Facts in News

Facts in News

Pingali Venkayya (2 August 1876 – 4 July 1963) 

• Pingali Venkayya was a freedom fighter and the designer and architect of the national flag of India.
• He had designed a flag, known as the Swaraj Flag, that now forms the basis of India’s present-day national flag. It consisted of red and green bands to symbolize the two major communities in the country- Hindus and Muslims.
• He met Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) when he was posted there as part of the British Indian Army.
• On the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, Pingali Venkayya added a white band over red over green with a charkha design onto Khadi bunting. The white represented peace and the rest of the communities living in India, and the spinning wheel symbolized the progress of the country. 
• Gandhiji’s approval had made it sufficiently popular and it was in use till 1931. The flag, however, had raised communal concerns after which a Flag Committee was set up in 1931.
• The Congress Working Committee (CWC) came up with a new tricolour which was called the Purna Swaraj. 
• He came up with a booklet titled ‘A National Flag for India’ in 1916, wherein he had presented twenty-four flag designs.

Recognition: 

• He was posthumously honoured with a postage stamp in 2009.
• In 2014, his name was also proposed for the Bharat Ratna, yet to get.
• ‘Jateeya Pataka Rupasilpi Pingali Venkayya’ by Venna Vallabharao, ‘Pingali Venkayya’ by Apoorv Shrivastava are a few of the books written on him.

Animal Birth Control Unit 

• After being inoperative for a long, the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Centre at Konakkarai (Tamil Nadu) has become operational.

About

• The unit was opened in 2018 and remained idle for several months before it was reactivated.
• The ABC centre has five pre-operative and five postoperative wards. 
• It can sterilise about 30 dogs a day. But lack of manpower, particularly veterinarians, is said to be the main reason behind the inaction.
• It drew criticism from residents, particularly those who were affected by stray dog menace.

Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001

• These rules were enacted under Section 38 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. 
• It seeks to reduce the dog population by sterilization and minimization of stray dogs by involving animal welfare organisations, private individuals and local authorities. 
• The rules were established to treat animals with care, compassion and in a humane manner. 

Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner

• Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft is being developed in collaboration with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

Key Features 

• The Starliner was designed to accommodate seven passengers, or a mix of crew and cargo, for missions to low-Earth orbit. 
• It will carry up to four NASA-sponsored crew members and time-critical scientific research for NASA service missions to the International Space Station.
•  The Starliner has an innovative, weldless structure and is reusable up to 10 times with a six-month turnaround time. 
• It also features wireless internet and tablet technology for crew interfaces.

Commercial Crew Program(CCP)

• Under this project, NASA is working with business partners to build rockets and spacecraft. The goal of CCP is to send astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States.
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) relies on Russia to get its astronauts on the space station. Now NASA no longer has to rely only on Russia to take American astronauts to the space station. 
• Objectives: To make access to space easier in terms of its cost, so that cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS, and enabling greater scientific research. 
  • NASA plans to lower its costs by sharing them with commercial partners such as Boeing and SpaceX, and also give the companies incentive to design and build the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS).
  • By encouraging private companies to provide crew transportation services NASA can focus on building spacecraft and rockets meant for deep space exploration missions.
    • Boeing and SpaceX were selected by NASA in September 2014 to develop transportation systems meant to transfer crew from the US to the ISS. 
    • But later, SpaceX won the race against Boeing to send NASA astronauts to space

Covid R-Number

India’s R-value of COVID 19 has increased slightly to 0.88 in the first week of July after being at its lowest ever value of 0.78 in June-end

Key Points 

• The R or reproduction (R0 or ‘R’ factor) number of a virus tells us how easily it spreads in the population.
• It is the average number of people to whom an infected person will pass the virus.
  • The higher the number, the more contagious it is. 
    • Measles, for instance, is extremely contagious and has an R number of about 18, which means one infected person will spread the infection to about 18 people.
    •  In simplest terms, if the R number is 2, then it means that one person infected is likely to infect two other people.
• The R number of a virus isn’t necessarily fixed, and can change depending on :
  • Immunity levels in a population
  • The evolution of the virus and cultural behaviours, as well as measures, are taken to avoid the virus. 
    • For example, lockdowns and physical distancing have reduced the amount of contact that people have, meaning that the virus can’t spread too as many people as it would normally do.

How is the R number estimated?

• Measuring the R number of a virus that is spreading rapidly across the world can be challenging in the early stages, especially as the spread can depend on population density and measures in place that is effective at stopping its spread.

What does it indicate?

• It gives experts an indication of how fast an infection is spreading. 
  • Across the world, governments have put emphasis on keeping the R-value at 1 or below; 
    • This would mean an outbreak would slow down and eventually fizzle out because there would not be enough new patients/carriers to sustain an outbreak.
    • Anything above 1 is dangerous, as it would mean the virus would keep spreading.

Medical Oxygen Production Promotion Policy, 2021.

Recently, the Delhi Cabinet approved the Medical Oxygen Production Promotion Policy, 2021.

About 

• It provides several incentives to the private sector to set up oxygen production plants, invests in oxygen tankers, and set up oxygen storage facilities. 

Objectives: 

• To make Delhi self-reliant in terms of medical oxygen production and supply. 
  • It seeks to do so by increasing the production of oxygen in Delhi by setting up either new manufacturing enterprises or expanding the production capacity of existing units.
• To ensure time-bound fulfilment of the setting up of Liquid Oxygen manufacturing facilities of minimum 50 MT capacity up to a total of 100 MT.
  • It also seeks the setting up of non-captive oxygen generation plants (PSA/Air Separation Unit technology) of a minimum of 10 MT and a maximum 50 MT capacity up to a total of 100 MT.

Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) 

• It is a technology used to separate some gas species from a mixture of gases under pressure according to the species’ molecular characteristics and affinity for an adsorbent material.
• It operates at near-ambient temperatures and differs significantly from cryogenic distillation techniques of gas separation.
• Specific adsorbent materials (e.g., zeolites, activated carbon, molecular sieves, etc.) are used as a trap, preferentially adsorbing the target gas species at high pressure.

Exercise Talisman Sabre

• It is the largest bilateral combined training activity between the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the U.S. military.
• It is a biennial exercise incorporating activities on land, air and sea.
• After the invitation of India to  Australia in the Malabar exercise in 2020, Australia keen India joins Exercise Talisman Sabre.

Indian Navy deployment

• Four frontline warships from the Navy’s Eastern Fleet are scheduled to depart on the overseas deployment of over two months to South East Asia, the South China Sea and the Western Pacific for series of exercises.
• During the deployment in the Indo-Pacific, the ships are scheduled to participate in bilateral exercises with the Navies of Vietnam, Philippines, Singapore (SIMBEX), Indonesia (Samudra Shakti) and Australia (AUS-INDEX) and in multilateral exercise MALABAR-21.