Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Rain triggers landslides in Sikkim, Darjeeling

News

• Incessant rain for the past few days has triggered multiple landslides in Sikkim and Darjeeling, snapping road connectivity at several places, officials said.

Beyond News

• The landslides have occurred at Dzongu, Mangan, Lachen and Mangshilla in North District and at two places near Sevoke, around 22 kms from Siliguri city.
• The Border Roads Organisation has arranged for small cars to pass through the two areas but large vehicles have been barred.
• Mangan, which houses the headquarters of North Sikkim district, has been cut off from Gangtok due to a landslide at Ambithang.
• The road link between Mangan and Chungthang has also been snapped after a bridge was washed off at Rafong Khola.
• The rain and widespread landslides have affected about 50 houses in the district.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

China’s provinces seek cover as exports fall in U.S trade storm

News

• China’s export-dependent cities and provinces are scrambling to provide relief to exporters, stabilise employment and avert the possibility of social unrest as an intensifying trade disputewith the United States threatens to further erode business.

Beyond News

• Guangdong, China’s biggest province by gross domestic product, this week offered to cut corporate taxes, slash electricity prices and reduce transport and land costs as additional U.S. tariffs since July exposed Chinese manufacturers to the prospect of empty order books.
• The tariffs have come at a particularly bad time for the southern province, which is in the midst of an economic restructuring as it tries to move away from low-end, labour-intensive manufacturing.
• Fujian, another big-exporting province on the coast, unveiled a similar package of measures in August to soften the blows of the trade war.
• The plight of the provinces is just a taste of what could come if the United States carries out its threat to impose additional tariffs on all of its Chinese imports.
• All-out U.S. retaliation would scuttle China’s plan to pivot away from basic industries to higher-value manufacturing, and could result in job losses in the hundreds of thousands, according to one private estimate.
• Guangdong’s exports fell 2% in the first seven months from a year earlier, with shipments of machinery accounting for more than half of its exports up only 2.2%.
• Three Guangdong cities Zhongshan, Foshan and Shenzhen  are racing to meet criteria for a programme under which exporters, both domestic and foreign-owned, are exempted from a value-added tax of 16%.
• Small firms with no export licences can also bundle their products with trading firms that have permits.
• The Trump administration is readying more duties on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will include most lighting products.
• The Finance Ministry said last week it would raise tax rebates on more than 300 products including LEDs, semiconductors and machinery.
• China could lose 700,000 jobs if the United States imposes 25% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports, and if China were to retaliate by devaluing its currency by 5% and adding to levies on U.S. goods.

Shapoorji Pallonji bags major project to clean Ganga

News

• To address pollution in the Ganga in Kanpur, the Uttar Pradesh government has awarded a Rs. 893-crore tender to the Shapoorji Pallonji conglomerate.

Beyond News

• The funds, to be made available from the Rs. 20,000 crore National Mission for Clean Ganga, will be largely spent on constructing new sewage treatment plants (STPs), repairing old ones and ensuring that these plants operate at their rated capacity for a minimum of 15 years.
• In Uttar Pradesh, Kanpur is the biggest contributor to pollution in the Ganga. In 2016, 450 MLD (million litres per day) of sewage was generated in Kanpur of which only 140 was treated. This, despite there already being STPs with a capacity of 425 MLD.
• A poor sewerage network has contributed to this capacity being underutilised and ensuring a cleaner Ganga requires better sewage treatment in the city, according to experts.
• Unlike previous efforts to clean the Ganga, the NMCG has opted to farm out building of STPs to private contractors instead of the traditional approach of having State bodies run them.
• The Kanpur zone tender involves building a 30 MLD STP in Pankha, 15 MLD plant in Unnao and 5 MLD plant in Shuklaganj.
• The SP group would also be required to build a network of drain interceptors, sewage pumping stations (systems that ensure sewage which doesn’t make it to sewer lines is mechanically shunted to STPs) and maintain them for 15 years.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

PSLV to launch two U.K. satellites

News

• A PSLV(polar satellite launch vehicle) will be launched on September16 night from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota to put two earth observation satellites from the United Kingdom to space.

