Science & Technology
Aditi Urja Sanch

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about DME+ about Aditi Urja Sanch)
What's the NEWS
The Union Minister of Science and Technology inaugurated the DME fired "Aditi Urja Sanch" unit along with the DME-LPG blended fuel cylinders


Know! about Dimethyl ether (DME)

• Dimethyl ether (DME) is an ultra-clean fuel.
• CSIR-NCL has developed nation's first kind of DME pilot plant with 20-24Kg/day capacity.
• The conventional LPG burner is not suitable for DME combustion as DME density is different than LPG.
• To address this issue, CSIR- NCL's "ADITI URJA SANCH" has come up with a helpful, innovative setup.
• The new Burner is fully designed and fabricated by NCL for DME, DME -LPG blended mixtures and LPG combustion.

Salient features of newly designed Burner are:
a. The new design is efficient for both DME and the blend of DME and LPG.
b. Novel design and flexible air ingress.
c. The new nozzle design allows optimum oxygen ingress for combustion
d. The angles at which nozzles are placed maximize the heat transfer area across the utensils.
e. Optimum flame velocity can be obtained.
f. The length of the flame (high, low, and medium) can be adjusted by altering the oxygen ingress.
g. The experiment shows that it increases the heat transfer rate as well.

Know! more about DME

• A clean cooking fuel combination of DME-LPG also safeguards the well-being of women and children.
• The DME process technology is economical, cost-effective, and scalable with in-situ product purification as well as a heat integration unit that produces pure DME.
• This technology developed by CSIR-NCL at present has the capacity of 20-24 kg/ day DME production. It is to be scaled up to 0.5 Ton per day through the CSIR-FTC project.
• The newly designed stove can burn with up to 30 % DME blended with LPG or 100% DME as fuel.
• A 20% DME blending with LPG, with fewer infrastructure changes, is expected to result in substantial savings annually.
• The DME from Methanol process developed by CSIR-NCL is producing 20-24 kg/ day.
• This economical, cost-effective process will be scaled up to 0.5 Ton per day through CSIR-FTC project. CSIR-NCL plans under "Aditi UrjaSanch" to launch in future industrial burners for low emission, DME/ DME blended fuel for automobiles and stationery power.

Science & Technology
National Super Computing Mission (NSM)
Relevance in - Prelims ( all about National Super Computing Mission (NSM) + GS III awareness in the field of science and technology
Know! all about NSM

• The National Super Computing Mission (NSM) is rapidly boosting high power computing in the country through its various phases to meet the increasing computational demands of academia, researchers, MSMEs, and startups in areas like oil exploration, flood prediction as also genomics, and drug discovery.
• With the infrastructure planned in NSM Phase-I already installed and much of Phase-II in place, the network of supercomputers through the country will soon reach to around 16 Petaflops (PF). Phase-III, to be initiated in January 2021, will take the computing speed to around 45 Petaflops.
• NSM is jointly steered by the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• Param Shivay, the first supercomputer assembled indigenously, was installed in IIT (BHU), followed by Param Shakti and Param Brahma at IIT-Kharagpur and IISER, Pune, respectively.

Supercomputing Infrastructure

• MoUs have been signed with total 14 premier institutions of India for establishing Supercomputing Infrastructure with Assembly and Manufacturing in India.
• These include IITs, NITs, National Labs, and IISERs.
• Some of these have already been installed, and some more will be done by December this year.
• The three phases will provide access to High-Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities to around 75 institutions and more than thousands of active researchers, academicians working through Nation Knowledge Network (NKN) - the backbone for supercomputing systems.
• HPC and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have converged together.
• A 100 AI PF Artificial Intelligence supercomputing system is being created and installed in C-DAC, which can handle incredibly large-scale AI workloads increasing the speed of computing-related to AI several times.
• The mission has also created the next generation of supercomputer experts by training more than 2400 supercomputing manpower and faculties till date.

Indigenous capability

• India has developed an Indigenous server (Rudra), which can meet the HPC requirements of all governments and PSUs. This is the first time that a server system was made in India, along with the full software stack developed by C-DAC.
• Experts said that the pace at which things are moving forward, we may soon have the motherboards and sub-systems manufactured in India, making the supercomputers indigenously designed and manufactured.

