Daily Prelims Notes 20 February 2022

February 20, 2022
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Daily Prelims Notes

20 February 2022

Table Of Contents

1. INDIA-USA FTA

TOPIC: IR

Context- FTA to come into effect by early May, Indian goods to get duty-free access to UAE in 5 years.

Concept-

India UAE Free Trade Agreement (FTA): The FTA will cover the following areas:

Trade in goods and services
Rules of Origin
Customs procedures
Government procurement
Intellectual Property Rights
E-Commerce

Important features of India- UAE FTA:

Presently India-UAE trade [export ($26 B) + import ($34B)] is around $60 billion which is expected to touch $100 billion in the next five years.
Both the countries have removed tariffs on 80% of products.
The FTA will give zero duty access to 90% of India’s exports to UAE.
The FTA includes robust rules of origin to protect both economies from misuse of the agreement by third countries, including a requirement of “melt and pour” for steel exports to qualify as domestically produced products from either country.
- The “melt and pour” rule of origin defines “the original location where the raw steel is: (A) First produced in a steel-making furnace in a liquid state; and then (B) Poured into its first solid shape.)
The FTA also provides a permanent safeguard mechanism to protect businesses in both countries to prevent any unnecessary or unwarranted surge in volumes of (imports) any particular product.

INDIA- UAE Trade Relations:

The United Arab Emirates is India’s third largest trading partner after China and USA, and second largest export destination after USA as per Economic Survey 2021.
India’s major exports to the UAE include petroleum products, precious metals, stones, gems and jewellery, minerals, food items such as cereals, sugar, fruits and vegetables, tea, meat, and seafood, textiles, engineering and machinery products, and chemicals.
India’s top imports from the UAE include petroleum and petroleum products, precious metals, stones, gems and jewellery, minerals, chemicals and wood and wood products.

2. ASIA’s BIGGEST BIO-CNG PLANT IN MP

TOPIC: Environment

Context- Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday inaugurated Asia’s biggest Bio-CNG plant in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore via video conferencing.

Concept-

About Bio-CNG Plant in Indore:

A typical bio-CNG station comprises a biogas purification unit, a compressor, and a high-pressure storage system.
The Bio-CNG plant in Indore has been set up based on the concept of waste-to-wealth innovation in India’s cleanest city.
The plant with 550 MT per day capacity is said to be the biggest of its kind in Asia. It will produce CNG with 96 percent pure methane
- For the fifth time in a row, Madhya Pradesh’s Indore has been ranked India’s cleanest city under the Centre’s annual cleanliness survey Swachh Survekshan 2021.
The Bio-CNG plant will be operated using 100 percent wet waste. It is estimated to produce 18,000 kg gas per day which will help in running around 400 buses in the city daily.
This plant has some unique features, like:
- Fully automated pre-treatment unit and separation hammer mill technology. This will prepare bio-slurry feed to run digesters.
- Anaerobic digesters, that have been mounted with agitators. They work on Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) principle.
- Use of ‘Pressure Swing Adsorption (VPSA) technology’, to ensure high-quality recovery of bio-CNG fuel from raw biogas.

Bio-CNG:

Bio-CNG is a purified form of biogas with over 95% pure methane gas
It is similar to natural gas in its composition (97% methane) and energy potential.
- While natural gas is a fossil fuel, bio-CNG is a renewable form of energy produced from agricultural and food waste.
- Bio-CNG is being looked at as an environment-friendly alternative to diesel.

3. KISAN DRONES

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- PM Modi has flagged off 100 “kisan drones” in different parts of the country for spraying pesticides and other farm materials.

Concept-

Drones will also be promoted for crop assessment, digitisation of land records, spraying of insecticides and nutrients.
Farmers can use high–capacity drones in the coming times to transport their produce like fruits, vegetables and flowers to markets in a minimal time, boosting their income.

Drone Shakti Scheme:

The Union Budget pushed for promotion of drones through startups and skilling at Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs).
Startups will be promoted to facilitate ‘Drone Shakti’ for Drone-As-A-Service (DrAAS). Courses for skilling will also be started in selected ITIs across all States.
Sectors where drones can be employed include photography, agriculture, mining, telecom, insurance, telecom, oil & gas, construction, transport, disaster management, geo-spatial mapping, forest and wildlife, defence and law enforcement to name a few.

