Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Hornbills among top seed dispersers, most threatened

News

• The study carried out in Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh noted that hornbills, one among the large-sized frugivores, are the top seed dispersers.
• Sadly, they are also the most threatened. This is because they are hunted for meat, and the tribal communities use their feathers for head dresses.

Findings

• The study looked at 43 tree species, 48 frugivore bird species that were seen visiting them.
• A single bird species could visit different tree species, and a single tree species would be visited by different bird species. So a complex network of over 400 interactions was created and studied.
• The trees were classified into small-, medium- and large-seeded. The large-seeded trees mainly depended on hornbills and imperial pigeons for their dispersal. The medium-size seeded trees were visited by bulbuls, barbets along with hornbills and imperial pigeons.
• Though the frequency of visits was similar for all four bird species, the number of fruits removed from trees was high for hornbills.
• Among the different bird species, hornbills were found to be the most effective seed dispersers. They were found to swallow and disperse most of the fruits they handled. They also removed maximum number of fruits and therefore seeds in every visit to a fruiting tree.
• They swallow the fruit as a whole causing no damage to the seed. They are known to disperse seeds far away from the parent plant and our previous studies have shown that they can disperse up to 13 km.
• Even for large, medium and small-seeded plants, hornbills swallowed as a whole and thus were the best fruit-handlers among the frugivores,” Chaplod says.
• Previous studies by the team also noted that when the number of hornbills decreased in an area, the regeneration of large-seeded plants that were primarily dispersed from them was also affected.
• Seeds that fall under the parent tree face heavy competition, predation by rodents and insects and fungal infections. So their chances of survival are very low.
• Plants depend on frugivore birds to disperse the seeds at favourable sites, which have low competition and predation pressures, to expand their geographic range. And so the decline of frugivores could severely affect the ecosystem.

• New species on the verge of extinction, says expert

  News

  • One hyporheic (porous spaces or sediments along water ways) crustacean Harbobathynella indicadiscovered on the banks of Krishna river near Vijayawada is suspected to be extinct.
  • Sewage flows into the river at the ‘type location’ (the point the sample was first collected) and these creatures are very sensitive to it.

  Beyond News

  • Human activity seems to have got to them, and many of them have become endangered even before they have been discovered.
  • Despite several efforts, no specimens of  indicawere found in recent times. Samples were collected 100 km downstream and upstream the type location, but the collection teams had no luck.
  • Some of the new species, particularly those that live in the Hyporheic zone, were threatened because of exposure to sewage and indiscriminate sand mining.
  • Quarrying, over exploitation of water resources, groundwater pollution, reduction in recharge of groundwater, visitors’ pressure, some religious and ritual practices, treasure hunt and cave vandalism are all threats to these ancient life forms studies of which could be the key to the study of evolution.
  • Several of them were extremophiles that might come in handy in creating drought resistant crops. Some of them could be used for research of life in outer space.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

India voices concern over delays in reimbursement to UN peacekeeping contributing countries

 

News

• India, which is owed $38 million by the UN for peacekeeping operations, has voiced concern over the “unjustifiable and inexplicable” delays in reimbursement to countries providing peacekeeping troops and police for UN missions.

