- KAZIND – 2019
- Joint Military Exercise KAZIND-2019 between India and Kazakhstan will be conducted at Pithoragarh from 02 to 15 October 2019.
- The exercise will comprise of nearly 100 soldiers from both Indian and Kazakhstan Army who would be sharing their experience gained during conduct of various counter insurgency and counter terrorism operations in the past.
Key highlights
- Exercise KAZIND-2019 is the fourth edition of an annual event which is conducted alternatively in Kazakhstan and India.
- The aim of this exercise is to conduct company level joint training with emphasis on counter terrorism operations in mountainous terrain.
- During the exercise, aspects of emerging trends of global terrorism and hybrid warfare have also been included.
- The joint military exercise will enhance the level of defence cooperation further fostering bilateral relations between the two nations.
- Meghalaya minor tribes fear exclusion from Sixth Schedule
- A sub-committee constituted by the Meghalaya government has decided to recommend to the Standing Committee of Parliament the removal of the word “unrepresented tribes” from the proposed amendment of the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution of India.
Key highlights
- Meghalaya is divided into autonomous councils in the names of the three major matrilineal communities — Garo, Khasi and Jaintia.
- The minority tribes include the Hajong, Koch, Rabha, Boro and Mann. Currently, members of such “unrepresented tribes” are nominated to the autonomous district councils.
- Parts or the whole of the four northeastern States — Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura — fall under the Sixth Schedule, which makes special provisions for “tribal areas”.
- Mont Blanc glacier on brink of collapse
- Part of a glacier on a mountain in the Mont Blanc range is at risk of collapse, prompting Italian authorities to close roads and evacuate Alpine hamlets. Rising global temperatures are causing the melting of mountain glaciers and the retreat of polar ice sheets.
About:
- Mont blanc is also known as White Mountain in French.
- It rises 4,808 m above sea level and is the highest mountain in the Alps and the highest in the European Union.
- The mountain stands in a range called the Graian Alps, between the regions of Aosta Valley, Italy, and Savoie and Haute-Savoie, France. The border between Italy and France passes through the summit of Mont Blanc, making it both French and Italian.
- Global initiatives to beat back climate change
- Governments and private sector leaders have unveiled initiatives aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York.
Key pledges made:
- The Climate Investment Platform was officially announced. It will seek to directly mobilize US$ 1 trillion in clean energy investment by 2025 in 20 Least Developed Countries in its first year.
- The “Three Percent Club”, a coalition of countries and businesses will work to drive a three percent annual global increase in energy efficiency.
- The Cool Coalition will set ambitious national cooling targets for its members with the potential to avoid 1 degree of warming by 2050.
- 65 countries and major sub-national economies such as California committed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
- France announced that it would not enter into any trade agreement with countries that have policies counter to the Paris Agreement.
- India pledged to increase renewable energy capacity to 175gw by 2022 and committed to further increasing to 450GW, and announced that 80 countries have joined the International Solar Alliance.
• Russia announced that they will ratify the Paris Agreement, bringing the total number of countries that have joined the Agreement to 187.
- What is Goldschmidtite?
- A new, curious mineral has been discovered inside a diamond unearthed from a mine in Koffiefontein, South Africa. It has been described in the journal American Mineralogist.
Key highlights
- The mineral has been named goldschmidtite, after Victor Moritz Goldschmidt, the Norwegian scientist acknowledged as the founder of modern geochemistry.
- Goldschmidtite has an unusual chemical signature for a mineral from Earth’s mantle. While the mantle is dominated by elements such as magnesium and iron, goldschmidtite has high concentrations of niobium, potassium and the rare earth elements lanthanum and cerium.
- For potassium and niobium to constitute a major proportion of this mineral, it must have formed under exceptional processes that concentrated these unusual elements.
- It was found as single grain of the mineral in the diamond. it is described as dark green and opaque.
- What is Portamento?
- An MIT student has invented a novel algorithm that produces a portamento effect between any two audio signals in real-time.
Crucial highlights
- In music, “portamento” is a term that’s been used for hundreds of years, referring to the effect of gliding a note at one pitch into a note of a lower or higher pitch.
- But only instruments that can continuously vary in pitch — such as the human voice, string instruments, and trombones — can pull off the effect.
- Now an MIT student has invented a novel algorithm that produces a portamento effect between any two audio signals in real-time. His paper describing the algorithm won the “best student paper” award at the recent International Conference on Digital Audio Effects.
- The algorithm relies on “optimal transport,” a geometry-based framework that determines the most efficient ways to move objects — or data points — between multiple origin and destination configurations. Formulated in the 1700s, the framework has been applied to supply chains, fluid dynamics, image alignment, 3-D modeling, computer graphics, and more.