Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Maldives’ new President promises to reset India ties

News

• Promising a host of people-focussed policies and a foreign policy formulated on the basis of human rights, democracy and climate diplomacy, the Maldives’s new President, Ibrahim Solih, sought to turn a new page in the country’s politics at a glittering inaugural ceremony.

Beyond News

• The event was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lankan MP Namal Rajapaksa and other dignitaries from across the region.
• The new government assumes power on the back of a coalition of parties led by Mr. Solih’s Maldivian Democratic Party, and comes after five years of rule under Abdulla Yameen that saw Male moving strategically and economically closer to Beijing than to New Delhi.
• At their meeting, the two leaders agreed on the importance of maintaining peace and security in the Indian Ocean and being “mindful of each other’s concerns and aspirations for the stability of the region”.
• The need to boost economic cooperation was writ large in their conversation. Their joint statement recognised that easing the visa regime mutually in both countries would be the quickest way to expand opportunities for Indian companies to invest in the Maldives,and for Maldivians to travel to India for a variety of purposes.
• India was also invited to step up again as an economic partner which could help the Maldives meet its most pressing economic needs, including for increased housing and infrastructure development and for water and sewerage systems on the outlying islands.

On the more troubling question of tackling climate change, President Solih corroborated his reference to “climate diplomacy” with details on his plan to introduce a green tax and halt fishing permits to foreigners.

Ganga waterway project cleared after overruling expert panel

News

• India’s longest waterway project was made possible only after a high-power Committee of Ministers and senior officials from multiple Ministries overruled the recommendations of experts appointed by the Environment Ministry.

Beyond News

• As part of the the government’s ambitious plan to make stretches of the 2,500-km-long Ganga suitable for transporting containers, it decided to make navigable a 1,390-km stretch of the river between Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Haldia in West Bengal.
• The project entails construction of 3 multimodal terminals (Varanasi, Sahibganj and Haldia); 2 intermodal terminals; 5 Roll On–Roll Off (Ro-Ro) terminal pairs; a new navigation lock at Farakka; assured depth dredging; an integrated vessel repair and maintenance facility; a Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS); a River Information System (RIS); and ‘river training’ and river conservancy works.
• The ₹5,369 crore project is partly funded by the World Bank. However, to enable container barges and ships to carry at least 2,000 tonnes, the project requires the river bed to be dredged to enable a minimum draft of three metres along the river, as well as to make the river channel at least 45 metres wide.
• Since early 2016, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI), which is attached to the Union Shipping Ministry, have been at odds over whether this dredging required environmental clearance (EC). This is a detailed process that involves a consultation with locals likely to be affected by the project and residing at locations along the river, where major constructions would be executed.
• Being a World Bank funded project, it was necessary for approvals to be in place before December 31.

Building by-law violators may face double property tax

News

• If the civic body has its way, property owners who have violated building by-laws may have to pay a hefty tax.
• The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has proposed to double the property tax for owners who have deviated from the approved plan. Civic officials who turned a blind eye to the violations may be looking at jail time.

Beyond News

• An amendment to the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, has been proposed and is currently pending with the State government’s Law Department. Once approved, the BBMP will identify owners violating by-laws and issue notices to them.
• The Akrama Sakrama scheme, which is pending before the Supreme Court, allows property owners to regularise some deviations. However, the scheme does not cover violations of the approved building plan, he explained.
• To prevent violators of the approved building plan from getting a stay from the Karnataka High Court, the BBMP has proposed to collect 50% of the building value as a deposit before owners can approach the court challenging the notice issued by the civic body for violations.
• That apart, three months’ imprisonment has been proposed for BBMP officials who are found to have aided the violations.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Harvesting green fuel from wastewater

News

• A purple bacteria which store energy from light can help harvest hydrogen fuel from sewage, and recover carbon from any type of organic waste, scientists have found.

Findings

• Organic compounds in household sewage and industrial wastewater are a rich potential source of energy, bioplastics and even proteins for animal feed but with no efficient extraction method, treatment plants discard them as contaminants.
• A study is the first to show that supplying electric current to purple phototrophic bacteria can recover nearly 100 per cent of carbon from any type of organic waste, while generating hydrogen gas for electricity production.
• One of the most important problems of current wastewater treatment plants is high carbon emissions.
• Purple phototrophic bacteria capture energy from sunlight using a variety of pigments, which turn them shades of orange, red or brown as well as purple.
• The researchers analysed the optimum conditions for maximising hydrogen production by a mixture of purple phototrophic bacteria species.
• They also tested the effect of a negative current that is, electrons supplied by metal electrodes in the growth medium – on the metabolic behaviour of the bacteria.
• The first key finding was that the nutrient blend that fed the highest rate of hydrogen production also minimised the production of CO2.

Kerala flood opened the gates to invasive plants

News

• Floods and landslips that caused widespread havoc all over Kerala have also unleashed several alien invasive species of plants into the State’s waterbodies, posing a threat to native biodiversity and the aquatic environment, scientists have reported.
• An ongoing survey of the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI),on the impact of the extreme climatic events in the State, has revealed that this might lead to invasive biota being introduced afresh, or being reintroduced in places where the control of their populations was once achieved.

