• The Power ministry recently established UTPRERAK, a Centre of Excellence to Accelerate Adoption of Energy Efficient Technologies in Indian Industry.

About UTPRERAK

• The Unnat Takniki Pradarshan Kendra (UTPRERAK) is the CoE to Accelerate Adoption of Energy Efficient Technologies and seeks to play a catalytic role in improving the energy efficiency of the Indian industry.
• It is also named as Advanced Industrial Technology Demonstration Centre (AITDC)
• It has been set up by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE).
• The Centre is mandated to become the key reference and resource institution on industrial energy-efficient technologies.
• It will demonstrate and showcase energy-efficient technologies in key industry sectors.
• It will act as an exhibition cum information centre and knowledge repository.
• It will be a knowledge exchange platform where best practices from across various key sectors can be diffused among industry professionals through workshops and seminars.
• It is expected to provide intensive training to more than 10,000 energy professionals from the industry.

ABOUT BUREAU OF ENERGY EFFICIENCY

• It is a statutory body set up under the provisions of the Energy Conservation Act of 2001, under the Union Ministry of Power.
• Objective – to develop policy and strategies with a thrust on self-regulation and market principles within the overall framework of the Energy Conservation Act (EC Act), 2001 and to reduce energy intensity in the Indian economy.

• HOME Minister recently met with the Meira Paibis as part of his meetings with various civil society groups.
• The Meira Paibis, also known as Imas or Mothers of Manipur, are Meitei women who represent a powerful moral force in Manipur’s civil society.
• It is a women’s social movement in Manipur formed in 1977.
• They come from various sections of society in the Imphal valley and are widely respected for their activism.
• They Paibis are loosely organized, led by groups of senior women, and lack rigid hierarchy or overt political leanings.
• Role: initially focused on fighting alcoholism and drug abuse has now expanded to countering human rights violations and the development of society at large.

• New additions in the unicorn list declined sharply in 2023, indicating a slowdown in the Indian startup ecosystem as per a report released by Huron named ASK private wealth Huron India future Unicorn Index, 2023.
• The overall number of unicorns declined from the previous year.
• There were 51 gazelles and 96 cheetahs in 2023 in India.

Different Categories of Start-ups

• Unicorns
  • refers to a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion.
  • It is commonly used in the venture capital industry.
  • The term was first popularised by venture capitalist Aileen Lee when she referred to the 39 startups that had a valuation of over $1 billion as unicorns.
  • The valuation of unicorns is not expressly linked to their current financial performance but is largely based on their growth potential, as perceived by investors and venture capitalists.
  • There are more than 1,000 unicorn companies around the world as of March 2022.
• Gazelles
  • Startups valued between $500 million and US$1bn; are likely to turn unicorns in three years.
• Cheetahs
  • Startups valued at $250 million and are likely to turn unicorn in five years.

• India has identified 30 critical minerals that it considers essential for economic development and national security of the country in order to ensure “self-reliance” and to address “the vulnerability” in its supply chain.
• The ‘Report of the Committee on Identification of Critical Minerals’, comprises the list of thirty critical minerals, including antimony, beryllium, bismuth, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, indium, lithium, molybdenum, niobium, nickel, phosphorous, potash, titanium, tungsten and rare earth elements.
• With a few exceptions such as copper, gallium, graphite, cadmium, phosphorus, potash, and titanium, India is 100% import dependent for most of these minerals.
• India was recently inducted into the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP).

ABOUT CRITICAL MINERALS

• It is a metallic or non-metallic element that has two characteristics :-
  • It is essential for the functioning of our modern technologies, economies or national security and
  • There is a risk that its supply chains could be disrupted.
• The ‘criticality’ of minerals changes with time as supply and society’s needs shift.
• They are used to manufacture advanced technologies, including mobile phones, computers, fibre-optic cables, semiconductors, banknotes, and defence, aerospace and medical applications etc.
• Top Producers: Chile, Indonesia, Congo, China, Australia and South Africa.