Drone:

It is a layman terminology for Unmanned Aircraft (UA).
A drone’s autonomy level can range from remotely piloted (a human controls its movements) to advanced autonomy, which means that it relies on a system of sensors and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) detectors to calculate its movement.

4. MH-60 R HELICOPTERS

TOPIC: Science & Tech.

Context- The first batch of three MH-60R Multi-Role Helicopters contracted by the Navy from the United States are scheduled to arrive in India by mid-July, according to defence officials.

Concept-

India had signed a $2.2 bn deal for MH-60R helicopters built by Lockheed Martin during the visit of then U.S. President Donald Trump in February 2020. Deliveries are expected to be completed by 2025.

About MR-60 R Helicopters:

The MH-60Rs are a replacement of the Sea King 42/42A helicopters already decommissioned in the 1990s.
These helicopters are considered to be the world’s most advanced maritime helicopter.
It will provide India the capability to perform anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare missions.
It will also enhance the Navy’s ability to perform secondary missions, including search and rescue, and communications relay.

5. NIGHT POLLINATORS

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- Moths vital to pollination in the Himalayan ecosystem, finds study.

Concept-

About The Study:

Moths are widely considered as pests, but a recent study by scientists of Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) has revealed that these group of insects are pollinators to a number of flowering plants in the Himalayan ecosystem
- Under the project titled “Assessment of Moths ( Lepidoptera ) As Significant Pollinators in the Himalayan Ecosystem of North Eastern India”
The study establishes 91 species of moths as potential pollinators of 21 plant families in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in the northeastern Himalayas.
The study revealed the importance of moths in nature.
When we are sleeping in our bedrooms, they are tirelessly working for the ecosystems to work, on which our survival is invariably dependent, and are helping in a great way towards food security.

About Moths:

Lepidoptera is the order of insects that includes butterflies, moths and skippers.
The name Lepidoptera is derived from the Greek, meaning “scaly winged,” and refers to the characteristic covering of microscopic dust like scales on the wings.
Due to their day-flying habits and bright colours, the butterflies are more familiar than the chiefly night-flying and dull-coloured moths, but the latter is far more varied and abundant.
The skippers are a worldwide group intermediate between butterflies and moths.
There are about 12,000 moth species in India and about 160,000 moth species in the world.
About 90% of the world’s flowering plants are pollinated by animals. Therefore, pollinators are essential for the genetic exchange among flowering plants and the biodiversity among plants
Researchers have pointed out that almost two-thirds of common large moth species have declined over the last 40 years in some parts of world.
- One of main reasons for the decline is light pollution (an increase in artificial light in moth habitats).

6. FAST RADIO BURSTS (FRBs)

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- Astronomers of National Centre of Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune and the University of California in the U.S. have used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to map the distribution of atomic hydrogen gas from the host galaxy of a fast radio burst (FRB) for the first time.

Concept-

Fast radio bursts:

Fast radio bursts are extremely bright radio waves from distant galaxies that last for only a few milliseconds because of which it is difficult to detect them and determine their position in the sky.
FRB produces repeated, very short bursts, and these have been found to arise in the outskirts of a spiral galaxy half a billion light-years away.
It was first discovered in 2007.
In 2020, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spotted FRB for the first time in the Milky Way.
A defining property of these bursts is their dispersion (scattering or separation), the bursts produce a spectrum of radio waves, and as the waves travel through matter, they spread out or disperse with bursts at higher radio frequencies arriving at telescopes earlier than those at lower frequencies. This dispersion allows researchers to learn about two important things:
1. They can measure this dispersion to learn about the stuff that radio bursts pass through as they travel toward Earth.
2. They can indirectly determine how far apart things are.
It can be used to understand the three–dimensional structure of matter in the universe and to learn about poorly understood early moments in the evolution of the universe.

About GMRT:

The GMRT located near Pune is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45-metre diameter, observing at metre wavelengths.
It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
Astronomers from all over the world regularly use this telescope to observe many different astronomical objects such as Ionized Interstellar atomic Hydrogen Regions, galaxies, pulsars, supernovae, and Sun and solar winds.

