• The Odisha Institute of Maritime and South East Asian Studies (OIMSEAS), an archaeological wing of the State government, has recently discovered a 4,000-year-old settlement and ancient artifacts in Durgadevi village in Remuna tehsil, Balasore district, Odisha.
• According to the ASI, the site has a circular mud fortification of about 4.9 km between the Sona River to the south and the Burahabalang River on its north-eastern margin.
• Archaeologists have come across distinct traces of three cultural phases at the excavation site

1. The Chalcolithic (2000 BCE to 1000 BCE)
2. The Iron Age (1000 BCE to 400 BCE) and
3. The Early Historic Period (400 BCE to 200 BCE)

• The Vice President of India has recently visited CCMB’s LaCONES (Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species) facility.

Project LaCONES

• In order to support effective conservation measures include both in situ and ex situ using biotechnological tools and techniques in an innovative manner, LaCONES was established.
• Project LaCONES was established in 1998 with the support from Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT), Central Zoo Authority of India (CZA), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Government of Andhra Pradesh.
• The laboratory was itself established in 2007.
• This laboratory would strive to promote excellence in conservation biotechnology and serve for conservation of endangered wildlife in India.
• National Wildlife Genetic Resource Bank (NWGRB) was established in 2018 at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology’s (CCMB’s) Laboratory of Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES) facility in Hyderabad, Telanagana.
• It is India’s first genetic resource bank where genetic material will be stored for posterity which will further the cause of conservation of endangered and protected animals.

• The Second Gender Samvaad was recently organised by the Ministry of Rural Development.
• This edition of the Gender Samvaad, held virtually, focused on the best practices of various states and from women’s collectives in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

Gender Samvaad Initiative

• It is a joint attempt between DAY-NRLM and the Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE).
• It aims to create a common platform to share experiences emerging from this effort and to generate greater awareness on gender related interventions under DAY-NRLM across the country.

• The Asian elephant is a charismatic species with a long history of co-existence with humans.
• Yet works on male societies of wild elephants based on long-term observations are rare.
• To fill this gap, researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), an autonomous Institute of the Department of Science and Technology studied associations of male Asian elephants Nagarahole and Bandipur National Parks.

Highlights of the Study

• The time spent by male Asian elephants in all-male and mixed-sex groups depended on the age of the male.
• Adult Asian male elephants preferred to spend their time alone than in mixed-sex or in all-male groups.
• Besides, old males were found mostly in the company of their age peers and less frequently with young males (15 to 30 years of age).
• Also, young males did not disproportionately initiate associations with old males.
• Adult male Asian elephants are less social than females.
• They enter musth -- a mate-searching strategy for old (above 30 years of age) males, annually.
• The researchers hypothesised that when the adult males enter musth, dominance relationships may affect the number of mating opportunities they procure.
• Hence, it might be more crucial for old males than for young males to test strength with each other and settle dominance relationships during their nonmusth time.
• On the other hand, since young males associated less with females during musth than non-musth time, they might also be using their non-musth time to search for mating opportunities.

• The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has recently launched the Global Peace Index (GPI), 2021.

Global Peace Index (GPI), 2021

• It is the 15th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness.
• It was prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).
• Iceland remains the most peaceful country in the world, a position it has held since 2008.
• It is joined at the top of the index by New Zealand, Denmark, Portugal, and Slovenia.
• Afghanistan is the least peaceful country in the world for the fourth consecutive year, followed by Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, and Iraq.
• India has improved its ranking from 137 to 135 out of 163 countries.

Heat Dome

• The causes of heat dome can be understood by considering Pacific Ocean to a large swimming pool in which the heater is turned on.
• The portions of the pool close to the heating jets will warm up faster once the heater is on and therefore, the temperature in that area will be higher.
• In the same way, the western Pacific Ocean’s temperatures have increased in the past few decades and are relatively more than the temperature in the eastern Pacific.
• The strong change in ocean temperature from the west to the east is what a team of scientists believe is the reason for the heat dome.

LEAF Coalition

• It is an ambitious new public-private initiative designed to accelerate climate action by providing results-based finance to countries committed to protecting their tropical forests.
• It is an initiative with initial participation from the governments of Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• It is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.

Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules 2020

• In India, the rights of transgender persons are governed by the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020.
• Under the Rules, an application to declare gender is to be made to the District Magistrate, Parents can also make an application on behalf of their child.
• District Magistrate will “subject to the correctness of the applicant’s particulars, get the application processed based on the affidavit submitted declaring the gender identity of any person, without any medical or physical examination.

Taal Volcano

• It is located on south of Manila in Philippines.
• It is in a caldera system located in southern Luzon Island.
• It is one of the most active volcanoes in a nation hit periodically by eruptions and earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire".
• It is formed by the subduction of the Eurasian Plate underneath the Philippine Mobile Belt.

Trojan Asteroids

• Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, much smaller than planets.
• They are also called minor planets, Asteroids are divided into three classes.

1. First group of Asteroids found in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is estimated to contain somewhere between 1.1-1.9 million asteroids.
2. The second group is that of trojans, which are asteroids that share an orbit with a larger planet.
3. The third classification is Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA), which have orbits that pass close by the Earth.