Facts in News

                           Facts in News

Bar-Headed Goose

• Scientific Name-Anser Indicus.
• IUCN Status: Least Concerned
• This pale grey bird is distinct from other geese in its genus because of the black bars on its head.
• Habitat: They are found in central China and Mongolia and they breed there.
  • They start the migration to the Indian sub-continent during the winter and stay here till the end of the season.
  • They come to India and return to their homes by crossing the Himalayan ranges.
• They are one of the birds which can fly even at a very high altitude.
• The capacity of bar-headed geese to transport and consume oxygen at high rates in hypoxia distinguishes this species from similar lowland waterfowl.
  • These geese have higher myoglobin concentration at the onset of migration and also slightly modified haemoglobin structure, which increases the oxygen-binding capacity in them as compared to other migratory birds. This helps them withstand a lower supply of oxygen.

                                           Image Courtesy:ebird

NanoSniffer

• The Union Education Minister launched NanoSniffer, the world’s first Microsensor-based Explosive Trace Detector (ETD).
• NanoSniffer is a 100 percent Made in India product in terms of research, development & manufacturing.
• NanoSniffer can detect explosives in less than 10 seconds.
• It detects all classes of military, conventional and homemade explosives.
• It gives visible & audible alerts with a sunlight-readable colour display.
• The Nanosniffer is developed by NanoSniff Technologies which is an IIT Bombay incubated startup.
• This will reduce our dependence on imported explosive detectors.

Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier

• Scientists have obtained data from beneath the Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier,” for the first time.
• It is 120 km wide at its broadest, fast-moving, and melting fast over the years. Due to its size, it contains enough water to raise the world sea level by more than half a metre.
• Thwaites is important for Antarctica as it slows the ice behind it from freely flowing into the ocean.
• Studies have found the amount of ice flowing out of it has nearly doubled over the past 30 years.
• Today, Thwaites’s melting already contributes 4% to global sea-level rise each year.
• It is estimated that it would collapse into the sea in 200-900 years..

• The melting of Glacier has long been a cause of concern because of its high potential of speeding up the global sea-level rise happening due to climate change.

                                     Image Courtesy :BBC

False Point Lighthouse

• The ‘False Point’ island lighthouse is situated off the Kendrapara coast, Odisha.
• The British era lighthouse has been guiding ships and vessels through the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal for the past 180 years.
• The 129-ft massive minaret-like structure of red-white bands with a huge embossed star, is visible from quite a distance from the Bay of Bengal.
• The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways wants to develop 65 lighthouses on public-private-partnership (PPP) mode as hubs of tourism under the Sagarmala project.
  • The Sagarmala programme is a port-led development programme that seeks to improve infrastructure development across the coastline.

Lost Golden City

• It is a three-millennia-old city from the era of 18th-dynasty king Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt from 1391 to 1353 B.C.
  • Amenhotep III is considered to be one of Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs and was the grandfather of Tutankhamun and mud bricks have been found bearing his seal.
  • The legend of Tutankhamun, whose tomb was discovered almost intact in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, is famous on account of the vast treasure discovered at the location.
• It is found in the southern province of Luxor and is located on the west bank of the Nile river, close to the Colossi of Memnon, Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum (mortuary temple of King Ramses II) all of which are popular tourist destinations.
• It was once the largest administrative and industrial settlement of the pharaonic empire.
• Major Findings
  • Walls, rooms filled with utensils, clay caps of wine vessels, rings, scarabs, coloured pottery, spinning and weaving tools, ovens and kilns for making glass and faience (glazed ceramic beads, figures, etc.) along with the debris of thousands of statues.

                                             (Image Courtesy: UKNA)

Migratory Birds in Manakudy

• Two tagged migratory birds, a Redshank and a Whiskered tern have been spotted in the salt pans of Swamithoppu in the Manakudy bird reserve in Kanyakumari district, Tamil Nadu.
• The reserve provides them with adequate supply of freshwater fish fauna, crustaceans, barnacles and freshwater weeds and also a shield from sound pollution.
• Whiskered Tern
  • This is the first time a whiskered tern, marked outside the country, is reported from India.
  • The spotted bird is possibly from European countries.
  • There are terns that breed in India, but those birds do not go to the reserve.
• RedShank
  • There are five subspecies of redshank, and they migrate from the Himalayas, China, Mongolia and the Russian Far East.
  • The redshank spotted is possibly from the subarctic region.
• Tagging helps ornithologists and scientists study the distance that birds travel, the areas they visit, the number of days they take to reach the wintering spots, food availability, water quality, climatic factors, habitat areas, challenges they face and human intervention in the wintering spots.

                                             (Image Courtesy: DTN)