Sea squirt
Category : Environment & Ecology
- A rubbery sea creature with an irritating habit of clinging to ships and invading beaches could help measure plastic pollution as it can filter tiny particles from the ocean and store them in its soft tissue.
- Israeli researchers have found that ascidians — round, palm-sized animals also known as sea squirts — can thrive in dirty industrial areas and pristine waters alike, allowing them to detect and analyse waste and its impact in various regions.
- The long-term impact of the waste, particularly tiny pieces called microplastic, is still not fully understood.
- Sea squirts just sit in one place all their life and filter the water, like a pump.
- Sea squirts are related in evolutionary terms to human beings. So studying them and the plastic inside them could be more insightful than looking at creatures like fish.
RCEP
Category: International
- Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) pact is being negotiated between 16 countries.
- RCEP, being negotiated between India, China, the 10-member ASEAN, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, can potentially result in the largest free trade bloc in the world covering about 3.5 billion people and 30 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.
- Apart from goods, the areas being negotiated include services, investments, intellectual property and government procurement.
Metal-contamination
Category: Environment
- More than four crore people in rural India drink water contaminated by heavy metals, fluoride, arsenic, and nitrate.
- West Bengal is the worst-affected with 39 per cent of India’s affected population living in that State.
- About 1.57 crore rural residents of Bengal drink metal-contaminated water. Rajasthan has 65 lakh rural people putting their health at risk while Bihar has 43 lakh people ingesting contaminated water.
- Rajasthan tops the list of States in fluoride and salinity contamination. The State also tops in nitrate contamination.
- West Bengal leads in arsenic and iron contamination.
- Punjab is the worst affected when it comes to heavy metal contamination.
- Punjab has all types of metallic water contamination while West Bengal has not reported any nitrate contamination.
KMUSU
Category: Agriculture
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved launch of Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan with the objective of providing financial and water security to farmers.
- The proposed scheme consists of three components:
- Component-A: 10,000 MW of Decentralized Ground Mounted Grid Connected Renewable Power Plants.
- Component-B: Installation of 17.50 lakh standalone Solar Powered Agriculture Pumps.
- Component-C: Solarisation of 10 Lakh Grid-connected Solar Powered Agriculture Pumps.
- All three components combined, the scheme aims to add a solar capacity of 25,750 MW by 2022.
SWAYATT
Category: Economy
- SWAYATT is an initiative to promote Start-ups, Women and Youth Advantage Through eTransactions on Government e Marketplace (GeM).
- This will bring together the key stakeholders within the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem to Government e-Marketplace the national procurement portal.
- Government e Marketplace, an online market place for procurement of common use goods and services by government ministries, departments and CPSEs was setup in 2016.
