Essential Facts (Prelims): 7 March, 2019


ICDS

Category: Social sector

  • Anganwadi services have a poor reach among key beneficiaries – the poorest of the poor and uneducated mothers – according to a paper published in a WHO bulletin recently.
  • The government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) provides a package of six services at anganwadi or child-care centres to young children and pregnant women and lactating mothers.
  • These services include supplementary nutrition, referral services, immunisation, health check-up, pre-school non-formal education and health and nutrition education.

ISRO

Category: Sc & tech

  • ISRO and its French counterpart CNES sealed an agreement to set up a joint maritime surveillance system in the country.
  • The two nations will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites that will identify and track movement of ships globally – and in particular those moving in the Indian Ocean region where France has its Reunion Islands.
  • The two agencies have put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (of 2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013) that are considered a model. This fleet will be augmented with the launch of Oceansat-3-Argos mission in 2020 along with a joint infrared Earth-observation satellite.

Bolo

Category: Sc & tech

  • Google launched a mobile application named ‘Bolo’ (speak) to help schoolchildren improve their Hindi and English reading skills.
  • The beta version of the free application — launched first in India, uses Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.

Kiru Hydro Electric Project

Category: Geography

  • The project is located on River Chenab in Kishtwar district of Jammu & Kashmir.
  • It envisages construction of a 135 m high concrete gravity Dam.
  • It is envisaged as a Run of River (RoR) Scheme.

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