DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS

On the occasion of Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas of 2023, India has launched a new scheme PM Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan.

Janjatiya Gaurav Divas is celebrated every year on November 15 since 2021 to mark the birth anniversary of tribal icon Birsa Munda.

• PM- JANMAN – It is launched for the development of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs).
• It is also named as PM PVTG Development Mission.
• Objectives
• To protect the tribes on the verge of extinction and nurture them with basic facilities.
• To ensure last-mile welfare scheme delivery.

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)are a more vulnerable group among tribal groups in India and 75 PVTGs are in India.

• Budget – Around Rs 24,000 crores.
• Government will reach out to tribal groups and primitive tribes and several ministries will work in tandem to implement development projects.
• Beneficiaries - Government has identified 75 tribal communities and primitive tribes with a population of lakhs who reside in more than 22 thousand villages in the country
• Ensures basic facilities - Road and telecom connectivity, electricity, safe housing, clean drinking water and sanitation, improved access to education, health and nutrition and sustainable livelihood opportunities.

In 1969, scientists noticed an abrupt and brief increase in the rotation rate of a pulsar called as pulsar glitch.

When heavy stars die, their cores implode and if they’re heavy enough, they become black holes. Else, they collapse to form a ball of neutrons called as neutron stars.

• Pulsars – They are rotating neutron stars (super-dense object) whose rotation rate slowed over time.
• Emission of radio signals – The energy saved by reducing the rotation rate was used to accelerate electric charges outside the star, producing the radio signals that are emitted near the poles.
• It forms a cone that sweeps past the earth with every rotation.

• Pulsar glitch – An abrupt and brief increase in the rotation rate of the pulsar before relaxing to the original value slowly.

The 1st pulsar was discovered in 1967 and 1^st pulsar glitch was observed in 1969. Till date, we have spotted more than 3,000 pulsars and around 700 pulsar glitches.

• This slow post-glitch relaxation hinted that the neutrons inside the star were superfluid.

Superfluids, a slippery, frictionless state which when set in motion inside a container will keep moving around.

Origin of Pulsar Glitch

The neutron star is a 20-km-wide sphere with a solid crust and a core. The crust, believed to be a lattice of iron-like nuclei, is interspersed with neutron superfluid. The core predominantly contains the superfluid, and no solid parts.

• A superfluid in a rotating system creates vortices which might be attached to the nuclei of the crust and attain less energy.

Vortices are a mass of air, water, etc. that turns around very fast and pulls things into its centre.

The phenomenon of vortices ‘sticking’ to the nuclei is called pinning.

• By radiation, the pulsar loses energy and slows down the rotation of crust but the pinned vortices maintains higher speed similar to the speed of the superfluid’s rotation inside.
• This speed difference creates a force to overcome pinning and vortices are thrown outward, reducing the speed of the superfluid.
• The angular momentum lost by the superfluid is gained by the crust leading to brief increase in rotation called as a glitch in the pulsar.

Angular momentum is defined as the total quantity of motion possessed by the rotating moving body.

• It is a Palestinian-led campaign that uses economic pressure to delegitimize Israel.
• It is a loosely connected network of Palestinian civil society groups coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
• The BDS movement aims to create a world without a Jewish state.

The movement was launched in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian groups to garner international support for Palestinian people’s rights.

• The world’s 1^st gene therapy “Casgevy” for sickle cell disease has been approved in Britain recently.
• It is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Europe) Ltd. and CRISPR Therapeutics.
• Gene therapy for sickle cell disease uses a non-infectious lentivirus to silence the BCL11A gene.
• It approved the treatment for patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia who are 12 years old and over.

Both sickle cell disease (common in people with African or Caribbean backgrounds) and thalassemia are caused by mistakes in the genes that carry hemoglobin.

• It is one of the largest river turtles in South America, also known as the yellow-headed sideneck turtle and the yellow-spotted river turtle.
• This diurnal (most active in mid-morning and afternoon turtle) is native to the Amazon River basin and can be found in the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers and are locally known as Taricayas.
• Conservation status - IUCN - Vulnerable.

An extended heat wave and drought have shortened the incubation period for thousands of turtle hatchlings in the Peruvian Amazon recently.