Daily Prelims Notes 25 September 2021

September 25, 2021
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

Daily Prelims Notes

25 September 2021

Table Of Contents

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – On December 16, 2020, China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission delivered to Earth nearly 2 kg of rocky fragments and dust from the Moon.

Concept –

On December 16, 2020, China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission delivered to Earth nearly 2 kg of rocky fragments and dust from the Moon.
Chang’e-5 landed on an area of the Moon (the ‘far side’) not sampled by the American or Soviet missions nearly 50 years ago, and thus retrieved fragments of the youngest lunar rocks ever brought back for analysis in laboratories on Earth. The rocks are also different to those returned decades ago.

The Findings –

90% of the materials collected by Chang’e-5 likely derive from the landing site and its immediate surroundings, which are of a type termed ‘mare basalts’.
These volcanic rocks are visible as the darker grey areas that spilled over much of the nearside of the Moon as ancient eruptions of lava.
Yet 10% percent of the fragments have distinctly different, ‘exotic’ chemical compositions.
The distinct 10% fragments may preserve records of other parts of the lunar surface as well as hints of the types of space rocks that have impacted the Moon’s surface.
Researchers have looked at the potential sources of beads of rapidly cooled glassy material.
- They have traced these glassy droplets to extinct volcanic vents known as ‘Rima Mairan’ and ‘Rima Sharp’.
- These fragments could give insights into past episodes of energetic, fountain-like volcanic activity on the Moon.
The young geological age of the rocks at the landing site narrows the search, as only craters with ages less than 2 billion years can be responsible, and these are relatively rare on the side of the Moon that faces Earth.
The team has modelled the potential contributions from specific craters: Aristarchus, Kepler, Copernicus, Harding, and Harpalus.
Findings show that Harpalus is a significant contributor of many exotic fragments among Chang’e-5’s sample haul, and these pieces of rock could offer a way to address persisting uncertainty about this crater’s age.

2. Artificial Intelligence’s religious biases

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken over our lives much sooner than the futuristic movie Minority Report had predicted.

Concept –

In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, Abid and his fellow researchers found that the AI system GPT-3 (an artificial intelligence system that generates text), disproportionately associates Muslims with violence.
Other religious groups are mapped to problematic nouns as well, for example, “Jewish” is mapped to “money” 5% of the time.
Of the six religious groups — Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist and Atheist — considered during the research, none is mapped to a single stereotypical noun at the same frequency that ‘Muslim’ is mapped to ‘terrorist’.
Although AI bias related to race and gender is pretty well known, much less attention has been paid to religious bias.
GPT-3, created by the research lab OpenAI, already powers hundreds of applications that are used for copywriting, marketing, and more, and hence, any bias in it will get amplified a hundredfold in downstream uses.

3. China’s Cryptocurrency ban

Subject – Science and Tech

Context – China’s blanket crypto ban sends most digital units tumbling

Concept –

Cryptocurrency investors and exchanges went into a tizzy after China’s central bank announced a blanket ban on all cryptocurrency transactions and mining activity in that country.
China is not only one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency markets but also a country where crypto mining happens on a big scale.

India’s perspective regarding cryptocurrency –

While the Reserve Bank of India has already expressed its reservation in allowing cryptocurrency, the government is yet to announce its stance on the issue.

To know about cryptocurrency, please click here.

To know more about Bitcoin and India’s stand, please click here.

To know about Bitcoin mining, please click here.

Cryptotech industry in India

The cryptocurrency market in India is set to witness two-fold growth and is likely to create 800,000 jobs by 2030.
More than 60 per cent of the States have emerged as cryptotech adopters with over 15 million retail investors and the industry is increasingly attracting new start-ups.
The cryptotech industry includes crypto applications in trading, P2P payments, remittances and retail, and has grown by 39 per cent in the last five years in India.
The report highlights that Bitcoin, smart contracts, decentralised finance, the wave of tokenisation, non-fungible tokens, rise of cryptotech capital and central bank digital currencies, will be seen as the seven key trends driving the growth and adoption of cryptotech in the country.
Several banks have started buying cryptos, and a few across the US, Europe and Asia are creating blockchain-based systems to enable B2B cryptocurrency payments between customers.

