ANZUS

• Countries - Australia, New Zealand, US (ANZUS)
• It was a trilateral defence agreement signed in 1951 to protect the security of the Pacific.
• It was an arrangement made after the Second World War and the early stages of the Cold War.
• It was further ratified by the United States and entered into force in 1952.
• The members met annually to discuss their shared interests and concerns.
• In 1984, New Zealand declared its country a nuclear-free zone and refused to allow U.S. nuclear-powered submarines to visit its ports.
• On 1986, the United States suspended its treaty obligations toward New Zealand and reduced the two countries military ties.
• The 3 nations remained formal parties to the treaty, but ANZUS was inoperative.

Meiogyne Arunachalensis

• Genus - Meiogyne
• It is distributed throughout South and Southeast Asia and includes approximately 33 described taxa.
• Habitat - It is the first record of the genus from Northeast India and the eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot.
• It is also found in intervening districts of Lower Dibang Valley and Lohit, and also in northern parts of Myanmar in areas neighbouring the Namdapha National Park.
• It is the largest species of the genus described so far in terms of tree height and girth of the tree trunk.
• The species has morphological similarity with Meiogyne maxiflora, a species distributed in Thailand, but it differs in a number of vegetative and reproductive characteristics.

Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE)

• It is a field experiment that exposes tropical trees to sequester future CO2 concentrations in Amazon forest, Brazil.
• It is led by the National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA) along with a range of partners.
• It is to increase the functioning of the world's largest tropical forest in light of climate change and to apply the knowledge gained for steering regional policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation.
• It have been used successfully in several locations including
  • Duke Forest,
  • North Carolina,
  • USA,
  • Staffordshire,
  • UK (BIFoR FACE) and New South Wales,        
  • Australia (EucFACE).

Mandala in art

• Mandala patterns are a centuries-old motif that are used to depict the cosmos, and have been adapted by artists the world over, each of whom have added their own interpretation and painted it as their own.
• Literally meaning “circle” or “centre” in Sanskrit, mandala is defined by a geometric configuration that usually incorporates the circular shape in some form.
• While it can also be created in the shape of a square, a mandala pattern is essentially interconnected. It is believed to be rooted in Buddhism, appearing in the first century BC in India.
• There are various elements incorporated within the mandala, each of which has its own meaning.
• For instance, the eight spokes of the wheel (the dharmachakra) represent the eightfold path of Buddhism (practices that lead to liberation from rebirth).
• The lotus flower depicts balance, and the sun represents the universe.
• Facing up, triangles represent action and energy, and facing down, they represent creativity and knowledge.

Gini coefficient

• It is often used as a gauge of economic inequality (income), measuring income distribution or, less commonly, wealth distribution among a population. The coefficient ranges from 0 (or 0%) to 1 (or 100%).
• A coefficient of zero indicates a perfectly equal distribution of income or wealth within a population.
• A coefficient of one represents a perfect inequality when one person in a population receives all the income, while other people earn nothing.
• A higher Gini index indicates greater inequality, with high income individuals receiving much larger percentages of the total income of the population.
• The Gini coefficient is usually defined mathematically based on the Lorenz curve, which plots the proportion of the total income of the population (y-axis) that is cumulatively earned by the bottom x% of the population.