April + May 2014

Hejje’, mobile application

• Tiger-tracking and wildlife conservation have a new mobile application for vigorous monitoring and better coordination of anti-poaching camp personnel at Bandipur.

• For, “Hejje” (Pug mark), an indigenously developed Android-based application, was launched at Bandipur. It will help coordinate foot patrolling of forest staff apart from providing the range forest officers live update of their respective anti-poaching patrolling activities such as patrol time, water level in lakes, suspicious activities, tree population and forest fires.

• The application, launched by Conservator of Forests and Director of Bandipur Tiger Reserve H.C. Kantharaj, has been developed by KeyFalcon Solutions of Bangalore.

• Tigers in Bandipur, a prime tiger habitat, are vulnerable to poaching. Effective protection of this habitat calls for modernisation, and the induction of “Hejje” adds a new protocol to the monitoring system.

• The adjoining BRT Wildlife Sanctuary makes use of a similar application called “Huli”.

HIV salvage therapy

• India has launched third-line drug therapy for people living with HIV/AIDS and extended free anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to more of them by revising the eligibility norm.

• The third-line therapy, sometimes called salvage or rescue therapy, is prescribed for people who have limited drug options left — after the failure of at least two drug regimens and with evidence of HIV resistance to at least one drug in each line or the latter cause alone. The highly expensive therapy will be provided free.

• Announcing these measures at the launch of the National AIDS Control Programme Phase IV (2012-2017) here, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said the third-line therapy would enhance longevity and improve the quality of life of patients.

• For receiving free ART, the minimum CD4-count limit had been reduced from 500 to 350. The count is a measure of the viral load.

• The government has tabled the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2014, in the Rajya Sabha. It seeks to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and protect the human rights of people living with it.

• At present, India is estimated to have 2.39 million people living with HIV/AIDS.

• The Bill seeks to prohibit any kind of discrimination against the infected person — for instance, denial or termination of employment or occupation, unfair treatment, denial of access to any sector and forcible HIV testing.

Solar Impulse

• Indians are going to witness a spectacle in the skies as world’s first day and night flying solar-powered wide bodied aircraft will fly into India as part of its round the globe journey.

• Termed as ‘Signature in the Skies,’ the flying laboratory will provide Indian clean energy and aviation enthusiasts a lifetime experience. Switzerland based Solar Impulse, world’s first day and night-abled solar-powered aircraft is all set to visit India in April 2015.

• It is for the first time in history that an airplane has succeeded in flying night and day without fuel, powered by only solar energy. It is launched by Bertrand Piccard and Mr. Borschberg.

Environmental clearance to 300-MW hydroelectric power project

• Environmental clearance was granted to a 300-MW hydroelectric power project on February 3 even as a Supreme Court order dated August 13, 2013 clearly said the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and the State government must “not grant any further environmental clearance or forest clearance for any hydroelectric power project in the State of Uttarakhand, until further orders.”

• The 300-MW Lakhwar project, which received the clearance from the MoEF, is located in the Upper Yamuna River Basin in Dehradun.

• In 1986, a 420-MW Lakhwar-Vyasi hydroelectric power project was granted environmental clearance. The project was then under the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department. Work continued till about 1992. The projects are now under the Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Limited (UJVNL). Once the projects were divided into a 120-MW Vyasi project and a 300-MW Lakhwar project, a separate environmental clearance was sought for the Vyasi project.

• For environmental clearance, the Expert Appraisal Committee considered the Lakhwar project in November 2010. However, many unresolved issues were raised by the EAC, including those related to the construction of a barrage.

Green Energy Corridors

• The Rs.1,593-crore Green Energy Corridors project of the Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation (TANTRANSCO) will be the State’s first power project to be funded by the KfW, a German development bank.

• Announced in the State budget tabled in the Assembly a few days ago, the project will cover essentially southern and western districts of the State, where most of the wind mills have been established.

• It will take care of transmitting power from wind mills, the point of generation, to sub-stations.

• Originally, the State government had sought the Centre’s support for the project. As there was not much progress, the authorities decided to seek the assistance of the KfW.

• The Corporation is carrying out transmission projects at a cost of Rs.5,000 crore, with loan assistance of Rs.3,572 crore from the Japan International Cooperation Agency to strengthen the transmission network, especially in Chennai.

World’s  largest solar power plant

• A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a milestone for a growing industry that is testing the balance between wilderness conservation and the pursuit of green energy across the American West.

• The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles (13 sq. kilometers) of federal land near the California-Nevada border, opened after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.

• Ivanpah is being described as a marker for the United States’ emerging solar industry. While solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of the nation’s power output, thousands of projects from large, utility-scale plants to small production sites are under construction or being planned, particularly across the sun-drenched Southwest.

