- INDIA INTERNATIONAL BULLION EXCHANGE
- The India International Bullion Exchange (IIBX) is India’s first bullion exchange, launched on 29 July 2022 in Gujarat.
- It is the 3rd exchange of its kind in the globe
- IIBX has been conceptualised to provide a gateway to import bullion into India and provide world class bullion exchange ecosystem to promote bullion trading, investment in bullion financial products and vaulting facilities in IFSCs.
- IIBX is promoted by India’s leading market infrastructure institutions like NSE, INDIA INX (subsidiary of BSE), NSDL, CDSL and MCX.
- IIBX is established at GIFT IFSC, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. IIBX is regulated by International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA)
- IIBX enables trading in bullion which adhere to OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply chain of Minerals from Conflict Affected and High-Risk Areas for establishing supply chain integrity.
- India’s gold market is one of the largest in the world and holds an important position in the global bullion market.
2. NEXT-GENERATION SYNCHROTRON
- This facility marks a significant milestone for Asia, propelling China into the elite league of nations with fourth-generation synchrotron light sources.
- Situated in Huairou, near downtown Beijing
- These efforts are geared towards creating a light source capable of delving deep into samples, unveiling their molecular and atomic structures in real-time.
- High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) will revolutionize scientific research with its production of high-energy X-rays, facilitating the precise probing of samples at the nanoscale level.
- A synchrotron is a type of circular particle accelerator.
- It works by accelerating charged particles (electrons) through sequences of magnets until they reach almost the speed of light.
- These fast-moving electrons produce very bright light, called synchrotron light.
- This very intense light, predominantly in the X-ray region, is millions of times brighter than light produced from conventional sources and 10 billion times brighter than the sun. Scientists can use this light to study minute matter such as atoms and molecules.
- There are approximately 70 synchrotrons around the world in various stages of development. There are technical differences between the use and capabilities of synchrotrons,
- Giant magneto-resistance, the phenomenon behind portable mp3 players, was studied using synchrotrons.
- The generation of a synchrotron is related to the technology it uses to produce synchrotron light.
- Synchrotrons were originally developed as “atom-smashers”, used by particle physicists to study the basic constituents of matter.
3. LEOPARD CAT
- Leopard cat, with the scientific name Prionailurus bengalensis, belongs to the family Felidae, and is noted for its leopard-like colouring.
- 15 species of felids, or wild cats, are found in India, constituting over 40 per cent of global felid diversity.
- Leopard cat is the most widespread species after the jungle cat in India due to its “adaptive flexibility”, and is restricted to North East India, northern Himalayan states, West Bengal, Odisha, and pockets of Western Ghats.
- The leopard cat is a small wild cat native to continental South, Southeast, and East Asia.
- Since 2002 it has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List as it is widely distributed although threatened by habitat loss and hunting in parts of its rang
- The Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra which gets its name from the Pench river is spread over 740 sq km. The flora is predominantly dominated by teak trees.
- The Reserve shows corridor connectivity with the Melghat Tiger Reserve to the west, Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve to the southeast, Pench Tiger Reserve (MP) to the north, and Kanha Tiger Reserve (MP) to the northeast
4. CRISPR
- The CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, developed in the year 2012
- CRISPR has made gene editing very easy and simple, and at the same time extremely efficient.
- The technology works in a simple way — it locates the specific area in the genetic sequence which has been diagnosed to be the cause of the problem, cuts it out, and replaces it with a new and correct sequence that no longer causes the problem.
- The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that use a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks
5. HIMANSH
- As part of the Indian government’s initiatives to better study and quantify the Himalayan glacier responses towards the climate change, National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Goa, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences has established a high altitude research station in Himalaya
- It is called as HIMANSH (literally meaning, a slice of ice), situated above 13,500 ft (> 4000 m) at a remote region in Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.
ONE LINER
- Lawerance Wong takes charge as the Prime Minister of Singapore
- Manipur accounted for 97% of displacements in South Asia Report by Geneva based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
