Essential Facts for Prelims – CSE 2019. Daily Compilation of Important Factual Information from Relevant News Sources for Civil Services Prelims Exam (UPSC)
Chabahar
Category: International
- With U.S. sanctions threatening Iran’s main port of Bandar Abbas, the Iranian government is planning to promote the Chabahar port being developed by India highlighting the potential of the Indian Ocean port beyond India-Afghan trade alone.
- The potential for inland trade goes well beyond the present plan of trade from India-Afghanistan via Chabahar, as Iran plans to connect ‘via Turkmenistan to Central Asia, via Turkey to Europe, and via Iraq to Syria and the Mediterranean’ countries.
Multispectral imaging
Category: Science & technology
- Thousands of manuscripts scattered across India could face destruction.
- To preserve them, a highly advanced multispectral imaging technology, currently being used for rare texts in the Ashta Mutts of Udupi has been procured.
- Multispectral imaging can capture texts in manuscripts that are affected by pests, fungus, over-written, scribbled, blackened or scraped and cannot be seen with bare eyes.
- It uses infra-red and ultraviolet rays to retrieve texts.
Pangolins
Category: Environment & ecology
- Obsession for its supposedly medicinal scales in China is believed to have made the ant-eating Chinese Pangolin, one of two species found in South Asia, extinct in India.
- The pangolin is the most trafficked mammal in the world.
- Though hunted for its meat across the northeastern States and in central India, the demand for its scales in China has made it the most critically endangered animal in less than a decade.
- The Chinese Pangolin was officially categorised as critically endangered in 2014.
- The Indian Pangolin, marked endangered that year, is now critically endangered.
National Security Act
Category: Polity & Governance
- NSA empowers the Centre or a State government to detain a person to prevent him from acting in any manner prejudicial to national security.
- The government can also detain a person to prevent him from disrupting public order or for maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community.
- The maximum period for which one may be detained is 12 months. But the term can be extended if the government finds fresh evidence.
- In the normal course, if a person is arrested, he or she is guaranteed certain basic rights. These include the right to be informed of the reason for the arrest. But none of these rights are available to a person detained under the NSA.
- A person could be kept in the dark about the reasons for his arrest for up to five days, and in exceptional circumstances not later than 10 days.
- Even when providing the grounds for arrest, the government can withhold information which it considers to be against public interest to disclose.
- The arrested person is also not entitled to the aid of any legal practitioner in any matter connected with the proceedings before an advisory board, which is constituted by the government for dealing with NSA cases.
- The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which collects and analyses crime data in the country, does not include cases under the NSA in its data as no FIRs are registered. Hence, no figures are available for the exact number of detentions under the NSA.
- In January, the government in Uttar Pradesh arrested three persons under the NSA in connection with an alleged cow-slaughter incident in Bulandshahr.
- In December last year, a Manipur journalist, who had posted an alleged offensive Facebook post on the Chief Minister, was detained for 12 months under the NSA.
- Experts say these cases point to the fact that governments sometimes use it as an extra-judicial power.
Mariculture
Category: Agriculture
- Plants use sunlight to produce energy for their metabolism and food production. This is referred to as photosynthesis .
- However, the efficiency of photosynthesis is rather low, just about 5% in most land crops. The most efficient land crop with 8% average is sugarcane, which is not all that edible, except for the sugar in it.
- One way to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis is to reduce what is called photorespiration in plants. Here the energy and oxygen produced in the ‘light reaction’ of photosynthesis is drained by the plant to make “wasteful” products in the ‘dark reaction’, and not just carbohydrates and other food material, particularly when the plant’s leaves close in order to reduce water loss by evaporation. If we can find ways to reduce this photorespiration, edible food yields can go up.
- The most efficient use of photosynthesis is actually not by land plants but by micro and macro algae, such as seaweeds. These are the champions, contributing to about 50% of all photosynthesis in the world.
- And many of them, notably those with dark green, red and brown colour, are edible. They are low-calorie and nutrient-dense food items and eaten by people in most parts of South East Asia – Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Korea and Japan, and also in some in coastal Atlantic region.
- Peninsular India from Gujarat all way to Odisha and West Bengal has a coast line of 5,200 km, and Andaman and Nicobar together have a coast line of 2,500 km. Thus, while we have 63% of our land area for crop agriculture, we should not forget this vast coastal area, much of which breeds seaweeds.
- Thus India should embark on Mariculture as vigorously as Agriculture, given its 7,500 km-long coastal line.
- Further, it does not require pesticides, fertilizers and water for irrigation, which is an added advantage.
- Seaweeds are rich sources of vitamins A and C, and minerals such as Ca, Mg, Zn, Se and Fe. They also have a high level of vegetable proteins and omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. Best of all, they are vegetarian, indeed vegan, and do not have any fishy smell, thus good and acceptable.
Leptospirosis
Category: General Science
- Leptospirosis is caused by bacteria.
- Leptospirosis is one of the emerging zoonotic diseases and causes almost 60,000 deaths every year as there is currently no preventive vaccine for humans.
BSF
Category: International
- In a unique move, 24 schoolchildren of the Border Security Force families would be visiting Bangladesh.
- These are children of the BSF officers and troopers posted in the three North-east frontiers — Assam-Meghalaya, Cachar-Mizoram and Tripura.
- This is the first time schoolchildren are going to Bangladesh from the NE region of India.
