Current Affairs- April 28, 2022

 

INDIA

– Centre scraps MP (Member of Parliament), DM (District Magistrate) for admissions to Kendriya Vidyalaya schools

– UP CM Yogi Adityanath asks Ministers, public servants to declare assets

 CMs of Delhi, Punjab sign Knowledge Sharing Agreement

– Keep politicians, businessmen away from sports bodies: Madras High Court

– Central govt., Netflix launch 2-minute films on 7 women changemakers, titled ‘Azadi ki Amrit Kahaniyan’

– T.N. clips Governor’s power to appoint V-Cs of state universities

– 250 kg heroin seized, nine Pakistani nationals and boat Al Haj held off the Gujarat coast

– United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommends India be designated a ‘Country of Particular Concern’

– EAM Jaishankar discusses progress of bilateral cooperation with his Portuguese counterpart Joao Cravinho

– PM Modi addresses opening of Shri Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital in Fiji

ECONOMY & CORPORATE

– The Union Cabinet on April 27, 2022 approved an additional funding of Rs 820 crore for India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) that will be utilised for expansion of its services to all post offices in the country.

– Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) scheme to continue till December 2024

– Cabinet clears Rs 2,426 cr to upgrade 2G mobile sites in naxal areas to 4G

– Govt sets timeline to launch first indigenous commercial chipsets by 2024

– NASSCOM appoints Krishnan Ramanujam of TVCS as its chairperson for 2022-23; Debjani Ghosh is President

– Ola Electric recalls 1400 electric scooters over fire risks

WORLD

– Russia halts gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria over their failure to pay in roubles

– Russia withdraws from the UN World Tourism Organization ahead of a vote to suspend its membership

– United Nations General Assembly adopts by consensus a resolution requiring the five permanent members of the Security Council to justify their use of the veto

SPORTS

– Former Indian women’s hockey team captain Elvera Britto dies at 81 in Bengaluru

Career in the drone industry

 

With drones being used across many sectors and industries, what are the opportunities available?

The emergence of new-age technologies has seen the job market evolve rapidly and open career opportunities in new industries. One such is Drones, which have gone from niche to mainstream in the past few years and have become a critical developing technology in the deep-tech sector. In India, the introduction of the new liberalised rules is helping release India’s airspace for drone operations. The industry is expected to grow significantly over the next decade and will open new career avenues.

Emerging job roles

Design engineers and assemblers: The industry needs people who can develop drones based on their expertise in engineering branches such as Aeronautical, Electronics and Electrical, Mechanical, and Robotics Engineering. Additionally, occupations such as manufacturing engineers who build drones and assemblers who assemble them are emerging.

Drone pilots: As the demand for drone operations increase, companies will need trained professionals who can remotely manage a drone’s flights. Drone pilots play a critical role and require training and certification with sector-specific specialisations. A drone can be hired for cinematography, aerial photography, mapping, modelling and several other uses.

Pilot trainers: Certified trainers are needed to train candidates who aspire to be drone pilots. They play a critical role in ensuring safer flying.

Drone flight planners: This involves determining flight schedule, altitude, weather-related specifications and image or video capture specifications to meet the data goals. Drone flight planners also need to understand the specific use-case, the location of the flight, zone in which the area falls under (red, yellow, green).

Drone software engineers: Developing software for flight operations is crucial. It is critical to develop indigenous software to eliminate the risk of cyberattacks. Since the use cases and the concept of leveraging drones for business operations is new and unique, software developers must upskill themselves for drone-related software development.

Drone data specialists: Drone data specialists and GIS engineers coordinate the data processing and analysis of datasets. GIS Professionals help companies interpret images, videos and maps to recognise trends and potential problem areas. The industry will also see a significant rise in demand for sector-wise experts who will convert drone data to actionable insights.

Relevant courses

For starters, one must be well-versed in the regulatory legislation governing commercial drone piloting in India in order to pursue a job in this industry. In terms of formal training, training schools approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) offer guided training to drone pilots. Special partnerships and associations with universities help facilitate courses on the design and development of unmanned aerial vehicles and training on mapping and inspection.

Source: The Hindu, 23/04/22

Mughilan Thiru Ramasamy

How is fabric made?

 From clothes to curtains, towels and sheets, fabrics are everywhere in our daily lives. You might also hear people call them “textiles“.

