Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 09 January 2017

:: National ::

The government has invoked Section 7 of the Aadhaar:

Workers in rural areas enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which mandates 100 days of work for a household a year, must have Aadhaar.
Those who have registered themselves under the scheme will be required to give proof of possession of Aadhaar or undergo the enrolment process till March 31. However, ration card, driving licence, voter identity card, Kisan passbook with photo, job card issued under the MGNREGS and a certificate issued by a gazetted officer or a tehsildar will be admissible as proof of identity for the people to get the benefits till they get Aadhaar.
Those who have applied for Aadhaar can produce their enrolment slip or a copy of the application for getting the 12-digit unique identification number.
Orders are being issued to make enrolment of Aadhaar mandatory for the States such as Jammu and Kashmir and a few others. Adequate steps will also be taken to ensure that people face no problem in getting the Aadhaar number.
The government has invoked Section 7 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
The Section mandates that when the government gives subsidy, benefit or service from the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI), an individual can be asked to undergo authentication or furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar.
The expenditure for the MGNREGS is met from the CFI.
The move to make Aadhaar mandatory for the MGNREGS will prevent leakages of subsidies and ensure that the beneficiaries get their due, according to another official who is part of the wing looking after the implementation of the Aadhaar-linked Direct Benefit Transfer scheme.
The DBT scheme, aimed at checking leakages of welfare funds, was launched on January 1, 2013 to cover 24 schemes of eight Ministries. Under the DBT, all cash benefits are transferred to the beneficiary’s bank account.
The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has also made it mandatory for 50 lakh pensioners and four crore subscribers to provide either the Aadhaar number or proof that they have applied for it.
The expenditure for the MGNREGS is met from the Consolidated Fund of India. A sum of Rs. 38,500 crore has been allocated for the MGNREGS in the current fiscal.

Mini grids can spur economic activity

Mini grids can spur economic activity in rural areas and accelerate the process of expanding mobile phone network across the country due to their large capacities and the ability to connect to the national grid, according to Smart Power India.
A mini grid, as defined by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, is an off-grid power system with a generation capacity of between 10 KW and 500 KW.
There are a number of other solutions of smaller capacities that rural areas can use such as a solar lantern, a solar home solution, or even a community solution like a micro grid.
But a mini grid is the only alternativethat provides the kind of electricity that can be used for business activities
One of the deficiencies of the other off-grid power solution models is that while these solutions are good in moving households away from kerosene and providing them with reliable and clean energy, they do not provide the energy required to fuel enterprise or commercial activity.
A mini grid is a larger system that converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) and it provides safety as per REC and CEA standards.
The power generated from a mini grid can be seamlessly transferred to the national grid since it is already going through a a charge controller which manages the flow of energy and an inverter which converts the electricity from DC to AC.
It also has a storage facility to meet night demand as well.Apart from commercial enterprises, rural banks or schools, a large part of the demand for mini grids came from telecom service providers for powering mobile towers.
There is a national mandate to green 50–60 per cent of the telecom towers and also the cost of using diesel is very high and it (the risk) includes diesel theft and all the other nefarious activities that go along with it not to mention the pollution.

Avian diversity to get a big boost in Kerala

The avian species diversity of Kerala got a boost in the last days of 2016 with BirdLife International dividing a species in two.
BirdLife International, an organisation which assesses the conservation status of birds globally, has split the group of montane laughingthrushes, which are endemic to the Western Ghats, and recognised them as two new species.
As a result, Kerala now has four mountain laughingthrushes in place of two.
The newly accepted species are Banasuralaughingthrush (Trochalopteronjerdoni), which has a very restricted distribution in Wayanad district and Travancorelaughingthrush (Trochalopteronmerdionale) found in Thiruvananthapuram district.
While the conservation status of the Banasura species was assessed as endangered, the Travancore variety was considered vulnerable, considering the risk the species were facing.
The two original species of the family were Nilgirilaughingthrush and Palanilaughingthrush.
The Nilgiri species, assessed as an endangered one, is found in Silent Valley National Park and Siruvani hills of Kerala.
The near-threatened Palanilaughingthrush is found mainly in Munnar hills and the mountains of Periyar Tiger Reserve apart from Grass Hills and Palani hills in Tamil Nadu, according to ornithologists.
BirdLife International recognised the findings and reclassified the birds in the latest Red List. Research papers on the genetic characteristics of each species are expected shortly.
Laughingthrushes are found only in the peaks of Western Ghats, popularly known as sky islands. These mountain peaks are separated from the others so well that the birds from one sky island find difficult to move to the next sky island.

