India, Bangladesh, Japan to hold connectivity meet in Tripura

Why In News

Ø  The connectivity event in Tripura, India, on April 11-12, will bring together Bangladesh, India, and Japan to explore connectivity initiatives and harness the commercial potential of the region.

Key Points

Ø  Bangladesh, India, and Japan are set to hold a connectivity event in Tripura, India on April 11-12. The event is aimed at exploring connectivity initiatives and leveraging the commercial potential of the region.

Who Will Participate:

Ø  The Asian Confluence, a think tank from Northeast India, will organize the event in collaboration with India’s Ministry of External Affairs. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam will represent Bangladesh, while India’s deputy foreign minister and the Japanese ambassador to India will also attend.

What are the gaps in developing Northeast India:

Ø  A recent study conducted by the Asian Confluence recommended scaling up multi-modal connectivity between Northeast India and Bangladesh to enhance competitiveness and narrow the development gaps in the region.

Ø  It also suggested working together to establish express corridors for the transit of goods from the Northeast Region to the Chattogram Port and bringing synergy in trade facilitation.

Ø  The study further recommended creating industrial value chains to benefit all stakeholders in India and Bangladesh, including Japanese companies in the region.

Ø  It suggested establishing a Japan-Northeast India Chamber of Commerce to promote Japanese investment in Northeast India and a Northeast India-Bangladesh-Japan CEO Forum to provide the necessary business leadership.

World Homeopathy Day 2023 observed on 10th April

Why In News

Ø  On April 10th every year, World Homeopathy Day is celebrated to honor the birth anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy and a German physician.

Key Points

Ø  On April 10th every year, World Homeopathy Day is celebrated to honor the birth anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy and a German physician. This day is dedicated to recognizing the valuable contributions of homeopathy to the field of healthcare. This year marks the 268th birth anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann.

World Homeopathy Day 2023: Theme

Ø  The focus of World Homeopathy Day 2023 is centered around the theme ‘One Health, One Family’. The primary objective of this theme is to advocate for evidence-based homeopathic treatment for the well-being of every family member through the involvement of family physicians within the community.

World Homeopathy Day 2023: Significance

Ø  World Homeopathy Day is an occasion to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities involved in promoting homeopathy. The aim of this day is to create awareness about homeopathy as a medical system and strive towards improving its success rate. Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that works by stimulating the body’s innate healing processes in the patient. It operates on the principle that the symptoms of a disease can be treated by administering small doses of natural substances that mimic the symptoms.

World Homeopathy Day: History

Ø  Samuel Hahnemann, a renowned scholar and physician from France, is credited with founding homeopathy. He was born on April 10, 1755, in Paris. During the first 15 years of his medical practice, he struggled to make a living and eventually made a significant discovery. He believed that in order to cure a patient’s illness, they should be administered with substances that cause the same symptoms as the disease. This is the fundamental principle of homeopathy, known as “like cures like.”

Ø  In India, the Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India, oversees the celebration of World Homeopathy Day. Homeopathy is among India’s most widely used medical systems, and it is believed to be a safe form of treatment with minimal side effects.

NASA’s High-Resolution Air Quality Control Instrument Launches

Why In News

Ø  NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument has successfully launched, marking a significant step forward in the monitoring of major air pollutants.

Key Points

Ø  NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument has successfully launched, marking a significant step forward in the monitoring of major air pollutants.

Ø  The instrument will provide unprecedented resolution, allowing scientists to observe air quality from space with accuracy down to just four square miles. The TEMPO mission aims to revolutionize the way air quality is monitored, helping to improve life on Earth.

More About The Launch of NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument:

Ø  The instrument was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The Intelsat 40E satellite carried the payload, which separated from the rocket around 32 minutes after launch. Signal acquisition occurred at 1:14 a.m. TEMPO commissioning activities will begin in late May or early June.