ABOUT MINERAL SECURITY PARTNERSHIP

• It is an ambitious new initiative to bolster critical mineral supply chains, announced by the United States (US) and key partner countries in June 2022.
• The goal of the alliance is to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realise the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments.
• The focus of the grouping would be on the supply chains of minerals such as Cobalt, Nickel, Lithium and also the 17 “rare earth” minerals.

• Recent research focuses on Tam Pà Ling Cave for studying the arrival of modern humans in mainland Asia.
• It revealed that humans were present in the vicinity of Tam Pà Ling Cave for roughly 56,000 years.
• The age of the lowest fossil, suggests modern humans arrived in this region between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago.
• Even researchers found a toothsome 150,000 years old belonging to a Denisovan.
• This suggests the site may lie on a previously used dispersal route among hominins.

ABOUT TAM PÀ LING CAVE

• It is a sloping cave situated high in the Annamite mountain range in Northern Laos.
• The stratigraphy of the site indicates formation by periodic slope wash deposition from the muddy slope at the entrance of the cave.

ABOUT DENISOVANS

• Denisovan are the now-extinct human relatives otherwise known only from remains found in Siberia and Tibet.
• They lived lakhs of years ago, coexisting with Neanderthals in some regions and interbreeding with early modern humans in some cases.
• They were first identified as a separate species in 2010, following the discovery of a fragment of a finger bone and two teeth, dating back to about 40,000 years ago, in the Denisovan Cave in Siberia.

• Harry Markowitz, father of modern portfolio theory (MPT), passed away recently.
  • MPT is a practical method for selecting investments in order to maximize their overall returns within an acceptable level of risk.
  • Markowitz focused on combinations of assets, rather than individual securities.
  • He shared the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (1990) with Merton H. Miller and William F. Sharpe for his ideas on finance.

• Priya A S has been honored with the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2023 in the Malayalam language for her novel “Perumazhayathe Kunjithalukal” (The Children Who Never Withered).
• The Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar, awarded by the Sahitya Akademi, carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and an engraved copper plaque.

• The term “organic intellectual” was coined by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
• Gramsci defined Organic intellectuals are those specific intellectuals who could help build awareness among the masses.
• They are intellectuals who rose to the professional standing from a social class that usually does not produce intellectuals and yet remained associated with that class, unlike traditional intellectuals

• New study shows that few plants don’t follow a Fibonacci pattern.
• Researchers led by the University of Edinburgh have unearthed evidence of non-Fibonacci spirals in a fossilized plant that lived approximately 407 million years ago.

ABOUT FIBONACCI SPIRALS

• The characteristic of being arranged in spirals that adhere to a numerical sequence called the Fibonacci sequence.
• Spirals occur frequently in nature and can be seen in plant leaves, animal shells vortex of hurricane and even in the double helix of our DNA.
• In most cases, these spirals relate to the Fibonacci sequence – a set of numbers where each is the sum of the two numbers that precede it (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on).
• They are extremely widespread in plants and can even be recognised with the naked eye.

• North India’s first skin bank opens in Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.
• The country has 16 skin banks — a facility where the skin of deceased persons can be donated — with 7 in Maharashtra, 4 in Chennai, 3 in Karnataka, and 1 each in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.

ABOUT SKIN BANK

• A skin bank is a place where cadaveric skin is processed and preserved under optimal conditions from where it can be used for the benefit of Burn victims.
• Anyone can donate Skin irrespective of sex & blood group; the minimum age of the donor should be 18 years.
  • There is no upper age limit.
• The skin of a deceased person can be donated within six hours of death.
• The donor’s skin is taken out only from the back of the thighs and legs and the thickness is only 3mm. It means a total of 1000-3000 sqm.
• The skin is then extracted, harvested, and processed, which takes five to six weeks.
• After this, it can be provided to patients.
• Unlike a kidney and liver, which cannot be stored and need to be transplanted within a few hours of donation, skin can be stored for three to five years by preserving in 85% glycerol solution.