7. DARK MATTER

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- Astronomical observations suggest that a significant part of the universe is made up of dark matter which interacts with the rest of the universe only through the gravitational pull.

Concept-

Primordial black holes:

One hypothesis is that dark matter comprises a large number of compact objects such as primordial black holes.
When the universe was very young, hot and dense – soon after the Big Bang, it must have had quantum fluctuations of its density.
This, in turn, would have caused some regions to become extremely dense, and therefore, to collapse under their own gravity to form the primordial black holes.

Gravitational lensing:

When light travels through space and passes near a massive or compact body – a star, a galaxy or a black hole, for example, the intense gravity of that body may attract the light towards it, bending it from its rectilinear (straight line) path.
This phenomenon is known as gravitational lensing and was first observed by Arthur Eddington in 1919.
Massive objects like galaxies can bend light significantly, producing multiple images, this is called strong lensing.
Lighter objects like stars or black holes bend light less, and this is called microlensing.
A similar lensing can happen to gravitational waves travelling towards the Earth, and this would leave signatures in the detected gravitational waves. This can be used to detect the presence, or the existence, of primordial black holes.

8. BLACK HOLES

TOPIC: Science & Tech

Context- The supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which has a mass 4 million times greater than the Sun, is observed.

Concept-

Observations showing a roughly dough-nut-shaped cloud of cosmic dust and gas shrouding a supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy Messier 77 similar in size to our Milky Way.

About Black Holes:

Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects possessing gravitational pulls so powerful even light cannot escape them.
It refers to a point in space where the matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.
The concept was theorized by Albert Einstein in 1915 and the term ‘black hole’ was coined in the mid-1960s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler.
The black holes belong to two categories:
- One category ranges between a few solar masses and tens of solar masses. These are thought to form when massive stars die.
- The other category is of supermassive black holes. These range from hundreds of thousands to billions of times that of the sun from the Solar system to which Earth belongs.

Messier 77:

Messier 77, also called NGC 1068 or the Squid Galaxy, is located 47 million light years – the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km – from the Earth in the constellation Cetus.
Its supermassive black hole has a mass roughly 10 million times greater than our sun.

9. EAT RIGHT CAMPAIGN

TOPIC: Governance

Context- Four police stations in the national capital’s New Delhi district have been designated as ‘Eat Right Campus’ by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for providing nutritious and wholesome meals daily to police personnel at their canteens.

Concept-

Eat Right India Movement:

Eat Right India is a flagship mission of FSSAI, which aims at ensuring that the citizens of the country get safe and nutritious food.
Under this initiative, ‘Sehatmand Delhi’ programme has been launched to identify premises that can be recognised as ‘Eat Right Campus’.
- The New Delhi district took up this initiative to focus on the health of its personnel across canteens, kitchens and mess in the district.
- The programme included audit of the campus, capacity building, training and sensitisation, creation of standard operating procedures. Successful completion of these activities lead to the recognition of the campus as Eat Right Campus by FSSAI.
This movement is aligned with the government’s flagship public health programmes such as POSHAN Abhiyaan, Anemia Mukt Bharat, Ayushman Bharat Yojana and Swachh Bharat Mission.
The movement aims to cut down salt/sugar and oil consumption by 30% by 2022.
Eat Right India’s vision for 2050 is about creating a culture of safe, healthy and sustainable food for all.
It also aims to engage and enable citizens to improve their health and well-being by making the right food choices.
FSSAI has prescribed a limit for Total Polar Compounds (TPC) at 25% in cooking oil to avoid the harmful effects of reused cooking oil.

FSSAI:

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is an autonomous statutory body established under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 (FSS Act).
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India is the administrative Ministry of FSSAI with its Headquarters in Delhi.
Various acts were subsumed & repealed after commencement of FSS Act, 2006.
- Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954
- Fruit Products Order, 1955
- Meat Food Products Order, 1973
- Vegetable Oil Products (Control) Order, 1947
- Edible Oils Packaging (Regulation) Order 1988
- Milk and Milk Products Order, 1992
FSSAI is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation and supervision of food safety.