Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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India inks $200 mn. WB loan for nutrition mission

News

• India signed an agreement with the World Bank for a $200 million loan for implementing the National Nutrition Mission across 315 districts of the country.

Beyond News

• Approved by the Union Cabinet last year, the mission aims at reaching 10 crore beneficiaries, mainly children upto the age of six years, pregnant women and lactating mothers and adolescent girls.
• The programme will be implemented in three phases between 2017 and 2020 across all districts of the country.
• The mission targets a 2% reduction in both under-nutrition and low birth weight per annum. It also aims to bring down anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls by 3% per year until 2020.
• The government will also strive to reduce the prevalence of stunting from the current level of 38.4% (as per the National Family Health Survey 4) to 25% by 2022.
• The National Nutrition Mission has an approved budget of ₹9046.17 crore. The total contribution of the Centre will be ₹2,849.54 crore and nearly ₹1,700 crore will be contributed by the State governments. The remaining amount will be funded through the government’s tie-up with multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.
• At the current rates of exchange, the loan translates to ₹1,344.6 crore 14% of the total budget approved by the government and 30% of the amount it plans to borrow.
• The project will include investments in improving the skills and capacities of ICDS staff and community nutrition workers, an official statement said.

Indians accounted for more than 74% of H-1B visas in 2016, 2017: USCIS report

News

• In 2016 technology professionals from India accounted for 74.2% of the total number of H-1B visas issued by the U.S. and the next year the figure increased to 75.6%, a government report said in Washington on Monday.

H-1B visas

• The H–1Bis a visa in the United States under the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 101(a)(15)(H) which allows U.S. employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.

Beyond News

• However there has been a drop in the number of new H-1B beneficiaries from India, the official report has said.
• China with a little over 9%, comes a distant second after India in terms of number of H-1B visas. The figures for China were 9.3% and 9.4% respectively for 2016 and 2017.
• Continuing employment petitions refer to extensions, sequential employment and concurrent employment, which are filed for foreigners already in the U.S.
• While the number of H-1B petitions filed increased 1.24% from 398,718 in 2016 to 403,675 in 2017, the number of H-1B petitions approved increased 5.9% from 345,262 in 2016 to 365,682 in 2017, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)said in its latest report titled ‘Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers’.
• According to the report the number of H-1B petitions approved in 2017 for workers between the ages of 25 and 34 was 66.2%, the number of H-1B petitions approved in 2017 for workers with a bachelor’s degree was 45.2%.
• In addition, 44.5% of approved petitions were for workers with a master’s degree, 6.8% had a doctorate, and 3.3% were for workers with a professional degree. The number of H-1B petitions approved in 2017 for workers in computer-related occupations was 69.8%, it said.
• The number of H-1B petitions approved for workers in computer-related occupations increased by 6.6% from 237,837 in 2016 to 254,592 in 2017. The number of H-1B petitions for all other occupation groups increased by 3.4% from 106,418 in 2016 to 110,009 in 2017, the report said.

New norms for labelling food planned

News

• All packaged food with at least 5% content from genetically engineered sources need to be labelled so.

Beyond News

• Moreover, foods that exceed norms of sugar and fat should carry ‘red’ and ‘green’ labels specifying the extent to which they do so, according to draft regulations by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
• This is the first time that the Central government has laid down guidelines for labelling genetically modified (GM) food. Officials say they are awaiting public comments.
• FSSAI CEO said, “This isn’t the final draft. There will be one more version and that will be reviewed for 30 days.”
• The government has been contemplating a system for labelling GM foods for at least two years.
• Current laws prohibit any GM food unless cleared by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, a Environment Ministry body from being sold in the country.
• The draft also defines the safe levels of fat, sugar and salt in processed food.
• Food packs would have a designated space coloured RED in case the value of energy from total sugar was more than 10 per cent of the total energy (kcal) provided by the 100 g/100 ml of the product; the value of energy (kcal) from trans-fat is more than 1 per cent of the total energy (kcal) provided by the 100 g/100 ml of the product; and total fat or sodium content provided by the 100 g/100 ml of the product is more than certain specified threshold values.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

No to new borewells in 230 villages

News

• Drilling of new borewells has been prohibited in 230 villages in erstwhile Warangal district in Telangana indicating the alarming rate of depletion of ground water levels.

Beyond News

• The increased temperature has forced the farmers to dig more borewells to wet their standing crops. If the temperature continues to rise at the current pace the situation in mid May and June is likely to be worse.
• The groundwater levels have declined sharply by March itself when compared to February this year. The officials of the Groundwater Department fear the situation might worsen.
• The district officials have been urging farmers not to wet their crops by canal method and instead adopt sprinkler or drip irrigation systems to conserve water and to save the standing crops.

Portable 3D skin printer to heal wounds

News

• In a first, researchers have developed a portable 3D skin printer that deposits even layers of tissue to cover and heal deep wounds within minutes.

Beyond News

• For patients with deep skin wounds, all three skin layers; the epidermis, dermis and hypodermis — may be heavily damaged.
• Although a large number of tissue-engineered skin substitutes exist, they are not yet widely used in clinical settings.
• The team believes their in-situ skin printer is a platform technology that can overcome these barriers, while improving the skin-healing process – a major step forward.
• The handheld skin printer resembles a white-out tape dispenser, except the tape roll is replaced by a microdevice that forms tissue sheets.
• Vertical stripes of “bio ink,” made up of protein-based biomaterials including collagen, the most abundant protein in the dermis, and fibrin, a protein involved in wound healing, run along the inside of each tissue sheet.

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