People have been making fabric, or textiles, for a very long time. In fact, they’ve been doing it for almost 35,000 years!Let’s first think about what a fabric is. The dictionary says fabric is a cloth made by knitting or weaving together fibres.

What is a fibre?

A fibre is like a strand of hair. It’s very long and thin.

Fibres can come from nature. Some common natural fibres are cotton, silk and wool.

Humans have also found ways to make fibres ourselves in the past 150 years. We can use technology to turn oil into fibres. We can even make special fibres to make your raincoat waterproof, or make a soldier’s vest bullet-proof.

But how can these thin, hair-like fibres be made into something we can wear?

From fibre to yarn

First, we need to put the fibres together to make long strings of yarn. This can be tricky because many fibres are quite short, especially natural ones.

A cotton fibre is usually only around 3cm long. That’s shorter than a paper clip. Wool is usually cut from a sheep when it is 7.5cm long – about the length of a crayon.

We twist these shorter fibres together to make a longer yarn. The twisting makes the fibres rub together and grip to each other. This is called yarn spinning.

Yarn spinning

The first step of yarn spinning involves taking bundle of fibres, lining them up, them combing them like you comb your hair … or how you might comb a long beard! In fact, when we’ve combed them into a sheet, we call it a “beard”.

Next, the sheet is stretched into a long tube. As it stretches, it becomes thinner and thinner. Then we twist it to form a yarn. This delicate sheet of fibres may have been metres wide to begin with, but we twist it into a thin thread.

There are all types of yarn threads. They can be thin, thick, hard, soft, stretchy, or even ones you can’t cut! It all depends on the starting fibre and the machine settings.

Turning yarn into fabric

Once we have our yarn, we’re ready to make fabric. There are many ways do this, such as weaving, knitting or felting.

Weaving crosses the yarns over and under in a chessboard pattern. Knitting makes loops that pass through each other.

Felting is when we get wool fibres wet and soapy. We rub the fibres together until they are all tangled up. Then we press the fibres into a flat sheet called felt.

Weaving, knitting and felting can be very slow if you do them by hand! These days we often use machines to speed things up.

How fabric is made

So we start with the fibre. Then we spin it into long strings of yarn. Next we weave, knit or felt the yarn into fabric.

Source: Indian Express, 18/04/22

Cambridge University launches free pre-degree foundation course

 The University of Cambridge has launched a new pre-degree foundation course, which has a lower entry requirement in a bid to increase diversity across the world-famous educational institution in the UK.

The university announced on Monday that the new Cambridge Foundation Year is free and fully funded and aimed at engaging an entirely new stream of applicants.

The one-year, full-time residential course, which begins with its first intake of 52 students for the start of the new academic year in October 2022, follows a ‘rigorous’ admissions process.“This is a big day for those who are receiving their Cambridge Foundation Year offer, and a big day for the University,’ said Dr Alex Pryce, Foundation Year Course Director at Cambridge.

“This is the first time in its history that Cambridge has run a pre-degree foundation year programme, aimed at talented applicants who might not otherwise consider applying to study here, and the number of applications we received shows that it is competitive and that there is a clear appetite for it,’ he said.

In total, there were 267 applications to the pilot Foundation Year programme, or around five applications for every place, which is comparable to the number of applications the university normally receives for undergraduate study at six applications for every place.

Annually, the course is aimed at around 50 individuals who have experienced educational and social disadvantage and demonstrate the potential to succeed in a degree in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

“The Cambridge Foundation Year offers a fresh approach to widening participation at Cambridge,’ said Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

‘It is an innovative programme that aims to reach an entirely new field of Cambridge candidates and transform lives. After all the planning that has gone into creating the Cambridge Foundation Year, and the hard work of many people across the University and Colleges, I’m delighted that we have reached this important moment,’ he said.

A donation from philanthropists Christina and Peter Dawson is funding the launch of the programme and full one-year scholarships for all students who are accepted.

Students will study at one of the 13 Cambridge colleges participating in the pilot scheme. The university said, as with all courses at Cambridge, there was a rigorous admissions process designed to help admit students who will thrive in the Foundation Year and be able to progress to a degree at Cambridge ‘ including interviews and assessment.

Students also have to prove their eligibility to receive the “generous scholarship” given to all students on the course.

