The Concept Building

Blue Tide The tide that produces a fluorescent blue hue (bioluminescence) appeared on the Juhu beach in Mumbai and Devgad beach in Sindhudurg along Maharashtra’s coastline recently. Bioluminescence is a natural phenomenon, characterized by the emission of light produced by phytoplankton's (microscopic marine plants), commonly known as dinoflagellates . The light is produced through a series of chemical reactions due to luciferase (oxidative enzymes) protein. A bioluminescent dinoflagellate can make a flash of light inside its cell when disturbed. In the case of dinoflagellates, this luciferin has a structure very similar to that of chlorophyll. The dinoflagellates are single-celled eukaryotes constituting the phylum Dinoflagellata. Usually considered algae, dinoflagellates are mostly marine plankton. Some of the brightest kinds of dinoflagellates leading to visible blooms are Noctiluca and Protoperidinium , which can eat other microorganisms, and Lingulodinium (Gonyaulax) or Pyro...

  The Gupkar Declaration was a joint resolution signed on August 4, 2019, at Gupkar Residence by the major political parties in Jammu and Kashmir to oppose the Centre's decision on abrogation of Article 370 which granted a special status to the erstwhile state (now a Union Territory). Gupkar Residence is the house of National Conference president Farooq Abdullah at Gupkar Road in Srinagar.   The Gupkar Declaration is a political movement by parties like National Conference, Indian National Congress, Peoples Democratic Party, Communist Party of India (M), Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference and Awami National Conference. The parties issued a joint statement later on defending Article 370.   Gupkar Declaration II A year after the abrogation of Article 370, leaders from the six political parties once again met on August 22, 2020, and signed the Gupkar Declaration and resolved to adhere to the 2019 declaration. Objectives of Gupkar Declaration The objective is to boycott el...

Microgravity is the condition in which people or objects appear to be weightless. The effects of microgravity can be seen when astronauts and objects float in space. Microgravity can be experienced in other ways, as well. "Micro-" means "very small," so microgravity refers to the condition where gravity seems to be very small. In microgravity, astronauts can float in their spacecraft - or outside, on a spacewalk. Heavy objects move around easily. For example, astronauts can move equipment weighing hundreds of pounds with their fingertips. Microgravity is sometimes called "zero gravity," but this is misleading. Many people mistakenly think that gravity does not exist in space. However, typical orbital altitudes for human spaceflight vary between 120 - 360 miles above Earth's surface. The gravitational field is still quite strong in these regions, since this is only about 1.8 percent the distance to the moon. Earth's gravitational field at about 250 ...

Contour Bunding involves the placement of lines of stones along the natural rises of a landscape, and Contour farming. These techniques help to capture and hold rainfall before it can become runoff. They also inhibit wind erosion by keeping the soil. Contour bunds is a traditional low-cost method of soil conservation suitable for sloping land; it promotes water retention and helps prevent erosion. Contour bunding is a proven sustainable land management practice for marginal, sloping, and hilly land where the soil productivity is very low. Contour farming is used on sloping land where crops are grown. Contour farming is most effective on slopes between 2 and 10 percent.

What is the Leonid Meteor Shower? The Leonids emerge from the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which requires 33 years to revolve once around the Sun. These meteors are bright and among the fastest moving– travelling at speeds of 71 km per second. Meteor showers are named after the constellation they appear to be coming from.  The Leonids originate from the constellation Leo the Lion– the groups of stars which form a lion’s mane . Meteors A meteor is a space rock—or meteoroid—that enters Earth's atmosphere. As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance—or drag—of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot. What we see is a "shooting star." That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere. When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower. What is a Meteor Shower? On its journey around the Sun, the Earth passes through large swathes of cosmic debris.  The debris is essentially the r...

What is Technical Recession? A technical recession is a term used to describe two consecutive quarters of decline in output. In the case of a nation’s economy, the term usually refers to back-to-back contractions in real GDP.  The ‘technical recession’ is mainly used by economists to capture the trend in GDP.  It is most often caused by a one-off event (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns imposed to combat it) and is generally shorter in duration. What is Recession? In the U.S., the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales”.  The policymakers and economists need to closely track data on unemployment, output in key sectors including industry and services (which has the largest share in India’s gross value added or...

What is Artificial Rain?  Clouds carry water, but sometimes water doesn’t reach where it’s needed on the ground.  It happens because the water molecules are not dense enough to feel Earth’s gravity. When the molecules huddle together, they form larger, heavier droplets. Eventually, they become heavy enough to fall to the ground as precipitation. The process of modifying the structure of clouds to increase the chance of rain is called cloud seeding. This rain is called artificial rain. Cloud Seeding  It involves modifying a cloud’s structure to increase the chance of precipitation. Cloud seeding adds small, ice-like particles to clouds. Usually, silver iodide particles are used. The foreign particles which are drenched over these clouds can be Dry Ice(solid carbon dioxide), Silver Iodide, Salt powder etc. These particles act as additional condensation nuclei. Unattached supercooled water vapour molecules in the clouds condense around these particles. Then, the condensed wa...

