Why in News?

• Recently, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology launched this campaign at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

About One Week One Lab Campaign:

• The One Week One lab campaign of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), will highlight India’s global excellence in technology, innovation and Start-ups.
• In this campaign, each of CSIR’s 37 constituent laboratories, spread Nationwide, will showcase their legacy, exclusive innovations and technological breakthroughs every successive week.
• During the campaign each CSIR lab shall be organizing week-long events including industry & start-up meet, students connect, society connect, display of technologies, etc.
• The campaign will also focus on academia and skill development, where interested students from varying domains get to know about the research activities and facilities of the CSIR laboratories and get a connection with prospects.
• Industries & MSMEs Meets are targeted to establish an understanding between Science and Industry based on the requirement of the society or regional needs and to identify potential industries for co-development of Next Gen technologies and products.
• It will be an opportunity to create networks of Govt- Academia-Industry for faster deliveries and deployments of technologies.

What is CSIR?

• It is the largest research and development (R&D) organisation in India which was set up in 1942.
• It is funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology

What is the Structure of the Organisation?

• The Prime Minister of India (Ex-officio) is the President of this organisation.
• Vice President: Union Minister of Science and Technology (Ex-officio)
• Governing Body: The Director-General is the head of the governing body.
  The other ex-officio member is the finance secretary (expenditures).

Why in News?

• The International Kite Festival 2023 begin in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

About International Kite Festival 2023:

• The festival is being organized by Gujarat Tourism on the G20 theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future.
• Ahmedabad first hosted the International Kite Festival on the occasion of Uttarayan in 1989.
• Apart from Ahmedabad, the International Kite festival will also be organized in Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Dwarka, Somnath, Dhordo, and Kevadia.
• After a gap of 2 years, skies over the Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad will be adorned with colorful unique Kites.
• More than 800 kite flyers from across India and the world will participate and display their unique creations in this Festival.
• This year, kite enthusiasts from different countries will fly Kites at the same time attempting to create a Guinness World Record for the maximum number of kite flyers.
• A special Parade by international and national kite flyers, a theme pavilion displaying the history of kites, and workshops on making and flying kites are among the major attractions of the festival this year.

Why in News?

• India and Japan are all set to hold the joint Air Exercise, ‘Veer Guardian-2023’ involving the Indian Air Force and Japan Air Self Defence Force (JASDF) at Hyakuri Air Base, Japan from 12th of January

About ‘Veer Guardian-2023’:

• The Joint Exercise which will continue till 26th January aims at promoting Air Defence cooperation between the countries.
• The Indian contingent participating in the air exercise will include four Su-30 MKI, two C-17 and one IL-78 aircraft, while the JASDF will be participating with four F-2 and four F-15 aircraft.
• It will include the conduct of various aerial combat drills between the two Air Forces.
• They will undertake multi-domain air combat missions in a complex environment and will exchange best practices.
• Exercise ‘Veer Guardian’ will fortify the long-standing bond of friendship and enhance the avenues of defence cooperation between the two Air Forces.

About:

• Covering 10% of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with ‘floatovoltaics’ would install electrical capacity equivalent to that provided by all electricity-generating fossil fuel plants in operation worldwide.
• Floatovoltaics, floating solar plants, or FSPV (floating solar photovoltaic) are panel structures that are installed on water bodies like lakes, basins, and reservoirs instead of on solid structures like a roof or terraces.
• The biggest impetus behind the rise of large-scale FSPV has been that it doesn’t take up any land space, which could be then used for construction and agriculture.
• The world’s first large-scale FSPV system was installed in 2011, in Napa Valley, California.

