Defence Ministry Seals Rs 313 Crore Deal For Upgrade Of Warship INS Beas

• It is the first Brahmaputra Class Frigate to be re-powered from steam to diesel propulsion.
• After completion of Mid Life Upgrade and Re-Powering in 2026, INS Beas will join the active fleet of the Indian Navy, with a modernised weapon suite and upgraded combat capability.

INS Beas

• INS Beas (F37) is a Brahmaputra-class frigate of the Indian Navy.
• It was built at the Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata.
• It was commissioned on 11th July, 2005.
• It is the second ship in the Indian Navy to bear the name. The first was a Leopard-class frigate commissioned in 1960 and scrapped in 1992.
• Role: It is a versatile warship capable of a range of missions, including anti-aircraft, anti-submarine, and anti-ship warfare. It is also used for patrolling, surveillance, and providing security to India''s maritime interests.
• Features:
  • The design and construction of the ship are entirely Indian and are a modification of the Godavari-class frigate.
  • It has a displacement of about 3,850 tonnes.
  • The ship has a length of 126 metres (413 feet) and a beam width of 14.5 metres (48 feet).
  • Propulsion: 2 steam turbines
  • It is capable of reaching speeds of over 30 knots, making it swift and agile in naval operations.
  • It is fitted with an array of modern sensor suites and matching weapon systems.

Rare bird from arctic tundra brings cheer to top birders

Buff-breasted Sandpiper

• It is one of the most delicately beautiful of the shorebirds.
• It breeds in the open arctic tundra of North America and usually in winters in South America.
• Habitat: Shortgrass prairies; in summer, tundra ridges. Migrants in North America mostly live on dry, open ground, such as prairies, pastures,
• The male Buff-breasted Sandpipers gather in groups on display territories called leks, where they flash their eye-catching underwings to compete for females'' attention.
• It is a champion long-distance migrant, leaving high-Arctic dry tundra nesting grounds and migrating thousands of miles to winter on the grasslands of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
• Conservation status
  • IUCN: Near Threatened

Arctic tundra

• It is the northernmost biome, which is a vast, dry, rocky place with few trees.
• It covers the land north of the Arctic Circle up to the polar ice cap.
• It reaches as far south as the Hudson Bay area of Canada and the northern part of Iceland.
• The word “tundra” comes from the Finnish word tunturi. This word means ‘treeless plain''.
• One important characteristic of the tundra is the permafrost. The word “permafrost” is short-form for the word “permanently frozen”.
• The ground in the arctic tundra tends to be rocky, and the soil has few nutrients. This is because the organic matter there breaks down very slowly.
• Despite the lack of trees, this biome is still considered a major carbon sink.
• This is due to the large amounts of organic matter found in deposits of peat and humus.
• Temperature: Temperatures range from 15.5 °C in summer to -60 °C in winter. Mean temperatures are below 0°C for six to 10 months of the year.
• Annual precipitation: The annual precipitation is around 150 to 250mm. Most of this precipitation does not evaporate due to the low temperatures.

Scientists using AI to decode secrets of ancient Pompeii scroll

Mt. Vesuvius

• It is an active volcano that rises above the Bay of Naples on the plain of Campania in southern Italy.
• It is the only active volcano in mainland Europe.
• The volcano is classified as a complex stratovolcano because its eruptions typically involve explosive eruptions as well as pyroclastic flows.
• A pyroclastic flow is a high-density mix of hot lava blocks, pumice, ash, and volcanic gas.
• It is most famous for the 79 AD eruption that destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
• It is part of the Campanian volcanic arc, a line of volcanoes that formed over a subduction zone created by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates.
• This subduction zone stretches the length of the Italian peninsula and is also the source of other volcanoes like Mount Etna, the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei), Vulcano, and Stromboli.
• Under Vesuvius, the lower part of the subducting slab has torn and detached from the upper part to form what is called a "slab window."
• This makes Vesuvius'' rocks slightly different chemically from the rocks that erupted from the other Campanian volcanoes.

Govt approves seven bridge projects in Arunachal Pradesh under the Setu Bandhan Scheme

Setu Bandhan Scheme

• It is an initiative of the Ministry for Road Transport and Highways.
• Objective: It has been introduced to improve inter-state connectivity, especially in rural areas at the borders where state roads do not get the required attention.
• It is aimed at replacing railway line Level Crossings (LCs) with Road Over Bridges (ROBs)/Rail Under Bridges (RUBs)in states.

Central Road and Infrastructure Fund

• It was established in 2000 under the Central Road Fund Act, 2000.
• It was previously known as Central Road Fund.
• Its subject matter belongs to the Ministry of Finance.
• The fund consists of a cess imposed along with excise duty on petrol and diesel.
• The Central Road Fund Act, 2000, was amended in 2018 and its objectives are as follows
  • To use proceeds of the road cess under CRIF to finance other infrastructure projects such as waterways, some portion of the railway infrastructure, and even social infrastructure, including education institutions and medical colleges.

For the first time, an AI system discovers supernova without human intervention

Bright Transient Survey Bot

• It is a machine-learning algorithm which has been trained by using over 1.4 million images from nearly 16,000 sources.
• It detected the newly discovered supernova named SN2023tyk in data from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)
• How does it work?
• It automatically requested the potential supernova’s spectrum from Palomar Observatory, where another robotic telescope, the Spectral Energy Distribution Machine (SEDM), performed an in-depth observation to obtain the source’s spectrum.
• This new system not only allows automation of the entire search for new supernovae across the night sky but also eliminates human error and dramatically increases speed.
• It searched, detected, confirmed, classified, and announced the findings without any human intervention

Artificial intelligence

• Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation or approximation of human intelligence in machines.
• The goals of artificial intelligence include computer-enhanced learning, reasoning, and perception.
• AI is being used today across different industries, from finance to healthcare.

