Current Affair 1:

State of India’s Birds report 2023

 

Report is too large. Few important images I have taken from entire report. See below:

The State of India’s Birds report is a periodic assessment of the distribution range, trends in abundance, and conservation status for most of the bird species that regularly occur in India.

Grassland specialists have declined by more than 50%, indicating the importance of protecting and maintaining grassland ecosystems.

 

Current Affair 2:

Growth of ultra-processed foods in India

 

News:

This report has been developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Country Office for India in collaboration with the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).

Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats.

There is a universal shift from traditionally home cooked food to more of processed foods due to variety of reasons like rising incomes and urbanisation, or the growth of the modern food retail sector. The processed food industry is also vital for reducing food loss and increasing the shelf-life of agricultural produce.

 In terms of the nutritional content and the nature of processed food, they can be classified into two broad categories; namely, ultra-processed food/ food with high fat, sugar, sugar and salt (HFSS) content and essential/staple food.

Impact of increase in consumption of ultra-processed food: has a significant positive relationship with health issues such as overweight/obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

For example,

1. the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB) survey highlighted that overweight/obesity has specifically increased in men and women consuming energy above 1587 calories/day, protein above 41-57 gm/day and fat above 19 to 32 g/day.
2. An Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) study released in 2020 had shown that in India, the average daily intake of visible fats among the urban population in seven metro cities was 33 gm per day, higher than the recommended levels of ICMR (20 gm per day).

Current Affair 3:

Why did Chandrayaan-3 land on the near side of the moon?

 

The near side refers to the portion of the moon — about 60% — that is visible to us. It is always the same side that is visible from Earth because the moon takes the same time to rotate about its axis as it does to circle around the Earth.

Is the dark side very different from the near side?

The major difference between the two sides is that the near side is relatively smoother and has large volcanic plains compared to the far side. On the far side however, there are huge craters, thousands of kilometres wide, which have likely resulted from collisions with asteroids.

The crust on the near side is thinner because of which, over millions of years, the volcanic lava in the lunar crust has flowed more extensively into the thinner side and filled up its craters. The resulting plains that have thus formed are far more conducive to space missions because they provide a relatively flat terrain for landers and rovers.

India's Chandrayaan-3 mission successfully landed near the moon's south pole not only made history because it saw the nation become the fourth to successfully land on the moon — after the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China — but also because it named India the first to land at the southern lunar pole.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, while still on the near side (as it is visible), has managed to land Vikram the closest ever to the lunar South Pole. The coordinates of Chandrayaan-3 at 69.36 S and 32.34 E make it about 600 km away from the South Pole.

Why lunar South Pole is important?

Region hosts water in the form of ice. Water can act as a coolant for equipment and even provide rocket fuel. The latter could be especially useful for a staging mission to Mars launched from the moon someday.

Additionally, water on the moon is of pure scientific value. It can be used as a record of geological activity on the moon, such as lunar volcanoes, and even act as an asteroid strike tracker.

At the lunar south pole, only elevated peaks are lit by the sun. This is because the sun is always positioned around the horizon due to the moon's tilt. More low-lying areas are permanently shrouded in shadow, and are quite literally referred to as permanently shadowed regions (PSRs).

Temperatures in PSRs can drop to as low as -418 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius), which is so frigid its colder than Pluto — but this means it's also an ideal spot to maintain water ice.

Any water molecules that enter a PSR region are immediately frozen. They're also trapped because it is simply too cold for them to evaporate. This water content then falls to the surface, where it gets mixed with lunar soil. That process results in the growth of large "pockets" of water and soil at the moon's south pole.

Also see Images:

Current Affair 4:

‘Quasi Extinction of Penguins’

 

A new study, published in Communications Earth & Environment earlier this week, found that melting sea ice poses a major threat to emperor penguins.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea region.

Quasi-extinction “is that (a) population essentially is still in existence, but there’s no way in the world it can increase.”

A quasi-extinction threshold reflects the fact that a population may be doomed to extinction even if there are still individuals alive.

Quasi-extinction arises when the density of reproductive individuals in a given population becomes so small that it’s unable to sustain a growing or even stable population.

The study found that emperor penguin colonies saw unprecedented and "catastrophic" breeding failure in a part of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022.

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