• The latest and longest-ever session of the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is being held presently.

About UNHRC

• The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the world.
• The Council was created by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2006.
  • It replaced the former United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
• The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland serves as the Secretariat of the Human Rights Council.
• It is made up of 47 United Nations Member States which are elected by the UNGA.
• Members of the Council serve for a period of three years and are not eligible for immediate re-election after serving two consecutive terms.

• AIIMS Delhi has developed AFTER (a new tool) to detect human emotions.
• It will create an emotional facial expression database (collection of images with great social and biological relevance).
• It will help in treating persons with autism, schizophrenia, and depression.
• It rates emotions on a 5-point Likert scale in three dimensions: intensity, clarity, and authenticity.
• Likert scale is a unidimensional scale that researchers use to collect respondents’ attitudes and opinions

• National Data and Analytics Platform enables policy-makers and researchers to exploit the potential of government data

About NDAP:

• In May 2022, the NITI Aayog, in collaboration with ministries and state governments launched a transformational open data platform called the NDAP.
• It serves foundational datasets from central and state government entities in machine-readable formats, with user-friendly interface and powerful analytics.
• The platform uses cutting-edge methods to link diverse datasets from across the government and enables the use of several types of data at once.
• NDAP’s target users include policymakers, civil servants, university students and researchers, journalists, innovators, and civil society groups.
• As of Feb 2023, NDAP hosts 885 datasets from across 15 sectors and 46 Ministries.

Objective:

• It is designed to solve the issues that limit the use of government data today, the design process of NDAP was preceded by extensive research with diverse data users to learn about their demand for government data, skills to use it effectively and challenges faced in doing so.

• Artists named by PM who were conferred with Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar include-
• Joydeep Mukherjee for Sursingar.
• Uppalpu Nagmani has been awarded for Carnatic Instrumental on the Mandolin.
• V Durga Devi ji has won this award for ‘Karakattam’, an ancient dance form.
• Sangram Singh Suhas Bhandare has been awarded for Warkari Kirtan.
• Saikhom Surchandra Singh for mastery in making Meitei Pung Instrument.
  • This instrument has connections with Manipur.
• Pooran Singh, a Divyang Artist, who popularized various Music Forms such as – Rajula-Malushahi, Nyuli, Hudka Bol, Jagar.

Related information

Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar:

• Sangeet Natak Akademi instituted “Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar” from the year 2006 to be awarded to artists who have shown / demonstrated conspicuous talent in the fields of music, dance and drama.
• Young artist upto the age of 40 years are eligible
  • It is not given posthumously.
• Yuva Puraskar will be given annually and the total number of Yuva Puraskar in a year is limited to 33.

Sursingar:

• Sursingar is a stringed instrument made of ivory and wood. This traditional instrument is found in various parts of North India.
• The strings of the instrument are usually four in number and made of brass or bronze, and are plucked with a metal pick.
• The Sursingar (along with the Rudra Veena and the Surbahar) usually accompanies Dhrupad, the genre of Hindustani vocal music which has a low, deep, and thoughtful pitch.

Karakattam:

• Karakattam is an ancient folk dance of Tamil Naduin which performers in colourful saris dance with a pot (karakam) on their head to invoke Mariamman, the goddess of rain.
• Traditionally, this dance is categorized into two types:
  • Aatta Karakam symbolizes joy and happiness. It is mainly performed as entertainment.
  • Sakthi Karakam is performed only in temples as a spiritual offering.
• It involves three tiers of flower arrangements of different colours sitting on top of a container filled to the brim with either water, rice, or soil.
• Other highlights include blowing fire, inserting needles into eyes, and keeping balance while holding a bottle parallel to the ground on the performer’s back.

Mandolin

• It is a stringed instrument, usually with eight strings that are plucked with a pick.
• The Mandolin is a moderately sized instrument, smaller than the Veena, Sitar, or guitar, and was developed in Europe in the 18th century as an evolution of the older Mandora (Mandola).
• The instrument’s modern form and proportions were strongly influenced by its maker Pasquale Vinaccia of Naples.
• The Mandolin has long been part of the Indian film music tradition, having been used by several great composers.

• Discovered by Australian National University seismologists, the new layer is a solid metallic ball is deep inside inner core of Earth, dubbed as “innermost inner core”.
• It is solid due to high pressure deep within the Earth that stops iron alloy from melting. It is a crystallized structure within inner core’s innermost region that is different from outer layer.
• First hypothesised about 20 years ago, it was identified through data gathered from seismic waves caused by earthquakes.
• So far, four layers of Earth’s structure had been identified. These include:
  1. Crust: Topmost or outermost layer of earth which makes up 1% of Earth Volume. It has two parts – thinner Oceanic Crust and thicker Continental Crust.
  2. Mantle: Solid/plastic layer of earth which makes up about 84% of Earth Volume. It is divided in two parts – Upper Mantle and Lower Mantle. Uppermost mantle and crust constitute lithosphere.
  3. Outer core: Liquid portion of core, composed of 80% iron along with nickel and some other lighter elements.
  4. Inner core: Solid portion of core, composed of Iron and nickel with presence of heavy elements like gold, platinum, palladium, silver and tungsten.

