Apple, Samsung smart rings to be available soon: What''s wearable tech? Is it worth buying? Here is all you should know

About Wearable technology:

• Wearable technology, also known as "wearables," is a category of electronic devices that can be worn as accessories, embedded in clothing, implanted in the user''s body, or even tattooed on the skin.
• These come in many shapes and sizes, including smart watches and sports watches, fitness trackers, head-mounted displays, smart jewellery, smart clothing and even implantable devices. At a minimum, wearable devices are equipped with sensors, software and connecting technology.
• Working:
• The sensors gather information from the person wearing the device and the software gathers the data and sends it to a device with processing capacity via a wireless connection.
• The ecosystem on which wearable technology works is known as the Internet of Things (IoT).
• It is the same principle as smart technology used at home, on devices such as thermostats that can be operated from a mobile device outside the home, or smart speakers, but applied at a personal level.
• What makes an IoT solution even more attractive is the interpretation of the data gathered by the sensors.
• Benefits:
• Smart rings can provide more accurate readings than smartwatches, because they can use the capillaries (small blood vessels) in your finger to get their readings.
• Another advantage of smart rings is that they have a longer battery life than smartwatches.
• Drawbacks:
• Smart rings won''t be able to replicate the functionality offered by a smartwatch. Also, they are unlikely to come with GPS or a screen.

Arunachal tribe donates land for critically endangered songbird Bugun Liocichla

About Bugun Liocichla:

• It is a small babbler (only 20 cm) with olive-grey plumage and black cap. It is found only in the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary landscape and nowhere else in the world. 
• The avian species is critically endangered with only 14 individual birds spotted so far in the Braiduah village under the Singchung sub-division.
• As a major step towards conservation, the Arunachal Pradesh government finally notified Braiduah Community Reserve under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The reserve is situated adjacent to the Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary.

Key facts about Bugun Tribe:

• The Buguns are migrated from Tibet via East Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh. They have their own geographical boundaries with neighbouring tribes and have a distinct language called Khowa.
• Like other Indo-Mongoloid tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, Buguns (Khowas) too build their houses with bamboo.
• They are skilled at extracting oil from a local wood species found in the forests called Chiblem.
• They have their own socio-political administrative decision making body called the Nimiang that fluidly regulates the functioning of the community.
• The “Pham-Kho” is the annual festival of Bugun. They are generally endogamous as they marry within their community.

Astronomers detect seven potential ‘ghost particles’ that passed through planet

About IceCube Neutrino Observatory:

• It is a device at the earth’s South Pole that detects subatomic particles called neutrinos. It was built and is maintained by the IceCube Collaboration, which consists of many universities worldwide led by the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• It consists of thousands of sensors buried more than 1.4 km beneath the ice plus multiple detectors above the surface. It is the world’s biggest ‘neutrino telescope’.
• Working:
• When a neutrino interacts with the ice surrounding the sensors, it may produce some charged particles and some radiation.
• The sensors detect the radiation to infer the detection of a neutrino and use the radiation’s properties to understand more about the particle.
• Neutrinos come in different types. IceCube can identify some of them in real-time.

What do FTAs with European countries signal?

About TEPA:

• Features
• Investment: TEPA sets out a target of a $100 billion investment into India from EFTA countries and consequent one million jobs over a 15-year period.
• It also provides India the ability to withdraw its tariff concessions if such expected investment is not achieved. If India is not satisfied, it can pull back its tariff concessions in a proportionate manner after 18 years.
• Trade in goods: India is mandated to eliminate tariff on most products within seven to 10 years.
• With regard to India’s exports to EFTA, there will be no material impact since most products face very low or zero tariff for nations which have the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status in EFTA countries.
• Trade in services: On services, both India and the EFTA members have committed to liberalisation across a wide range of sectors.
• Sustainable development: The TEPA’s chapter on Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD), comprising commitments on environment and labour aspects, represents a first for India in any FTA.
• Intellectual property rights: the EFTA countries are home to several pharmaceutical and high technology MNCs, whose ask has been commitments on protection of intellectual property rights that exceed the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement.
• The TEPA’s IPR Annex requires swift rejection of “prima facie unfounded” oppositions. This potentially opens up India’s internal regulatory process to external scrutiny on whether this standard was met.

EX TIGER TRIUMPH – 24

About Exercise Tiger Triumph:

• It is a bilateral tri-Service Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Exercise between India and the US.
• It is aimed at developing interoperability for conducting HADR operations and refine Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to enable rapid and smooth coordination between forces of both countries.
• On completion of the Harbour Phase, the ships, with the troops embarked, would sail for the Sea Phase and undertake Maritime, Amphibious and HADR operations in accordance with injected situations.
• Indian Navy Ships with integral helicopters and landing crafts embarked, Indian Navy aircraft, Indian Army personnel and vehicles and Indian Air Force aircraft and helicopters along with the Rapid Action Medical Team (RAMT) would be participating in the exercise.

