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Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Global climate finance flows increased: UN Climate Change

News

  • The global climate finance flows have increased with a bulk of it continuing to go towards efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Findings

  • A relatively small proportion of the finance goes towards efforts to enable the most vulnerable to adapt.
  • On a comparable basis, the global climate finance flows increased by 17% in 2015-16 from 2013-14 levels.
  • One central conclusion is that the growth in global climate finance seen in 2015 was largely driven by high levels of new private investment in renewable energy, the largest segment of the global total.
  • The fall in renewable energy investment in 2016 was offset by an 8% increase in investment in energy efficiency.
  • However, whilst climate-related finance flows are considerable, they remain relatively small in the context of wider trends in global investment.
  • Another central finding is that climate finance to developing countries, as reported in developed countries biennial reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), increased by 24% in 2015 to $33 billion and, subsequently, by 14% in 2016 to $38 billion.
  • The Standing Committee on Finance is the body that supports the Conference of the Parties with respect to climate finance matters.

A shot in the arm for defence IPRs

News

  • Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated an ambitious mission, “Raksha Gyan Shakti”, to promote self-reliance in Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in defence.

Beyond News

  • Under the mission, the target for the year 2017-18 is to train 10,000 personnel of Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSU) and Ordnance factory Board (OFB) on IPR and facilitate filing of at least 1,000 new IPR applications.
  • Between March and October this year, 5,283 people have been trained and 204 IPRs have been filed.
  • The first level of IPs will be filed with the Controller of Indian Patents which would then take them up at the global level.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

ISRO to launch new imaging satellite HysIS

News

  • HysIS, the country’s first hyperspectral imaging satellite for advanced Earth observation, is slated for launch from Sriharikota.
  • About 30 small satellites of foreign customers will be its co-passengers on the PSLV launcher, numbered C-43.

PSLV-C43

  • PSLV-C43 mission will launch 31 satellites on November 29 in two orbits
  • Slated to last just under 2 hours (or about 113 minutes), it will be ISRO’s third longest mission
  • Main payload HysIS, all of 380 kg, is built to work for five years
  • It will aid detailed, high-definition study of Earth surface
  • It will be placed in a polar orbit 636 km away at an inclination of 97.957 degrees.
  • 30 co-passengers include a micro satellite (100-kg class) and 29 nano satellites (under 10 kg)
  • They are from eight countries & together weigh 261 kg
  • Their launches were booked with ISRO’s arm Antrix Corporation.

Beyond News

  • A hyperspectral imaging camera in space can provide well-defined images that can help to identify objects on Earth far more clearly than regular optical or remote sensing cameras.
  • The technology will be an added advantage of watching over India from space for a variety of purposes such as defence, agriculture, land use, minerals and so on.
  • While the ISRO coyly puts it down as another variety in remote sensing, knowledgeable sources have earlier conceded that it can be highly useful in marking out a suspect object or person and separate it from the background. This could aid in detecting transborder or other stealthy movements.
  • HysIS will be ISRO’s first full-scale working satellite with this capability. While the technology has been around, not many space agencies have working satellites with hyperspectral imaging cameras as yet.
  • The November 29 flight would last almost two hours. The satellites would be ejected in two orbits by restarting the rocket’s fourth-stage engine twice. The PSLV, flying in its core-alone format, will first release HysIS to an orbit distant 636 km after 17 minutes from launch. later, two engines will restart after an hour from launch and again 47 minutes later all customer satellites would be put into a lower orbit at 504 km. This will be the third longest mission of PSLV.

NASA’s InSight spacecraft lands on red planet after six-month journey

News

  • A NASA spacecraft designed to burrow beneath the surface of Mars landed on the red planet after a six-month, 300 million-mile (482 million-kilometre) journey and a perilous, six-minute descent through the rose-hued atmosphere.

