THE CONTEXT: Kandla SEZ has become the First Green SEZ to achieve the IGBC Green Cities Platinum Rating for Existing Cities.

Analysis

• IGBC Platinum rating has been awarded for ‘Green master planning, policy initiatives and implementation of green infrastructure’ by CII’s Indian Green Building Council (IGBC).
• The efforts of KASEZ is noteworthy especially because of the fact that this was accomplished in Bhuj region where water conservation and afforestation are critical interventions.
• The recognition will pave way for all the other SEZs in the country to emulate the green initiative and efforts of Kandla SEZ.

ABOUT INDIAN GREEN BUILDING COUNCIL

• The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), part of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was formed in the year 2001.
• The vision of the council is, “To enable a sustainable built environment for all and facilitate India to be one of the global leaders in the sustainable built environment by 2025”.
• The council offers a wide array of services which include developing new green building rating programmes, certification services and green building training programmes.
•  The council also organises Green Building Congress, its annual flagship event on green buildings

THE CONTEXT: A recent study by researchers has highlighted the importance of the last fragments of tropical lowland forests in Assam by showing interactions between plants and fruit-eating birds in them.

Analysis:

• The researchers belonged to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in Dehradun and the Nature Conservation Foundation non-profit in Bengaluru.
• They showed that small fruit eaters such as bulbuls and barbets “fed upon the highest number of fruits” in both, fragmented and contiguous forests. They were crucial in seed dispersal in both these types of forests.
• They also found that the remaining patches of forest were very important for birds like the White-throated Brown Hornbill, which dispersed larger seeds that other birds were not able to.
• The researchers cited these examples to show that such forest segments help to connect bigger portions of forest and thus help in the flow of biodiversity in them.
• They conducted sampling in two forest fragments experiencing degradation pressures namely Doom Dooma Reserve Forest and Kakojan Reserve Forest and a less disturbed, better protected contiguous forest patch, Dehing Patkai National Park.
• All three are located in Upper Assam.
• The researchers found that fragmentation of habitats had resulted in reduced interactions between plants and frugivorous birds in forest patches.
•  However, despite this, fragmented forest patches continued to harbour interactions and distinct ones at that, between frugivorous birds and plants.

THE CONTEXT: Pirs, a Russian module on the International Space Station (ISS) used as a docking port for spacecraft and as a door for cosmonauts to go out on spacewalks, was on July 26 detached from the 22-year-old floating laboratory.

Analysis

• In its place, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos will be attaching a significantly larger module called Nauka, which will serve as the country’s main research facility on the space station.
• It is a path breaking collaborative effort between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) and CSA (Canada).
• Nauka, which was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 21 using a Proton rocket, is scheduled to be integrated with the ISS on July 29.
• Nauka — meaning “science” in Russian — is the biggest space laboratory Russia has launched to date, and will primarily serve as a research facility.
• It is also bringing to the ISS another oxygen generator, a spare bed, another toilet, and a robotic cargo crane built by the European Space Agency (ESA).

 WHAT KIND OF RESEARCH GOES ON AT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION?

• A space station is essentially a large spacecraft that remains in low-earth orbit for extended periods of time.
• It is like a large laboratory in space, and allows astronauts to come aboard and stay for weeks or months to carry out experiments in microgravity.
• For over 20 years since its launch, humans have continuously lived and carried out scientific investigations on the $150 billion ISS under microgravity conditions, being able to make breakthroughs in research not possible on Earth.
• As per NASA, 243 people from 19 countries have so far visited the ISS.
• The floating laboratory has hosted more than 3,000 research and educational investigations from researchers in 108 countries and areas, carrying out cutting edge research in various disciplines, including biology, human physiology, and physical, material and space science

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