:: Science and Technology ::

Diagnosing retinal diseases

Early diagnosis of certain eye diseases and studying the early progression of the diseases has now become possible, thanks to the work carried out by a team of researchers from three institutes.
Early diagnosis of eye diseases and quantification of disease progression has been a challenge.
For instance, the human retina has 10 layers and subtle morphological changes in these layers do not lead to a change in thickness that can be detected by OCT imaging.
But OCT images do contain data on subtle refractive index variations and the researchers have successfully teased out this information to help diagnose eye diseases early and study the early progression of disease.
Using the software, the researchers are able to find a peak at the junction between two layers from the refractive index data extracted from the OCT images.
The thickness of a layer can be calculated by measuring the distance between two successive peaks. When the thickness of a layer becomes more as the disease progresses the distance between two successive peaks increases.
In the case of the retina, different layers are affected by different diseases. For instance, the photoreceptor layer is affected in the case of diabetic macular edema, while the top layer (retinal nerve fibre layer) is affected in the case of glaucoma.

Tweaking photosynthesis for a better crop yield

We depend on plants for much of our food, clothing and shelter. Plants depend on the material in the soil and earth below, water, air and sunshine for their growth. Sunlight is thus an essential raw material for the growth of plants.
Using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide present in air, plants synthesise what is needed for much of their own metabolic needs (and thus our needs).
This process, known as photosynthesis, is carried out largely by the leaves (and similar appendages) in plants. Humans and many animals are dependent on the efficiency with which plants photosynthesise, grow and multiply.
As human population increases, we would need more of crops in order to cater to the global demands for food. One way of approaching this is to find ways in which photosynthesis can be improved.
Energy from sunlight is captured by the green pigment called chlorophyll in the leaves in order to conduct these chemical reactions. But this energy can also damage the leaves (recall how sunbathers in beaches can get sunburnt).
Plants protect themselves from such light-induced damage by releasing heat (but we use sun-tan lotions or dark glasses for protection).
In full sunlight, NPQ is activated so as not to harm the chlorophyll too much. But as clouds shade the sunlight, in such a low-light situation, NPQ is reduced.
Hastening the NPQ process, argues the team, could increase the efficiency of the photosynthesis cycle by anywhere between 8 per cent and 30 per cent. This, in turn, could be a promising strategy for improving crop yield.

:: Business and Economy ::

Deposits data before and after demonetisation

Taxmen call for data on deposits before, after demonetisation move.The tax department has now asked banks and post offices to provide details of cash deposits made from April 1, 2016 till November 8.
Bank account holders, who have not yet submitted their PAN or Form 60 to their respective banks, have been asked to so by February 28, 2017.
failing which no withdrawals will be allowed from such accounts having a ‘substantial credit balance,’ as per an earlier decision by the Reserve Bank of India.
Income-tax Rules have been amended to provide that banks shall obtain and link PAN or Form No 60, where PAN is not available, in all existing bank accounts (other than basic savings bank deposit accounts) by 28 02.2017, if not already done.
The banks and post offices have been mandated to submit information in respect of cash deposits from April 1, 2016 to November 8, 2016 in accounts where the cash deposits during the period November 9, 2016 to December 30, 2016 exceeds the specified limits.
Since it had come to the Centre’s notice that people were paying impoverished account holders to deposit large sums of cash into their accounts so as to convert it into white money.

Anti-avoidance tax rule

Tax anti-avoidance rule GAAR will kick in from April 1, 2017, the tax department said.
In its 2016 year-end review, the Central Board of Direct Taxes, which is the apex policy-making body of the I-T department, listed its major achievements.
Major achievements of CBDT in the current financial year 2016-17 so far include,among others, Enactment of The Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016, Implementation of The Direct Tax Dispute Resolution Scheme, 2016 and of GAAR from Assessment Year 2018-19.

Centre’s flagship digital payment application BHIM safer than others

Allaying security concerns over the Centre’s flagship digital payment application BHIM, the CEO of cybersecurity solutions firm Lucideus, said it was currently among the most secure ways to make digital payments.
Imany firms involved in testing the UPI-based application’s safety, said that the increasing adoption of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment mechanism would spell doom for mobile wallets, which saw a surge in their usage in two months.
The encryption used for the application to communicate with the payments server is the same that is used in Google Wallet or Apple Pay.
While e-wallets use a one-factor authentication mode by default, both net banking and credit or debit cards use two-factor authentication.
BHIM uses three-factor authentication and hence, is relatively more secure from a consumer point of view. It also combines the convenience of a mobile wallet with the security of net banking.
When a user opens BHIM application for the first time, the application automatically binds itself to their device ID and phone number — both of which are unique.
This means that the same UPI cannot be used from two phones. The BHIM application will also not work on a phone which doesn’t have a SIM card.
Once the BHIM App is installed, the user can select her bank out of the 35 listed banks.
The application, which already knows the phone number, runs a check to match the mobile number against the selected bank’s data base to automatically detect the account whose KYC details you have already filled in while opening the bank account.
For consumers, before UPI, there were three popular options of digital payments — net banking, mobile wallets or plastic cards.
Net Banking allows a users to access the bank account without going to the bank, but a third party transfer even within the same bank takes a minimum of 30 minutes.