Beyond News

• There is no Indian satellite on this flight. PSLV-C42 will be the first fully commercial trip of the year, breaking a five-month-long lull, for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
• The PSLV is being flown in its core-alone format, minus the external boosters. The two satellites together weigh nearly 889 kg; this is the optimum payload that a core-alone PSLV can launch.
• It will lift NovaSAR and S1-4 to a sun-synchronous (‘pole-to-pole’) orbit 583 km from the Earth.
• NovaSAR is an S-Band synthetic aperture radar satellite, which will map forest, land use and monitor ice cover, flood and disaster.
• S1-4 is a high resolution optical Earth observation satellite that will be used for surveying resources, urban management and monitoring of the environment and disasters.
• Antrix has so far contracted over 280 foreign customer satellites for a fee; most of them are small experimental or earth observation spacecraft.
• This will be the 44th PSLV and the 12th time it will fly as core-alone.

Researchers dive in to restore coral ecosystems

News

• Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on earth, and their role in maintaining marine biodiversity is of no small measure.

Beyond News

• However, it is well documented that coral systems around the world are bleaching and dying due to climate and chemical changes in the sea water. A team from National Centre for Coastal Research, Chennai, plans to work on coral monitoring and restoration in the Gulf of Mannar region.
• The team will also set up an acquatech park which will help local persons rear marine ornamental fish towards a sustainable livelihood.
• The group has prior experience in studying corals across the country. They have successfully transplanted and nurtured corals in the Lakshadweep region. Now they are set to work in the Gulf of Mannar.
• Corals have a symbiotic relationship with the unicellular algae dinoflagellates. An increase in sea surface temperatures leads to coral bleaching and the breaking of this relationship. This ecosystem is so sensitive that an increase of sea surface temperature by one degree can cause the corals to bleach and die. Apart from sea surface temperatures, increase in carbon dioxide levels in the sea water and a change in its chemical composition can also trigger bleaching.
• Coral reefs in India are only seen in some localities around the Gulf of Mannar, Gulf of Kutch, Lakshadweep islands and Andaman and Nicobar islands. In many of these places, bleaching of corals and related cnideria species such as giant clam and tentacle sea anemone have been observed by the team.
• The methods include reducing harvest of herbivorous fish and minimising anthropogenic causes of bleaching.
• The National Centre for Coastal Research, which comes under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, conducted a mapping of corals for Gulf of Kutch, Gulf of Mannar, Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar islands over a period of five years, from 2000 to 2005.
• Their results were startling, as they found less than 40% of the coral reefs in India were still alive.
• From 2005 to present, the team, with support from Department of Science and Technology, has surveyed the area around Agatti and Kavaratti islands in the Lakshadweep, and in an area approximately one acre, transplanted branching corals, massive corals and foliac corals.
• Over the last decade, this region has seen restoration of live corals in these areas. The team found that the branching coral Acroporacould grow 25 cm in 3 years. Another genera, Pocillopora, grew 15 cm in 3 years.
• The researchers plan to replicate the model in the Gulf of Mannar region, and towards this end, they have set up a centre in a 25-acre piece of land near the Rameshwaram coast. Partnering with Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park Authority, they will first monitor the 21 islands in this region and identify degraded areas.
• After the monsoons, they plan to start transplantation work with branching coral species.

A single piece of plastic can kill sea turtles

News

• A sea turtle has a 22 per cent chance of dying if it eats just one piece of plastic, an Australian scientific institution revealed on Friday, quantifying for the first time the risk that plastic pollution poses to sea turtle populations.

Findings

• Scientists found that there was a 50 per cent likelihood that a sea turtle would die if it had 14 plastic items in its gut, according to a statement from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
• However, “even a single piece of plastic can kill a turtle”, said Kathy Townsend of the University of the Sunshine Coast, who participated in the analysis of nearly 1,000 turtles found dead and washed up on beaches around Australia, reports Efe news.
• “Some of the turtles we studied had eaten only one piece of plastic, which was enough to kill it. In one case, the gut was punctured, and in the other, the soft plastic clogged the gut,” Townsend said.
• Prior to this study, it was unclear if the plastics in the oceans killed sea turtles or if they simply ingested them without major harm.
• Sea turtles are among the first animals recorded to consume plastic debris, a phenomenon that occurs worldwide in all seven species of marine turtles.
• Globally, it is estimated that 52 per cent of sea turtles have eaten plastic.
• According to the UN, eight million tonnes of plastic waste ended up in the oceans each year.
• The UN suggested that if this trend continues, there will likely be more plastics than fish in the oceans by 2050, as seabed pollution is already present in every region worldwide.

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