4. ‘Fraud loans’ to ARCs

Subject – Economy

Context – RBI allows banks to sell ‘fraud loans’ to ARCs

Concept –

The Reserve Bank of Indiaallowed loan exposures classified as fraud to be transferred to Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs).
This comes in the wake of banks reporting frauds aggregating ₹3.95-lakh crore between FY19 and FY21.
Stressed loans, which are in default for more than 60 days or classified as non-performing assets (NPA), can be transferred to ARCs. This shall include loan exposures classified as fraud as on the date of transfer.
The central bank said the transfer of such loans to an ARC, however, does not absolve the transferor from fixing the staff accountability as required under the extant instructions on frauds.
Until now, when an account is declared fraud, banks had to set aside 100 per cent of the outstanding loan as provision.
- Under the new rules, banks can hope to recover a part of the loan. For ARCs, this will allow them to buy debt cheaper than regular loan accounts.
The RBI also said the transfer of stressed loans above ₹100 crore negotiated on a bilateral basis between lenders and permitted acquirers, including ARCs, must necessarily be followed by an auction through the Swiss Challenge method.
- Under the Swiss Challenge auction, the price bilaterally negotiated for the sale of a stressed asset becomes the floor price for inviting counter-proposals from other interested buyers.
Loan transfers are usually resorted to by lending institutions for multiple reasons ranging from liquidity management, rebalancing of exposure or strategic sales.
Under the new guidelines, loans can be transferred only after a minimum holding period (MHP) of three months in case of loans with tenor up to 2 years, and six months for those with tenor of more than 2 years.
In case of loans where the security does not exist or cannot be registered, the MHP shall be calculated from the date of first repayment of the loan.

To know about Bad banks, please click here.

To know about National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd, please click here.

5. Tax buoyancy

Subject – Economy

Context – Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj wants to be cautious even though both indirect and direct tax collections during the first two quarters of this fiscal year have shown buoyancy.

Concept –

To know about tax buoyancy, please click here.

For related terms like Revenue Foregone and Tax Base, please click here.

6. DICGC to announce new date to submit claims

Subject – Economy

Context – The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) has clarified that it will separately communicate the revised date for submission of claims and the procedure to be followed in respect of payment of deposits in the case of the scam-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank.

Concept –

The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) has clarified that it will separately communicate the revised date for submission of claims and the procedure to be followed in respect of payment of deposits in the case of the scam-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank.
DICGC had, on September 21, asked the depositors of 21 urban co-operative banks, including PMC Bank, Sri Gururaghavendra Sahakara Bank, Rupee Co-operative Bank and Kapol Co-Operative Bank, which are currently under the RBI’s All-Inclusive Directions (AID), to contact their banks and submit the declaration of willingness to enable DICGC make payments.

To know about The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), please click here.

7. Blue foods have potential to become more sustainable

Subject – Environment

Context – Aquatic or blue foods can be made more environmentally sustainable than they are now, according to a recently released paper.

Concept –

The report, titled Environmental performance of blue foods, was one of five initial scientific papers published as part of the Blue Food Assessment (BFA).
- The BFA is a collaboration between Sweden-based Stockholm Resilience Centre, United States-based Stanford University and the non-profit EAT.
The paper noted that seaweeds and farmed bivalves, such as mussels and oysters, generated the fewest greenhouse gas and nutrient emissions and used the least land and water.
Capture fisheries also resulted in few nutrient emissions and use limited land and water, according to the paper.
- Capture fisheries refers to all kinds of harvesting of naturally occurring living resources in both marine and freshwater environments.
The paper added that greenhouse gas emissions in such fisheries ranged from relatively low, such as for sardines and cod, to relatively high for flatfish and lobsters, compared to farmed fish.
Capture fisheries had the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through improved management and optimising gear types, according to the paper.
Many subsectors among blue foods such as carp and milkfish, also had the potential to improve their environmental performance through improved farm management, reduced feed conversion ratios and innovative technological interventions.

8. Symphony

Subject – Art and Culture

Context – A team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony

Concept –

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, written by composers, most often for orchestra.
Written for an orchestra, symphonies often contain four movements: the first is performed at a fast tempo, the second at a slower one, the third at a medium or fast tempo and the last at a fast tempo.
Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians.
Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts.
Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony).

Ludwig van Beethoven

He was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music;
His works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music.

