13 Apr 2021: PIB Summary & Analysis

April 13th, 2021, PIB:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Raisina Dialogue-2021
2. Jallianwala Bagh massacre
3. e-SANTA
4. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
5. Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy

1. Raisina Dialogue-2021

Context:

6^th edition of the Raisina Dialogue.

Details:

• The conference is being hosted by the think tank Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs.
• The 6^th edition of the prestigious conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics is being held in the virtual mode owing to the pandemic.
• The theme for the 2021 conference is “#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control”.
• During the four-day event, talks will be based on five subjects namely, WHOse multilateralism? Reconstructing the UN and beyond; Securing and diversifying supply chains; Global ‘Public Bads’: Holding actors and nations to account; Infodemic: Navigating a ‘No-Truth’ world in the age of Big Brother; and The Green stimulus: Investing in gender, growth, and development.
• 150 speakers from 50 countries and multilateral organisations will attend the event virtually.
• The event will feature the Prime Minister of Denmark and the President of Rwanda as chief guests in the inaugural session. Subsequent sessions will see the participation of the Australian PM, European Council President, foreign ministers of Portugal, Japan and Singapore. A few former heads of government of various countries will also take part in India’s flagship conference on geopolitics & geoeconomics.

About the Raisina Dialogue:

• Started in 2016, the Raisina Dialogue has grown to emerge as a leading global conference on international affairs.
• It invites leaders from politics, business, media and the civil society to hold discussions on the state of the world and explore opportunities for cooperation on several contemporary matters.
• Read more on the Raisina Dialogue in the link.

2. Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Context:

PM pays tribute to martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Know more about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in the link.

3. e-SANTA

Context:

Union Minister inaugurates e-SANTA.

What is e-SANTA?

• E-Santa is an electronic marketplace providing a platform to connect aqua farmers and buyers.
• The term e-SANTA was coined for the web portal, meaning Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers’ Trade in Aquaculture.
  • National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is an extension arm of the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), Govt. of India, Ministry of Commerce & Industry.
• e-SANTA is a Digital Bridge to end the market divide and will act as an alternative marketing tool between farmers & buyers by eliminating middlemen.
• It will revolutionize traditional aquafarming by providing cashless, contactless and paperless electronic trade platform between farmers and exporters.
• The farmers have the freedom to list their produce and quote their price while the exporters have the freedom to list their requirements and also to choose the products based on their requirements such as desired size, location, harvest dates, etc.

How it works?

• The platform provides detailed specification of each product listing and it is backed by an end to end electronic payment system with NaCSA as an Escrow agent.
• After crop listing and online negotiation, a deal is struck, advance payment is made and an estimated invoice is generated.
• Once the harvest date is fixed, the buyer goes to the farm gate and the produce is harvested in his presence.
• Once the harvest is completed, the final count, quantity of material is verified, the final amount is decided and delivery challan is issued.
• Once the material reaches the processing plant, the final invoice is generated and the exporter makes the balance payment.
• This payment is reflected in the escrow account. NaCSA verifies it and accordingly releases the payment to farmers.

Benefits of the portal:

• e-SANTA can become a tool to advertise collectively the kind of products the buyers, fishermen & fish producing organisations are harvesting, so people in India & internationally can know what is available & in the future, it can become an auction platform.
• The platform is available in many languages, which will help the local population.
• It enables the farmers and buyers to have greater control over the trade and enables them to make informed decisions.
• It will raise income, lifestyle, self-reliance, quality levels, traceability, and provide new options for aqua farmers.

4. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)

Context:

34th Foundation Day of C-DAC.

Details:

• On the occasion of 34th foundation day, three novel innovative technologies – Cyber Security Operation Centre (CSoC) as a service and C-DAC’s indigenous High-Performance Computing software solutions – Parallel Development Environment (ParaDE) and Automatic Parallelizing Compiler (CAPC) were launched by C-DAC.
• Another App based system called MANAS, Mental health And Normalcy Augmentation System is also being earmarked separately by the Principal Scientific Advisor to Govt. of India.
  • MANAS is a comprehensive, scalable, national digital wellbeing platform to augment mental well-being of Indian citizens and aimed to ‘reach the unreached’ through Digital India initiatives.

About C-DAC:

• C-DAC is the premier R&D organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for carrying out R&D in IT, Electronics and associated areas.
• The setting up of C-DAC in 1988 itself was to build supercomputers in the context of the denial of import of supercomputers by the USA.
• Since then, C-DAC has been undertaking building of multiple generations of supercomputers starting from PARAM with 1 GF in 1988.
• Today, C-DAC is working towards strengthening national technological capabilities in the context of global developments in the field and responding to changes in the market need in selected foundation areas.
• Its products and services cover the following domains:
  • High Performance, Grid and Cloud Computing (HGCC)
  • Multilingual Computing & Heritage Computing
  • Professional Electronics, VLSI & Embedded Systems
  • Software Technologies including FOSS
  • Cybersecurity
  • Health Informatics
  • Education and Training
  • Services:
    • e-Hastakshar: On-Line Digital Signing Service
    • e-Pramaan: A National e-Authentication Service
    • Mobile Seva: Citizen Services on Mobile Phones
    • Cyber Forensic Analysis, Training and Laboratory Development
    • e-Raktkosh: National Portal for Blood Bank Management System
    • e-Aushadhi: National Drugs and Vaccine Distributed Management System
    • Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing (VAPT): Security Audit/Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
    • Data Centre Services
    • Process Automation for Competitive Examinations (PACE)
    • OBjective Responses Image based Capture (OBRIC): web-based system for processing of objective type tests conducted using specially designed answer sheets.
  • With a corporate office in Pune, C-DAC has centres in several Indian cities.

5. Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy

What’s in News?

• Astronomers have discovered a new active galaxy identified as the farthest gamma-ray emitting galaxy that has so far been stumbled upon.
• This active galaxy called the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxy, which is about 31 billion light-years away, opens up avenues to explore more such gamma-ray emitting galaxies.
• Scientists from ARIES, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, studied around 25,000 luminous Active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and found a unique object that emits high-energy gamma rays located at a high redshift (more than 1). They identified it as a gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxy, which is a rare entity in space.
  • SDSS is a major optical imaging and spectroscopic survey of astronomical objects in-operation for the last 20 years. It was founded by the University of Chicago.

Significance:

• The detection of gamma-ray emission from NLS1 challenges the idea of how relativistic jets are formed because NLS1s are a unique class of AGN that are powered by black hole of low mass and hosted in spiral galaxy.
• As of today, gamma-ray emission has been detected in about a dozen NLS1 galaxies, which are a separate class of AGN identified four decades ago.
• All of them are at redshifts lesser than one, and no method was present till date to find NLS1 at redshifts larger than one.
• This discovery opens up a new way to find gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxies in the early Universe.

Read previous PIB here.

April 13th, 2021, PIB:- Download PDF Here