Published on: October 3, 2024

Snippets : 2-3 OCTBER 2024

Snippets : 2-3 OCTBER 2024

  • The Karnataka government has launched a rare blood donor program aimed at supporting patients with rare blood groups by creating a comprehensive database of voluntary donors. Inaugurated by Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao on National Voluntary Blood Donation Day, October 1, the initiative is a collaboration between the Rotary Bangalore TTK Blood Centre’s Bangalore Medical Services Trust (BMST) and the Karnataka State Blood Transfusion Council. The program features a Rare Blood Donor Registry that includes a database of donors with rare blood types and a repository of frozen red cell units of these types. Additionally, it benefits from technical expertise provided by the National Institute of Immunohematology (ICMR Mumbai), New York Blood Center (U.S.), and the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT, Amsterdam), and will offer training and awareness programs for blood centers across Karnataka. To enhance blood group testing, extended serology and molecular techniques will be employed to identify rare blood types among patients and their families.
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced Mission Amrit as a significant continuation of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on the campaign’s 10th anniversary, focusing on new urban sanitation and water initiatives. The mission aims to enhance urban water and sewage systems, with an allocation of Rs 6,800 crore under Amrit and Amrit 2.0. Additionally, new projects have been launched under the National Mission for Clean Ganga to improve water quality in the Ganga basin, with an investment of Rs 1,500 crore, alongside the establishment of 15 new Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants under the GOBARdhan Scheme, which will receive Rs 1,332 crore in funding. The campaign witnessed massive public engagement, with over 28 crore people participating in 27 lakh events during the Sewa Pakhwada, reinforcing the idea that mass participation is vital for transforming cleanliness drives into paths of prosperity. The Swachh Bharat Mission has significantly impacted public health, with the World Health Organisation attributing the prevention of 300,000 deaths from diarrhoea between 2014 and 2019 to the initiative. Furthermore, India has seen the emergence of around 5,000 clean-tech start-ups, opening up new opportunities in the water and sanitation sector, including waste-to-wealth initiatives, waste collection and transportation, and water reuse and recycling projects.
  • The Geographical Indications Registry in Chennai has granted GI tags to eight products from Assam, enhancing the recognition of local specialties. Among the awarded products are three rice beer varieties: Bodo Jou Gwran (noted for its high alcohol content of 16.11%), Maibra Jou Bidwi (a welcome drink made from half-cooked fermented rice), and Bodo Jou Gishi (another traditional rice-based beverage). Additionally, four traditional food items received GI tags, including Bodo Napham (fermented fish dish), Bodo Ondla (rice powder curry with spices), Bodo Gwkha (prepared during the Bwisagu festival), and Bodo Narzi (a nutrient-rich semi-fermented jute leaf dish). Lastly, the Bodo Aronai, a small intricately woven cloth, was also recognized. Geographical Indications (GI) signify products with specific geographical origins, governed by the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, under the authority of the Controller General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks (CGPDT).
  • The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for its ambitious Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM), set to launch on March 29, 2028, aboard the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3). This mission, approved by the Union Cabinet on September 18, 2024, has a budget of Rs 1,236 crore and will take 112 days to reach its final orbit on July 19, 2028 . The VOM aims to explore Venus’ atmosphere, surface, and interaction with the Sun, with key objectives including high-resolution mapping of the Venusian surface and studying the solar X-ray spectrum . This mission will also test ISRO’s aerobraking and thermal management techniques in the harsh Venusian environment. The spacecraft will carry 16 Indian payloads, two Indian-international collaborative payloads, and one international payload, including the Venus InfraRed Atmospheric gases Linker (VIRAL) developed by Russia’s Space Research Institute. Collaborations also include Sweden’s IRI for the Venus Ionospheric and Solar Wind particle AnalySer (VISWAS) and Germany for the Radio Anatomy of Venus Ionosphere (RAVI). Following the cruise phase, the spacecraft will enter Venus’ orbit at 500 km x 60,000 km and use aerobraking for six to eight months to achieve its desired orbit.
  • The Karnataka government will launch the Providing Access to Telescopes (PAT) scheme by the end of this month, aiming to make telescopes accessible to schoolchildren. The scheme focuses on fostering scientific curiosity in students from rural and Kannada medium high schools, specifically targeting grades 8 to 10. The government has procured 836 telescopes, which will be distributed to residential schools in the first phase. This initiative, supported by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds, will later expand to all government-run high schools, encouraging early interest in astronomy and space sciences.
  • Surgeon Vice-Admiral Arti Sarin became the first woman officer to assume charge as the Director-General of the Armed Forces Medical Services
