Prelim Bits 07-03-2019

Janaushadhi Diwas

• Ministry of Chemicals and fertilizers has decided to celebrate 7th March 2019 as ‘Janaushadhi Diwas’ across India.
• It is to provide further impetus & create awareness about the use of generic medicines.
• Under Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana around 5050 Janaushadhi stores were opened.
• It has provided the awareness about the availability of the high quality affordable generic medicines in the country.
• About 10-15 lakh people benefit from Janaushadhi medicines per day.
• The market share of generic medicines has grown over 3 fold from 2% to 7% in last 3 years.

Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project

• India signed a loan agreement with the World Bank for 96 Million US dollars for additional financing of Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Project.
• The world bank, through the Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery project has been supporting the state government since 2014.
• The project helps to restore housing and rural connectivity, and to build resilience of communities.
• The funding will help in further reconstruction of bridges, road and river banks protection works.
• It will also help to increase the technical capacity of the state entities to respond promptly.

National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories

• NABL has launched a scheme called Quality Assurance Scheme (QAS) for Basic Composite (BC) Medical Laboratories.
• It is a Constituent Board of Quality Council of India.
• It has been established with the objective of third-party assessment of the technical competence of testing including medical and calibration laboratories, proficiency testing providers and reference material producers.
• It provides accreditation in all major fields of Science and Engineering.
• It also offers accreditation for Proficiency testing providers.

Protecting the Biodiversity zones

• Goa State Biodiversity Board (GSBB) recently introduced a tagging system to ensure communities residing within the biodiversity zone get Access Benefit Share (ABS) from their profits.
• The tag will show the ingredients used are sourced from the nature.
• The sellers are supposed to pay 0.01 % of their annual profit to the GSBB.
• GSSB will then use this amount to protect the habitat from where the ingredients are procured.
• This initiative is also expected to boost the products’ sale.
• However very few industries has joined the scheme.

Forward Search Experiment (FASER)

• It is a new experiment announced by European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
• It will complement CERN’s ongoing physics program, extending its discovery potential to several new particles.
• It will look for light and weakly interacting particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
• It will search for a suite of hypothesized particles including dark photons, particles which are associated with dark matter, neutralinos and others.
• Dark matter is a hypothesized kind of matter that does not interact with the electromagnetic force and consequently cannot be directly detected using emitted light.
• The mysterious dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe.

Swachh Survekshan awards 2019

• The Swachh Survekshan awards 2019 were conferred by President recently.
• It is given by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
• Indore is India's cleanest city for the third straight year .
• The New Delhi Municipal Council area was given the Cleanest Small City award and Uttarakhand's Gauchar was adjudged the Best Ganga Town.

• The awards are based on the survey conducted by the MoHUA.
• MoHUA conducted its first survey Swachh Survekshan survey for ranking 73 cities (Urban Local Bodies) in 2016.
• The survey was conducted under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).

Source: PIB, The Hindu, Indian Express