Assam-based oncologist among winners of 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award

Ramon Magsaysay Award

• It is Asia’s premier prize and the highest honour celebrates the greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia.
• The Ramon Magsaysay Awardees, annually selected by the RMAF board of trustees, are presented with a certificate and a medallion with an embossed image of Ramon Magsaysay facing right in profile.
• From 1958 to 2008, the Award was given in six categories annually:
  • Government Service: To recognise outstanding service in the public interest in any branch of government, including the executive, judicial, legislative, or military;
  • Public Service: To recognise outstanding service for the public good by a private citizen;
  • Community Leadership: To recognise leadership of a community toward helping the disadvantaged have fuller opportunities and a better life;
  • Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts: To recognise effective writing, publishing, or photography or the use of radio, television, cinema, or the performing arts as a power for the public good;
  • Peace and International Understanding: To recognise contributions to the advancement of friendship, tolerance, peace, and solidarity as the foundations for sustainable development within and across countries; and
  • Emergent Leadership: To recognise an individual, forty years of age or younger, for outstanding work on issues of social change in his or her community but whose leadership may not yet be broadly recognised outside of this community.
• It is presented in formal ceremonies in Manila, Philippines, on August 31st, the birth anniversary of the much-esteemed Philippine President whose ideals inspired the Award’s creation in 1957.

Indian winners on the list

• Prominent Indians who have won the award include Vinoba Bhave in 1958, Mother Teresa in 1962, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay in 1966, Satyajit Ray in 1967, and Mahasweta Devi in 1997.
• In recent years, Arvind Kejriwal (2006), Anshu Gupta of Goonj (2015), human rights activist Bezwada Wilson (2016), and journalist Ravish Kumar (2019) have won the award.

FMC India launches ‘Entazia’ biofungicide, a biological solution for crop protection

ENTAZIA

• It is a bio fungicide crop protection product formulated with Bacillus subtilis.
• It was developed by FMC India.
• It will provide farmers with a powerful and sustainable tool to protect their crops from fungi while maintaining environmental integrity.
• Advantages:
  • It leverages the natural capabilities of Bacillus subtilis to control bacterial leaf blight, one of the most serious diseases of rice.
  • By activating the crop’s defence system against plant pathogens, it acts to prevent and control bacterial leaf blight while staying harmless to natural predators and parasites.
  • The biological product promotes natural pest defence by utilising the naturally occurring Bacillus subtilis to establish a robust line of defence against bacterial leaf blight.
  • By fostering a healthy plant microbiome, it bolsters plants’ resilience to stress factors and contributes to overall growth and vigour.
  • It can be applied in an integrated pest management program with FMC’s bio-stimulants and synthetic fungicides for additional plant benefits.

Leaf Blight

• It is a plant disease that affects the foliage (leaves) of various plants, causing discoloration, wilting, and, in severe cases, the death of the leaves.
• It is typically caused by various types of fungi or bacteria that infect and damage the plant tissues.
• Leaf blight can affect a wide range of plants, including trees, shrubs, ornamental plants, and crops.

India''s first AI school launched in Kerala

• Location: It was launched by Santhigiri Vidhyabhavan in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
• The establishment of this AI school is the result of a collaboration between iLearning Engines (ILE) USA and Vedhik eSchool.
• The school’s curriculum aligns with the National School Accreditation Standards, which are based on the New National Education Policy (NEP 2020).
• The school''s unique approach centres on deepening students'' understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced technologies, enhancing their learning journey.
• It seamlessly integrates AI components such as machine learning, natural language processing, and data analysis into various educational facets like curriculum design, personalised assessments, and student support.
• Features:
  • It caters to students from 8 to 12 grade with various multifaceted support services. They will get many benefits like support from a multitude of teachers, different test levels, aptitude tests, career planning, memory techniques and counselling.
  • Besides academics, this AI system nurtures the skills like interview techniques, group discussion aptitude, mathematical prowess, writing finesse, etiquette, English proficiency and emotional well-being as well.
  • It equips its students to prepare for competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CUET, CLAT GMAT and IELTS for a better higher education.
  • It helps students get opportunities at esteemed foreign universities and paves the way for students to pursue their higher studies in foreign countries.

Chhattisgarh HC dismisses plea seeking tiger reserve status for Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary

The Chhattisgarh High Court has dismissed a PIL challenging the decision of the State Wildlife Board not to declare Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary as a Tiger Reserve. State Forest Minister Mohammad Akbar has said that the state government will present its stand firmly in the Supreme Court as well.