  • The Centre has appointed Ram Singh, Saugata Bhattacharya and Nagesh Kumar as new external members of the central bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The three new members have been appointed for a four-year term with immediate effect, the statement said. The six-member MPC, which consists of three RBI and three external members
  • An online portal to allow people to purchase tickets for all trekking paths across Karnataka will be launched
  • Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd. (KRIDL) has launched a new software application, Gandhi Sakshi Kayaka 2.0, or the work monitoring system, to improve fund management and project oversight. Unveiled by Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Priyank Kharge on Gandhi Jayanti, the software aims to streamline the sanctioning and utilisation of funds, ensuring transparency and efficient monitoring of infrastructure projects across Karnataka. Developed by the Center for Smart Governance, the tool enhances efficiency and accountability in state projects. KRIDL, an undertaking of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, has been instrumental in infrastructure development for 51 years. Additionally, the department will host a national Swaraj convention from November 13 to mark 30 years of the Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act. Experts from various fields will attend the convention, which will feature debates and workshops, culminating in the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Declaration, a charter for the future of the Gram Swaraj system based on Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of truth, non-violence, honesty, and brotherhood.
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, a package for basic scheme saturation in tribal-majority villages across 550 districts, at an event in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag district, where he also laid the foundation stones for a host of other projects intended to benefit tribal people across the country. The package, originally coined as the PM Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan (PM-JUGA), was cleared by the Union Cabinet last month as an umbrella package to implement existing schemes in 63,000 Scheduled Tribe-majority villages.
  • A new study has found that overexploitation of 25 species of host plants valued for their medicinal properties has affected swallowtail butterflies in forests on the Brahmaputra’s northern bank.
  • China has initiated a second phase of construction to enhance the capabilities of the Five-Hundred Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), located in Guizhou Province. Recognized as the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, FAST features a receiving area equivalent to 30 football fields and measures 500 meters in diameter. Its scientific goals include detecting neutral hydrogen at the edge of the universe, reconstructing images of the early universe, discovering pulsars, establishing a pulsar timing array, and contributing to pulsar navigation and gravitational wave detection in the future. Additionally, FAST aims to join the International Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Network to obtain hyperfine structures of celestial bodies, perform high-resolution radio spectral surveys, detect weak space signals, and participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
  • The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has appointed Coforge Limited as the system integrator for its digital transformation project, Anna DARPAN, aimed at enhancing the efficiency of its supply chain management system. This new tech-driven initiative seeks to streamline operations at various levels and will feature an interactive, user-friendly design to boost productivity and facilitate data-driven decision-making through advanced analytics. Coforge will oversee the entire lifecycle of the Anna DARPAN system, including design, development, implementation, and maintenance, utilizing a cloud-based platform powered by a service mesh architecture for seamless communication among microservices. The project’s initial phase involves thorough requirement gathering and analysis, allowing Coforge to gain deep insights into FCI’s operations, existing processes, and integration opportunities, ensuring that the final solution effectively meets the organization’s specific needs.
  • The BharatGen initiative, recently launched by the Union Ministry of Science & Technology, aims to develop generative AI systems capable of producing high-quality text and multimodal content in various Indian languages. It represents the first Government-supported Multimodal Large Language Model Initiative and is implemented by IIT Bombay under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS). BharatGen’s features include its multilingual and multimodal foundation, a Bhartiya dataset for building and training, and the development of an open-source platform to foster a generative AI research ecosystem in India. The project is expected to be completed within two years and aims to benefit numerous government, private, educational, and research institutions. Multimodal Large Language Models, like those targeted by BharatGen, are designed to process and generate various modalities, including text, images, and sometimes audio and video. These models are trained on extensive datasets that encompass both text and image data, enabling them to learn relationships between different modalities and be utilized in applications such as image captioning, visual question answering, and content recommendation systems that combine text and image data for personalized user experiences.