• Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has recently launched the Aahaar Kranti Movement.

Aahaar Kranti

• The mission is aimed to spread the message of the need for a nutritionally balanced diet and to understand the importance of accessible to all local fruits and vegetables.
• Vijnana Bharati (Vibha) and Global Indian Scientists’ and Technocrats’ Forum (GIST) have come together to launch the mission with the motto of “Uttam Aahaar Uttam Vichaar” or “Good Diet-Good Cognition”.
• The programme will focus on training teachers, who, in turn, will pass on the message to the multitudes of students, and through them to their families and finally the society at large.
• Such a strategy was adopted for the eradication of Polio and it turned out to be a grand success.

Background

• The movement is designed to address the peculiar problem being faced by India and the world called ‘hunger and diseases in abundance’.
• Studies estimate that India produces as much as two times the amount of calories that it consumes.
• However, many in the country are still malnourished.
• The root cause of this strange phenomenon is a lack of nutritional awareness in all sections of our society.

• NITI Aayog, in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, Ashoka University launched Poshan Gyan, a national digital repository on health and nutrition recently.

Poshan Gyan

• It is a collection of effective communication materials created by government agencies and other development organizations to tackle the challenges of knowledge awareness and behaviour change in the nutrition sector.
• The materials cover a range of topics, such as antenatal care, complementary feeding, adolescent health, diet diversity, anemia prevention etc.
• This repository is curated and maintained by NITI Aayog in joint efforts with other development partners.
• Poshan Gyan is designed to be accessible for everybody to use - whether frontline health workers, community leaders, teachers or anyone else seeking to improve nutritional outcomes.

• The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science & Technology has recently announced that it has approved additional funding towards clinical studies of India's first of its kind mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine - HGCO19, developed by Pune-based biotechnology company Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd.
• This funding has been awarded under the Mission COVID Suraksha - The Indian COVID-19 Vaccine Development Mission by DBT's dedicated Mission Implementation Unit at Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) after multiple rounds of evaluation of all the applications.

Advantages over traditional vaccines

Safety

• Unlike live-attenuated or viral-vectored vaccines, mRNA is non-infectious and poses no concern for DNA integration—mainly because it cannot enter the nucleus which contains DNA.
• Other strategies such as protein-based or inactivated vaccines also require chemicals and cell cultures to produce.
• mRNA is made through a cell-independent process and does not require inactivation; thus, it poses no safety concerns due to contamination with toxic agents.

Efficacy

• mRNA is rapidly degraded in the body, and cells don't readily take up foreign mRNA.
• Recent technology has modified the mRNA molecule to make it more stable and packaged the molecules in fats (called lipids), increasing cell delivery efficiency.
• These advances increase the amount of spike protein produced on your cells, thereby stimulating a more effective immune response.

Production

• They are fully synthetic and do not require a host for growth, e.g., eggs or bacteria.
• It can be quickly designed and scaled up, if necessary.
• The manufacturing is sequence-independent, which makes it highly adaptable to different pathogens.
• The cost is also lower than other platforms and will continue to decrease as the technology expands.

Infant Toddler and Caregiver-friendly Neighbourhoods (ITCN) Training and Capacity Building Programme

• The programme was launched virtually by National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) in partnership with Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF) recently.
• The Programme is designed to help build capacities of city officials and young professionals for developing young children and family-friendly neighbourhoods within cities in India. 
• The programme is a continuation of the long-term partnership between NIUA and BvLF to scale up the efforts and embed the lessons of ITC needs at neighbourhood level within the city level programmes.

Raisina Dialogue, 2021

• The 6th Edition of the prestigious Raisina Dialogue was inaugurated recently.
• Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi delivered a video address at the Inaugural Session of the Raisina Dialogue in virtual format, along with Chief Guests H.E. Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda and H.E. Mette Frederiksen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
• The theme for the 2021 Edition is ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control.

Raisina Dialogue

• It is India’s premier conference on geopolitics and geo-economics committed to addressing the most challenging issues facing the global community.
• Every year, leaders in politics, business, media, and civil society converge in New Delhi to discuss the state of the world and explore opportunities for cooperation on a wide range of contemporary matters.
• The conference is hosted by the Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

e-SANATA

• The term e-SANTA was coined for the web portal, meaning Electronic Solution for Augmenting NaCSA farmers' Trade in Aquaculture.
• It is a Digital Bridge to end the market divide and will act as an alternative marketing tool between farmers & buyers by eliminating middlemen.
• The platform provides detailed specification of each product listing and it is backed by an end to end electronic payment system with NaCSA as an Escrow agent.
• National Centre for Sustainable Aquaculture (NaCSA) is an extension arm of Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA).

Narrow line Seyfert1 Galaxies

• Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), , in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, studied around 25,000 luminous Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and found a unique object that emits high-energy gamma rays located at a high red-shift.
• They identified it as a gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxy, which is a rare entity in space.
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a major optical imaging and spectroscopic survey of astronomical objects that have been in operation for the last 20 years was used for the study.
• As of today, gamma-ray emission has been detected in about a dozen NLS1 galaxies, which are a separate class of AGN identified four decades ago.
• All of them are at lower redshifts, and no method was available to date to find NLS1 at higher redshifts.
• This opens up a new way to find gamma-ray emitting NLS1 galaxies in the early Universe.
• For the research, the scientists used one of the largest ground-based telescopes in the world, the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope located in Hawaii, USA.

Alkaloids

• Alkaloids are a huge group of naturally occurring organic compounds which contain nitrogen atom or atoms (amino or amido in some cases) in their structures.
• These nitrogen atoms cause alkalinity of these compounds.
• Well-known alkaloids include morphine, strychnine, quinine, ephedrine, and nicotine.
• Recently central government has decided to rope in the private sector to commence production of concentrated poppy straw (CPS) from India’s opium crop to boost the yield of alkaloids, used for medical purposes and exported to several countries.

Gyanvapi Mosque

• The mosque was built during the reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1669 CE.
• It is a Jama Masjid located in north of Dashashwamedh Ghat, near Lalita Ghat along the river Ganga.
• Recently, Varanasi civil court ordered Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a survey to ascertain whether the Gyanvapi mosque was built over a demolished Hindu temple.

Gangavaram Port

• It was has a depth of 21m, located in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
• It is managed by Gangavaram Port Ltd., a special-purpose company floated by Mr. DVS Raju, who serves as its chairman and managing director.
• The company is owned by the DVS Raju Group (58.1%), Adani Ports (31.5%) and the Andhra Pradesh Government (10.4%).
• Recently Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Adani ports acquisition of 89.6% stake in Gangavaram Port Ltd.