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DAILY DOSE 25TH JAN-2024 CURRENT AFFAIRS
History: 25th January
National Voters’ Day
- The day has been celebrated since 2011 across the country to mark the foundation of the Election Commission of India, i.e. 25th January 1950.
- The Theme for the year 2024 NVD, ‘Nothing Like Voting, I Vote for Sure’
- National Tourism Day is also observed on January 25th each year.
1) Mpemba Effect : Study
- The Mpemba effect continues to captivate scientists with its complex interplay of physical mechanisms.
- Mpemba effect is named after Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba, who brought attention to this counterintuitive phenomenon in 1969, making for curious observations.
- The effect is that hot water can freeze faster than cold water in similar conditions.
- While Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and René Descartes had noticed the effect centuries earlier, the Mpemba effect caught scientists’ attention only more recently.
- Researchers have conducted numerous experiments to determine the causes of this confusing phenomenon, but a consensus conclusion remains wanting.
- One cause, they have posited, is microbubbles left suspended in water that has been heated by boiling.
2) Karpoori Thakur : Bharat Ratna Posthumously
- Karpoori Thakur, a prominent Gandhian socialist leader and former Bihar chief minister will be awarded the ‘Bharat Ratna’ posthumously.
- Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian Award of the country which was instituted in the year 1954.
- Any person without distinction of race, occupation, position or sex is eligible for these awards.
- Though usually conferred on India-born citizens, the Bharat Ratna has been awarded to one naturalised citizen, Mother Teresa, and to two non-Indians, Pakistan national Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and former South African President Nelson Mandela.
- The original statutes did not provide for posthumous awards but were amended in 1955 to permit them. Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri became the first individual to be honoured posthumously.
- It is awarded in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour.
- The recommendations for Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister himself to the President and no formal recommendations for this are necessary.
- The number of annual awards is restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year.
- On conferment of the award, the recipient receives a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a medallion.
- The award does not carry any monetary grant.
3) Lake Retba:
- The Lake Retba’s waters are virtually devoid of life and are on the verge of disappearing due to pollution and mining.
- Lake Retba is also known as Lac Rose the Pink Lake.
- It is located north of the Cap Vert peninsula of Senegal, northeast of Dakar
- The lake is isolated from the sea by sand dunes.
- Its fresh water comes from the seasonal water table in the dunes, which are higher than the lake.
- Thus, the sea provides most of the lake’s water and all of its salt.
- The Pink Lake is one of the main tourist destinations in the Dakar region, primarily because of the pink colour of its waters.
- The pink coloration is due to the proliferation of halophilic green algae (living in a salty environment), Dunaliella salina, which contain red pigments.
- The algae is associated with halophilic bacteria of the genus Halobacterium.
4) National Monetization Pipeline:
- The Centre has decided to conduct an Asset Recycling Drive under the National Monetization Pipeline (NMP), aiming to generate resources for new investments in infrastructure.
- The Centre’s asset recycling drive is expected to generate around Rs 1.5 trillion in the fiscal year 2024-25.
- Transactions with monetisation values of around Rs 0.97 trillion were completed in 2021-22, and Rs 1.32 trillion in 2022-23.
- National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) envisages an aggregate monetisation potential of Rs 6-lakh crore through the leasing of core assets of the Central government in sectors such as roads, railways, power, oil and gas pipelines, telecom, civil aviation etc, over a four-year period (FY 2022-25).
- The Monetization through NMP only includes core assets, excluding monetization through disinvestment of non-core assets.
- Currently, only assets of central government line ministries and CPSEs in infrastructure sectors have been included.
- The government is currently in the process of coordinating and collating asset pipelines from states to expand the scope of the NMP, incorporating assets at both the central and state levels in due course.
5) Homi J Bhabha Death Anniversary:
- Homi Jehangir Bhabha (born 30th October 1909, Mumbai, India) and died on 24th January, 1966 was a pioneering Indian physicist.
- He is regarded as the father of India’s nuclear programme. He saw the importance of nuclear power as a military deterrent and source of energy, and laid the foundation of India’s nuclear establishment.
- He founded and directed two of the institutions that would bring India into the nuclear age: the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, later renamed the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in his honour.
- India’s three-stage nuclear power programme was formulated by Homi Bhabha in the 1950s.
- Bhabha was the first Indian to receive the Adams Prize in 1942, the highest honour given by the University of Cambridge.
- Bhabha received the award for his “theory of the elementary particles and their interactions”.
- He was also awarded the Padma Bhushan.
6) Light Emitting Diodes (LED):
- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made a statement declaring that while incandescent light bulbs illuminated the 20th century, the 21st century would be illuminated by LED lamps.
- A diode is an electronic component about 5 mm wide. It has two points of contact, or terminals, called its anode and cathode.
- A diode’s primary purpose is to allow current to flow in only one direction.
- It achieves this using a P-N Junction Diode.
- The P-N junction occurs at the interface of p-type and n-type semiconductors.
- The positive side of the semiconductor, known as the p-side, possesses an abundance of holes.
- The negative side of the semiconductor, referred to as the n-side, contains an excess of electrons.
- Electrons are ‘places’ inside atoms that carry negative charge.
Light Emitting Diodes (LED):
- LEDs are semiconductors that can emit light when an electric current passes through them.
- Inside the diode’s p-n junction, the electrons have more energy than the holes.
- When an electron meets and occupies a hole, it releases energy into its surroundings.
- The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2014 was granted to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura.
- Their achievement was recognized for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes, a breakthrough that paved the way for the creation of bright and energy-efficient white light sources.
- Red and green diodes existed for a while, but the lack of blue light prevented the creation of white lamps.
7) Pradhanmantri Suryoday Yojana:
- PM Modi announced the launch of Pradhanmantri Suryoday Yojana .
- Currently, there is no centrally compiled estimate of the number of households in India with rooftop solar installations.
- Pradhanmantri Suryoday Yojana launched on January,2024.
- Objectives is to
- Provide affordable solar energy.
- Increase energy independence
- Promote environmental sustainability.
- It will provide incentives and financial assistance to make it affordable for residential consumers to adopt rooftop solar.
- This scheme comes after India missed its initial target of 40 gigawatts of rooftop solar capacity by 2022 under the existing Rooftop Solar Programme.
- The new scheme signals renewed impetus to achieve the target of 40GW capacity by the extended deadline of 2026.
- With only around 11GW currently installed, the Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana intends to accelerate rooftop solar adoption.
- The scheme aimed to expand India’s rooftop solar installed capacity in the residential sector by providing Central Financial Assistance and incentives to DISCOMs
- A consumer can avail of the benefits of the scheme through DISCOM tendered projects or through the National Portal
- The DISCOM’s role is limited to issuing of technical feasibility approval, installation of the net meter and inspect the system.
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