Scientists have developed a novel algorithm that may help detect and prevent cyber attacks on GPS-enabled devices in real time.

Beyond News

• The algorithm developed by researchers at University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in the US mitigates the effects of spoofed GPS attacks on electrical grids and other GPS-reliant technologies.
• Malicious agents have the ability to disrupt a device’s understanding of time and location by emitting a signal that is pretending to be a GPS signal.
• The US electrical power grid, for example, depends on GPS to give time stamps for its measurements at stations across the country.
• Although reliable, researchers in laboratories across the world have shown that the system can be vulnerable to spoofing cyber-attacks that can disrupt the system’s time and location data.
• The algorithm, which can be applied to cell phones or computers as easily as a new app, has the ability to recognise false GPS signals and counter an attack while it occurs.
• The main focus of researchers is to prevent attacks on the American electrical power grid, but the algorithm is applicable to several different devices.

Mission: clean water

News

• This year though, Kerala is gearing up to conserve its water resources and also to supply clean drinking water.

Beyond News

• God’s Own Country suffered its worst-ever drought in 115 years in 2017.
• As the monsoon failed, residents faced an acute shortage of drinking water.
• Last year, many areas in the State faced acute shortage of clean drinking water.
• Last year, the State received only 185 mm of rainfall, which is about 33% of the average rainfall of 480.7 mm. Following the drought, a spike in waterborne diseases and fevers were reported in the State.
• 66% of schools in Kerala had functional drinking water facilities in 2010, the number slipped to 80.5% in 2016.

Haritha Keralam

• Haritha Keralam is an umbrella mission integrating the components of waste management and water resources management.
• Local bodies are involved actively in cleaning ponds and rivers, and also carrying out Watershed Walking programmes.
• Through Watershed Walking programmes, they are identifying watersheds, cleaning them, and also upgrading the water resources map of the State.
• The Water Parliament will sensitise people towards protecting water resources and keeping them unpolluted. By April, this [the Water Parliament] will be held at local body levels and groups will be formed to carry out water conservation awareness programmes.

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