Canals used to drain peatlands are underappreciated hotspots for carbon emissions, new study finds

About Peatlands:

• Peatlands are terrestrial wetland ecosystems in which waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing. Consequently, the production of organic matter exceeds its decomposition, which results in a net accumulation of peat.
• These occur in every climatic zone and continent and cover around 2.84% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface.
• The majority of the world’s peatlands occur in boreal and temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, especially, Europe, North America, and Russia, where they have formed under high precipitation-low temperature climatic regimes.
• About 84% of the world’s peatlands are considered to be in natural, or near-natural state. Drained peatlands make up about 16% of the world’s peatlands, or 0.5% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. 
• Due to the process of peat accumulation, peatlands are carbon rich ecosystems. Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store. They store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined. 
• Damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for almost 5% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Conservation not enough for the highly inbred Ranthambore tigers — they require genetic rescue

About Genetic Rescue:

• Genetic rescue is the process of increasing population growth with new genetic variation by migrating individuals into another small population (i.e., gene flow).
• In practice, wildlife managers take individuals from a larger, healthier population, and bring them to a smaller population to introduce new variation. This conservation strategy aims to alleviate genetic load, decrease extinction risk, and enhance the viability of endangered species and populations. 
• It is often employed in conservation biology to mitigate the negative effects of inbreeding depression, which can occur when individuals within a population mate with close relatives, leading to decreased reproductive success and viability of offspring.
• Genetic rescue can have both beneficial and deleterious effects, depending on factors such as the magnitude and duration of gene flow, as well as the genetic and non-genetic factors influencing population dynamics. There can be risks involved with moving animals around, so it’s often thought of as a last resort.

Delhi World''s Most Polluted Capital Again, India Has 3rd Worst Air Quality: Report

About World Air Quality Report 2023:

• It is published by the Swiss organisation IQAir.
• Highlights:
• With an average air annual particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) concentration of 54.4 micrograms per cubic metre, India had the third worst air quality.
• India was better than only two of its neighbouring countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
• While Bangladesh remained the most polluted country in the world, with an average PM2.5 concentration of 79.9 micrograms per cubic metre, Pakistan was second, with a level of 73.7.
• It also identified Delhi as the most polluted capital city in the world for the fourth consecutive time. Bihar''s Begusarai was termed the world''s most polluted metropolitan area.
• Ten out of the top 11 most polluted cities in the world are from India, the other being Lahore in Pakistan.
• 96 percent of the Indian population experiences PM2.5 levels more than seven times the WHO annual PM2.5 guideline.

What is Particulate Matter (PM)?

• It is made of solid particles and liquid droplets in the air. In general, any type of burning or any dust-generating activities are sources of PM. 
• PM comes in many different sizes.
• Larger particles come mostly from the soil. Smaller particles come from burning of fossil fuels, like gasoline in cars, diesel in trucks, and coal used by power plants.
• PM is also divided into primary and secondary categories.
• Primary PM is directly emitted from a smokestack or a tailpipe. Secondary PM forms downwind from sources of gaseous emissions through chemical reactions.

Exporters need to follow new UK rules to avail duty benefits: DGFT

About Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS):

• It is a scheme introduced by the UK Government to facilitate developing countries to integrate into the global economy, create stronger trade and investment partnerships and strengthen supply chains.
• It is a simpler and more generous preferential trading scheme which has been designed to boost trade with developing countries in order to support their development. 
• It reduces or removes rates of duty, or tariffs, on imports from eligible developing countries into the UK. It also enables UK businesses to access thousands of products from around the globe at lower prices, reducing costs for UK consumers.
• The DCTS applies to 65 countries, that are:
• least developed countries (LDCs) as defined by the United Nations.
• low-income countries (LIC) and lower middle-income countries (LMIC) as defined by the World Bank.
• It will provide duty-free, quota-free trade to LDCs on everything but arms and duty-free, quota-free trade on 85% of eligible goods to most low LIC and LMIC countries.
• It does not extend to countries and territories deemed by the World Bank as ‘upper-middle income’ for three consecutive years, or to LICs and LMICs who have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the UK.

Oldest evidence of earthquakes found in strange jumble of 3.3-billion-year-old rocks from Africa

About Barberton Greenstone Belt:

• It is situated on the eastern edge of the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa. It is known for its gold mineralisation and for its komatiites, an unusual type of ultramafic volcanic rock named after the Komati River that flows through the belt. 
• Some of the oldest exposed rocks on Earth (greater than 3.6 Ga) are located in the Barberton Greenstone Belt of the Eswatini–Barberton areas, and these contain some of the oldest traces of life on Earth, second only to the Isua Greenstone Belt of Western Greenland. The Makhonjwa Mountains make up 40% of the Baberton belt.

What are ultramafic rocks?

• Ultramafic (or ultrabasic) rocks are dark-colored igneous and meta-igneous rocks that are rich in minerals containing magnesium and iron ("mafic" minerals) and have a relatively low content of silica.
• They are generally composed of more than 90 percent mafic minerals—that is, they have a high content of magnesium oxide (more than 18 percent MgO) and iron oxide (FeO). Their silica content is less than 45 percent, and their potassium content is low.
• The Earth''s mantle is thought to be composed of ultramafic rocks. Most of the exposed ultramafic rocks have been found in orogenic (mountain-forming) belts.