On successful completion of the programme, Cambridge Foundation Year students will receive a CertHE qualification from the University of Cambridge, and with suitable attainment can progress to degrees in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge without the need to apply to the university again in the usual admissions round.

The eligibility criteria for the course cover students with disrupted educational backgrounds in the UK as well as refugees or asylum seekers. The move is part of efforts by the university to be more inclusive to students from less privileged backgrounds. 

Source: Indian Express, 28/04/22

Unemployed Indians: For a country in the midst of a demographic transition, this is the biggest challenge

 India has an employment problem which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. One indication of the building crisis is the continuing increase, over the years, in work demanded by households under the MGNREGA. In 2014-15, 4.13 crore households got work under the scheme. By 2019-20, just prior to the pandemic, this had risen to 5.48 crore. In 2020-21, at the peak of the economic distress, the number of households that worked under the scheme had risen to 7.55 crore. While that figure declined to 7.26 crore in the subsequent year, it remains considerably higher than the pre-pandemic level, indicating perhaps the continuing absence of alternatives. This growing divergence between the demand and supply of jobs manifests in a myriad of ways — from louder demands for reservation in the public sector by various caste groups, and for including the private sector in its ambit, to state governments exploring ways to ensure job quotas for locals. All this is indicative of a wide and deepening anxiety over employment prospects.

The deterioration in the employment scenario can be tracked at many levels. One, over the years, there has been a sharp fall in the labour force participation rate in India. Data from CMIE suggests that the labour force participation rate has fallen to around 40 per cent. For comparable countries, it is significantly higher. This decline suggests that despite India’s young population, many have simply opted out of the labour force, perhaps feeling let down by the absence of remunerative, productive jobs. The situation is even more dire for women who had a considerably lower participation rate to begin with. India’s female labour force participation is not only lower than the global average, but also lower than countries like Bangladesh. Two, even as the unemployment rate has declined from the highs observed during the initial phase of the pandemic, it remains elevated, suggesting that among those looking for jobs, those unable to find jobs remains high. Three, the unemployment rate is higher among the younger and more educated. As per the periodic labour force surveys, the unemployment rate is higher among those in the 15-29 age group (22.5 per cent in September 2019), and those educated up to at least the secondary level (11 per cent). Four, while there are signs of increasing formalisation as indicated by the EPFO data, a substantial share of the labour force continues to remain employed in the informal sector, lacking a safety net.

While successive governments have taken steps to address the issue, the jobs crisis is in large part the result of the absence of a labour intensive manufacturing sector which can not only absorb the millions entering the labour force each year, but also those moving out of agriculture. For a country of the young, in the midst of a demographic transition, the employment problem is perhaps the most formidable challenge before the government.

Source: Indian Express, 28/04/22

Quote of the Day April 27, 2022

 

“The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”
Ross Perot

“वह व्यक्ति कर्मठ नहीं है जो कि यह कहता है कि नदी गंदी है। कर्मठ तो वह व्यक्ति होता है जो कि नदी की सफाई करना शुरु कर देता है।”
रॉस पेरो

World Malaria Day

 Annually on the 25^th of April World Malaria Day is observed across the world to highlight the need for sustained political commitment and continued investment so as to prevent and control malaria across the world

Overview:

The World Health Organization has continuously highlighted the need for and also called for innovations and investments to bring in new vector control approaches, antimalarial medicines, diagnostics, and other tools that will help in fighting against malaria.

The theme of World Malaria Day 2022

The theme for this year’s world malaria day is “Harness innovation to reduce the malaria disease burden and save lives.”

Significance of this day

The day is significant as despite being a treatable disease, Malaria continues to impact the livelihoods of people all over the world. According to the WHO, in the year 2020 around 241 million new cases of malaria and 6,27,000 fatalities due to malaria in 85 nations were witnessed. In the African region, more than two-thirds of the reported fatalities were among children who were below the age of 5. This data shows that in spite of achieving steady advances against malaria from 2000 to 2015, there has been a slowdown in recent years, especially in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

History of this day

In 2007, WHO got the idea of observing this day came from Africa Malaria Day, which is observed by the African government since 2001. At the WHO-sponsored World Health Assembly’s 60^th session it was proposed to change the Africa Malaria day to World Malaria Day. This was done with the aim of generating greater awareness regarding the fight against malaria.