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Q.1- Which of the following is not correct about Indian Ballistic Missile Defence Programme? 1. It is a three tired system consisting of air, land and sea based interceptor missiles 2. Shield should be able to intercept any incoming missile launched 5,000 kilometres away. 3. The system also includes an overlapping network of early warning and tracking radars, as well as command and control posts. 4. India became the fourth country to have successfully developed an anti-ballistic missile system, after United States, Russia, and Israel. Q.2- Which of the following correctly describes a comet? A. It is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. B. It is planet sized bodies which are present outside solar system C. It is bodies revolving around sun in between mars and jupiter. D. None of the above Q.3- Which of the following is not a function of SEBI? A. regulating the business in stoc...

Severe food insecurity is threatening over 17 million people (almost 60 per cent of the country’s population) in conflict-ridden  Yemen , according to the latest  Integrated Food Security Phase Classification  analysis released by the United Nations and other humanitarian partners. Twenty of the country’s 22 governorates are in “emergency” or “crisis” food-insecurity phases and almost two-thirds of the population is facing hunger. Without humanitarian and livelihood support, Taiz and Al Hudaydah governorates risk slipping into  famine . Yemen is currently facing one of the worst hunger crises in the world. These two places have been the focus of intense violence in two years since the current crisis escalated. Conflict driving food insecurity Conflicts spell devastating impacts for food security and livelihoods. Almost 80 per cent of households in Yemen report having a worse economic situation than before the crisis. The decrease in domestic production, disru...

Once upon a time, the Sahara was green. There were vast lakes. Hippos and giraffe lived there, and large human populations of fishers foraged for food alongside the lakeshores. The Conversation The “African Humid Period” or “Green Sahara” was a time between 11,000 and 4,000 years ago when significantly more rain fell across the northern two-thirds of Africa than it does today. The vegetation of the Sahara was highly diverse and included species commonly found on the margins of today’s rainforests along with desert-adapted plants. It was a highly productive and predictable ecosystem in which hunter-gatherers appear to have flourished. These conditions stand in marked contrast to the current climate of northern Africa. Today, the Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. It lies in the subtropical latitudes dominated by high-pressure ridges, where the atmospheric pressure at the Earth’s surface is greater than the surrounding environment. These ridges inhibit the flow of mois...

Phosphorus is an essential element which is contained in many cellular compounds, such as DNA and the energy carrier ATP. All life needs phosphorus and agricultural yields are improved when phosphorus is added to growing plants and the diet of livestock. Consequently, it is used globally as a fertiliser – and plays an important role in meeting the world’s food requirements. The Conversation In order for us to add it, however, we first need to extract it from a concentrated form – and the supply comes almost exclusively from phosphate mines in Morocco (with far smaller quantities coming from China, the US, Jordan and South Africa). Within Morocco, most of the mines are in Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony which was annexed by Morocco in 1975. The fact that more than 70% of the global supply comes from this single location is problematic, especially as scientists are warning that we are approaching “peak phosphorous”, the point at which demand begins to outstrip supply and int...

Besides increased yield, the treated plants also proved to be more resilient to drought-like conditions Using a novel route, an Indian researcher has been able to increase wheat grain yield by 20% and also improve the resilience of wheat to environmental stress such as drought. By using a precursor that enhances the amount of a key sugar-signalling molecule (trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P)) produced in wheat plant, Dr. Ram Sagar Misra, from the Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford and currently with the Department of Chemistry, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, has been able to increase the amount of starch produced and, therefore, the yield. The technique The T6P molecule stimulates starch synthesis, which in turn, increases the yield. Since the pathway of T6P molecule is the same in other plants, the yield can potentially be increased by using suitable precursors. The results were published in the journal Nature. Dr. Misra is one of the authors of the paper. Dr. Mis...

Water turns into jelly, that’s what. This four-year-old video from the International Space Station has suddenly gone viral on social media for some reason. Back in 2013, the ISS posted a video of the (now retired) Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield performing an experiment with a wet towel. He squirts some water into a towel and then wrings it, leading to the water to just accumulate — first on the outside of the towel and then on his hand. “It’s becoming a tube of water,” says Hadfield. The experiment was designed by two standard 10 students from Nova Scotia, Canada, who won a national science contest held by the Canadian Space Agency. So why, exactly, is water behaving like jelly? Watch and find out.

Turkey and the EU nations can’t afford to wait till the referendum to de-escalate tensions Until Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan started a high-voltage campaign for next month’s referendum on constitutional reforms that give him more powers, relations between Ankara and the European Union were relatively stable, though not without glitches. Trouble started when Mr. Erdogan’s allies drew up plans to organise campaign rallies in European cities to mobilise support among the tens of thousands of Turks living in Europe who are eligible to vote in the April 16 referendum. Several European countries, including Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and some German towns, banned such rallies, raising security concerns as well as fear of domestic political repercussions. Mr. Erdogan, however, turned this into a Turkey versus West spat. When German towns blocked the rallies, Mr. Erdogan accused the country of “Nazi practices”. When the Netherlands refused landing rights to a plane ...