9. Sericulture

Subject – Agriculture

Context – ‘Cocoon production in Karnataka down by 50%’

Concept –

Sericulture is the cultivation of silk rearing of silkworms. It is an agro-based industry.
It involves the raising of food plants for silkworm, rearing of silkworm for production of cocoons, reeling and spinning of cocoon for production of yarn, etc. for value-added benefits such as processing and weaving.
Silk is known as the queen of textile and “BIOSTEEL” because of its strength.
India is the second largest producer of silk in the world after China (China is said to be the origin of sericulture).
India has the distinction of producing all the four types of silk i.e.
- (a) Mulberry silk (91.7%);
- (b) Tasar silk (1.4%);
- (c) Eri silk (6.4%); and
- (d) Muga silk (.5%) which are produced by different species of silkworms.
Mulberry silk is produced extensively in the states of Karnataka, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir.
- Similarly, Tasar silk worms are reared traditionally by the tribes of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand;
- Muga and Eri silk are produced exclusively in Assam.
- The food plant of silkworms is Mulberry for producing Mulberry silk.
Except for mulberry, other non-mulberry varieties of silks are wild silks, known as vanya silks.
South India is the leading silk producing area of the country and is also known for its famous silk weaving enclaves like Kancheepuram, Dharmavaram, Arni, etc.

Central Silk Board

Central Silk Board is a statutory body established under the Central Silk Board Act, 1948.
It functions under the aegis of Union Ministry of Textile.
It is a national organization for overall development of silk sector in India.

10. National Informatics Centre (NIC)

Subject – Governance

Context – NIC drops Modi image from SC emails

Concept –

The NIC provides email services to the Supreme Court.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an attached office under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in the Indian government.
It was established in 1976 and is located in New Delhi.
The NIC provides infrastructure to help support the delivery of government IT services and the delivery of some of the initiatives of Digital India.
NIC provides network backbone and e-Governance support to the Central Government, State Governments and UT Administrations.
NIC has been closely associated with the Government in different aspects of Governance besides establishing a Nationwide State-of-the-Art information and communication technology (ICT) Infrastructure.
It has also built a large number of digital solutions to support the government at various levels, making the last-mile delivery of government services to the citizens a reality.

11. Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)

Subject – Governance

Context – Mukherjee is ABC chief

Concept –

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) of India is a non-profit circulation-auditing organisation.
It certifies and audits the circulations of major publications, including newspapers and magazines in India.
ABC is a voluntary organisation initiated in 1948 that operates in different parts of the world.
The benefit of ABC certificates of circulation have been availed by advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and organisations connected with print media advertising.

12. States bordering Myanmar

Subject – Geography

Context – Mizoram fears fresh influx from Myanmar

Concept –

Four Northeast Indian states share the border with Myanmar: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur.

13. Medical Devices Park Scheme

Subject – Governance

Context – Centre notifies medical device parks’ scheme

Concept –

The Union government notified a scheme to promote medical device parks at a financial outlay of ₹400 crore till financial year 2024-2025.
The scheme aims to ensure easy access to testing and infrastructure facilities.
It is expected that this will bring down the cost of production of medical devices, thereby making them more affordable for domestic consumption, the Department of Pharmaceuticals said in a statement.
The financial assistance for a selected medical device park would be 90% of the project cost of common infrastructure facilities for the north-eastern and hilly States. For the rest, it would be 70%. However, a maximum assistance under the scheme for one such park will be ₹100 crore

Medical Devices –

The medical device industry is a unique blend of engineering and medicine. It involves the creation of machines that are used to support life within the human body.
Medical devices include Surgical Equipment, Diagnostic equipment like Cardiac imaging, CT scans, X-ray, Molecular Imaging, MRI and Ultrasound-imaging including hand – held devices; Life Support equipment like ventilator, etc. as well as Implants and Disposables.

Medical Devices Sector in India:

Medical devices sector in India is very small in size as compared to the rest of the manufacturing industry, though India is one of the top twenty markets for medical devices in the world and is the 4th largest market in Asia after Japan, China, and South Korea.
India currently imports 80-90% of medical devices of the USD15 billion market.
The US, Germany, China, Japan, and Singapore constitute the five largest exporters of high technology medical equipment to India.

To know about Biomedical park, please click here.

14. Anti-Dumping Duty

Subject – Economy

Context – Antidumping duty likely on pharma API from China

Concept –

To know about Anti-Dumping Duty, please click here.

To know about Tariff / Non Tariff Barriers, please click here.