e-cigarettes

Why in news?

• In a move to protect health risks to children, adolescents and women of reproductive age, the health ministry has asked states to ban Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) including e-cigarettes, Vape, e-Sheesha, e-Hookah etc.

What centre told?

• States are asked to ensure that devices that enable nicotine delivery are not sold (including online sale), manufactured, distributed, traded, imported and advertised in their jurisdictions, except for the purpose & in the manner and to the extent, as may be approved under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and Rules made there under.

What are e-cigarettes?

• An electronic cigarette (or e-cig) is a battery-powered vaporizer that mimics tobacco smoking. It works by heating up a nicotine liquid, called “juice.”
• Nicotine juice (or e-juice) comes in various flavors and nicotine levels.
• e-liquid is composed of five ingredients: vegetable glycerin (a material used in all types of food and personal care products, like toothpaste) and propylene glycol (a solvent most commonly used in fog machines.) propylene glycol is the ingredient that produces thicker clouds of vapour.

Why it should be banned?

ENDS have cancer-causing properties, are highly addictive and do not offer a safer alternative to tobacco-based products.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Why in news?

Satya S Tripathi, an Indian development economist and lawyer, has been appointed assistant secretary general of the United Nations and will head the New York office of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

About UNEP

• The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is an agency of United Nations and coordinates its environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices.
• It was founded by Maurice Strong, its first director, as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Conference) in June 1972 and has its headquarters in the Gigiri neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya.
• UNEP has overall responsibility for environmental problems among United Nations agencies.
• UNEP has also been active in funding and implementing environment related development projects.
• The World Meteorological Organization and UNEP established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988.

Higgs boson

Why in news?

Six years after its discovery, the Higgs boson has at last been observed decaying into fundamental particles known as bottom quarks.

Benefits

• The finding, presented by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is consistent with the hypothesis that the all-pervading quantum field behind the Higgs boson also gives mass to the bottom quark.
• The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that about 60% of the time a Higgs boson will decay to a pair of bottom quarks, the second-heaviest of the six flavours of quarks.
• Testing this prediction is crucial because the result would either lend support to the Standard Model – which is built upon the idea that the Higgs field endows quarks and other fundamental particles with mass – or rock its foundations and point to new physics.

What is Higgs Boson?

The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory.

About Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

LHC is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator situated in a tunnel beneath the France Switzerland border near Geneva.

Horizon 2020

Why in news?

The European Union and India will collaborate in research and innovation for developing a next generation influenza vaccine to protect people worldwide.

About horizon 2020

• The EU and the Indian government’s Department of Biotechnology have committed 15 million Euros each to fund this joint project.
• The aim is to advance the efficacy, safety, duration of immunity, and reactivity against an increased breadth of influenza strains.
• The joint effort also aims to develop cost-effective and affordable influenza vaccine rapidly without compromising quality.
• The projects require minimum three applicants from Europe (three different EU member states) or countries associated to the EU programme Horizon 20202) and minimum three applicants from India.
• The projects are also ‘Open to the World’ and thus applicants from other countries can join the EU-India consortia.

 What is Horizon 2020?

• Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract.
• It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

Spitzer telescope

Why in news?

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the youngest member of the “Great Observatory” programme, has completed 15 years in space.

About Spitzer Space Telescope

• Spitzer Space Telescope was launched in 2003 to study the universe in the infrared. It is the last mission of the NASA Great Observatories program, which saw four specialized telescopes (including the Hubble Space Telescope) launched between 1990 and 2003.
• The goal of the Great Observatories is to observe the universe in distinct wavelengths of light.
• Spitzer focuses on the infrared band, which normally represents heat radiation from objects. The other observatories looked at visible light (Hubble, still operational), gamma-rays (Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, no longer operational) and X-rays (the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, still operational.)
• Spitzer’s highly sensitive instruments allow scientists to peer into cosmic regions that are hidden from optical telescopes, including dusty stellar nurseries, the centers of galaxies, and newly forming planetary systems.

Corbett Tiger Reserve

Why in news?

Pointing to an “alarming trend” of tiger deaths, the Uttarakhand High Court has asked if the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) could take over the management of the Corbett Tiger Reserve “as an interim measure”. The court also asked the NTCA if the tigers could be relocated “to save them from poaching”.

About Corbett tiger reserve

• Corbett National Park is situated in the foothills of the Sub- Himalayan belt in Nainital districts of Uttarakhand state in India.
• It is also being honoured as the place where Project Tiger was first launched in 1973. This unique tiger territory is best known as the father who gave birth of the Project Tiger in India to protect the most endangered species and the Royal of India called Tigers.
• Corbett is one of the richest bird regions of the Country and has been declared as an ‘Important Bird Area’ (IBA) by Birdlife International.

 About NTCA

• The National Tiger Conservation Authority is a statutory body under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change constituted under enabling provisions of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, as amended in 2006, for strengthening tiger conservation, as per powers and functions assigned to it under the said Act.
• The National Tiger Conservation Authority has been fulfilling its mandate within the ambit of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 for strengthening tiger conservation in the country.

Govt. scraps scientific panels, forms council

• The government has scrapped two Scientific Advisory Committees (SAC) for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, and replaced them with a nine member, Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC).
• Unlike in the earlier SACs, secretaries of various scientific Ministries such as education, environment and health would be ‘special invitees’ to the council meetings.
• The PM-STIAC will be chaired by the government’s Principal Scientific Advisor, Dr K. Vijay Raghavan.
• The newly constituted body is expected to act as a high-level advisory body to several ministries and execute mission-oriented programmes.

Gaganyaan

Why in news?

Manned space mission before 75th I-Day: ISRO chief

About Gaganyaan

• First manned space mission.
• ISRO is planning to launch this before 75th independence day.
• ISRO began work on the manned mission in 2004 and some of these technologies have been demonstrated successfully through various tests — Space Capsule Recovery Experiment, Crew module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment and Pad Abort Test.
• The mission will aim to send a three-person crew to space for a period of 5-7 days.
• The total programme is expected to cost less than ₹10,000 crore and will result in significant spin-offs in multiple dimensions, including technology spin-offs in the social sector.

MoveHack

Why in news?

Computer chip manufacturer NVIDIA collaborated with NITI Aayog as its Deep learning technology partner to support the government think-tank’s “MoveHack” which is a global mobility hackathon to crowdsource solutions aimed at the future of mobility in India.

About Movehack

• As the deep learning partner of “MoveHack”, the chipmaker would provide participants with graphics processing unit (GPU) and deep learning technologies, as well as remote access to NVIDIA DGX systems, purpose built deep learning supercomputers.
• Deep learning technology is a subset of machine learning (ML) in artificial intelligence (AI) that has networks capable of learning unsupervised from data that is unstructured or unlabelled.
• The participants would also get a chance to be mentored by experts from the chip-making company.

Venezuela crisis: Brazil to send army to safeguard border

Why in news?

Venezuela’s “tragic” situation threatened peace in the whole of South America. The president signed a decree which will deploy soldiers for two weeks along the border and federal roads of its northern state of Roraima.

Why migration now?

• Millions of Venezuelans have fled their country due to hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages.
• Brazil’s move follows recent border clashes between locals and Venezuelans.