Beyond News

• The study found that physical routes and paths formed due to landslides and the overflow of rivers had paved the way for the establishment of primary colonies of invasive species like Nila grass (Mimosa diplotricha), mikania (Mikania micrantha), lantana (Lantana camara) and Siam weed (Chromolaena odorata).
• The survey revealed that invasive species like the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) and giant salvinia (Salvinia molesta), present in the backwaters of the Kuttanad region, had started colonising paddy fields, cultivated lands and other isolated water bodies in nearby areas.
• In Thrissur district’s Kole wetlands, notified under the Ramsar Convention, invasive plants, especially grass species, such as matamat (Rhynchospora corymbosa), desho grass (Pennisetum pedicellatum), giant salvinia and water hyacinth were reportedly establishing a beach-head, using available soil resources. This may lead to the conversion of marshy wetlands into dry land.
• Wayanad district, a significant biodiversity hotspot within the Western Ghats, has been facing a serious threat from senna (Senna spectabilis), an invasive tree species, for the past 15 years.
• Non-native plants are more likely to become invasive when they possess biological traits that are different from those of native flora, which works to their competitive advantage.
• Invasive species are introduced to native eco-systems by ‘global transportation’, as ornamental plants or for botanical gardens, either deliberately or inadvertently. Alter the environment they invade and are difficult and expensive to control after they colonise a landscape, having phenotypic plasticity (the ability to adapt to environmental stress).
• Invasive species generally adopt a wide variety of seed dispersal mechanisms, and their seeds are more viable.
• The Forest Department is conducting a survey to identify the area and density of the spread of invasive species in the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary.

New discovery shows glass made from exploding stars

News

• An international team of scientists said that they had detected silica the main component of glass in the remnants of two distant supernovae billions of light years from earth.

Findings

• Researchers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to analyse the light emitted by the collapsing mega-cluster and obtain silica’s “fingerprint” based on the specific wavelength of light the material is known to emit.
• A supernova occurs when a large star burns through its own fuel, causing a catastrophic collapse ending in an explosion of galactic proportions. It is in these celestial maelstroms that individual atoms fuse together to form many common elements, including sulphur and calcium.
• Silica makes up around 60% of the earth’s crust and one particular form, quartz, is a major ingredient of sand.
• As well as glass windows and fibreglass, silica is also an important part of the recipe for industrial concrete.
• In 2016, scientists reported they had found traces of lithium a metal used in the manufacture of many modern-day electronics at the heart of exploding nova, a phenomenon that occurs when a white dwarf star absorbs hydrogen from a nearby sun.

GROWTH-India telescope’s first science observation

News

• The 0.7 m GROWTH-India telescope at the Indian Astronomical Observatory located in Hanle, Ladakh, has made its first science observation which is a follow-up study of a nova explosion.

Beyond News

• Novae are explosive events involving violent eruptions on the surface of white dwarf stars, leading to temporary increase in brightness of the star. Unlike a supernova, the star does not go on to die but returns to its earlier state after the explosion.
• The GROWTH-India telescope was commissioned six months ago soon after which it saw first light.
• The celestial object was first noticed by a different group which saw the nova explosion.
• This recurrent nova, named M31N-2008, has been observed to erupt several times, the most recent eruption happening in November 2018. Recurrent nova systems are interesting because they are candidates for progenitors of Type Ia supernovae.
• The telescope is potentially fully robotic and can operate on its own, but the way these readings were taken has only partly used its potential for automation.
• This telescope has a field that is five to six times larger. It can ‘slew’ or move its focus from one part of the sky to another in just about 10-15 seconds and its camera can view stellar objects that are thousands to millions of light years away.
• The GROWTH-India telescope is part of the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen. Its goals are threefold: (1) Search for explosions in the optical regime whenever LIGO group detects a Binary Neutron Star merger (2) study nearby young supernova explosions. (3) Study nearby asteroids.
• Transient phenomena such as supernovae are important parts of time-domain astronomy which is a less-explored frontier in astronomy.

Ape fossil 11 million years old unearthed in Gujarat

News

Tireless fossil hunting under the scorching heat of the Kutch basin, Gujarat proved fruitful palaeontologists have unearthed a fossilised upper jaw (maxilla).

• Further studies showed that the fossil find was highly significant: it is the oldest and the only known ape fossil discovered in peninsular India.

Findings

• The researchers concluded that the upper jaw belonged to an adult ape (hominoid family), belonging to the genus Sivapithecus and lived about 11-10.8 million years ago (Miocene).
• The oldest found remains of these apes are dated at about 12.7 million years in Indo-Pakistan and the youngest at about 8.6 million years.
• Fossils of the Sivapithecus genus have been previously unearthed near the Siwalik hill range, spreading across Pakistan, Churia Hills in Nepal and around the Himalayas [Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh]. Now this finding, almost 1,000 km south from the previous finds has increased the geographic range of the genus.
• It also fills a time-window of approximately 11 million years in the evolutionary history of hominoid remains in India.
• Researchers now believe that Sivapithecus is either more close to the modern orangutan of Southeast Asia or an ape that is part of an early radiation of fossil hominoids the great apes, the chimps, gorillas and orangutans and also humans.
• Researchers carried out the X-ray CT scans. The researchers note that as the unearthed jaw had a lot of iron in it due to its deposition in an iron-rich ancient soil, the radiation was not able to penetrate very deep into the specimen, thus preventing better analysis.
• By comparing the fossil with other available data on Sivapithecus genus, the authors speculate that the identified jaw could belong to a large-sized ape, attributed to one of the two species of Sivapithecus, hysudricus or sivalensis. More, better preserved and unfragmented specimens are required to identify the exact species.

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