''Iron Beam'': Israel''s deadly laser tech can be used against Hamas'' missiles; how it works

Iron Beam

• The Iron Beam, also known as Magen or Light Shield, is a new laser-based missile defence system developed by Israel.
• It is a directed-energy weapon air defence system that fires powerful beams of light that can destroy fast-moving projectiles.
• Built by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Iron Beam was first unveiled in 2014.
• The system can intercept hostile rockets, drones, artillery, and even mortar shells.
• Its operational range extends up to 7 km (4.3 miles).
• Advantages:
  • With a continuous energy supply for the laser, the advantage lies in never depleting ammunition, ensuring a sustained capability for defence.
  • The absence of conventional ammunition will directly result in significant cost savings.
• Disadvantages:
  • Diminished effectiveness during restricted visibility, such as heavy cloud cover or adverse weather conditions.
  • It cannot operate effectively in wet conditions—the more moisture in the atmosphere, the more water particles absorb the laser’s energy.
  • Iron Beam requires a direct line of sight between the system and its target, making its placement far more critical.
  • It also has a much slower rate of fire, requiring five seconds or so to transmit sufficient energy to destroy its target.

Cabinet approves royalty rates for lithium, two other strategic minerals

Niobium

• It is a rare, soft, malleable, ductile, gray-white metal.
• Atomic symbol: Nb
• It has a body-cantered cubic crystalline structure.
• It must be placed in a protective atmosphere when processed at even moderate temperatures because it tends to react with oxygen, carbon, the halogens, nitrogen, and sulphur.
• Melting point: 2,477 degrees Celsius
• Boiling point: 4,744 degrees Celsius
• In air, an oxide layer forms over it, whose colour depends on its thickness. Shades of blue, green, and yellow are typical.
• Niobium resists corrosion due to the oxide film.
• The metal starts to oxidise rapidly in the air at 200 degrees Celsius.
• The metal is inert to acids, even to aqua regia at room temperature, but is attacked by hot, concentrated acids, and especially by alkalis and oxidizing agents.
• It is one of the five major refractory metals (metals with very high resistance to heat and wear).
• It has the property of becoming superconducting at low temperatures.
• Sources:
  • It is not found free in nature but in minerals such as columbite and tantalite.
  • Commercially, niobium is extracted by first forming the oxide (Nb2O5). The oxide is then reduced using carbon or hydrogen.
• Major Producers: Brazil is the world''s largest supplier, with Canada a distant second.
• Applications:
  • It is used for the production of high-temperature-resistant alloys and special stainless steels.
  • It is also used in its pure form to make superconducting accelerating structures for particle accelerators.
  • Niobium alloys are used in surgical implants because they do not react with human tissue.
  • Niobium carbide is used in cutting tools.
  • Niobium-tin and niobium-titanium alloys are used as wires for superconducting magnets capable of producing exceedingly strong magnetic fields.

Amazon River falls to lowest in over a century amid Brazil drought

Amazon River

• It is the world''s largest river by water volume and width.
• It is the second-longest river in the world after the Nile.
• Course:
  • Its journey begins high in the Andes Mountains.
  • The river then makes its way east through thousands of miles of rainforests and lowlands until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of Brazil.
• Length: 6,400 km
• Width: During the dry season, the width of the Amazon River can be 4 km to 5 km in some places – and in the wet season, this can increase to 50 km.
• Drainage:
  • It has the largest drainage area of any river system.
  • Its watershed spans the countries of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia.
  • Roughly two-thirds of the Amazon’s main stream and by far the largest portion of its basin are within Brazil.
• Water Discharge:
  • The Amazon releases high amounts of freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean at 300,000 m3 per second.
  • It accounts for one-fifth of the total volume of freshwater entering the oceans globally.
• Tributaries:
  • It has more than 1,100 tributaries, of which seventeen measures over 1,500-kilometers long.
  • Notable tributaries include the Rio Negro, the Madeira River, and the Xingu River, among many others.
• The Amazon Rainforest, which represents about half of the Earth’s remaining rainforest, also constitutes its single largest reserve of biological resources.
• It is sometimes referred to as the "lungs of the Earth" due to its role in regulating the planet''s oxygen and carbon cycles.

US negotiator signs new deal with strategic Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands

• The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is located in the western Pacific Ocean.
• It is a chain of five volcanic islands and 29 coral atolls.
• Capital: Majuro
• Official languages: English and Marshallese
• Government:
  • It is a presidential republic with a parliamentary system.
  • The President of the Marshall Islands is both the head of state and the head of government.
• Economy: Agriculture and tourism are the mainstays of the economy.
• Official currency: US dollar
• In 2018, RMI became the first country to issue its own cryptocurrency and certify it as legal tender.
• History:
  • The islands have been under the control of various nations throughout the last few centuries, including Spain from the late 1400s to the late 1800s, Germany from 1885 to World War I, and Japan from 1914 to World War II.
  • After World War II, the RMI became a part of the United Nations (UN) Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under the United States (US) administration.
  • The RMI Government was officially established in 1979, following the signing of the Constitution.
  • The RMI gained its independence in 1986 after signing the Compact of Free Association with the US, ending the UN-US Trusteeship Agreement.
• Compact of Free Association with the United States:
  • It provides the Marshall Islands with financial assistance, defence protection, and access to U.S. government programs.
  • The Compact recognises RMI''s right to self-government and seeks to promote economic development and budgetary self-reliance.
  • The United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defence of the Marshall Islands.