Prelim Bits 04-10-2023 | UPSC Daily Current Affairs

UMMEED

Recently, the Union Ministry of Education (MoE) released the draft guidelines for schools to prevent suicide among students.

• UMMEED - Understand, Motivate, Manage, Empathise, Empower, and Develop (UMMEED).
• Released by – Department of School Education, Ministry of Education.
• Objectives -
  • To prevent suicides among school students
  • To serve as directions to schools for enhancing sensitivity, understanding, and providing support in case of reported self-harm.
  • To de-stigmatise mental health concerns through storytelling, rallies, posters, exhibitions and other activities.
• These guidelines align perfectly with the NEP’s (National Education Policy) vision of holistic education.
• Plan of Action – Setting up of School Wellness Teams (SWT), orientations, and immediate response to vulnerable students.
• Composition of SWT – School counsellors, students, teachers, supporting staff, a representative of the school management committee under the leadership of the school principal.
• Functions of SWT – It implements school activities in creating awareness about mental well-being.

References

1. The Indian Express | UMMEED guidelines
2. Hindustan Times| Draft norms to prevent suicides

World Bank Paper on Swachh Bharat Mission

Recently, a departmental working paper by the World Bank on the progress of the Swachh Bharat Mission - Gramin (SBM-G) was released.

• SBM-G - It was launched in 2014 as a flagship program to eliminate open defecation in India by 2019.
• Data Sources - It is observed from the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS), National Sample Surveys (NSS) and the National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey (NARSS) and the SBM-G’s own information system.

The NARSS was conducted across rural India from 2017-18 to 2019-20 by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation with World Bank support.

Key findings of the report

• It reported 4 main results after harmonizing definitions and measurements across all data sources.
• Increased access – A substantial increase in access to own or shared improved toilets in rural India from 38% in 2012 to 90% in 2019-20 with the sharpest increase reported in the last 2 years.
• Coverage in terms of sanitation infrastructure is nearly universal.
• Increased toilet usage – There was significant increase especially for the poor and the socially disadvantaged groups, but far from universal.

• Wide spatial variation –It is seen in progress across and within states regarding toilet usage.
  • For Example: 6 states shows sustained decline, 7 states including Tamil Nadu shows uneven decline while 7 states shows steady performance.
• While the performance of most low-income States were among the best, richer States had mixed performances.
  • For Example: In Tamil Nadu, the amount of progress was found to be smaller than poorer States.
• Declining trend – The substantial gains in regular toilet use between 2014 and 2019 have slowed or are reversing in most states.
• While decline is seen in all groups, it is the largest for SCs and STs.
• Challenges – Sustaining regular toilet use remains a critical challenge.

References

1. The Hindu| World Bank Paper on SBM-G
2. WB| Progress on Sanitation in Rural India

International Criminal Court (ICC)

Recently, Armenia's Parliament has voted to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

• Establishment – In 1998 under the “Rome Statute”.
• Headquarters – Hague in Netherlands.

India, USA, China, Russia and Ukraine are not the member of ICC whereas Britain, Japan, Afghanistan, and Germany are members of ICC.

• Aim - To end impunity through international criminal justice.
• Jurisdiction – It is limited to offences occurring after it came into effect on July 1, 2002 and act as a court of last resort.
• Functions – It investigates and also tries individuals charged with the gravest crimes of concern to the international community.

• Complementarity - It is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems.
• It prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely.
• Cooperation - It does not have its own police force or enforcement body and thus, it relies on cooperation with countries worldwide.
• This is for making arrests, transferring arrested persons to the ICC detention centre in The Hague, freezing suspects’ assets, and enforcing sentences.
• Relationship with UN – While it is not a United Nations organization, it has a cooperation agreement with UN.

• To know more about ICC, click here
• To know about Armenia Azerbaijan conflict, click here

References

1. The Hindu| Armenia to join ICC
2. ICC| International Criminal Court

Nobel Prize in Physics 2023

The 2023 Nobel Prize for Physics was shared by 3 scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillie for their “experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”

• Contribution - They developed methods to produce ultra-short pulses of light called as attosecond pulse which enables to see directly into the super-fast world of electrons.

Attosecond is billionth of a billionth of a second which is 1×10⁻¹⁸ of a second.

• Contribution of Anne L’Huillier – In 1987, overtones (waves of light) were produced by passing IR laser beam through a noble gas whose wavelength was an integer fraction of the beam.
• When multiple overtones were created in the gas, they began to interact with each other.
• When the peak of one overtone merges with the peak of other, it produces an overtone of greater intensity through constructive interference.
• But when the peak of an overtone merges with the trough of another, they cancel each other out, in destructive interference.
• This setup was fine-tuned which created intense pulses of light each a few attoseconds long (due to constructive interference) that doesn’t last longer (due to destructive interference).
• Contribution of Pierre Agostini - In 2001, his research group produced a series of 250-attosecond light pulses, or a pulse train.
• Contribution of Ferenc Krausz - At the same time, his team developed a technique to separate an individual 650-attosecond pulse from a pulse train.
• Using that, the researchers were able to measure the energy of some electrons released by some krypton atoms.

Challenges in imaging electrons

• Electrons are the negatively charged sub atomic particles which zoom around the denser nucleus in an atom.
• They are lighter and interact faster, in the attosecond realm.
• Thus picturing of electrons was difficult through camera that doesn’t have lower exposure in the order of attosecond.

References

1. The Hindu| Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
2. The Indian Express | Discovery of Attosecond

Microplastics in Clouds

Researchers in Japan have confirmed the presence of microplastics in clouds.

• Observations – They identified 9 different types of polymers and 1 type of rubber in the airborne microplastics ranging in size from 7.1 to 94.6 mm.

• 1 litre of cloud water contains 6.7 to 13.9 pieces of plastics.
• Hydrophilic (water-loving) polymers were abundant and thus play a significant role in rapid cloud formation and thus climate systems.

Microplastics are plastic particles under 5mm which come from industrial effluent, textiles, personal care products and much more.

• Impacts – When they get exposed to UV radiation from sunlight, they degrade and contribute to greenhouse gasses.

Microplastics in Biosphere

• They have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean peppering Arctic sea ice.
• They blanket the snows on the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.
• Emerging evidence has linked microplastics to a range of impacts in human health and in the environment.
  • It can affect human lung, heart and can even lead to cancer.

References

The Hindu| Microplastics in Clouds