Beyond News

• It underlined that recurrent delays in payments have turned the Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) as “de facto financers” of UN peacekeeping.
• Reimbursement on time for peacekeeping is a genuine expectation, First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN said at a Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) session on ‘Improving the Financial Situation of the United Nations.’
• First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN noted that total arrears currently stand at a whopping $3.6 billion, nearly one-third of the annual assessment of the United Nations, UN peacekeeping also suffers from delay in reimbursements.
• First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN pointed out that apart from the one billion dollar worth of unsettled reimbursements to TCCs, large reimbursements related to Letters of Assist ($178 million) and death and disability claims ($8 million) were also outstanding.
• These amounts do not include the long unsettled Contingent Owned Equipment (COE) reimbursements of many TCCs, including India, from the closed peacekeeping missions.
• The UN owes India $38 million, among the highest it has to pay to any country, for peacekeeping operations as of March 2019, UN Secretary General had said in his report in April on improving the financial situation of the UN.
• As at March 31, 2019, the total amount payable to troop- and police-contributing countries with respect to active peacekeeping missions was $265 million.
• India is among those member states who continue to be owed significant sums towards troop and COE reimbursements from the active peacekeeping missions but the country still continues to support UN peacekeeping, and is cumulatively the largest troop contributor.
• First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN voiced concern over the “unjustifiable and inexplicable delays in reimbursement, saying it negatively impacts on UN’s ability to maintain honest agreements with TCCs on other aspects of peacekeeping.
• India’s share of the UN’s budget has been increasing in recent years, including a 13 % increase from this year and the country has been paying its share on time.
• The UN Secretary-General has put forth several proposals to improve the financial situation of the UN and some of the proposals supposedly aim to improve UN’s reimbursement relationship with the TCCs. India will study these proposals carefully.

Ex-servicemen status for Nursing Service

News

• The Defence Ministry and the Army have agreed in principle to grant ex-servicemen status to the Military Nursing Service (MNS) cadre, which has been their long-term demand.
• The decision comes as the Supreme Court has asked for their opinion in an ongoing case on the issue.

Beyond News

• The Army and the Ministry have agreed in principle for ex-servicemen status as also their demand to use star plates on cars for brigadiers and above.
• In all, the MNS had 28 demands of which these two are the major ones. The status entitles them to all benefits of veterans, the official stated. Some MNS had approached the Armed Forces Tribunal which supported their demand after which the Defence Ministry challenged it in the Supreme Court in 2010.
• On May 7 this year, the apex court had asked the Ministry and the Army to submit their reply. Ahead of the change in stance of the Ministry, a meeting was convened in March this year with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) “for technical changes to the definition of ex-servicemen” to which the DoPT agreed in principle, the source stated.
• MNS enjoys commissioned status and is already entitled to the Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) and Canteen Stores Department (CSD) facilities.

Climate-resilient roads for State

News

• The 5,000-odd km of roads damaged in the deluge last August to be developed under Rebuild Kerala with World Bank and German development bank KfW aid will be climate resilient.
• Resilient design will be adopted for the roads and drainages, embankments, slope and soil stabilisation measures, retaining walls, and steps to avoid water retention will be the key features of the roads.

Beyond News

• A 5,000-km core road network is to be created by upgrading the roads into world-class corridors on the parameters of the WB-funded Kerala State Transport Project (KSTP) corridors.
• To be taken up as part of Rebuild Kerala, the road upgrade will be done by the Public Works Department.
• A core road network authority will be formed and the government had issued orders to this effect.
• Initially, the core roads will be in 800 km and the corridors will be identified based on passenger car unit (pcu) movement, connectivity to economic centres, hospitals, educational institutions, and maximum number of public and commercial vehicles.
• Transport planners have found that 80% of the traffic move along 15% of the road network in the State.
• The World Bank will give technical support and aid from the $150 million promised to the State and the KfW aid will be used.
• The process to identify core roads and prepare a detailed project report (DPR) has commenced.
• Utilising $19 million to be provided by the World Bank, 300 km of rural roads in Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottayam, Idukki, Wayanad, and Kannur under the Local Self-Government Department (LSGD) will be made climate resistant.
• Another 63 km of roads in Pathanamthitta, Idukki, and Wayanad under the Public Works Department will be upgraded utilising a WB aid of $23 million.
• The restructuring of the $216-million World Bank loan for the ongoing Phase II of the KSTP is for upgrading 363 km of State highways traversing through eight districts.
• The remaining 1,769 km LSGD roads damaged in the floods will be upgraded in a phased manner.
• A project management unit has been set up for the LSGD in the capital as done for the PWD for executing the KSTP project.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Navy boosts its air warfare capability

News

• The Navy crossed a milestone in enhancing its anti-air warfare capability, with the maiden “cooperative engagement firing” of the medium-range surface-to-air missiles.

