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Prelim Bits 04-03-2017

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March 04, 2017

INS Viraat

  • INS Viraat, the second aircraft carrier in the Indian naval fleet is soon to be decommissioned. INS Vikrant is India's first aircraft carrier.
  • INS Viraat is the second centaur class aircraft carrier in service.
  • Earlier known as HMS Hermes, it served Royal Navy of UK from 1950 to 1980's and later re-commissioned in Indian Navy in 1987.
  • It holds the Guinness Record for being the oldest-serving warship.
  • It played a pivotal role in the Indian peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka and the 1999 Kargil War.
  • It also took part in major operations like Op. Parakram – a India Pakistan in the LOC  and Op. Pawan by IPKF to take control of Jaffna from the LTTE as part of the Indo-Sri Lankan accord.
  • The latest deployment of Viraat was in the International Fleet Review (IFR-2016) at Visakhapatnam.

MAVEN

  • The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), NASA's spacecraft, has been orbiting mars for the past two years.
  • MAVEN is studying Mars’ upper atmosphere, ionosphere and its interactions with the sun and solar wind.
  • An important aspect of the MAVEN mission is studying how early Mars lost much of its atmosphere.
  • This atmospheric loss may have been partially responsible for Mars’ transition from a planet capable of supporting liquid surface water to the dry, desert world we know today.
  • Recently, MAVEN has avoided its head-on collision with phobos, the natural satellite of Mars.
  • The other one is Deimos. Phobos is the innermost and larger of the two.

Ochre Colored Pottery (OCP) Culture

  • When the Indus Valley Civilization was flourishing, a parallel culture called OCP Culture is thought to have co-existed in the fertile plains between the Ganga and the Yamuna.
  • The people who used ochre pottery and their culture are specific to the doab region.
  • The first remnants of OCP culture were found in Hastinapur, in Meerut district, in 1951 and later in Eta district of UP.
  • OCP marked the last stage of the North Indian Bronze Age and was succeeded by the Iron Age.
  • Pottery Culture in Ancient India -
  1. Indus Valley Civilization - Burnt Black Painted Red Ware
  2. Iron Age (1000 BC) - Painted Grey Ware in North India and the Gangetic plain and Red Polished ware in Gujarat Area.

Nasi II island

  • The island is part of Gahirmatha Scantuary in Odisha, one of the world's largest nesting ground of olive ridley turtles.
  • There are seven species of marine turtles in  the world.
  • The Olive Ridley is the smallest of the sea turtles and omnivorous in diet.
  • The olive ridleys are found only in warmer waters, including the southern Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.
  • They are known for their behavior of synchronized nesting in mass numbers, termed arribadas.
  • They nests twice/thrice in a year.
  • They are listed as Vulnerable in IUCN Red List and in Appendix I of CITES.
  • Turtles are adapted to aquatic life whereas Tortoises are almost exclusively land-dwelling animals.
  • The term “terrapins” is sometimes used for turtles that are semi-aquatic.

 

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