India:

• In recent years, floating solar power plants have become part of India’s plans of solar expansion.
• According to a 2020 study by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) reservoirs cover 18000 square Kilometer in India and can generate 280 GW through floating solar panels.
• Currently less than 1% of solar installations are floating.
• The largest floating solar power plant in India is currently the Ramagundam in Peddapalli district of Telangana, with a capacity of 100 MW.
• Currently a plant is being built on the Narmada’ Omkareshwar Dam in Khandwa, Madhya Pradeshis being built with a capacity of 600 MW, which will soon be the largest floating solar power plant in the world.
• The project is touted to be worth Rs 3000 crore.
• What are the benefits of floating solar panels?
  • The water’s cooling effect makes them more efficient than land-based ones;
  • They don’t interfere with desert ecosystems; and
  • They keep precious water from evaporating.
  • Even though reservoirs are artificial ecosystems, they provide habitats for wildlife.

Why in News?

• Recently, for the first time, physicists at the University of L’Aquila, Italy have found a complete microscopic understanding of the superconductivity of Mercury.

About Mercury’s superconductivity

• In 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered superconductivity in mercury.
• He found that at a very low temperature, called the threshold temperature, solid mercury offers no resistance to the flow of electric current.
• Scientists later classified mercury as a conventional superconductor because its superconductivity could be explained by the concepts of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory.
• In BCS superconductors, vibrational energy released by the grid of atoms encourages electrons to pair up, forming so-called Cooper pairs.
• These Copper pairs can move like water in a stream, facing no resistance to their flow, below a threshold temperature.

What is Superconductivity?

• A material can conduct electricity without any resistance. It is observed in many materials when they are cooled below a critical temperature.

What is Mercury?

• It is a naturally occurring element that is found in air, water and soil.
• It is released into the atmosphere through natural processes such as weathering of rocks, volcanic eruptions, geothermal activities, forest fires, etc.

Why in news?

• Six groupings, which included Facebook, Google, Amazon, Flipkart and others, had applied for NUE licences and all of them have fallen short of the RBI’s expectations.
• Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is said to have put on hold licensing of the New Umbrella Entity (NUE) network, a fintech institution planned as a rival to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

What is New Umbrella Entity (NUE)?

• As envisaged by the RBI, an NUE will be a non-profit entity that will set up, manage and operate new payment systems, especially in the retail space such as ATMs, white-label PoS; Aadhaar-based payments and remittance services.
• The entity formed shall be a company incorporated in India under the Companies Act, 2013. Currently, the umbrella entity for providing retail payments systems is NPCI, which is a non-profit entity, owned by banks.
• Promoters:A promoter will hold at least 25% and up to 40% of the operator. Only those entities that are owned and controlled by Indian citizens with at least three years of experience in the payments segment can become promoters of NUEs.
• Foreign investment:Foreign companies can own a maximum of 25%, so are teaming up with local players.
• Capital required:According to the RBI guidelines, the entity will have minimum paid-up capital of Rs 500 crore, with no single promoter group holding over 40 per cent investment in the capital.
• Governance structure: The new entity will have to abide by corporate governance norms and the ‘fit and proper’ criteria for persons to be appointed to the board.

Why in news?

• The Indian contingent, which consists of two officers and 25 other ranks, will work as a platoon in an engagement and specialise in community outreach in addition to carrying out numerous security-related duties.
• This time India is deploying the largest single unit of female Blue Helmets in a UN mission since 2007.
• Recently, India deploys a women-only platoon of peacekeepers to the UN Mission in Abyei on the border of Sudan and South Sudan as part of the Indian Battalion in the United Nations Interim Security Force, Abyei (UNISFA).

What is UNISFA?

• It was established by the UN Security Council in response to the critical situation in the Abyei area of Sudan by resolution 1990 of 27 June 2011.
• Resolution 1990 made provision for the deployment of 4,200 Ethiopian troops to provide security and protect civilians under imminent threat of violence in the disputed border region.

What is United Nations Peacekeeping Mission?

