22 Jul 2018: UPSC Exam Comprehensive News Analysis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A. GS1 Related
GEOGRAPHY
1. Blood Moon
B. GS2 Related
SOCIAL JUSTICE
1. Malnourished children underreported in Odisha
C. GS3 Related
SCIENCE AND TECH
1. Parker Solar Probe
D. GS4 Related
E. Editorials
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
1. Israel’s ‘Nation State’ Law
F. Tidbits
G. Prelims Fact
1. Student Police Cadet (SPC) programme
H. UPSC Prelims Practice Questions
I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions 

A. GS1 Related

Category: GEOGRAPHY

1. Blood Moon

Context

  • Total lunar eclipses are sometimes called blood moons because of the reddish orange glow the moon takes on.
  • The word “eclipse” means to obscure.
  • When the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, it’s called a solar eclipse.
  • When the Earth passes between the sun and the moon, it is a lunar eclipse.
  • The Moon does not have any light of its own—it shines because its surface reflects sunlight. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth moves between the Sun and the Moon and cuts off the Moon’s light supply. When this happens, the surface of the Moon takes on a reddish glow instead of going completely dark.
  • The reason why the Moon takes on a reddish color during totality is a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. It is the same mechanism responsible for causing colorful sunrises and sunsets, and for the sky to look blue.

 

B. GS2 Related

Category: SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. Malnourished children underreported in Odisha

Context

  • The Odisha State Food Commission has expressed concern over the underreporting of severe acute malnourished (SAM) children in the State.

Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM)

  • It is defined by a very low weight for height
  • It is the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition. Its face is a child – frail and skeletal – who requires urgent treatment to survive.
  • They may also have nutritional oedema – characterized by swollen feet, face and limbs. About two thirds of these children live in Asia and almost one third live in Africa.
  • Severe acute malnutrition is a major cause of death in children under 5, and its prevention and treatment are critical to child survival and development

How is SAM measured?

  • Anganwadi workers use MUAC (Mid Upper Arm Circumference) tape to determine SAM and list out all children whose MUAC measurement is below 11.5 cm.
  • Many districts did not identify and report on MAM (Moderately Acute Malnourished) children.
    • This includes all those children whose MUAC measurement lies in between 11.5 cm and 12.5 cm

Concern

  • Undernutrition continues to be a serious child health issue in Odisha and almost one third of the under five years children population due to faulty methods of screening of SAM children at the community level had led to poor detection.
  • Many anganwadi centres still do not have MUAC tapes or it is in a mutilated or spoiled condition.
  • It has also been observed during field visits that many anganwadi workers are not able to take MUAC measurements correctly and make errors.

 

C. GS3 Related

Category: SCIENCE AND TECH

1. Parker Solar Probe

  • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will study sun’s outer atmosphere and to understand how sun works.
  • It is set to fly into the sun’s corona within 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
  • The previous closest pass to the sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 43 million km.
  • The distance of the earth from the sun is approximately 149.6 million km.

Why is it named so?

  • The name of the probe initially called the Solar Probe Plus has been renamed as the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker. This is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft after a living person.
  • Astrophysicist Eugene Parker published a research paper predicting the existence of solar wind in 1958. At that time, it was thought that the space between planets was a vacuum. Parker’s theory of solar wind was later on confirmed by satellite observations.

Details

  • The probe will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation that has not experienced by any other man-made probes previously.
    • It has been outfitted with a heat shield designed to keep its instruments at a tolerable 29 degrees Celsius even as the spacecraft faces temperatures reaching nearly 21,370 degrees Celsius at its closest pass.
  • The objective of the mission will be to study sun in detail and shed light on Earth and its place in the solar system.
    • The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles.
  • The mission will work towards determining the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind. This will be NASA’s first mission to the sun and its outermost atmosphere corona.
  • The probe will use Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun

Why do we study the sun and the solar wind?

  • The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on the earth. NASA hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in the earth’s space environment.
  • In the most extreme cases of these space weather events, it can actually affect our power grids on the earth
  • The sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. The more we know about it, the more we can understand how life on Earth developed.

D. GS4 Related

Nothing here for today!!!

E. Editorials

Category: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1. Israel’s ‘Nation State’ Law

Context

  • The law establishes Israel as the
    • historic home of the Jewish people
    • with a “united” Jerusalem as its capital
    • declares that the Jewish people “have an exclusive right to national self-determination” in Israel.
  • The legislation, a “basic law” gives it the weight of a constitutional amendment — omits any mention of democracy or the principle of equality, in what critics called a betrayal of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which ensured “complete equality of social and political rights” for “all its inhabitants” no matter their religion, race or sex.

Law downgrades status of Arabic

  • The law downgrades the status of Arabic, until now an official language of the State of Israel, along with Hebrew.
  • The law sets Arabic as a language with “special status.” Arabs make up approximately 20% of Israel’s population and about 36% of the population of Jerusalem.

What do the supporters of bill say?

  • It is aimed to boost Israel’s Jewish identity and will not discriminate against minorities.

Issue Area

  • Arab community, which makes up a fifth of Israel’s population, faces discrimination when it comes to opportunities and rights
  • It challenges the basic concepts of equality, which even Israel’s declaration of independence promised to all its inhabitants.
  • The legislation is racist and a form of apartheid aimed at creating two systems within one country.
  • The emphasis on Jerusalem and the promise to promote settlements pose a direct threat to any peace process with the Palestinians.
    • Jerusalem remains a disputed territory, with Palestinians seeing its eastern part as the capital of their future state. Israel’s claim over the city remains a key point of dispute between the two sides.
    • Besides, if Israel sees Jewish settlements as a national value and continues to promote them in the Palestinian territories, it cannot command confidence when it says it is still committed to the two-state solution.

Together, these laws allow the Israeli state to institutionalize discrimination against the minorities at home, deepen occupation in the Palestinian territories and stifle even the limited rights of the Palestinians living under occupation.

 

F. Tidbits

Nothing here for today!!!

G. Prelims Fact

Student Police Cadet (SPC) programme

  • SPC programme would help in making students responsible citizens by inculcating values of respect to the elderly, discipline, social responsibility and through police-student interaction.
  • the SPC programme will provide a healthy interface between schools and police peace and inculcate in the student’s aspects of public safety, discipline, patience, tolerance, empathy, respect of senior citizens, social harmony, traffic sense and a corruption-free environment.
  • The SPC programme focuses on students of Classes 8 & 9 and special care has been taken to ensure that it does not lead to increase in the workload of the students.
  • The programme does not have any prescribed textbook nor is any exam envisaged. Only one class in a month is proposed. The programme seeks to cover broadly two kinds of topics, – crime prevention and control; and values and ethics.

Significance

  • The SPC project will also help the police assess their image in the public eye and strive for improving confidence and winning trust of the people.
  • SPC would lead to a silent revolution over the years by focusing on character building by imparting moral values to budding minds.

H. Practice Questions for UPSC Prelims Exam

Nothing here for today!!!

I. UPSC Mains Practice Questions

  1.  The balance between fundamental rights and parliamentary privilege must be re-examined. Analyze.
  2. Bureaucracy and political intervention go hand in hand. Explain.
Also, check previous Daily News Analysis

 

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