Terms in News

Ugram

• It is an indigenous assault rifle also named the fierce one.
• The Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), and the Hyderabad-based Dvipa Armour India Private Limited (DAIPL).
• Ugram is a 7 to 15 mm assault rifle that was developed within 100 days for both the Indian Army and paramilitary forces.
• The rifle has a 20-round magazine that fires robust and full auto mode.
• The rifle is effective for 500 metres and the weight of the rifle including the magazine is less than 4 kg.

Drishti 10 Starliner

• It is the first indigenously manufactured Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), by Adani Defence and Aerospace.
• Adani Aerospace Park is the country's first final assembly line in the private sector for military-grade unmanned systems.
• The Drishti 10 Starliner is an advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform with 36 hours of endurance and a 450 kg payload capacity.
• It is the only all-weather military platform with NATO's STANAG 4671 (standardised agreement 4671) certification for the UAV system's airworthiness.
• The drone is cleared to fly in both segregated and unsegregated airspace.
• The UAV will now be taken from Hyderabad to Porbandar to be inducted into naval maritime operations.

VINBAX Exercise

• The VINBAX exercise, initiated in 2018, is an annual training event that alternates between India and Vietnam.
• The first edition took place in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, and the most recent edition occurred at Chandimandir Military Station in August 2022.
• The primary objective of VINBAX-2023 is to enhance collaborative partnerships, promote interoperability, and share best practices between the Indian and Vietnamese armed forces.
• The exercise falls under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, specifically focusing on Peacekeeping Operations.

Operation PRAHAAR & Operation Shakthi

• Operation PRAHAAR & Operation Shakthi are the destruction operation of illicit opium poppy crop by Central Bureau of Narcotics in India.

Sahel Region

• Africa’s Sahel, a region running across the breadth of the continent, between the Sahara in the north and the Sudanian Savanna in the south.
• It is a largely semi-arid belt of barren, sandy and rock-strewn land.
• Sahel marks the physical and cultural transition between the continent’s more fertile tropical regions to the south and its desert in the north.
• The Sahel stretches from Senegal on the Atlantic coast, through parts of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast.
• Culturally and historically, the Sahel is a shoreline between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

Grant for Research and Entrepreneurship across Aspiring Innovators in Technical Textiles (GREAT)

The Ministry of Textiles is all set to organize a hackathon on “Fostering Innovations in Technical Textiles”, in the event the ministry will announce the top 3 winners of the GREAT initiative.

• GREAT – Grant for Research and Entrepreneurship across Aspiring Innovators in Technical Textiles.
• It is an initiative of the Ministry of Textiles.
• Under GREAT, Ministry of Textiles shall provide grant-in-aid of normally up to INR 50 Lakhs for a period of 18 months.
• Objectives – GREAT believes in utilizing the in exhaustive talent pool and expertise of India in Technical Textiles sector to bring innovative products/technologies to the market to:
  • Support young innovators/entrepreneurs in Technical Textiles to translate their prototypes to technologies/products.
  • Support commercialization of technologies developed by innovators/start-ups in Technical Textiles.
  • Bring forward a culture of rapid translation of ideas/prototypes to products through collaboration.
• It has evolved under the Research, Development and Innovation Component of National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM) and not a part of the Multiplier Grants Scheme (MGS).
• National Technical Textiles Mission (NTTM) – Is a flagship scheme of Ministry of Textiles.
• NTTM primarily focusses on research, development, and innovation (RD &I) along with education, skill and market promotion for the technical textiles.
• It has funded several projects in the form of ideation, prototype grants along with applied projects of national importance.

Panspermia

• Panspermia is a hypothesis that simply attributes the origin of life on one planet to a different planet, it doesn’t actually explain how life came to be.
• The hypothesis has prevailed since ancient Greece.
• It was first posited by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), who coined the term and first articulated life’s potential to travel as ‘seeds’ between planets.
• Modern version – The idea of panspermia advances 3 stages:
  1. Escape from a planet
  2. Transit through interplanetary space
  3. Landing on another planet
• It has also become the seed of many controversies, including one suggesting the interstellar object ?Oumuamua was an alien object engaged in panspermia.