Prelims Factoids
Moushik
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Moushik)
What's the NEWS

• Indian Institute of Technology Madras researchers have booted up a microprocessor ‘Moushik'.

Know! about Moushik

• Moushik, a processor-cum-system on a chip that can cater to the rapidly-growing IoT devices, was conceptualised, designed and developed at Pratap Subrahmanyam Centre for Digital Intelligence and Secure Hardware Architecture (PS-CDISHA) of RISE group, Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the institute.
• The project was funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
• The three steps in the making of a microprocessor such as design, fabrication and post-silicon boot-up were taken up in India.
• The design of the microprocessor, motherboard printed circuit board design, assembly and post-silicon boot-up were done at IIT Madras.
• The foundry-specific back-end design and fabrication was undertaken at Semi-Conductor Laboratory of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Chandigarh and manufacturing of this motherboard was done at Bengaluru.
• Shakthi Moushik SOC will constitute the heart of an indigenously-developed motherboard called Ardonyx 1.0.
• The field application of Moushik includes smart cards, such as credit and debit cards; ID cards; travel cards for Metros and driving licences; electronic voting machines; office management systems including attendance, surveillance cameras and safe locks; personalised health management systems; consumer electronics, including washing machines and water pump monitoring systems.

Culture
Azad Hind Government
Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Azad Hind Fauj) + Mains ( GS I India's freedom struggle)
What's the NEWS

• Union Minister of State for Culture and Tourism attends Commemoration of '77th Year of Formation of Azad Hind Government' at Red Fort, Delhi
• Next year the nation will celebrate the 75th anniversary of freedom and the year will also mark the 125th birth anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose.
• The nodal agency for celebrating both these occasions is Culture Ministry

Know! all about Azad Hind Fauj

• The Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) was an Indian provisional government established in Japanese occupied Singapore during World War II.
• It was created in October 1943 and supported by-as well as largely dependent on-the Empire of Japan.
• It was a part of a political movement originating in the 1940s outside India with the purpose of allying with the Axis powers to liberate India from British rule.
• It was established by Indian nationalists in exile during the latter part of the Second World War in Singapore with monetary, military and political assistance from Imperial Japan.
• Founded on 21 October 1943, the government was inspired by the concepts of Subhas Chandra Bose who was also the leader of the government and Head of State.
• The government of Azad Hind had its own currency, court and civil code
• Japan also handed over nominal authority of the Japanese occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1943, though the government continued to be dependent on Japanese support.
• The INA had its first major engagement at the Battle of Imphal where, under the command of the Japanese Fifteenth Army, it breached the British defences in Kohima

Economy
IFSCA prescribes regulatory framework for REITs and InvITs in IFSC

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about IFSCA + REITs and InvITs ) + Mains ( GS III Economic development)
What's the NEWS

• The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), has prescribed the regulatory framework for Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) in IFSC.
• The REITs and InvITs registered in IFSC have been permitted to invest in real estate assets and infrastructure projects respectively in IFSC, India and other foreign jurisdictions, which is in line with the framework provided in the global financial centres.
• Additionally, the REITs and InvITs that are already listed in any of the permissible jurisdictions other than IFSC or India have been permitted to list and trade on the recognised stock exchanges in IFSC, subject to compliance with their respective laws of home jurisdiction.

Know! about REITs and InvITs

• Real estate investment trusts (REITs) and infrastructure investment trusts (InvITs) are innovative vehicles that allow developers to monetise revenue-generating real estate and infrastructure assets, while enabling investors or unit holders to invest in these assets without actually owning them.
• Such monetisation benefits developers by allowing them to release capital for funding new infrastructure/real estate projects, and provides liquidity to investors or unit holders as the units of the trust are listed on exchanges.
• Apart from these, REITs and InvITs enjoy favourable tax treatment, including exemption from dividend distribution tax and relaxation of capital gains tax.
• CRISIL has developed specific criteria for rating of REITs and InvITs that focus on assessment of quality of the underlying asset portfolio and cash flows, take into account the leverage, experience of the investment manager, risk management policies, etc.
• CRISIL assigned its first InvIT rating of "CCR AAA" to India Grid Trust, an InvIT established by Sterlite Power Grid Ventures.

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