Bhoramdeo Wildlife Sanctuary

• Location: It is situated in the Kawardha district of Chhattisgarh.
• It is named after the famous 11th-century Bhoramdeo Temple situated near the Sanctuary.
• It shares a border with Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh, making it an important tiger habitat in central India.
• Size: The sanctuary covers an area of approximately 325 square kilometres (125 square miles).
• Rivers: This wildlife sanctuary is the origin of the Fen and Sankari rivers.
• Landscape: The sanctuary is characterised by its lush green forests, rolling hills, and the Maikal Range of the Satpura Hills.
• Vegetation: It offers a mix of dense forests and open grasslands.
• Flora: The main species of plants in the Sanctuary include sal, saja, tinsa, kara and haldu.
• Fauna: It is home to a variety of wildlife species, including tigers, leopards, wild dogs, sloth bears, sambar deer, barking deer, chital (spotted deer), gaur (Indian bison), and various species of birds and reptiles.

Two cases registered after RBI detects fake notes from SBI currency chest in Kochi

Currency Chest

• A currency chest is a place where the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stocks the money meant for banks and ATMs.
• The RBI has authorised select scheduled banks to establish currency chests.
• The monitoring authority over the chests lies with the RBI. They are inspected by representatives of RBI from time to time.
• Whenever new currency notes are printed by RBI, they are first delivered to currency chests. These notes are then delivered to other banks by the banks holding the currency chests.
• They act as cash distribution centres. These currency chests are expected to distribute banknotes and rupee coins to other bank branches in their area of operation.
• RBI takes back soiled notes and mutilated notes from the public through currency chests.
• Moreover, if the bank has an excess cash balance, the excess is moved to the currency chest. In a vice versa situation, when the bank is low on cash balance, the currency chest provides it.

Guidelines for banks to set up new currency chests:

• The area of the room or vault should be at least 1500 sq. ft.
• In case of hilly/ inaccessible places, the area of the strong room or vault should be at least 600 sq. ft.
• Apart from this, the new chests should have a processing capacity of 6.6 lakh pieces of banknotes per day.
• For those situated in hilly/ inaccessible places, a capacity of 2.1 lakh pieces of banknotes per day.
• The currency chests should have a Chest Balance Limit (CBL) of ₹1,000 crore, subject to ground realities and reasonable restrictions, at the discretion of the Reserve Bank.

Kolkata Metro Railway is set to become member of elite club of London, Moscow, Berlin, Munich, and Istanbul Metro

Third Rail Current Collector

• The third rail system is a means of providing electric power to a train through a conductor placed alongside the rails.
• Kolkata Metro Railway has been using steel Third Rail for the last 40 years.
• Kolkata Metro Railway has now decided to use composite Aluminium Third Rail in all the upcoming corridors being undertaken for construction along with retro fitment in existing corridors with steel Third Rail.
• With this Metro Railway, Kolkata would become a member of the elite club of London, Moscow, Berlin, Munich, and Istanbul Metro which have also shifted from steel Third Rail to Aluminium Third Rail.
• The advantages of aluminium composite third Rail over steel third Rail are:
  • Reduction in resistive current loss and improved Traction voltage level.
  • Reduced maintenance and life cycle cost.
  • Improvement in the efficiency of train operations.
  • Huge improvement in Energy Efficiency
  • Reduction in carbon footprint.

Funga: UN wants us all to say it along with ''Flora & Fauna''

• United Nations Biodiversity has urged people globally to use the word ‘funga’ whenever they say ‘flora and fauna’, in order to highlight the importance of fungi.
• Fungi, along with Animalia (animals), Plantae (plants), Protista, Archaea/Archaebacteria, and Bacteria or Eubacteria form the six ‘kingdoms’ of biology.
• Species Survival Commission (SSC) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced that it would use “mycologically inclusive” (referring to fungi) language in its internal and public-facing communications (“fauna, flora and funga” and “animals, fungi and plants”) and to incorporate fungi in conservation strategies with rare and endangered plants and animals.

There would be no life on Earth without fungi: the yeasts, molds and mushrooms that are critical to decomposition and forest regeneration, mammalian digestion, carbon sequestration, the global nutrient cycle, antibiotic medication, and the bread, beer and chocolate we consume. Trees would not be able to live on land without fungi.

Fungi

• Fungi, along with Animalia (animals), Plantae (plants), Protista, Archaea/Archaebacteria, and Bacteria or Eubacteria, form the six ‘kingdoms’ of biology.
• They are eukaryotic organisms; i.e., their cells contain membrane-bound organelles and clearly defined nuclei.
• Reproduction: Fungi usually reproduce both sexually and asexually.
• Distribution
  • Fungi are either terrestrial or aquatic, the latter living in freshwater or marine environments.
  • They are found in all temperate and tropical regions of the world where there is sufficient moisture to enable them to grow.
  • A few species of fungi live in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, although they are rare and are more often found living in symbiosis with algae in the form of lichens.
• Importance of fungi
  • They help in breaking down dead organic material. They continue the cycle of nutrients through ecosystems.
  • Fungi, as food, play a role in human nutrition in the form of mushrooms.
  • They also act as agents of fermentation in the production of bread, cheeses, alcoholic beverages, and numerous other food preparations.
  • Secondary metabolites of fungi are used as medicines, such as antibiotics and anticoagulants.