• In 2012, the federal government established 17 “solar energy zones” in an attempt to direct development to land it has identified as having fewer wildlife and natural—resource obstacles. The zones comprise about 450 square miles (1,165 sq. kilometers) in six states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

Jade Rabbit

• China’s first lunar rover Jade Rabbit, which woke up ten days ago after being declared dead, has entered its third “planned dormancy” even as mechanical issues that might cripple the vehicle still unresolved.

• The rover named Yutu (Jade Rabbit) in Chinese entered its 14-day dormancy, with the mechanical control issues unresolved, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

• Yutu touched down on the moon’s surface on December 15, some hours after lunar probe Chang’e-3 landed.

• The rover was designed to roam the lunar surface for at least three months to survey the moon’s geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources.

• China is the third country to soft-land on the moon after the United States and the Soviet Union. Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of China’s lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth.

• The country has also sent probes to orbit the moon in 2007 and 2010, the first of which crashed onto the lunar surface at the end of its mission.

• According to the SASTIND, the Chang’e-2 has become China’s first man-made asteroid, and is currently 70 million km from the Earth.

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria

• Oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as three billion years ago, much earlier than previously thought.

• Researchers at the University of California, Riverside provide a nontraditional way of thinking about the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history.

• A general consensus asserts that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago during the so-called Great Oxidation Event (GOE).

• However, according to new research, oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as 3 billion years ago.

• Oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere potentially rose and fell episodically over many hundreds of millions of years, reflecting the balance between its varying photosynthetic production and its consumption through reaction with reduced compounds such as hydrogen gas.

New forest cover to be created

• Government has cleared a plan to create new forest cover and improve the quality of existing forests with an expenditure of Rs. 13,000 crore in the 12th Plan.

• Besides the two components, which are to be implemented through various measures including decentralisation of forest governance, the proposed National Mission for a Green India (GIM) as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme will also strive to achieve increased forest-based livelihood income of households living in and around the forests.

• The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved the proposal of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

• The objectives of the Mission during 12th Plan period includes increased forest/tree cover and improved quality of forest cover in two to eight million hectares, along with improved ecosystem services including biodiversity, hydrological services, increased forest-based livelihood income of households, living in and around the forests, and enhanced annual CO2 sequestration.

• Mission implementation will be on a decentralized participatory approach with involvement of grass root level organisations in planning, decision making, implementation and monitoring.

• The gram sabha and the committees mandated by the gram sabha, including revamped Joint Forest Management Committees will oversee implementation at the village level.

The oldest known gem

• A tiny gem found on an outback sheep station in Western Australia has been declared the oldest known piece of our planet.

• The zircon is said to be 4.4billion years old and was found by geoscience professor John Valley from the University of Wisconsin in the United States.

• He was on a field trip to an area called Jack Hills about 600km north of Perth in 2001 when he found the specimen. It’s an area known for its ancient gem stones which date back to when the Earth’s temperatures cooled and formed a crust.

• Prof. Valley said the zircon was formed when the Earth had cooled sufficiently to form a crust.

Discovery of 715 new planets

• NASA’s Kepler mission has announced the discovery of 715 new planets.

• These newly verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

• Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process.

• Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun’s habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

• One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.

• This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1700.

• Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets.

India’s largest solar plant

• Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi launched a 130-MW solar power plant at Bhagwanpur in Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh.

• The Welspun Solar MP project, the largest solar power plant in India set up at a cost of Rs. 1,100 crore on 305 hectares of land, will supply power at Rs. 8.05 a kWh.

Cheaper bio-aviation fuel

• Based on pilot plant studies of a state-of-the-art process developed by the Indian Institute of Petroleum here, a unit in a refinery is being revamped to yield 40,000 tonnes a year of bio-aviation turbine fuel at competitive rates. It will be blended with fossil jet fuel for running commercial flights.

• Under the recently developed process, renewable aviation fuel was produced from Jatropha curcas oil through a non-noble metal catalyst.

• Pratt & Whitney, Canada, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. are collaborating in the project. They have tested our fuel for its physio-chemical and performance characteristics.

• The carbon tax imposed by Australia and the European Union on the aviation indus-try prompted airlines to run their flights on bio-fuel.

Eco-sensitive zone around the Okhla Bird Sanctuary

• The National Green Tribunal has directed the Centre to take an appropriate decision on the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh governments’ proposal recommending creation of an eco-sensitive zone around the Okhla Bird Sanctuary.

• A Bench headed by Justice P. Jyothimani also directed the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) to visit various projects within 10 km of the sanctuary and verify the correctness of the information tendered by builders, on the basis of which they have secured environmental clearance.

• The tribunal also asked the Delhi government to send its proposal about the eco-sensitive zone around the sanctuary to the Ministry of Environment and Forests within 15 days.

• During the hearing, U.P. submitted that it had sent its proposal recommending a 100-metre eco-sensitive zone around the bird sanctuary.

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