Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Comprehensive Current affairs 4 November 2020

NFAI and FFSI Conducts Online Film Appreciation Course in Marathi.

National Film Archive of India is organising 15th edition of Film Appreciation Course in Marathi along with Federation of Film Society of India (FFSI). The course is to be held online for the first time from November 1 to November 7, owing to the COVID Pandemic.

About:

It was established in 1964 in Pune.

It is a media unit of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

It aims to trace, acquire and preserve for posterity the heritage of Indian cinema; to classify, document data and undertake research relating to films; to act as a centre for the dissemination of film culture.

 Dashboard

Recently, the CarbonCopy and Respirer Living Sciences, two environmental organisations have released a Dashboard which presents a comparative picture of particulate matter (PM) for 122 Indian cities since 2016.

About the Dashboard:

• It establishes a three-year rolling average trend for PM2.5 and PM10 levels across the cities from 2016 to 2018.

• The State of Global Air 2020 revealed that India had faced the highest exposure to toxic air in the world last year.

• 122 cities are referred to as non-attainment cities under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).

• It is a National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP) based dashboard, built on data from the Central Pollution Control Board’s National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring (NAAQM) Network which was started in 1984-85 and covers 344 cities/towns in 29 states and 6 UTs.

• Each station records about 104 observations a year covering four pollutants– Sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), suspended particulate matter (SPM), and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM).

• State pollution control boards and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur carry out the monitoring, and the Union Ministry of

Environment, Forest and Climate Change oversees the operation under the NCAP.

About Particulate Matter:

• It is also called particle pollution, it is a term for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air.

 It includes:

PM10: Inhalable Particles, with Diameters that are generally 10 Micrometers and smaller; and

PM2.5: fine Inhalable Particles, with Diameters that are generally 2.5 Micrometers and smaller.

• Some are emitted directly from a source, such as construction sites, unpaved roads, fields, smokestacks or fires.

• Most particles form in the atmosphere as a result of complex reactions of chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are pollutants emitted from power plants, industries and automobiles.

• Small particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter pose the greatest problems, because they can get deep into the lungs, and some may even get into the bloodstream.

• Particle pollution exposure has been linked to a variety of problems, including irregular heartbeat, aggravated asthma, decreased lung function and increased respiratory symptoms, such as irritation of the airways, coughing or difficulty breathing.

National Clean Air Programme:

• The Centre had launched the National Clean Air Programme in 2019 to address air pollution in 122 cities. These cities are referred to as non-attainment cities as they did not meet the national ambient air quality standards for the period of 2011-15 under the National Air Quality Monitoring Programme.

Strategic Policy and Facilitation Bureau.

Ministry of AYUSH and M/s Invest India will form a collaboration to set up a strategic policy unit called “Strategic Policy and Facilitation Bureau (SPFB)” to facilitate planned and systematic growth of the Ayush Sector.

This is among the various steps which the Ministry has initiated to chart future directions along which the stake-holding groups of the Ayush Sector can move.

The activities to be undertaken by the SPFB would include:

 Knowledge Creation and Management,

Strategic and Policy-Making Support, State Policy Bench marking: Undertaking State Policy bench marking to formulate uniform guidelines/regulations regarding AYUSH sector in India,

Investment Facilitation: Follow up and facilitation of investment cases and MoUs, and coordination among different Department, organisations and States.

Issue Resolution: Invest India would work with companies and other institutions on issue resolution across States and among various sub-sectors.

Some of the Specific Deliverables of Bureau would include project monitoring for Inter-Ministerial Groups, Skill Development Initiatives, setting up Strategic Intelligence Research Unit and initiating an Innovation Program.

Mission Sagar II.

As part of ‘Mission Sagar-II’, Indian Naval Ship Airavat entered Port Sudan on 02 November 2020.

About:

As part of Mission Sagar-II, Indian Naval Ship Airavat will deliver food aid to Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea.

Mission Sagar-II, is in line with the Prime Minister’s vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region ‘SAGAR’ and highlights the importance accorded by India to relations with her maritime neighbours and further strengthens the existing bond.

The Indian Navy is progressing this mission in close coordination with the Ministries of Defence and External Affairs, and other agencies of the Government of India. Phase 1 and 2:

Mission Sagar-II, follows the first ‘Mission Sagar’ undertaken in May-June 2020, wherein India reached out to Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar and Comoros, and provided food aid and medicines.

 The Government of India is providing assistance to Friendly Foreign Countries to overcome natural calamities and COVID-19 pandemic, and towards the same INS Airavat is carrying a consignment of 100 Tonnes of food aid for the people of Sudan.

Super typhoon Goni blasts into Philippines.

Recently, this typhoon killed 7 people in Philippines.

A typhoon is defined as a tropical cyclone in the western Pacific.

Typhoons generally track in a westward or northern direction, and occur most frequently in a region of thewestern Pacific and east Asia.

Typhoon season lasts from the early summer to early autumn, often coinciding with the monsoon seasonin Southeast Asia and the wet season in eastern Japan.