​​What is QR code actually and how it works? QR codes are a technology that appear everywhere from supermarket shelves and magazines to hiking trails and tombstones. QR (Quick Response) code is the trademark name for the two dimensional barcode system . It was originally invented in 1994 by Denso Wave , a Toyota subsidiary, as a way to track vehicles as they were assembled, and to scan components at high speeds. While Denso Wave does hold the patent on the technology, it has granted free licence on it, going so far as to publish the spec online, and allowing anyone to use it. The conventional one dimensional barcodes used on virtually every consumer product are mechanically scanned. That is, they're read by physically bouncing a narrow beam of light onto the code, which can be interpreted using the pattern of light reflected off the white gaps between the lines.

What is an orbit? An orbit is the curved path that an object in space (such as a star, planet, moon, asteroid or spacecraft) takes around another object due to gravity. Gravity causes objects in space that have mass to be attracted to other nearby objects. If this attraction brings them together with enough momentum, they can sometimes begin to orbit each other. Low Earth orbit (LEO) A low Earth orbit (LEO) is, as the name suggests, an orbit that is relatively close to Earth’s surface. It is normally at an altitude of less than 1000 km but could be as low as 160 km above Earth – which is low compared to other orbits, but still very far above Earth’s surface. Medium Earth orbit (MEO) Medium Earth orbit comprises a wide range of orbits anywhere between LEO and GEO. It is similar to LEO in that it also does not need to take specific paths around Earth, and it is used by a variety of satellites with many different applications. Polar orbit and Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) Polar orbits :...

  The PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) and GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) are two rocket launch systems developed by the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, to launch satellites into orbit.  The PSLV is the older of the two and the GSLV even inherits some of the technologies of the former in its design. Load capacity: The main reason behind the advent of the GSLV is the capability to lift greater loads into space. While the PSLV can only lift slightly over a ton of payload to GTO (Geostationary Transfer Orbit) , the GSLV is capable of lifting more than double that with a rated capacity of 2 to 2.5 tons.  One of the main reasons why the GSLV has such an increased load is its utilization of a cryogenic rocket engine for its last stage.  The cryogenic rocket engine provides more thrust than conventional liquid rocket engines but the fuel and oxidizer needs to be supercooled in order to keep them in a liquid state. In terms of the rocket :...

Our Sun is a huge ball of electrically-charged hot gas. This charged gas moves, generating a powerful magnetic field. The Sun's magnetic field goes through a cycle, called the solar cycle . Every 11 years or so, the Sun's magnetic field completely flips. This means that the Sun's north and south poles switch places. Then it takes about another 11 years for the Sun’s north and south poles to flip back again. The solar cycle affects activity on the surface of the Sun, such as sunspots which are caused by the Sun's magnetic fields. As the magnetic fields change, so does the amount of activity on the Sun's surface.

  NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered more than 1,000 planets and some are quite Earth-like. A group of astronomers of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found eight new planets orbiting their stars at distances compatible with liquid water.  The total number of potentially habitable “Goldilocks planets” are dozen now. The most terrestrial of the new worlds announced are a pair known as Kepler 438b and Kepler 442b , both orbiting stars slightly smaller, cooler and redder than our sun.  Kepler 438b is only 12 per cent larger than Earth in diameter and has a 35-day year; Kepler 442 is a third larger than Earth and has 112-day year. Goldilocks zone: It is the habitable zone around a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of orbiting planets Kepler mission : In 2009, NASA launched a spacecraft called Kepler to look for exoplanets . Kepler looked for planets in a wide range of sizes and orbits. And these pla...

Cyclone is a general term for a weather system in which winds rotate inwardly to an area of low atmospheric pressure. For large weather systems, the circulation pattern is in a counterclockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere and a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere. India’s east and west coasts are prone to cyclones with the maximum associated hazards—rain, heavy winds and storm surge— faced by coastal districts of West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.  Cyclones in the North Indian Ocean are bi-modal in nature, that is, they occur during two seasons— April to June (pre-monsoon) and October to December (post-monsoon). Of these, May and November remain the most conducive for the development of cyclones. October to December period is among the favourable months for the development of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. This year, however, October passed without witnessing a cyclonic storm. IMD officials have attributed it to the weak La Nina conditi...

Table salt and sea salt have the same chemical composition, but different processing methods give them a slightly different taste and texture. Sea salt is produced by evaporating the water from seawater or saltwater lakes, leaving behind salt but also small amounts of minerals such as magnesium, calcium and potassium, which can affect flavour. The large salt crystals give it a relatively coarse texture. Table salt, on the other hand, is typically mined from salt deposits. It is washed, purified and stripped of any contaminants. Additives are then added to prevent it from clumping. Iodised salt also contains extra potassium iodide.

Bioplastics are biodegradable materials that come from renewable sources and can be used to reduce the problem of plastic waste that is suffocating the planet and contaminating the environment. Plastic is the third most commonly used petroleum derivative in the world. As an alternative, the use of bioplastics is being promoted, consisting in obtaining natural polymers from agricultural, cellulose or potato and corn starch waste. These are 100% degradable, equally resistant and versatile, already used in agriculture, textile industry, medicine and, over all, in t he container and packaging market, and biopolymers are already becoming popular in cities throughout Europe and the United States for ecological reasons: they are known as PHA. These are polyesters produced by fermenting raw vegetable materials with a series of bacterial strains. For example, PHAs can be used for injection molding to build automobile parts and for many other uses. Specifically, PHA (PolyHydroxyAlkanoate) is ex...