Department of Financial Services under Ministry of Finance has launched Financial Inclusion Index (FDI).
The index has taken into account three factors. They are,
Access to financial services
Usage of financial services and
Quality of financial services.
The index will be a measure of access and usage of various financial products and services.
The services includes savings, remittances, credit, insurance and pension products.
It enables fulfilment of G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators requirements.
Human Capital Score
A recent study that ranks countries for their levels of spending on education and health care has been published in Lancet.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the request of the World Bank.
It is the first ever scientific study ranking countries for their levels of human capital.
Finland topped the score and turkey showed the most dramatic increase in human capital between 1990 and 2016.
India ranks 158th in the world for its investments in education and health care. It was ranked 162 in 1990.
India is placed behind Sudan (ranked 157th) and ahead of Namibia (ranked 159th) in the list.
The U.S. is ranked 27th, while China is at 44th and Pakistan at 164th.
Countries in the South Asian region that have fared better than India in terms of human capital include Sri Lanka (102), Maldives (116), , Bhutan (133), Nepal (156).
Amitava Roy Panel
Supreme Court has recently set up a panel headed by retired SC Judge Amitava Roy Panel to look in to prison reforms and decongest crowded jails.
The panel will examine way and means to prevent violence against inmates, get the required legal aid and rehabilitate them.
It will also examine the feasibility of setting up more open prisons.
It will examine the functioning of undertrial review committees, availability of legal aid and advice, grant of remission, parole and furlough.
Young Asteroids
Brazilian scientists have recently identified four young asteroids which are less than 7 million years old.
It orbits between Mars and Jupiter as part of a grouping known as the Main Asteroid Belt.
The Main belt is an extraordinary niche of asteroids, with more than 700 known objects.
The key parameters used for identification are longitudes of pericentre and ascending node.
For a planet, comet or asteroid moving around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, the pericentre is the point at which it comes closest to the Sun.
The ascending node is the point at which the orbit crosses from the southern side of the ecliptic plane, to the northern side.
New Telescope in India
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) are developing a new gamma ray telescope in Ladakh.
It will be the second such telescope to be available globally.
The first one is in La Palma in Canary Islands set up jointly by Switzerland and Germany in 2011.
It will be located near the High Altitude Gamma Ray (HAGAR) array at Hanle in Ladakh.
HAGAR houses the Indian Astronomical Observatory operated by Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.
It will work in tandem with MACE (Major Atmospheric Cerenkov Experiment), a gamma ray imaging telescope which is also under installation at Hanle.
It will be able to operate in bright environment like twilight hours and moon-lit nights, unlike traditional ones that operate only in dark hours of the night.
It will be used to observe and monitor spectacular celestial events like explosion of stars, falling of matter into black holes and collision of extraterrestrial objects better.
WAYU
It is a device developed by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur-based laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
It is to address air pollution at high traffic zones, which have lot of buildings in the neighbourhood leading to restricted flow of air called "Street Canyon" effect.
Working - A fan sucks air around the device and pollutants like dust and particulate matter are separate using three filters of different dimensions.
The air is led into a specially designed chamber where carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons content in the air are oxidized.
After oxidation, the pollutants will turn into less harmful carbon dioxide using activated carbon coated with titanium dioxide.
The purified air is then ejected with force into the atmosphere so as to help dilute pollutant content in the outside air.