Hurricane is essentially the same thing as a Typhoons that takes place in the North Atlantic, or central oreastern North Pacific.

Super Typhoon:

Since 2009 the Hong Kong Observatory has divided typhoons into three different classifications: typhoon, severe typhoon and super typhoon.

A typhoon has wind speed of 64–79 knots (73–91 mph; 118–149 km/h), a severe typhoon has winds of at least 80 knots (92 mph; 150 km/h), and a super typhoon has winds of at least 100 knots (120 mph; 190 km/h.

E-way bills.

E-way bills for October clocked 64.1 million, the highest since the introduction of the system more than two years ago.

About:

Union government has announced introduction GST E-way bills from April 1,2018.

 The E-way bill is a document to be generated online under the GST system, when goods of the value of more than Rs.50,000 are shipped inter-State or intra-State.

Key highlights:

The e-invoice system under goods and services tax (GST) was launched on October 1, 2020 for the businesses with aggregate turnover of more than Rs 500 crore in the financial year.

According to NIC, within the first month of introduction itself, more than 495 Lakh e-invoices were generated on the NIC portal by 27,400 tax payers.

Modes of generations of invoice reference number (IRN) in NIC system:

Currently, there are three modes of generations of IRN in NIC system.

First is the direct API interface of ERP system of tax payer with NIC system.

Second is the API interface of ERP system of the tax payer through GSP with NIC system.

Third is using the offline tool for bulk uploading of invoices and generating IRNs.

Around 15% of the tax payers are using the offline tool for the IRN generations and 85% are integrating through API.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopath

It was reported that England World Cup winner Bobby Charlton, regarded England’s greatest, had developed dementia.

About:

Dementia is a general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life. Alzheimer's is the most common cause of dementia.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopath:

 It is a disease that causes severe damage to the brain because of repeated head injuries and is linked to memory loss, depression and dementia.

Former boxers are most commonly diagnosed with it, however, there have been instances of CTE in many other contact sports like pro wrestling, mixed martial arts, ice hockey, rugby, baseball, Australian rules football and, of course, football.

A 2017 research by University College London and Cardiff University pointed to six cases of players in 60s developing dementia having played for an average of 26 years

Four showed signs of CTE adding that the risk was ‘extremely low’ from playing recreational football.

Earth Observation Satellite EOS-01.

Recently, India would launch its latest earth observation satellite EOS-01 and nine international customer satellites from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota.

Highlights:

• The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C49) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch these ten satellites on 7th November 2020. It will be PSLV's 51st Mission.

• It is an earth observation satellite and is intended for applications in agriculture, forestry and disaster management support.

• Earth observation satellites are the satellites equipped with remote sensing technology.

Earth observation is the gathering of information about Earth's physical, chemical and biological systems.

• Many earth observation satellites have been employed on sun-synchronous orbit.

• Other earth observation satellites launched by ISRO include RESOURCESAT- 2, 2A, CARTOSAT-1, 2, 2A, 2B, RISAT-1 and 2, OCEANSAT-2, Megha-Tropiques, SARAL and SCATSAT-1, INSAT-3DR, 3D, etc

 • These are being launched as part of a commercial agreement with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), Department of Space.

• NSIL is incorporated in 2019 (under the Companies Act, 2013), is a wholly owned Government of India company, under the administrative control of Department of Space (DOS).

• NSIL is the commercial arm of ISRO with the primary responsibility of enabling Indian industries to take up high technology space related activities and is also responsible for promotion and commercial exploitation of the products and services emanating from the Indian space programme.

The Major Business Areas of the NSIL Include:

Production of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) through industry.

Production and marketing of space-based services, including launch services and space-based applications like transponder leasing, remote sensing and mission support services.

Building of Satellites (both Communication and Earth Observation) as per user requirements.

Transfer of technology developed by ISRO centres/ units and constituent institutions of Dept. of Space.

Marketing spin off technologies and products/ services emanating out of ISRO activities.

Consultancy services.

• The Government of India has created the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), an independent nodal agency under the Department of Space, to provide a boost to the private sector participating in space-related activities or using India’s space resources.

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle:

• India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is the third generation launch vehicle.

 • It is the first launch vehicle which is equipped with Liquid Stages.

• Its first Successful Launch was in October 1994. PSLV was used for two of the most important missions. These are Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft in 2013.

• Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark II and GSLV MkIII are other two launch vehicles.

• GSLV Mk II is the largest launch vehicle developed by India, which is currently in operation. This fourth generation launch vehicle is a three stage vehicle with four liquid strap-ons. The indigenously developed cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS), which is flight proven, forms the third stage of GSLV Mk II.

• GSLV MkIII, chosen to launch Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft, is a three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle developed by ISRO. The vehicle has two solid strap-ons, a core liquid booster and a cryogenic upper stage.

• GSLV Mk III is designed to carry a 4 ton class of satellites into Geosynchronous Transfer

Orbit (GTO) or about 10 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is about twice the capability of the GSLV Mk II.

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