DAY 120Quick read

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda includes important policy commitments and key deliverables in critical areas for sustainable development, including infrastructure, social protection and technology. There are agreements for international cooperation for financing of specific areas where significant investments are needed, such as in infrastructure for energy, transport.UNESCAP’s strategic focus is to deliver on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is reinforced and deepened by promoting regional cooperation and integration to advance responses to shared vulnerabilities, connectivity, financial cooperation and market integration.

India is home to the world’s third largest startup ecosystem, having added over 1,300 tech startups in 2019. Unicorns is a term to describe startups valued at $1 billion.NASSCOM has released a report ‘Indian Tech Start-up Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s’, describing India’s startup scenario. India’s newest unicorns include Delhivery, a logistics startup; Icertis, which provides cloud-based enterprise contract management; Dream11, a gaming startup; Druva, which provides cloud data protection and management.India now hosts 24 unicorns, the third-highest number of unicorns in a single country in the world

The main instrument of sterilisation used by the Reserve Bank is Open Market Operations (OMO). The Reserve Bank has conducted OMO for absorbing excess liquidity in the system through outright sale of securities.
Eg:- a U.S. investor looking to invest in India must use dollars to purchase rupees. If a lot of U.S. investors start buying up rupees, the rupee exchange rate will increase. At this point the Indian central bank can either let the fluctuation continue, which can drive up the price of Indian exports, or it can buy foreign currency with its reserves in order to drive down the exchange rate. If the central bank decides to buy foreign currency, it can attempt to offset the increase of rupees in the market by selling rupee-denominated government bonds.

Interest rates are very low in the liquidity trap. During a liquidity trap, consumers choose to avoid bonds and keep their funds in cash savings because of the prevailing belief that interest rates could soon rise. People are indifferent between bonds and cash because the rates of interest both financial instruments provide to their holder is practically equal. The interest on cash is zero and the interest on bonds is near-zero. Hence, the central bank cannot affect the interest rate any more (through augmenting the monetary base) and has lost control over it.

Oxytocin is being misused in the livestock industry to stimulate the mammary gland and induce milk production in farm animals. Worryingly, it is also used in illegal and unsafe abortions to induce labour. Vegetables and fruit, too, are injected with Oxytocin, to increase their sizes.

The Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) has recommended banning 343 “irrational” fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs. Several cough syrups, painkillers and dermatological drugs in India are FDCs. Rampant use of FDCs has also allowed antibiotic resistance to assume threatening proportions in India. DTAB is the apex body to decide on technical matters related to drugs in the country.

Most of the scattering that occurs in nature is Rayleigh scattering, and it is one of the most commonly observed optical phenomena. For example, Rayleigh scattering is the reason the sky looks blue: the intensity of the light that gets Rayleigh scattered by a molecule is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength of the incident light. Raman scattering is much less prevalent. For approximately one million photons Rayleigh scattered by a molecule, only one photon is Raman scattered. Indeed, the most significant challenge in detecting Raman scattered light is to separate it from the predominant Rayleigh scattered light that accompanies it.

RLDA was set up by an amendment in 1989. It is entrusted by the central government for development of railway land for commercial use for the purpose of generating revenue by non-tariff measures. RLDA has been assigned the additional responsibility of developing Multi Functional Complexes through IRCON, RITES, RVNL and Private developers, with an aim to provide multiple facilities like shopping, food stalls/restaurants, book stalls, PCO booths, ATMs, Medicines and variety stores, budget hotels, parking spaces. For redeveloping railway stations, Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd. (IRSDC) was created as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), Joint Venture of IRCON & RLDA with an authorized share capital of Rs.100 crore.

Biofuels are liquid or gaseous fuels primarily produced from biomass, and can be used to replace or can be used in addition to diesel, petrol or other fossil fuels for transport, stationary, portable and other applications. Crops used to make biofuels are generally either high in sugar (such as sugarcane, sugarbeet, and sweet sorghum), starch (such as maize and tapioca) or oils (such as soybean, rapeseed, coconut, sunflower). First-generation biofuels are made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil, or animal fats using conventional technology. Second-generation biofuels are produced from non-food crops, such as cellulosic biofuels and waste biomass (stalks of wheat and corn, and wood). Third-generation biofuels are produced from micro-organisms like algae.