Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and union minister of state for railways flagged off Antyodaya Express in the Raipur recently.
The train is equipped with modern coaches, RO drinking water, mobile charging facilities, bio-toilets, LED lights and other facilities.
The Express is a long-distance, fully unreserved, superfast train service, operated on dense routes.
This kind of train service was announced in the Railway Budget in 2016.
Although similar to the Deen Dayalu coaches introduced earlier for unreserved travel, Antyodaya Express will be a full train.
The trains are designed by Integral Coach Factory (ICF).
The train’s LHB-type (Linke Hofmann Busch) coaches are manufactured in Chennai.
Intergovernmental Ocenaographic commission
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC/UNESCO) was established by a resolution adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO.
It assists governments to address their individual and collective ocean and coastal management needs, through the sharing of knowledge, information and technology.
Beginning with the International Indian Ocean Expedition in 1960, it has coordinated and promoted program and activities in ocean observations, ocean science, and reduction of marine hazards.
IOC also coordinates and fosters the establishment of regional intergovernmental coordinating tsunami warning and mitigation systems in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in the North East Atlantic, Mediterranean and Caribbean seas.
Its headquarters is in Paris, France.
General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO), Tara Expeditions, Océanopolis Brest are some of its partners.
There are 149 members of which India is also a member.
Efficient recycling of organic waste
Earthworm gut may offer new ways of efficient recycling of organic waste.
Indian scientists have found that the gut of earthworms provides an ideal environment for nurturing a variety of cellulose-degrading bacteria.
This enables them to convert organic waste from plant sources into fertilizer or compost.
Earthworms eat plants, which contain cellulose (a complex sugar) as an important part of a plant cell wall.
Cellulose-degrading bacteria in the gut of earthworms break cellulose down into carbon, hydrogen and oxygen which make up most of the soil organic matter.
In rice growing tropical and sub-tropical regions, cellulose-containing rice straw remains in the field after harvesting.
It needs to be decomposed quickly for efficient release of nutrients and where earthworms can be employed to degrade the straw.
Pink moon
The full moon in April is called the ‘pink moon’ in north America.
It is to represent ground phlox, which are ground-cover flowering plants and usually bloom around springtime.
The April moon is also known as the Sprouting Grass moon, the Egg Moon and the Fish Moon.
These names are all Native American names for the phenomenon.
Every month’s full moons are named by the tribes.
As the early Native American tribes did not record time using either the Julian or the Gregorian calendars, they used the moons to keep track of seasons.
Exercise Vijay Prahar
South Western Command of Indian Army is carrying out Exercise VIJAY PRAHAR.
It employs cutting edge equipment and state of the art force multipliers at Suratgarh in Rajasthan.
It is essentially to practice the troops in penetrative manoeuvres across the obstacle ridden terrain under a nuclear umbrella
It is aimed to orchestrate wide spectrum of threats which are planned to be tackled through high tempo joint air and land operation.
In the immediate wake of Gagan Shakti, this exercise was being held for testing and refining jointmanship and maximising the impact of the joint operations.
GaganShakti is an IAF exercise which was conducted earlier this year.
