07.04.17 Daily Current Affairs

Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems Project

Originally approved in 2009, the Project aims to:

• Deliver various web based police related services to citizens.
• Facilitate a pan-India search of crime and criminal records of individuals through a national database.
• Generate crime and criminal reports at the state and central level to inform policy interventions and
• Computerise police processes.
• In 2015, an additional objective of establishing a basic platform for an Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) was added to the Project.
• The Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) aims to integrate the CCTNS project with the e-courts and e-prisons databases in the first instance and with the other pillars of the criminal justice system - Forensics, Prosecution, Juvenile homes and a nationwide Fingerprint data base of criminals in a phased manner.
• Why in News? The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the proposal of the Ministry of Home Affairs for extension of the implementation phase of the Crime and Criminals Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) Project for another year beyond 31st March 2017. The extension would help in achieving the remaining objectives of the project comprehensively.

Belmont Forum

• The Belmont Forum, created in 2009, is a group of the world’s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research.
• It provides an opportunity to identify study and deliver international environmental research priorities, for the society, in an accelerated way through trans­national research collaboration.
• India is a member of Belmont Forum, besides Australia, Brazil, Canada, European Commission, France, Germany, Japan, Netherland, South Africa, UK and USA etc.
• Ministry of Earth Science (MoES), represents India in the Belmont Forum since 2012.
• Why in News? “The Union Cabinet has given its approval for signing of the Collaborative Agreement with French National Research Agency (ANR), France for supporting the Belmont Forum Secretariat from January, 2015 to December, 2017 at a total estimated expenditure of Euro 40,000. The Cabinet also approved continued financial support to Belmont Forum Secretariat beyond 2017.”

Pollution from Coal based Thermal Power Plants

• The Government has taken several steps to modernize and improve the efficiency of coal based thermal power plants and to reduce the pollution level of coal based thermal power plants in the vicinity of these plants.
• Supercritical technology has already been adopted for thermal power generation. The design efficiency of Supercritical units is about 5% higher than that of typical 500 MW subcritical units and these (supercritical) units are likely to have correspondingly lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in ambient air.
• All Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs) are required to use supercritical technology.
• Coal based capacity addition during the 13th Plan period shall be through super-critical units.
• Indigenous research is being pursued for development of an Advanced Ultra Supercritical Technology (A-USC) with targeted efficiency improvement of about 10% over supercritical unit.
• A capacity of about 7751.94 MW of old and inefficient unit has already been retired till date.
• Perform Achieve and Trade (PAT) Scheme under National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency is under implementation by BEE (Bureau of Energy Efficiency). In PAT cycle–II, individual target for improving efficiency has been assigned to 154 thermal power stations.
• High efficiency Electrostatics Preceptor (ESP) are installed to capture Particulate Matters from Flue gases.
• SO2 emission control is achieved through dispersion of flue gases through tall stacks (275 metres) to reduce the concentration of polluting gases at ground level.
• Harmful pollutants emitted from a typical, uncontrolled coal plants include: Sulphur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, PM (soot or fly ash), Mercury, VOCs, Lead, Cadmium, toxic heavy metals, Arsenic, Carbon Monoxide and trace amounts of uranium.
• Ozone is a secondary pollutant; it is formed due to the reaction of emissions from coal power plants such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds with atmospheric Oxygen, in the presence of sunlight. 

Article 142

• A. 142: The Supreme Court may pass such decree or order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it.
• The recent highway liquor ban was imposed by the SC under A. 142.
• The Supreme Court on Thursday indicated that it will use its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to transfer the Babri Masjid demolition related trial in Rae Bareilly against top BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to Lucknow, where a CBI court is hearing conspiracy and other serious criminal charges against "lakhs of unknown kar sevaks" for the actual act of razing down the 15th century mosque.

Cyber Physical Systems

• With autonomous vehicles and robot-executed surgeries becoming commonplace around the world, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has initiated a Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) programme.
• CPS is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the deployment of computer-based systems that do things in the physical world, such as, for instance, the self-driven cars produced by Google and Tesla. However, even smart grids (where electricity is optimally distributed on the basis of calculations in real time by micro-processors) as well as autonomous unmanned vehicles and aircraft navigation systems qualify as ‘cyber physical systems.’
• CPS is a mechanism controlled or monitored by computer-based algorithms, tightly integrated with internet and its users. It is an engineered system that are built from and depend upon, the seamless integration of computational algorithms and physical components.
• In general Cyber means computation, communication and control that are discrete and logical. Physical means natural and human-made systems governed by the laws of physics and operating in continuous time. Computing and communication systems bridges with the physical world are referred to as Cyber Physical Systems.