UPSC Daily Current Affairs | Prelim Bits 04-03-2021
iasparliament
March 04, 2021
Aries-Devasthal Faint Object Spectrograph
Aries-Devasthal Faint Object Spectrograph & Camera (ADFOSC) is an optical spectrograph, which is indigenously designed and developed by Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES).
This low-cost spectroscope, India’s largest astronomical spectrograph, has been commissioned on the Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT).
It can locate extremely faint lightsources from distant quasars and galaxies in a very young universe, regions around supermassive black-holes around the galaxies, and cosmic explosions.
It uses a complex arrangement of lenses made of glasses, polished to better than 5-nm smoothness to produce sharp images of the sky.
Photons coming from distant celestial sources, collected by the telescope, are sorted into different colours by the spectrograph.
Then, this will be converted into electronic recordable signals using an in-house Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) camera cooled to -120oC.
India faces U.S. Anti-Dumping Tax
Anti-dumping duty is a protectionist tariff that a domestic government imposes on foreign imports that it believes are priced below fair market value.
The US Department of Commerce would impose anti-dumping or countervailing tax on aluminium sheet exporters from 18 countries as they had benefited from subsidies and dumping.
According to the U.S. investigation, imports from India have benefited from subsidies for 35% to 89%.
So, India and 17 other countries would face the U.S. anti-dumping tax.
Arktika-M Satellite
Russia launched its space satellite Arktika-M from Kazakhstan by a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat booster.
This is a remote-sensing and emergency communications satellite.
It was launched to monitor the climate and environment in the Arctic.
It will have a highly elliptical orbit that passes over northern latitudes allowing it to monitor northern regions for long periods before it loops back down under Earth.
It will retransmit distress signals from ships, aircraft or people in remote areas as part of its Cospas-Sarsat satellite-based search and rescue programme.
Russia plans to send a second satellite in 2023. These two will offer round-the-clock, all-weather monitoring of the Arctic Ocean and Earth’s surface.
Platypus
To promote breeding and rehabilitation of platypus that faces extinction due to climate change, the world’s first platypus refuge would be built in Australia.
Platypus is one of the five species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to young ones.
This duck-billed mammal is the only animal in the world to have a beak, fur and webbed feet.
It is endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania, where it is classified as an endangered species.
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red list Status - Near Threatened.
NDC Synthesis Report
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has released the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report.
In this report, the UNFCCC has updated the NDC till December 31, 2020 for 75 of the 197 Parties to the UNFCCC.
These Parties account for 30% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The UK and the European Union are the only regions among 18 of the world’s biggest emitters that have substantially increased their GHG reduction targets.
Sixteen of the world's biggest emitters have not increased their emission reduction targets substantially or at all.
UNFCCC called for more ambitious climate action plans by the countries to achieve the Paris Agreement target of containing global temperature rise to 2oC (ideally 1.5°C) by the end of the century.
Bangladesh - LDC to a Developing Country
The UN Committee for Development Policy (CDP) has recommended graduation of Bangladesh from the category of Least Developed Country (LDC) to the category of Developing Country.
The CDP decides on the LDC status of a country based on three criteria,
Per capita income,
Human Assets Index,
Economic Vulnerability Index.
A country must achieve two of the three criteria at two consecutive triennial reviews to be considered for graduation.
Bangladesh has met for the second time all the three eligibility criteria for graduating from the LDC category to the developing nations category.
This proposal will be sent to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for endorsement, late to the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
Usually countries are given 3 years for transition but this year due to the pandemic, Bangladesh has been given 5 years i.e. upto 2026.
