Maharashtra’s ephemerals: plants that wait for monsoon to bloom

Ephemerals

• These are any short-lived plant, usually one that has one or more generations per year.
• They grow only during favourable periods (as when adequate moisture is available) and passing the unfavourable periods in the form of seeds.
• They are of two types — annual and perennial
  • Annual ephemerals form new individuals every year and are seen for a very short period.
  • They form seeds at the end of their life cycle, remaining dormant till the next year.
  • Perennials have a source like a tuber or a bulb in the soil, so it is the same individual, but the other parts (stem, flowers) are newly formed.”
• Monsoon ephemerals bloom towards the end of May and throughout June, July, August, and September.
• Some other monsoon ephemerals will just form leaves and little branch structures after a few showers.
• These leaves stay for a month or more and then flowering starts, which goes on till July and August.
• The onset of monsoon brings flowers such as ground **orchids (**Nervilia and Eulophia), lilies (crinum lily, pancratium lily, grass lily, star lily), wild yam (suran), and Indian squill.
• Significance
  • The primary job of these flowers is to act as an important source of nectar and pollen for native pollinators.
  • Their presence in all micro habitats on a plateau ensures the appropriate presence of soil and, most importantly, water.

Archaeologists unearth largest cemetery ever found in Gaza, with rare lead sarcophogi

Sarcophagus

• It is an above-ground stone container for a coffin or dead body that often is often decorated with art, inscriptions, and carvings.
• The word sarcophagus comes from the Greek "sarx" meaning "flesh," and "phagien" meaning "to eat," so that sarcophagus literally translates as "eater of flesh."
• First used in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, the sarcophagus gradually became popular throughout the ancient world.
• It carried over through the later years of European society, often used for high status members of the clergy, government, or aristocracy.
• Features:
  • They differ in detail from one culture to another.
  • They are almost always made of stone, limestone being the most popular, but sometimes of granite, sandstone, or marble.
  • They were usually made by being carved, decorated, or constructed ornately.
  • Some were built to be freestanding above ground, as a part of an elaborate tomb or tombs. Others were made for burial, or were placed in crypts.
• Archaeological Significance:
  • Sarcophagi are important artifacts for archaeologists and historians because they provide insights into the art, culture, and beliefs of the societies that created them.
  • The carvings and inscriptions on sarcophagi often contain valuable historical information.
• Example: The most famous Egyptian sarcophagus is perhaps the golden sarcophagus of King Tutankhamun.

Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic

Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)

• It is the most commonly used thermoplastic polymer in the world.
• It belongs to the family of polyesters.
• Production:
  • PET is produced by the polymerization of ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid.
  • When heated together under the influence of chemical catalysts, ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid produce PET in the form of a molten, viscous mass that can be spun directly to fibres or solidified for later processing as plastic.
• Properties:
  • It is highly flexible, colorless and semi-crystalline resin in its natural state.
  • It shows good dimensional stability, resistance to impact, moisture, alcohols and solvents.
  • It exhibits excellent electrical insulating properties.
  • It is very lightweight, which reduces transportation costs.
  • It has good gas (oxygen, carbon dioxide) and moisture barrier properties.
  • It is recyclable. It can be commercially recycled by thorough washing and re-melting, or by chemically breaking it down to its component materials to make new PET resin.
• Applications:
  • It is widely used for packaging foods and beverages, especially convenience-sized soft drinks, juices and water.
  • The polymer finds use in fabrics, and the textile industry.
  • It is also used in films to mold parts for automotive, electronics, etc.
  • PET''s insulating properties and resistance to moisture make it suitable for various electrical and electronic components, such as insulation for electrical wires and connectors.

Oil price on the rise: Can Crude breach the $100 mark

Brent Crude

• It serves as the most widely used benchmark that defines oil prices around the world.
• The term "Brent" refers to the Brent oil field, which was discovered in the 1970s and became a significant source of oil production.
• About two-thirds of all internationally traded crude oil supplies are priced relative to Brent, making it the most widely used marker of all.
• It is a light, sweet crude oil extracted from different oil fields in the North Sea.
• Its unique properties, low density and low sulphur content, make Brent crude oil simpler to process into products such as gasoline.
• As its supply is water-borne, Brent crude oil is easy to transport to distant locations.
• The Brent Crude oil price is influenced by various factors, including supply and demand dynamics, geopolitical events, production disruptions, and economic factors.