Beyond News

  • The three-legged InSight spacecraft reached the surface after being slowed by a parachute and braking engines. Updates were coming in via radio signals that take more than eight minutes to cross the nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometres) between Mars and Earth.
  • It was NASA’s ninth attempt to land at Mars since the 1976 Viking probes. All but one of the previous U.S. touchdowns were successful.
  • NASA last landed on Mars in 2012 with the Curiosity rover.
  • The plan called for the spacecraft to go from 12,300 mph (19,800 kph) to zero in six minutes flat as it pierced the Martian atmosphere and settled on the surface.
  • This is no rock-collecting expedition. Instead, the stationary 800-pound (360-kilogram) lander will use its 6-foot (1.8-metre) robotic arm to place a mechanical mole and seismometer on the ground. The self-hammering mole will burrow 16 feet (5 metres) down to measure the planet’s internal heat, while the seismometer listens for possible quakes.
  • Nothing like this has been attempted before at our next-door neighbor, nearly 100 million miles (160 million kilometres) away. No lander has dug deeper than several inches, and no seismometer has ever worked on Mars.
  • By examining the interior of Mars, scientists hope to understand how our solar system’s rocky planets formed 4.5 billion years ago and why they turned out so different Mars cold and dry, Venus and Mercury burning hot, and Earth hospitable to life.
  • InSight has no life-detecting capability, however. That will be left to future rovers. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, for instance, will collect rocks that will eventually be brought back to Earth and analysed for evidence of ancient life.

‘50 Indian star tortoises rescued from Singapore’

News

  • At least 50 Indian star tortoises were rescued from Singapore after they were smuggled from India, said a wild life 

Beyond News

  • The tortoises were confiscated by the Singapore authorities. They will now be repatriated to India and returned to their natural habitat in the forests of Karnataka with cooperation from the Indian and Singapore governments.
  • Investigations confirmed that Karnataka was the origin of these tortoises.
  • Singapore Airlines contributed to the cause of wildlife conservation by transporting the tortoises for free.
  • A three-member team from Wildlife SOS India and a three-member team of Acres Singapore rescued the tortoises from Singapore to India.
  • Once the tortoises complete their quarantine period of 3 months, Wildlife SOS will initiate radio tagging and monitor these animals for survival.
  • The Indian star tortoise is protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. It is one of the most trafficked tortoise species in the world owing to the unique star-like radiating pattern on the shell.

More winter birds flock to Ernakulam’s wetlands

News

  • The year’s migratory bird season is in full swing and the latest visitors to the wetlands near the city include the charismatic greater flamingo and the Amur falcon.

Beyond News

  • While the greater flamingo is one of the most widespread of the six species of flamingoes worldwide (it is seen across Africa, south Asia, the Middle-east and parts of Europe), the bird is a winter visitor to most parts of Kerala.
  • Amur falcon, a small bird of prey that has been in the news over the last few years because of the huge numbers in which it arrives in north east India and was rampantly hunted until very recently.
  • Amur falcons, which breed in Siberia, have been sighted in several spots across Kerala, as they make a final pit stop before flying over the Arabian Sea and into southern Africa to spend the winter there.
  • Other migratory species that have been sighted in the area over the last week include the Siberian stonechat, Pallas’s grasshopper warbler, Eurasian marsh harrier, booted warbler and several species of sandpipers.

ISS microbes could be a threat to astronaut health

News

  • Scientists have identified strains of the bacterium Enterobacter on the International Space Station (ISS), which they say should be studied for potential health implications for astronauts on future missions.

Findings

  • Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the US investigated five strains of Enterobacter that were isolated from the space toilet and the exercise platform on the ISS in March 2015.
  • To identify the species of Enterobacter collected on the ISS and to show in detail the genetic make-up of the individual strains, the researchers compared the ISS strains to all publicly available genomes of 1,291 Enterobacter strains collected on Earth.
  • The researchers found that the ISS isolates had similar antimicrobial resistance patterns to the three clinical strains found on Earth and that they included 112 genes involved in virulence, disease and defence.
  • While the ISS E bugandensis strains were not pathogenic to humans, the researchers, a 79 per cent probability that they may potentially cause disease.
  • However, analyses in living organisms should be carried out to confirm this.

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