Prelim Bits 11-03-2018

Multilateral Air Exercise ‘Samvedna’

• A Multilateral Air Force exercise, ‘Ex Samvedna’, is being spearheaded by Indian Air Force.
• ‘Samvedna’ means ‘Empathy’ and it will ensure better understanding and sharing of response procedures between a numbers of friendly neighboring nations.
• It is the first composite HADR Air exercise in the South Asian region.
• The focus is on practicing Air Force centric HADR solutions in a Multi-national cooperative Disaster Management environment.
• Air Forces of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, UAE and Myanmar had committed resources and personnel for the exercise.

Kidney related disease

• The Indian Council of Medical Research (IMA) said the prevalence of kidney-related diseases has almost doubled in the past decade and is expected to rise further.
• The risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD) is at least as high in women as in men.
• The number of women on dialysis in India is lower than the number of men.
• The IMA launched a Kidney Disease Prevention project for screening and creating awareness drives to identify the population at risk.
• Indian Medical Association is a representative voluntary organization of Doctors of Modern Scientific System of Medicine.

Threat to Coral Sediments

• According to journal Science, ocean acidification is eroding the coral reef systems.
• Coral reefs are formed by the calcium carbonate skeletons and also carbonate sediments which accumulate on them over thousands of years.
• Calcium carbonate skeletons are created by tiny animals called coral polyps.
• Ocean acidification is lowering of sea water’s pH when it absorbs the excess, human-caused carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• It prevents polyps from building their stony skeletons.
• Coral reefs span 3,062 sq. km in India.
• Many coral species are included in the Schedule 1 of the Wildlife protection Act.

BioNEST

• University of Hyderabad (UoH) had launched the Bio-Incubator to facilitate start-ups and entrepreneurship ventures.
• The BioNEST (Bio-Incubator Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies) was inaugurated on the occasion of `National Science Day’.
• It was supported by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a unit of the Department of Biotechnology.
• The BioNEST will incubate start-ups and entrepreneurs in the life sciences, biotechnology, healthcare and allied areas of research.

Initiatives launched on International women’s day

Udyam Sakhi Portal

1. It was for Women Entrepreneurs
2. On the occasion of International Women’s Day the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises(MSME) launched the portal for women entrepreneurs of India
3. The portal is a network for nurturing entrepreneurship and creating business models for low cost products.
4. The portal provides assistance through its platform for entrepreneurship learning tools, incubation facility, training programs

Women Entrepreneurship Platform

1. It was launched by Niti Ayog.
2. The initiative is aimed at building an ecosystem for women across India to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations, scale-up innovative initiatives and chalk-out sustainable, long-term strategies for their businesses.
3. the three pillars on which WEP is built:

1. Ichha Shakti (motivating aspiring entrepreneurs to start their enterprise)
2. Gyaan Shakti (providing knowledge and ecosystem support to women entrepreneurs to help them foster entrepreneurship)
3. Karma Shakti (providing hands-on support to entrepreneurs in setting-up and scaling up businesses).

WHO new guidelines on Tobacco Products

• World Health Organization has launched new guidelines on the role that tobacco product regulations can play.
• The focus is on reducing tobacco demand, saving lives and raising revenues for health services to treat tobacco-related diseases.
• The new guide, titled ‘Tobacco product regulation: Building laboratory testing capacity’ was included in the publication that was launched in the 17^th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, 2018.
• The new guidelines provide practical, stepwise approaches to implementing tobacco testing

Source: PIB, The Hindu, Business Standard