Beyond News

• This was achieved by network-centric operations that helped to combine the capabilities of all military platforms in a formation.
• The firing was undertaken on the western seaboard by the INS Kochi and the INS Chennai, wherein the missiles of both ships were controlled by one ship to intercept different aerial targets at extended ranges.
• The trial was carried out by the Navy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
• The missile was developed by the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad, a DRDO laboratory, and IAI. It is made by Bharat Dynamics Limited.

Environmental costs of a digital planet

News

• Technology is often touted as a solution to the world’s environmental challenges, but it is also part of the problem: industry executives are facing rising pressure to clean up their energy and resource-intensive business.
• Around 25 watts per hour, representing 20 grammes of carbon dioxide emissions, according to France’s CNRS research centre.

Findings

• It might not seem like much, but the Radicati research group expects 293 billion emails will be sent every single day this year and the power needs to be generated mostly from fossil fuels.
• Apps can quickly drain and shorten the life of phone batteries, with Snapchat a particularly “heavy” messaging service because it automatically turns on the camera.
• Then there are the server farms crunching mammoth amounts of data worldwide, which require huge amounts of electricity both to run and to power airconditioning which keeps the equipment from getting too hot.
• Under the current global energy mix, the share of greenhouse gas emissions from information and communication technologies will rise from 2.5% in 2013 to 4% in 2020.
• That makes the sector more carbon-intensive than civil aviation (a 2% share of emissions in 2018) and on track to reach automobiles (8%).
• Greenpeace warned about the concentration of data centres, in particular those used by Amazon, in the U.S. state of Virginia, which reportedly help transmit 70% of the world’s internet traffic.
• To cope with the voracious energy needs, the local power company Dominion turned to non-renewable fuel sources drawing the ire of tech firms.
• Most have pledged to use as much “clean” energy from wind farms or other sources as possible, with Facebook signing a partnership with Greenpeace several years ago.
• Video streaming now accounts for nearly 60% of all “downstream” internet traffic from servers to individual devices, with Netflix alone generating 15%, according to an October report from U.S. network analysis and services group Sandvine.
• Music services also take a toll. In 2000, researchers found that greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. music industry alone stood at 157 million kg in 2000.
• But by 2016, even as the use of plastics for CDs and their cases plummeted, the storage and sharing of online music files in the US generated between 200 million and 350 million kilograms of greenhouse emissions.
• The Basel Action Network NGO estimates that the European Union exports some 3,50,000 tonnes of electronic and electrical waste (a category that also includes appliances like washing machines) to developing countries each year.
• The race to extract the rare-earth metals essential for modern phones and other devices, often leading to deforestation and water pollution, is also an environmental threat in Africa and Asia in particular.

Study documents diverse plant species in Singanallur lake

News

• A recent study on the plant diversity conducted at Singanallur lake, an urban lake in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, has found the presence of 453 species of plants in and around the water body, of which 328 (72 %) are medicinal plants.
• The study is the first of its kind conducted on the plant diversity of an urban lake in the State.

Findings

• Apart from the survey, the team also prepared a herbarium of specimens of the species of plants except the planted ones that were not in flowering or fruiting.
• Declared as an Urban Biodiversity Conservation Zone by Coimbatore Municipal Corporation in 2017, Singanallur lake is currently protected by the Centre for Urban Biodiversity Conservation and Education (CUBE).
• Though a freshwater lake is expected to have several hydrophytes (aquatic plants) as its vegetation, these were absent in Singanallur lake probably due to poor quality of water, the study found. There were a few aquatic species that preferred polluted water.
• The study also found the presence of some climbers that disturb the vegetation, and certain weeds including prosopis juliflora(karuvelam tree) and parthenium. It suggested the removal of these species gradually without affecting overall functioning of lake shore vegetation.

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