• Authorities in Colombia have warned of an increase in seismic activity around the Nevado del Ruiz volcano.
• Nevado del Ruiz is situated in the Andes mountain range, approximately 129 km (80 mi) from the capital city of Bogotá.
• Nevado del Ruiz is situated in the Ring of Fire, a belt of intense seismic activity that encircles the Pacific Ocean.
• It is a stratovolcano and considered one of the most active and dangerous volcanoes in the country, with a history of generating destructive lahars and pyroclastic flows.
• The volcano’s composition consists of layers of lava, volcanic ash, and pyroclastic rocks, which have built up over approximately two million years of volcanic activity.
• History – The eruption in 1985 caused the deadliest lahar in recorded history, known as the Armero tragedy. The lahar, which was triggered by the melting of snow and ice on the volcano’s summit during the eruption, swept away the town of Armero and claimed the lives of over 23,000 people.

• Astronomers have discovered an ultramassive black hole using gravitational lensing, a phenomenon where a foreground object bends light from a distant object behind it.
• Researchers used supercomputer simulations to simulate light from a distant galaxy travelling through the Universe, each simulation had a black hole of a different mass.
• The path taken by the light in one simulation matched the path seen in actual images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, leading to the discovery of an ultramassive black hole in the foreground galaxy.
• The ultramassive black hole is over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun.

About Black Hole

• Black holes are regions of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from them.
• They are formed when a massive star collapses in on itself at the end of its life, creating an incredibly dense object with a gravitational pull that is so strong that it warps space-time around it.
• Types of Black Holes:
  • Stellar Black Hole: It is formed by the collapse of a single massive star.
  • Intermediate Black Hole: Their masses are between 100 and 100,000 times that of the sun.
  • Supermassive Black Hole: Their masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the sun, found at the centres of most galaxies including our own Milky Way galaxy.
• Studying black holes can also help us understand the fundamental properties of space, time, and gravity.

Gravitational Lensing

• Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon where the path of light from a distant object is bent by the gravitational field of a massive object, such as a galaxy or a black hole.
• This bending of light can cause distant objects to appear distorted or magnified, depending on the alignment of the massive object and the observer.
• The effect of gravitational lensing was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity, and has since been observed and studied by astronomers.

• The European Union (EU) has granted the Geographical Indicator (GI) tag to Kangra tea. This will help the tea growers of Kangra export their produce to Europe.
  • The Kangra tea had got the Indian GI tag in 2005.
• According to experts, the production of Kangra tea has fallen to just 8 lakh kg per annum against 17 lakh kg per annum, the highest production recorded in 1998.
• The said production is just .01 per cent of the total 90 million kg tea produced in the country.
• The low yield and lack of initiative among local tea farmers are primary responsible for less production of Kangra tea, according to experts.
• At present, the average yield of tea in Kangra is 230 kg per hectare.
  • However, the average yield of tea is 1,800 kg per hectare at the country level.
• Despite low yield, farmers are carrying out tea plantation in Kangra as the government does not allow the land under tea for any other use.

• In March 2023, the railway network in the state of Haryana in India was completely electrified by Indian Railways, making it the first state in the country to achieve 100% electrification of its railway network.
• The Indian Railways has set a target to achieve 100% electrification of its broad-gauge routes by December 2023.

• World Backup Day is an annual event that takes place on March 31st to raise awareness about the importance of data backup and protection.
• World Backup Day was first observed on March 31, 2011.

• Recently, Indian Council of Historical Research has been preparing to release records of people’s ancestors kept by genealogy priests.

About

• Genealogy priests called Panda have been collecting records of families going back 15 to 20 generations, with details like place of origin, names, births, deaths, reason of death, place of residence, grants made to temples, caste, and clan.
  • Genealogy is the study of ancestry.
• Many Hindu families undertake a pilgrimage to religious places like Haridwar or Varanasi upon the death of a family member, where they also visit their family priest to register the death as well as other family developments.
• These records can be a rich source to understand past famines, epidemics, migration, movement of people, as well as social history on how clans and communities were organised.
• The ICHR plans to help make these records available to researchers, scholars, and historians.

About Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR)

• The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Education, Government of India.
• It was established by the Ministry of Education & Social Welfare, Govt. of India (now, Ministry of Education) in 1972.
• ICHR was registered under the Societies Registration Act.
• The primary aim and objective of the Indian Council of Historical Research are to promote and give directions to historical research and to encourage and foster objective and scientific writing of history.
• It provides fellowships and financial assistance to young teachers in colleges, universities and registered research organisations.
• It publishes a biannual Journal – the Indian Historical Review, and another journal Itihas in Hindi.

• The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has written to all States and Union Territories, suggesting that children with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) are provided with proper care and required facilities.

About T1D-

• T1D is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin, which is a hormone needed to regulate blood sugar levels. This type of diabetes usually occurs in children and young adults, although it can occur at any age.
• According to data from the International Diabetes Federation Atlas 2021, India has the world’s highest number of children and adolescents living with Type I Diabetes Mellitus (TIDM), at over 2.4 lakh, in the southeast Asia region.
• It is an autoimmune disorder, which means that the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The exact cause of this condition is not known, but genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role.
• Type 1 diabetes typically require insulin injections or an insulin pump to manage the blood sugar levels.
• Complications of type 1 diabetes in children can include hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), hyperglycemia (high blood sugar), ketoacidosis (a potentially life-threatening condition that occurs when the body breaks down fat for energy instead of glucose), and long-term complications such as eye, kidney, nerve, and cardiovascular damage.

Other Types of Diabetes

• Type 2 Diabetes:
  • It affects the way the body uses insulin. While the body still makes insulin, unlike in type I, the cells in the body do not respond to it as effectively as they once did.
  • Type 2 diabetes can occur at any age, even during childhood. However, this type of diabetes occurs most often in middle-aged and older people.
  • This is the most common type of diabetes and it has strong links with obesity.
• Gestational Diabetes:
  • This type occurs in women during pregnancy when the body sometimes becomes less sensitive to insulin.

Gestational diabetes does not occur in all women and usually resolves after giving birth.

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has recently released a Global False Colour Composite (FCC) mosaic of images captured by the Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) payload on board the EOS-06 satellite.
• The OCM senses the Earth in 13 distinct wavelengths to provide information about global vegetation cover on land and ocean biota for global oceans.

About EOS-06

• The EOS-06 third generation satellite in the Oceansat series was launched by ISRO onboard the PSLV-C54 along with eight Nano-satellites on November 26, 2022.
• EOS-06 provides continued services of Oceansat-2 with enhanced payload capability and carries four payloads OCM, Sea Surface Temperature Monitor, Ku-Band Scatterometer, and ARGOS.
• The EOS-06 is envisaged to observe ocean colour data, sea surface temperature and wind vector data to use in Oceanography, climatic and meteorological applications.
• The satellite also supports value added products such as potential fishing zones using chlorophyll, SST and wind speed and land based geophysical parameters.

• Tiwa tribesmen in Assam celebrate the Yangli festival once every three years to mark the beginning of the sowing season.
• The Yangli festival, which is related to agriculture, is a significant event for the Tiwas as farming is the main source of income for their community.
• During the festival, the Tiwas perform dances and offer prayers for a successful harvest, seeking protection for their crops from pests and natural calamities.

• Salt marshes have been playing an outsized role in stabilising the environment.
• But more than 90 per cent of these biologically productive ecosystems may soon succumb to sea level rise by the turn of the century, according to a recent study.

About Salt marshes

• Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by the tides.
• They are found in intertidal zones along coastlines, usually in protected areas such as estuaries or bays.
• They are dominated by grasses and other salt-tolerant plants such as sedges, cordgrass, rushes, and mangroves.
• Salt marshes occur worldwide, particularly in middle to high latitudes.
• Salt marshes protect shorelines from erosion by buffering wave action and trapping sediments.
• They reduce flooding by slowing and absorbing rainwater and protect water quality by filtering runoff, and by metabolizing excess nutrients.

Coastal squeeze

• Marshes all over the globe experience ‘coastal squeeze,’ where their movement is obstructed by sea level rise, anthropogenic activities and geographical factors. For instance, a seawall that protects a home from inundation will prevent a wetland from naturally migrating to higher ground.
• Sea level rise is the most important threat to salt marshes.