Ø  Significance of The NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument:

ü  NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has said that the TEMPO mission is about more than just studying pollution. It aims to improve life on Earth by monitoring the effects of everything from rush-hour traffic to pollution from forest fires and volcanoes. NASA data will help improve air quality across North America and protect our planet.

ü  The observations provided describe a new scientific instrument that is capable of monitoring air quality over North America at a high resolution and with a high frequency. This instrument is hosted in geostationary orbit, which means that it can continuously monitor the same region of the Earth’s surface, allowing for the tracking of changes in air quality over time.

What will it Observe:

Ø  The instrument is designed to measure several key pollutants, including ozone, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, and formaldehyde. These pollutants are all known to have harmful effects on human health and the environment, so monitoring their levels is important for understanding and mitigating their impacts.

Ø  TEMPO, a NASA instrument, is set to revolutionize the way scientists observe air quality from space by providing unparalleled resolution of monitoring major air pollutants down to four square miles. As a fixed geostationary orbit above the equator, TEMPO will be able to measure air quality over North America hourly during the daytime, surpassing existing limits of about 100 square miles in the U.S.

PM Modi launched big cats alliance to conserve seven cats

Why In News

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA) during his visit to Karnataka on April 9, 2022. The IBCA aims to conserve seven species of big cats, including tigers, lions, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, snow leopards, and clouded leopards.

Key Points

Ø  International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA): Focus on seven major big cats:

Ø  International Big Cats Alliance (IBCA) will focus on the protection and conservation of seven major big cat species in the world. These species are the tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar, and cheetah.

Significance of this initiative:

Ø  The alliance seeks to bring together countries, conservationists, and experts from around the world to collaborate on conservation efforts for these seven big cat species.

Ø  Through IBCA, India hopes to share knowledge, expertise, and best practices in conserving these species with other countries that have significant big cat populations, such as Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa.

Ø  The alliance also aims to facilitate collaborations between governments, NGOs, and the private sector to create sustainable solutions for conservation.

Ø  The launch of IBCA marks a significant step towards the conservation of these magnificent animals, as their populations face unprecedented threats from habitat loss, poaching, and human-animal conflicts.

C.R. Rao wins International Prize in Statistics 2023

Why In News

Ø  The 2023 International Prize in Statistics, which is regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in statistics, has been awarded to Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, an Indian-American statistician.

Key Points

Ø  The 2023 International Prize in Statistics, which is regarded as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in statistics, has been awarded to Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, an Indian-American statistician. The prize, established in 2016, is presented once every two years to an individual or team that has made significant contributions to science, technology, and human welfare through the use of statistics.

Ø  The award is given out by a collaboration of five major international statistics organizations and recognizes major accomplishments by an individual or team. Rao will be honored with the prize, which carries an $80,000 cash award, at the International Statistical Institute World Statistics Congress in Ottawa, Canada, in July.

What was Rao’s 1945 paper about?

Ø  Rao’s groundbreaking paper, ‘Information and accuracy attainable in the estimation of statistical parameters’, was published in 1945 in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, a journal that is otherwise not well known to the statistics community. The paper was subsequently included in the book Breakthroughs in Statistics, 1890-1990. This was an impressive achievement given Rao was only 25 at the time and had just completed his master’s degree in statistics two years prior.

About the C.R. Rao

Ø  Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao, born in Karnataka in 1920, is an Emeritus Eberly professor in the statistics department at Pennsylvania State University. He played a significant role in establishing the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata and has been associated with the institute since 1941. Rao holds PhD and ScD degrees from Cambridge University.

Ø  In addition to being awarded the Padma Bhusan in 1968 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001, Rao was the recipient of the SS Bhatnagar Prize in 1963 and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1967. He also received the Wilks Medal of the American Statistical Association in 1979 and the US National Medal of Science in 2002.

Ø  Throughout his career, Rao has held various positions such as Jawaharlal Nehru professor and national professor in India, university professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and Eberly professor and chair of statistics and director of the Center for Multivariate Analysis at the Pennsylvania State University.