Daily Prelims Notes 24 July 2020

July 24, 2020
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

Table Of Contents

Subject: IR

Context:

Indian consular officers were obstructed from taking written consent from Kulbhushan Jadhav for legal representation on July 16 said Ministry of External Affairs.

Concept:

Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 is an international treaty that defines consular relations between independent states.
A consul, who is not a diplomat, is a representative of a foreign state in a country and works for the interests of his countrymen in the host country.
Article 36 of the Vienna Convention states that foreign nationals who are arrested or detained be given notice without delay of their right to have their embassy or consulate notified of that arrest.
If the detained foreign national so requests, the police must fax that notice to the embassy or consulate, which can then check up on the person.
The notice to the consulate can be as simple as a fax, giving the person’s name, the place of arrest, and, if possible, something about the reason for the arrest or detention.

2. Global Forest Resources Assessment

Subject: Environment

Context:

According to the latest Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) report, India has ranked third among the top 10 countries that have gained in forest areas in the last decade.

Concept:

Food and Agriculture Organization has brought out this comprehensive assessment every five years since 1990.
This report assesses the state of forests, their conditions and management for all member countries.
The top 10 countries that have recorded the maximum average annual net gains in forest area during 2010-2020 are China, Australia, India, Chile, Vietnam, Turkey, the United States, France, Italy and Romania.
India reported 38 per cent annual gain in forest, or 266,000 ha of forest increase every year at an average.
The FRA 2020 has credited the government’s Joint Forest Management programme for the significant increase in community-managed forest areas
India accounts for two per cent of total global forest area.
India reported the maximum employment in the forestry sector in the world.
Globally, 12.5 million people were employed in the forestry sector. Out of this, India accounted for 6.23 million, or nearly 50 per cent.

3. Spike protein

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

Researchers have found that the spike protein in coronavirus changes its form after it attaches itself to a human cell.

Findings:

Spike protein changes its form after it attaches itself to a human cell, folding in on itself and assuming a rigid hairpin shape

Concept:

Spike protein protrudes from the surface of a coronavirus, like the spikes of a crown or corona — hence the name ‘coronavirus’.
In the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, it is the spike protein that initiates the process of infection in a human cell.
It attaches itself to a human enzyme, called the ACE2 receptor, before going on to enter the cell and make multiple copies of itself.

Uses:

The researchers believe the findings have implications for vaccine development.
Many vaccines that are currently in development use the spike protein to stimulate the immune system.
But these may have varying mixes of the prefusion and postfusion forms and that may limit their protective efficacy.
There is need for stabilising the spike protein in its prefusion structure in order to block the conformational changes that lead to the postfusion state. If the protein is not stable, antibodies may be induced but they will be less effective in terms of blocking the virus.

4. Tangams

Subject: Arts and culture

Context:

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister released a book titled “Tangams: An Ethnolinguistic Study Of The Critically Endangered Group of Arunachal Pradesh”.

Concept:

The Tangams are a little-known community within the larger Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh and reside in the hamlet of Kugging in Upper Siang district.
As per the UNESCO World Atlas of Endangered Languages(2009), Tangam an oral language under the greater Tibeto-Burman language family is marked ‘critically endangered’.

5. Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Chandra Shekhar Azad

Subject: History

Context:

July 23 is birth anniversaries of great freedom fighters Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Chandra Shekhar Azad

Concept:

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Born on July 23, 1856, Tilak was a mathematician, philosopher, scholar and social reformer.
To impart quality education to the country’s youth, he founded the Deccan Education Society in 1884.
He also started two weeklies, Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English), through which he criticised British policies of that time.
Tilakjoined the Congress in 1890, but due to ideological differences, he and his supporters were known as extremist leaders within the party.
British arrested him on the charges of sedition in 1906 and a court sentenced him to six years of imprisonment in Mandalay (Burma)
He was popularly known as Lokmanya. The famous slogan, “Swaraj is my birth right and I shall have it”, was coined by him.
Tilak with Annie Besant, Joseph Baptista, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah founded the All India Home Rule League in 1916.
In the same year, he concluded the Lucknow Pact with Jinnah, which provided for Hindu-Muslim unity in the nationalist struggle.
When BalGangadharTilak was imprisoned during the freedom struggle, he wrote a book titled ‘Gita-Rahasya’.
The events like the Ganapati festival and ShivajJayanti were used by Tilak to build a national spirit beyond the circle of the educated elite in opposition to colonial rule.

Chandra Shekhar Azad

Chandra Shekhar Azad was one of the most notable Indian revolutionaries who took part in India’s freedom struggle at a very young age.
Azad was deeply moved by the JallianwalaBagh incident which took place on April 13, 1919.
He joined the revolution for Indian independence and soon became a part of the Non-Cooperation Movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920. He even got arrested at the young age of 15 for being a part of the movement.
After Gandhi suspended the non-cooperation movement in 1922, Chandra Shekhar Azad joined the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA), a revolutionary organisation formed by Ram Prasad Bismil, SachindraNathSanyal and others.
As a freedom fighter, he was involved in the Kakori Train Robbery of 1925, in the attempt to blow up the Viceroy of India’s train in 1926, and in the shooting of British police officer JP Saunders at Lahore in 1928.
Chandra Shekhar Azad took charge of HRA after Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, RajendraLahiri and ThankurRoshan Singh were sentenced to death in the Kakori train robbery case.
After the capture of the main leaders of the HRA, Chandra Shekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh secretly reorganised the HRA as the HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republic Army) in September 1928.

6. H-CNG

Subject: Science and tech

Context:

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has notified draft notification for amendment to Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1979 for inclusion of Hydrogen enriched CNG as an automotive fuel.

Concept:

H-CNG is a blend of hydrogen and CNG, the ideal hydrogen concentration being 18%. Compared to conventional CNG, use of H-CNG can reduce emission of carbon monoxide up to 70%, besides enabling up to 5% savings in fuel.
While recommending the use of H-CNG as an alternative fuel, the NITI Aayog-CII Action Plan for Clean Fuel notes that physical blending of CNG and hydrogen involves a series of energy-intensive steps that would make H-CNG more expensive than CNG

CNG

CNG is compressed natural gas. With natural gas mainly composed of methane, CNG emits less air pollutants — carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter — than petrol or diesel.
Environmental Benefits: No impurities, No Sulphur (S), No lead (Pb) and Very low levels of polluting gaseous emissions without smell and dust. Molecular structure compactness prevents the reactive processes which lead to the formation of Ozone (O3) in the troposphere

7. Covid-19 Law Lab

Subject: IR

Context:

World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched its Covid-19 Law Lab.

Concept:

It gathers and shares legal documents from over 190 countries across the world to help states establish and implement strong legal frameworks to manage the pandemic.
The goal is to ensure that laws protect the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities and they adhere to international human rights standards.
It is a joint project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), WHO, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.