Sweet Crude

• It refers to crude oil that is extracted that is found to contain very low amounts of sulfur.
• Sulfur is undesirable in crude oils because it lowers the yield of high-value refined products, including gasoline and plastics.

Other Oil Benchmarks:

• West Texas Intermediate (WTI)
• Dubai Crude

India Post Payments Bank accounts to be blocked If PAN card not updated?

India Post Payments Bank (IPPB)

• IPPB has been established under the Department of Posts, Ministry of Communication, with 100% equity owned by the Government of India.
• IPPB was launched on September 1, 2018, aimed at making banking services available at people’s doorstep.
• Mandate: To remove barriers for the unbanked and under-banked and reach the last mile, leveraging a network comprising 160,000 post offices (145,000 in rural areas) and 400,000 postal employees.
• Headquarters: New Delhi
• Functions:
  • The operations of IPPB will be on a smaller scale as compared to other banks and will not advance loans or issue credit cards to avoid risk.
  • It will accept deposits, offer remittance services, mobile payments/transfers/purchases and other banking services like ATM/debit cards, net banking and third-party fund transfers.
  • It will accept deposits upto Rs 2 lakh, beyond which the account will be automatically converted into a post office savings account.
  • The products and services of the bank will be made available through various mediums such as counter services, micro ATMs, mobile banking apps, messages, and interactive voice responses.
  • The IPPB will use Aadhaar to open accounts, and a QR card and biometrics will be used for authentication, transactions, and payments.

Payments Banks

• A payments bank is like any other bank but operates on a smaller scale without involving any credit risk.
• It was set up on the recommendations of the Nachiket Mor Committee.
• Objective: Widen the spread of payment and financial services to small businesses, low-income households, and migrant labor workforce in a secured technology-driven environment.
• They are registered under the Companies Act 2013but are governed by a host of legislations such as the Banking Regulation Act, 1949; RBI Act, 1934; Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999, etc.
• It needs to have a minimum paid-up capital of Rs. 100,00,00,000.
• Activities that can be performed:
  • It can take deposits up to Rs. 2,00,000. It can accept demand deposits in the form of savings and current accounts.
  • The money received as deposits can be invested in secure government securities only **in the form of Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR).**This must amount to 75% of the demand deposit balance.
  • The remaining 25% is to be placed as time deposits with other scheduled commercial banks.
  • It can offer remittance services, mobile payments/transfers/purchases, and other banking services like ATM/debit cards, net banking, and third-party fund transfers.
• Activities that can be performed:
  • It cannot issue loans and credit cards.
  • It cannot accept time deposits or NRI deposits.
  • It cannot set up subsidiaries to undertake non-banking financial activities.

Docking of first ship at Vizhinjam port to be delayed by 10 days

Vizhinjam International Seaport

• Location: It is located at Vizhinjam, a coastal town in Thiruvananthapuram District, Kerala.
• It is designed primarily to cater to container transhipment besides multi-purpose and break bulk cargo.
• It is developed in a landlord model with a Public Private Partnership component on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer (“DBFOT”) basis.
• The private partner, the Concessionaire M/s Adani Vizhinjam Port Private Limited has, commenced the construction on 5th December 2015.
• The Port is merely a 10 NM diversion from the international east-west shipping route and is also close to the national/regional road and rail network.
• There would be about 30 berths, most of which would be capable of handling Mother Vessels.
• Significance:
  • It is the only transhipment hub in the Indian subcontinent, closest to the international shipping routes, and is centrally located on the Indian coastline.
  • Around 95 per cent of India’s foreign trade is conducted through the sea route. In value terms, this works out to 70 per cent of the foreign trade.
  • Nearly 30 percent of the freight movement takes place through the international shipping route South of the Indian peninsula, which passes 10 nautical miles off Vizhinjam.
  • Currently, India does not have a deep-water container transhipment terminal and depends on Colombo, Singapore and Salalah ports.
  • This results in a significant loss of foreign currency and revenue, estimated to be about Rs 2,500 crore a year.

Nasa to launch Psyche mission to metal-rich asteroid to find how Earth formed

Psyche mission

• The journey to the asteroid, also named Psyche, will span nearly six years and cover approximately 3.6 billion kilometers.
• The asteroid orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
• It is believed to be a remnant core of a planetesimal, composed primarily of iron-nickel metal.
• Studying it from orbit could provide invaluable insights into the composition of Earth''s core.
• In addition to its primary mission, the Psyche spacecraft will also host a pioneering technology demonstration known as NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.
• This laser communications system aims to test high-bandwidth optical communications back to Earth during the first two years of Psyche''s journey.
• This experiment could revolutionise how data is transmitted across vast distances in space, potentially enhancing our ability to explore the farthest reaches of the solar system.
• NASA''s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for mission management, operations and navigation.

Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC)

• It is a sophisticated new laser communication technology that encodes data in photons at near-infrared wavelengths (rather than radio waves) to communicate between a probe in deep space and Earth.
• Using light instead of radio allows the spacecraft to communicate more data in a given amount of time.
• The DSOC team is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

IISER scientists identify a circular RNA that plays a crucial role in the replication of HIV-1 virus

Circular RNA

• Ribonucleic acid is a molecule in living cells that carries genetic information and helps in the production of proteins.
• RNAs are in general straight-chain, free-end structures but these circular RNA (‘circRNA’ ) forms a closed-loop.
• The circRNA plays a pivotal role in regulating gene expression and is essential for various biological processes.
• Its role in HIV-1 replication has remained unclear for a long time.
• Characterizing circular RNA can be tricky because it usually is less abundant, making it further challenging to detect in the native form.
• During viral infections, there''s so much information from the virus that it can make it hard to find the less common ones like circular RNA.

Recent findings

• The researchers developed a novel approach called ‘circDR-Seq’, to successfully capture circRNAs from T-cells (white blood cells) infected with the HIV-1 virus and identified a specific circRNA named ciTRAN, which plays an important role in the multiplication of the virus.
• HIV-1 viral protein R (VpR) is a multifunctional protein that plays specific roles at multiple stages of the HIV-1 viral life cycle and affects anti-HIV functions of the immune cells.
• Further found that HIV-1 infection induces ciTRAN expression in a Vpr-dependent manner and that ciTRAN interacts with serine/arginine-rich splicing factor 1 (SRSF1), a protein known to repress HIV-1 transcription,”
• How does this work?
  • The results suggest that HIV-1 hijacks ciTRAN which is generally altered during immunological signaling, inflammation, and viral infection.
  • It further prevents (SRSF1) from doing its job, thereby promoting efficient viral transcription.
  • In addition, researchers demonstrated that an SRSF1-inspired mimic can inhibit viral transcription regardless of ciTRAN induction.
  • The hijacking of a host circRNA thus represents a previously unknown facet of primate lentiviruses in overcoming transmission bottlenecks,

Combing operations conducted in areas surrounding Mukurthi National Park in the Nilgiris

Mukurthi National Park

• It is located in the western corner of the Nilgiris Plateau in the northwest corner of Tamil Nadu.
• The park was created to protect its keystone species, the Nilgiri tahr.
• Pykara and Kundah rivers flow through the park along with several perennial streams that originate in the park and drain into the Bhavani Puzha.
• It is designated as the UNESCO World Heritage Site
• Vegetation: The Park is characterised by montane grasslands and shrublands interspersed with sholas in a high altitude area of high rainfall.
• Flora: Here one can find shrubs like Gaultheria fragrantissima, Helichrysum and Berberis Other plants which can be seen here are Rhododendrons, Cinnamon, Mahonia, Satyrium, Raspberries etc.
• Fauna: The park is home to some of the endangered wild species like Nilgiri tahr, Indian elephants, Nilgiri Langur, Bengal tiger and bonnet macaque etc.

Galactic tides: Pushing and pulling the heavens

Galactic tides

• It is a tidal force experienced by objects subject to the gravitational field of a galaxy such as the Milky Way.
• They are caused by gravitational forces within a galaxy, arising in the interactions between celestial objects like stars and gas clouds.
• Effects of Galactic tides
  • These tidal forces influence various aspects of a galaxy’s evolution.
  • They can reshape a galaxy structure by creating tidal tails and bridges, promoting star formation, and disrupting smaller star systems.
  • They also disrupt the orbits of stars, leading to long-term changes in galactic structure.
  • Galactic tides also have a say in the ways in which proximate galaxies do and don’t interact.
  • Researchers have observed the closest galaxy to the Milky Way, the colossal Andromeda, and found that tidal streams near its edges could be signatures of dwarf galaxies that were later devoured.
  • Galactic tides also affect the supermassive black holes at galaxy centres, leading to events that change the ways in which these cosmic beasts interact with nearby stars.