UPSC Daily Current Affairs - 5th February 2023 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly PDF Download

GS-I

Visva Bharati university

Context

Visva-Bharati University will soon get the ‘heritage’ tag from UNESCO to take the distinction of world’s first living heritage university.

About Visva Bharati university:

• It is one of India's major Central Government funded autonomous university located in Santiniketan, West Bengal.
• It is well-known as a distinguished centre for Visual Art practice and research in India. 
• The university was established in 1921 by Nobel Prize Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. 
• It was named after Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore until Visva-Bharati Society was registered as an organisation in May 1922.
• The institution was given the status of Central University in 1951 through a central Act. 
• Its first vice-chancellor was Rathindranath Tagore, the son of Rabindranath Tagore, and the second vice-chancellor was grandfather of another Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen.
• The President of India appoints the Vice-chancellor of the University.
• Visva Bharati University is renowned for its cultural festivals called Poush Mela and the Basanta Utsab  which attracts a number of artisans from all across the country.

Source: The Hindu

Context

The United Nations refugee agency recently reported that seven Haitian migrants have died in the Andean highlands of Peru as anti-government protests have prevented them from crossing into Bolivia.

About Andes Mountains:

• The Andes is the longest above-water mountain range in the world.
• The Andes Mountains extend over seven countries:Argentina (Mount Aconcagua), Bolivia (Huayna Potosi), Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, known as Andean States.
• It is about 5,500 miles (8,900 km) long and second only to the Himalayas in average elevation.
• It consists of a succession of parallel and transverse mountain ranges, or cordilleras, and of intervening plateaus and depressions.
• The highest elevation in the Andes is Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, which is 22,841 feet (6,962 m) above sea level.
• The Andes are also home to the world’s highest volcano when measured above sea level, the Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border.
• The Andes Mountains are over 50 million years old, they were created when the South American and Pacific tectonic plates collided. 

Key facts about Peru:

• Peru is the third largest country in South America, after Brazil and Argentina.
• It is made up of a variety of landscapes, from mountains and beaches to deserts and rain forests. 
• Capital: Lima
• The world's largest rain forest, the Amazon, covers nearly half of Peru.
• Peru shares borders with Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador.

Source: The Hindu

Sacred Shaligram Stones

Context

Two sacred Shaligram stones, weighing 31 tonnes and 15 tonnes, arrived in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. The stones are expected to be used for constructing the idols of Lord Ram and Janaki at the Ram Temple.

About Shaligram Stones:

• Shaligram stones are fossils of ammonite, which is a type of mollusc that lived between 400 million and 65 million years ago.
• Shaligram stones date specifically from the Early Oxfordian to the Late Tithonian Age near the end of the Jurassic Period some 165-140 million years ago.
• It is mostly found in riverbeds or banks of the Kali Gandaki, a tributary of the Gandaki River in Nepal.
• This stone is revered by Hindus who believe it to be a representation of Lord Vishnu.
• The stone is considered to have divine powers and is seen as a symbol of good luck and prosperity.
• Significance:
  • Lord Ram is believed to be the reincarnation of Lord Vishnu, and the use of the Shaligram stone symbolises the connection between the two gods.

Source:  Indian Express

Guru Ravidas

Context

The President of India greeted fellow citizens on the eve of the birthday of Sant Guru Ravidas.

About Guru Ravidas:

• Guru Ravidas Jayanthi is commemorated on Magh Purnima, the day of the full moon in the month of Magh, according to the Hindu Lunar calendar.
• Guru Ravidas was a 14th-century famous Bhakti Movement saint.
• He abandoned saguna (with attributes, image) forms of supreme beings, and focussed on the nirguna (without attributes, abstract) form of supreme beings.
• Ravidas was a disciple of Sant Kabir and the founder of the Ravidassia religion.
• The Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, contains forty-one of his devotional songs and poems.
• The famous saint poetess, Mirabai was a disciple of Guru Ravidas. 

Source: PIB

GS-II

Context

The Supreme Court has refused to set aside a provision in the election law that allows candidates to contest polls from two constituencies simultaneously.

Background: The petition filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, represented by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, had sought the court to declare Section 33(7) of the Representation of People Act invalid and ultra vires.

• Like one-person-one-vote, one-candidate-one-constituency is the dictum of democracy.
• Section 33(7) of the Act allows a person to contest a general election or a group of by-elections or biennial elections from two constituencies.
• But the court chose to leave the issue to the wisdom of the Parliament.

In 2018, the government had objected to the petition in court.

• It had argued that law cannot curtail the right of a candidate to contest elections and curtail the polity’s choice of candidates.
• The government had further told the Supreme Court that one-candidate-one-constituency restriction would require a legislative amendment. It had supported Section 33 (7).
• Before the amendment, candidates could contest from any number of constituencies. The government had said the restriction to two constituencies was reasonable enough, and there was no need to change the law now.

The Election Commission had, in an affidavit in 2018, supported the petition. It had informed the Supreme Court that it had proposed an amendment to Section 33(7) in July 2004.

• There have been cases where a person contests election from two constituencies, and wins from both.
• In such a situation he vacates the seat in one of the two constituencies.
• The consequence is that a by-election would be required from one constituency involving avoidable expenditure on the conduct of that bye-election.
• Conclusion:
  • Law should be amended to provide that a person cannot contest from more than one constituency at a time.
  • A candidate should deposit an amount of ₹5 lakh for contesting in two constituencies in an Assembly election or ₹10 lakh in a general election.
  • The amount would be used to cover the expenses for a by-election in the eventuality that he or she was victorious in both constituencies and had to relinquish one.

Source: The Hindu

GS-III

Context

As per a new study, researchers are examining the fortress wall of Xi’an, an ancient city in China, by using tiny outer space particles called muons that can penetrate hundreds of metres of stone surfaces.

What are Muons?

• Muons are subatomic particles raining from space.
• The muon was discovered as a constituent of cosmic-ray particle “showers” in 1936 by the American physicists Carl D. Andersonand Seth Neddermeyer.
• They are created when the particles in Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays — clusters of high-energy particles that move through space at just below the speed of light.
• It has two forms, the negatively charged muon and its positively charged antiparticle.
• These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive. Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”.
• Muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos
• They are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.

What is muon tomography?

• Although muon tomography was first used in the 1960s, it has only recently gained widespread use among researchers, particularly in archaeology.
• It is conceptually similar to X-ray but capable of scanning much larger and wider structures, owing to the penetration power of muons.
• All that is required is to place a muon detector underneath, within, or near the object of interest.
• The detector then tracks the number of muons going through the object from different directions, to form a three-dimensional image.
• The image is then compared with a muon image of the “free sky.” This indicates how many muons have been blocked. The final picture is essentially a shadow of the object, in the light of cosmic muons.”

Source: The Hindu

Context

Recently, scientists have fashioned a previously unknown form of ice – one that might exist on our solar system’s icy moons.

About Medium-density amorphous ice:

• The researchers employed a process called ball milling to vigorously shake ordinary ice together with steel balls in a container cooled to minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-200 degrees Celsius).
• This yielded what they called “medium-density amorphous ice,” or MDA, which looked like a fine white powder.

What is amorphous ice?

• Amorphous ice consists of water molecules arranged in a disordered state, with no large-scale regularity to their orientations or positions.
• This kind of ice is most often found in space.
• Scientists have identified 20 different forms of crystalline ice and three forms of amorphous ice – one low density (discovered in the 1930s), one high density (discovered in the 1980s), and the new one in between. 

Source: The Hindu