Learn with NITISH KUMAR

🪖 Exercise Nomadic Elephant 2023: • Indian and Mongolian troops will take part in the 15th edition of a bilateral military exercise in Ulaanbaatar from July 17 to July 31 aimed at exchanging best practices and developing interoperability. • 'Nomadic Elephant' is an annual training exercise which is conducted alternatively in Mongolia and India. • The last edition of the exercise was held at the Special Forces Training School, Bakloh, Himachal Pradesh in October 2019. • The aim of this exercise is to build positive military relations, exchange best practices, and develop inter-operability, bonhomie, camaraderie and friendship between the two Armies.

🎥 https://youtu.be/lLpuwxXjAMU

🌲 Mangrove Forest: • They represent the littoral forest ecosystem. • They are also called Halophytes - They are salt-tolerant. • The trees that grow in Mangrove Forests are generally 8-20 meters high. These trees have thick leaves. • They have blind roots which are called Pneumatophores. These roots help these trees to respire in anaerobic soils. • The seeds of Mangrove Forests trees germinate in the trees themselves before falling.

🛰️ Chandrayaan 3: • The launch of Chandrayaan-3 has been scheduled for July 13 at 2.30 p.m. • This is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface. It has a lander and rover configuration. • Chandrayaan-3 will be launched by the Launch Vehicle Mark-III from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. • The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit. It has a Spectro-Polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth payload to study the spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit. • The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to retain the names of the Chandrayaan-2 lander and rover for their Chandrayaan-3 equivalents as well. • This means, the Chandrayaan-3 lander will bear the name ‘Vikram’ (after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme) and the rover, ‘Pragyan’. • The lander will have four payloads — Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA), Chandra’s Surface Thermo physical Experiment (ChaSTE), Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) and the LASER Retroreflector Array (LRA). The six-wheeled rover will have two payloads — the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and the LASER Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS).

👩🏻‍🎓 Kamala Sohonie: • Kamala Sohonie was an Indian biochemist who in 1939 became the first Indian woman to receive a PhD in a scientific discipline. 

🩸Anaemia: • According to the World Health Organization (WHO), anaemia is a condition in which the number of red blood cells or the haemoglobin concentration within them is lower than normal. • Haemoglobin is needed to carry oxygen and if there are too few red blood cells, or not enough haemoglobin, there will be a decreased capacity of the blood to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues, resulting in symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, dizziness and shortness of breath among others. • Anaemia, according to WHO, may be caused by several factors. The most common nutritional cause of anaemia is iron deficiency although deficiencies in folate, vitamins B12 and A are also important causes.

🗞 India's first centre for earthquake safety of dams: • Malviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) in Jaipur has been identified as the National Centre for Earthquake Safety of Dams, the first centre of its kind in the country. • The centre will develop indigenous capabilities in making the country self-reliant in handling technology issues related to structural and earthquake safety of dams.

🗞️ India set to triple speed of its fastest supercomputers: • India is set to dramatically scale up its super-computing prowess and install an 18-petaflop system over the course of this year, Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) Minister Kiren Rijiju said on May 24. • Flops (floating point operations per second) are an indicator of computers processing speed and a petaflop refers to a 1,000 trillion flops. • Processing power to such a degree greatly eases complex mathematical calculations required, for among other things, forecasting how the weather will be over the next few days all the way up to two-three months ahead. • Currently India’s most powerful, civilian supercomputers — Pratyush and Mihir — with a combined capacity of 6.8 petaflops are housed at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida, respectively. • The fastest high-performance computing system in the world is currently the Frontier-Cray system at Oakridge National Laboratory, United States. This has a peak speed of 1 exa-flop (or about 1,000 petaflops). • The top 10 other systems, based on speed, range from about 400 petaflops to 60 petaflops. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/india-set-to-triple-speed-of-fastest-supercomputers/article66889689.ece