• This Peacekeeping operation is policing and peacebuilding actions carried out by the UN to bring order and stability to war-torn nations.
• The UN Peacekeepers are known as ‘Blue Helmets’or ‘Blue Berets’.
• Peacekeepers are the military personnel of the UN that work alongside the UN Police and civilian colleagues to promote “stability, security, and peace processes”.
• Origin:When the UN Security Council approved the deployment of UN military observers to the Middle East in 1948, the UN Peacekeeping Forces were established.
• Nodal Agency:The United Nations Charter authorises the United Nations Security Council to take collective action to maintain international peace and security.
• Structure:The UN Peacekeeping force is supplemented by personnel from member nations. They are added to the force on a volunteer basis.
• India’s role:India is one of the largest troop-contributing nations to the U.N. peacekeeping missions. India is the second-highest military and fifth-highest police contributing country to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Why in News?

• Recently, the Prime Minister of India launched the Aspirational Block Programme at the second National Conference of Chief Secretaries in Delhi.

What is Aspirational Block Programme?

• The Aspirational Blocks Programme is on the lines of the Aspirational District Programme that was launched in 2018 and covers 112 districts across the country.
• This new programme is aimed at improving performance of blocks lagging on various development parameters.
• This will enable holistic development in those areas that require added assistance.
• The programme will cover 500 districts across 31 states and Union Territories initially.
• Over half of these blocks are in 6 states—Uttar Pradesh (68 blocks), Bihar (61), Madhya Pradesh (42), Jharkhand (34), Odisha (29) and West Bengal (29).

What is Aspirational Districts Programme?

• It was launched in 2018 and aims to transform districts that have shown relatively lesser progress in key social areas.
• 3C Strategy: The broad contours of the programme
• Convergence (of Central & State Schemes)
• Collaboration (of Central, State level ‘Prabhari’ Officers & District Collectors)
• Competition (among districts driven by a Mass Movement )
• Parameters for Ranking:The ranking is based on the incremental progress made across 49 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) under 5 broad socio-economic themes
  • Health & Nutrition (30%)
  • Education (30%)
  • Agriculture & Water Resources (20%)
  • Financial Inclusion & Skill Development (10%)
  • Infrastructure (10%)

• Post-monsoon seasonal rainfall was deficient in Himachal last year, as per a report of the Indian Meteorological Department.
• According to the data, the state received 63.9 mm of rainfall during the post-monsoon period in 2022 against its normal 82.9 mm with 23 per cent departure.
• Actual rainfall in October, November and December was 38.2 mm, 19.5 mm and 6.4 mm, respectively. However, no extreme weather events were recorded.
• A spell of 5.1 cm snowfall was reported at Hansa in Lahaul-Spiti district on October 10 while Hamirpur, Bilaspur and Una districts were hit by a cold wave at isolated pockets. Mandi and Una districts witnessed fog, mainly during morning hours.

• \After directions from the Ministry of Rural Development, the attendance of all MGNREGA workers in Kangra district is marked online from January 1.
• This will ensure transparency and check fake muster rolls being prepared manually by panchayat pradhans or ward members in the gram panchayats.
• Authorities of the Department of Rural Development had received many complaints that village pradhans were creating forged muster rolls (attendance papers) to please their favourites.
• As per information, the Ministry of Rural Development had initially made it mandatory that the attendance of all MGNREGA works involving more than 20 workers to be marked online a year ago. Following its success, the online attendance system has been introduced for all community works to be carried out in the rural areas involving any number of workers.
• The online attendance scheme has been implemented in the state to check the practice of forged manual attendance of workers in the muster rolls.
• The online attendance of every MGNREGA worker is being marked through the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) by the elected ward member or other representative of the respective gram panchayat. The attendance is being marked twice on a working day.
• Sonu Goyal, project officer, District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Kangra, said the online attendance of every MGNREGA worker in community works in rural areas had become mandatory now and added this system had been introduced in the district.
• He asserted that the online attendance of workers would ensure transparency and ensure that only genuine MGNREGA workers get their names registered on muster rolls.