The Maoist ambush suggests that the state has a lot more to do to establish its writ It would be tempting, but dangerous, to see the deadly ambush by Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district on Saturday as just a desperate act of a fading insurgent group. It must, instead, serve as a wake-up call for the security forces to beef up their standard operating procedures, especially intelligence-gathering capabilities, in the Maoist heartland in central India. Twelve personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force were killed in Sunday’s attack, and four others sustained injuries. A road-opening party of the CRPF’s 219 battalion was ambushed about 450 km from the State capital Raipur. The insurgents used improvised explosive devices, country-made mortars and arrows mounted with explosive heads, and made off with some weapons and radio sets of the force. Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha that extremist groups were restless because of the “unprecedented success of the forces aga...

The biggest drivers of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission on the planet are industrial meats and dairy rather than transportation, says a new report. However, the rich countries, where these industries are mostly located, have been sidestepping these findings. Moreover, the meat industry lobbyists accuse poor and developing countries for it. The new report published by Spain-based international non-profit GRAIN in January this year claims that industrial meat production generates more GHGs than the world’s entire transportation sector. Due to the pressure from meat industry lobbyists, no meaningful action has been worked out to cut emission. The GHG emission has been causing rise in global temperature, which is perpetuating climate change. The target of reducing greenhouse gas emission to limit global warming to 2°C by 2050 can be achieved by cutting down industrial meat and dairy consumption. North America, EU largest consumers of meat There is huge difference in consumption patt...

A public declaration made last year by a group of 43 renowned international scientists called for a global plan to prevent the world’s large mammals from slipping into oblivion. This led to debates among scientists on whether a focus on megafauna conservation would ignore other forms of biodiversity. Allaying such fears, the same scientists have published an article that makes a strong case for how megafauna conservation does not come at the cost of all else, but rather complements biodiversity conservation. Dr. William Ripple and his colleagues highlight how terrestrial megafauna––large-bodied carnivores and herbivores such as tigers, leopards, wolves, bears, elephants and gaur––remain the strongest candidates to serve as ‘umbrellas’ for many species and ecosystems. “Conserving megafauna requires us to safeguard large tracts of forests, grasslands and various other ecosystems that meet the vast habitat requirements of such species”, said WCS India scientist, Dr. Varun R. Goswami, a...

The survey of international weather models made by the Bureau of Meteorology under the Government of Australia shows steady warming of the central tropical Pacific Ocean is expected over the next six months. Moreover, at least six models suggest that El Nino thresholds will be reached by July 2017. If an El Nino develops by July, as forecasters worldwide predict, India might once again see deficit rainfall during the southwest monsoon season. In February, we had reported that though El Nino may make a comeback in 2017, it will not affect southwest monsoon in India. According to the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which had already predicted above normal summer in 2017, weak La Nina condition prevails over the Pacific Ocean since July 2016 and it is weakening further. A weak La Nina increases chances of El Nino and hence, a weak monsoon. The previous El Nino event had affected rice production across Southeast Asia, damaged cocoa crops in Ghana and sugarcane in Thailand. Th...

The Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) has asked schools affiliated to it to ban junk food in and around schools. The circular issued by the NBSE on March 14 mentions the report of the working group constituted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2015. Stating that the report of the working group has direct bearing on schools, the circular advised all schools to implement the recommendations made in the report. The NBSE in Nagaland is an autonomous body under the Department of School Education in Nagaland and regulates higher school education between Classes 9 to 12. The Chairman of the Board, Asano Sekhose, says “We received a circular from the Department of School Education, which mentioned the report of the working group of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.” She adds, “The NBSE is the leading educational board in Nagaland. We decided to issue a circular on healthy eating habits to more than 700 schools affiliated to the NBSE.” Besides banning the...

The former Foreign Secretary says he remains optimistic about India-U.S. ties and that India should reject China’s territorial claims Several recent developments indicate the need for India to strategise long term: China’s ambitious connectivity infrastructure in South Asia, the arrival of a new U.S. president, and New Delhi’s increasing political distance from Russia, a traditional ally. Former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran has been speaking about careful strategising of India’s policies since the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014. In this interview, Mr. Saran, who was also a a key negotiator with the U.S. for the nuclear deal, assesses India’s key foreign policy choices. Excerpts: In the context of recent developments in the U.S., what do you suggest are the best possible options before India to strategise priorities for its global aims? India will have to deal with the reality of the likely persistence of a Trump administration grappling with domestic political t...

It’s time Indian-Americans in the U.S. involved themselves deeply in civic issues Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas, Harnish Patel in South Carolina, and Deep Rai in Washington, all well settled Indians in America, were shot at in a span of three weeks resulting in two deaths. The words repeatedly used by their assailants were, “go back where you came from.” While these are the most visible cases of attacks against Indian-Americans, the harassment of the community is far more pervasive since Donald Trump took office as U.S President. In my own family, spread throughout the U.S., we are hearing stories of insults and innuendoes. A niece in Maryland being told by a co-worker that she will have to go back where she came from, if she was not a citizen (she is); a friend in the DC suburb detained by the local police for ‘suspicious appearance’ and for not carrying an identification (she was simply taking a walk in her neighbourhood as she has done for years). In our family WhatsApp group,...