■ International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN): • The World Health Organization on Saturday launched the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN), a platform for connecting countries a global network to help swiftly detect the threat from infectious diseases, like COVID-19, and share the information to prevent their spread. • The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) will provide a platform for connecting countries and regions, improving systems for collecting and analysing samples. • The network aims to help ensure infectious disease threats are swiftly identified and tracked and the information shared and acted on to prevent catastrophes like the Covid pandemic. • The network will rely on pathogen genomics to analyse the genetic code of viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms to understand how infectious and deadly they are and how they spread. • The data gathered will feed into a broader disease surveillance system used to identify and track diseases, in a bid to contain outbreaks and to develop treatments and vaccines.

🗞 Himachal Pradesh explores possibility of growing cannabis: • The Himachal Pradesh government recently formed a five-member committee of MLAs to conduct a thorough study about each aspect related to cannabis cultivation in the State. • Uttarakhand has become the first State in the country to legalise cannabis cultivation in the year 2017. • This would ensure livelihood but also be beneficial for the patients as it has many medicinal properties and can be used for industrial purposes. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/himachal-explores-possibility-of-legalising-cannabis-cultivation-a-team-visits-uttarakhand/article66874607.ece

■ "Meri LiFE" App: • To catalyze youth action for climate change as a build up to June 5, World Environment Day, Union Minister for Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Shri Bhupender Yadav launched a mobile application, called “Meri LiFE” (My life) on May 15. • This app is inspired by the concept of LiFE, envisioned by the Prime Minister at COP 26, which emphasizes mindful and deliberate utilization instead of mindless and wasteful consumption. • The Meri LiFE app will help in creating a structured way to track the progress being made on Mission LiFE. • Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) was launched by the Prime Minister on 20 October 2022 at Kevadia, Gujarat and focuses on bringing about behaviour changes in individuals through simple easy to do actions.

■ Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT): • Mitochondria replacement involves transferring nuclear genetic material from a mother’s egg into a donor egg that has had its nuclear DNA removed so the embryo does not inherit the mitochondrial disease. • This would allow a woman carrying mitochondrial diseases to have healthy children. • The resulting IVF embryo combines sperm and egg from the biological parents, while the mitochondria is from the donor’s egg. • As a result, the baby has DNA from each of its parents, along with 37 genes from the donor. • This is the reason why this technique is also called three-parent IVF (in vitro fertilisation). • Mitochondria is the powerhouse of a cell, and any mutation that damages the mitochondria tends to affect energy-hungry organs the most. • U.K. is the first country in the world to approve this reproductive technique known as mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT). • Last year, Australia became the second country to approve this therapy.

■ Exercise Samudra Shakti 23: • The 4th edition of India - Indonesia Bilateral exercise Samudra Shakti-23 will held from 14-19 May 23. • Exercise Samudra Shakti is a bilateral Navy exercise between India & Indonesia. • Exercise Samudra Shakti is aimed at enhancing interoperability, jointness and mutual cooperation between both the navies.

🇮🇳 India launches "Operation Kaveri": • India has started ‘Operation Kaveri’ today (24th April) to evacuate the Indian citizens stranded in Sudan.

■ Election Commission grants national party status to AAP: • The Election Commission of India (ECI) on April 10 granted the status of a national party to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), while also withdrawing this status from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Communist Party of India (CPI). • With the latest move, the number of national parties in India has come down to six — Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, CPI(M), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), National People’s Party (NPP) and the AAP. • To earn a national party status, a political outfit needs to be recognised as State party in four States and have at least two members in the respective Legislative Assemblies, according to the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) order, 1968.

✈️ Exercise Cope India 2023: • Exercise Cope India 2023 is a bilateral Air Exercise between the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the United States Air Force (USAF) is being held at Air Force Stations Arjan Singh (Panagarh), Kalaikunda and Agra. • The exercise aims to enhance mutual understanding between the two Air Forces and share their best practices.