• Recently, physicists working with the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND) in Japan reported that after analysing two years’ data, they could not find signs that neutrinos could be their own anti-particles.
• KamLAND looks for an event called neutrinoless double beta-decay.
  • In normal double beta-decay, two neutrons in an atom turn into two protons by emitting two electrons and two electron antineutrinos.
  • In neutrinoless double beta-decay, the anti-neutrinos aren’t emitted, which can happen only if anti-neutrinos are just different kinds of neutrinos.

About Neutrinos

• Neutrinos are the second most abundant particles in the Universe after photons (light particles), produced in copious amounts in the cores of stars.
• Properties: Because they are so ubiquitous, their properties are windows into the microscopic structure of the universe.
• An open question about neutrinos is whether they are their own antiparticles. If they were, physicists will have a way to explain why the universe has more matter than antimatter.
• Probing of oscillations of neutrinos and their relations with mass are crucial in studying the origin of the universe.
• Sources of Neutrinos: Neutrinos are created by various radioactive decays; during a supernova, by cosmic rays striking atoms etc.

Anti-Particles

• Every elementary particle has an antiparticle. If the two meet, they will destroy each other in a flash of energy.
• The electron’s antiparticle is the positron. Similarly, neutrinos have anti-neutrinos.
• However, an electron is distinguishable from a positron because they have opposite charges.
• Neither neutrinos nor anti-neutrinos have electric charge, nor any other properties to really differentiate between them.

• National Stock Exchange (NSE) launched India’s first municipal bond index- IBMX- to track performance of bonds issued by municipal corporations.
• Municipal bond market has seen a three-fold rise in fund raising since 2017 (from ₹2,342 crore in 2017 to ₹6,252 crore in 2022.)
• Index will have 28 municipal bonds, which were issued by 10 issuers.
• Bonds in the index have a credit rating of AA

• India ranked 42^nd on International IP Index released by US Chambers of Commerce.
• S topped the index.
• Annual Index evaluates protection of Intellectual Property (IP) rights in 55 of world’s leading economies, together representing around 90% of global GDP.
• Key Findings for India
  • Improved enforcement against copyright-infringing content and provides a best-in-class framework to promote better understanding and utilisation of IP assets.
  • Concerns: Dissolution of IP Appellate Board (2021), under-resourced and overstretched judiciary, limited framework for the protection of biopharmaceutical IP rights etc.

• India was among 190 countries that participated in GBBC 2023 recently.
• It is an annual event that brings bird enthusiasts, students and nature enthusiasts together for counting birds they see around the places where they live, work or study.
• West Bengal reported the highest number of species (489 species) followed by Uttarakhand (426), Arunachal Pradesh (407), Assam (397) and Karnataka (371) during the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) 2023. Tamil Nadu and Kerala took the eighth and ninth spots with 349 and 325 species.
• India’s birds are thriving in diverse habitats from the city to the countryside. A remarkable increase in participation across the country helped India upload the second-highest number of checklists after the United States of America and the third-highest species of any country.

About GBBC

• The GBBC was launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, and was the first online citizen-science project (also referred to as community science) to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real time.
  • Bird Count India organises the GBBC in the country.
• In 2013, it became a global project after entering data into eBird, the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science (community science) project.

Bird Count India

• Bird Count India is an informal partnership of organisations and groups working together to increase collective knowledge about bird distributions and populations.
• It supports listing and monitoring of birds in India: from individuals maintaining their bird lists, to groups of students or birders monitoring local birds, to large India-wide projects to document the abundance and distribution of species.

• Recently, four police personnel in Chennai were suspended for aiding orangutan smugglers.

About Orangutans

• Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra.
• Habitat: Orangutan means “man of the forest” in the Malay language. The most arboreal of the great apes, orangutans spend most of their time in trees.
• Characteristics: They have proportionally long arms and short legs, and have reddish-brown hair covering their bodies. Bornean and Sumatran orangutans differ a little in appearance and behavior. While both have shaggy reddish fur, Sumatran orangutans have longer facial hair.
• Threats: Human activities have caused severe declines in populations and ranges. Threats to wild orangutan populations include poaching (for bushmeat and retaliation for consuming crops), habitat destruction and deforestation (for palm oil cultivation and logging), and the illegal pet trade.
• Declining population & IUCN Status:
  • A century ago there were probably more than 230,000 orangutans in total, but
  • The Bornean orangutan is now estimated at about 104,700 based on updated geographic range categorized as Endangered and
  • The Sumatran with numbers around 7,500 is categorized as Critically Endangered.
  • Tapanuli orangutan: A third species of orangutan was announced in November, 2017. With no more than 800 individuals in existence, the Tapanuli orangutan is the most endangered of all great apes.