Jais, the World''s Most Advanced Arabic Large Language Model, Released

• It is a bilingual Arabic-English model that has been trained on a massive dataset of text and code.
• It can be used for a variety of tasks, such as machine translation, text summarisation, and question-answering.
• It was trained on the Condor Galaxy, the world''s largest AI supercomputer, using 116 billion Arabic tokens and 279 billion English tokens.
• It is also open-source, which means that anyone can use it or contribute to its development.
• It is available to download on the Hugging Face machine learning platform.
• The release of Jais is a significant step forward for the development of AI in the Arabic world.
• Applications
  • Potential applications of Jais include Machine translation, which can be used to translate text from Arabic to English and vice versa.
  • This could be used to improve the accessibility of information to Arabic speakers, as well as to facilitate communication between Arabic speakers and speakers of other languages.
  • It adeptly distils extensive textual content, from news articles to research papers, into succinct and comprehensible summaries, enhancing accessibility and comprehension.
  • It also response to queries about text, enabling educational tools like responsive chatbots for students or robust customer service applications for client inquiries.

Large Language Models

• These are deep learning algorithms that can recognise, summarise, translate, predict, and generate content using very large datasets.
• The popular ChatGPT AI chatbot is one application of a large language model. It can be used for a myriad of natural language processing tasks.
• The nearly infinite applications for LLMs also include:
  • Retailers and other service providers can use large language models to provide improved customer experiences through dynamic chatbots, AI assistants and more.
  • Search engines can use large language models to provide more direct, human-like answers.
  • Life science researchers can train large language models to understand proteins, molecules, DNA and RNA.

Smooth operation of Liquid Apogee Motor engine critical to Aditya-L1 success

Liquid Apogee Motor

• It is a small but powerful engine going by the acronym ‘LAM’ will have a critical role to play in the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) upcoming Aditya-L1 mission meant to study the sun.
• The successful operation of LAM is vital to ISRO’s plans to place the Aditya spacecraft in a halo orbit at Lagrangian point L1.
• Such engines are used for orbital adjustment manoeuvres of satellites/spacecraft in orbit.
• It is developed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), the ISRO Centre for Liquid and Cryogenic Propulsion in Thiruvananthapuram.

Aditya-L1 mission

• It is the first space-based Indian mission to study the Sun.
• It will be launched by the PSLV-XL launch vehicle.
• The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth.
• A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
• This will provide a greater advantage in observing solar activities and their effect on space weather in real-time.
• The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic particle and magnetic field detectors.

Iceland resumes whale hunting after temporary ban, but slaughter needs to be faster

• Iceland lifts temporary ban on commercial whaling imposed in June, but with stricter requirements on hunting methods
• Iceland, along with Norway and Japan, is one of a handful of countries that still allow commercial whale hunting
• Iceland’s government said it will resume hunting fin whales after a two-month halt, but with new guidelines aimed at killing them as quickly as possible to reduce suffering.
• Iceland resumed hunting fin whales, which can reach lengths of over 20 metres (65 feet), in 2006 after a 20-year pause.

Fin Whales

• Next to the blue whale, the fin whale is the second largest mammal in the world.
• It gets its name from an easy-to-spot fin on its back, near its tail.
• It is the fastest swimming of the large whales, known as the greyhound of the seas.
• Scientific Name: Balaenoptera physalus
• Other Names: Finner; Razorback; Finback; Flathead; Common rorqual; Herring whale
• Distribution:
  • They inhabit the temperate and polar zones of all major oceans and open seas and, less commonly, in tropical oceans and seas.
  • Some populations are migratory, moving into colder waters during the spring and summer months to feed. In autumn, they return to temperate or tropical oceans.
• Features:
  • It is very streamlined in shape but rather "fuller" than the blue whale, although it isn''t as long.
  • They grow to 20 meters in length and weigh approximately 70,000 kilograms.
  • They are dark grey to brownish-black in colour along the top of the body, with an asymmetrically pigmented head.
  • They have a distinct ridge along their back behind the dorsal fin, which gives them the nickname "razorback.
  • Fin whales have a very unusual feature: the lower right jaw is bright white, and the lower left jaw is black.
  • Lifespan: They can live for 80 to 90 years.
  • Females are slightly longer than males.
• Conservation Status:
• IUCN Red List: Vulnerable