India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC), Adaptive Defence Strategy, Uranus-New Revelations

• The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) was announced during the G20 New Delhi Summit in 2023 to revolutionize international maritime trade by reducing transit time and costs.
• Signatories: India, the US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, the European Union, Italy, France, and Germany.

Eastern Corridor:

• It links India with the Arabian Gulf. It features railroads, ship-to-rail networks, and road transport routes.
• Strong progress due to robust economic ties between India and UAE.
• Bilateral trade grew significantly post-CEPA, reaching $83.64 billion in 2023-24.
• Focus on diversification with growing non-oil trade.

Northern Corridor:

• It connects the Gulf region to Europe. This incorporates similar transportation infrastructure, including rail, ship-to-rail links, and road networks.
• Progress stalled due to the Israel-Palestine conflict affecting regional stability.
• Key stakeholders like Saudi Arabia and Jordan face delays in project implementation.

Dig Deeper: Read about India’s initiative in the West Asia for infrastructure development.

• The World Bank report “Unlocking the Power of Healthy Longevity: Demographic Change, Non-communicable Diseases and Human Capital” presents the findings and recommendations for life course investments to improve health, reduce poverty, address gender inequity, enhance productivity, and increase overall well-being.
• Healthy longevity means a state of good physical, cognitive, and social functioning throughout a person’s lifespan.
• Need to leverage population aging for health, societal, and economic gains by investing today in health.
• This includes measures to control non-communicable diseases as they majorly contribute to a large and growing burden of avoidable mortality.
• Investing in healthy longevity could save 150 million lives in low- and middle- income countries and extend millions more by 2050.
• Adults over 60 are the fastest-growing demographic across the world.

Dig Deeper: Read about various initiatives of government in context of geriatric care. 

• Indian Defence Minister in recently concluded Delhi Defence Dialogue talked about adopting an “adaptive defence” strategy to address the challenges posed by a rapidly changing global landscape.
• It focuses on anticipating potential threats and preparing proactively, rather than merely reacting to events.
• A strategic approach where military and defence mechanism emphasize proactive and innovative measures to counter emerging threats effectively.
• Promotes a mindset of adaptability, innovation, and resilience.
• It aims to address transnational threats with global solutions.

Dig Deeper: Read about the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program, Space warfare and anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

• The Global Carbon Budget 2024 is the 19th edition of the annual update that started in 2006 as part of Global Carbon Project, published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
• The Global Carbon Project aims to develop a complete picture of the global carbon cycle, including both its biophysical and human dimensions.
• Global CO2 emissions from fossil use are projected to rise 0.8% in 2024 (range -0.3% to 1.9%) relative to 2023 level.
• Global CO2 emissions from land-use change remain high but they have decreased every decade since the 1990s, and in particular in the past decade (-20%).
• Total CO2 emissions – the sum of fossil and land-use change emissions – have plateaued in the past decade.
• Atmospheric CO2 concentration expected to reach 422.5 ppm in 2024, 52% above pre-industrial levels.

Dig Deeper: What is the remaining carbon budget?

• Uranus discovered in 1781, has remained enigmatic despite Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby.
• As Voyager 2 encountered Uranus during in an intense solar wind event observations left a mis-impression about the magnetosphere of Uranus as lacking in plasma and possessing uncommonly intense belts of highly energetic electrons
• Uranus’ magnetosphere is now believed to resemble Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune under normal conditions.
• Plasma observed likely originated from its atmosphere, not the solar wind or moons.

Dig Deeper: Read about the Plasma-fourth stage of matter.

• Researchers at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, have genetically engineered bacteria to perform computational tasks like identifying prime numbers and vowels.
• This innovation combines synthetic biology and computational techniques to create bacterial computers with artificial neural network-like behaviour.
• Scientists introduced genetic circuits into Escherichia coli bacteria.
• Circuits were activated using chemical inducers, creating “bactoneurons”.
• These bactoneurons collectively mimic artificial neural networks (ANN), perform tasks like identifying prime numbers, vowels, perfect powers, and solving optimization problems.
• Responses are coded in binary using fluorescent proteins like red, green, blue, orange.

Dig Deeper: Read about Artificial Neural Networks.