Prelims Booster
1. What is Steadfast Defender 2024?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started its largest military exercise in Europe, the Steadfast Defender 2024, recently.
- It is NATO’s most extensive military exercise since the Cold War era.
- It involves 90,000 forces from 31 member countries and NATO partner Sweden and is conducted across various NATO nations.
- The exercise will feature an impressive array of military hardware, including over 50 naval vessels ranging from aircraft carriers to destroyers, and a formidable air contingent of more than 80 units comprising fighter jets, helicopters, and drones.
- The ground forces are equally robust, with at least 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles, demonstrating NATO’s ground capabilities.
- The purpose of Steadfast Defender 2024 is to put NATO’s new regional defense plans to the test.
- These plans, the first of their kind in decades, outline the alliance’s response mechanisms to potential threats, notably addressing concerns regarding Russian aggression.
What is NATO?
- Formed in 1949 with the signing of the Washington Treaty, NATO is a security alliance of 31 countries from North America and Europe.
- NATO’s fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies’ freedom and security by political and military means.
- It is a system of collective defence where independent member states agree for mutual defence in case of any attack by an external party.
- Article 5 of the Washington Treaty states that an attack against one ally is an attack against all.
- This article forms the core of the Alliance, a promise of collective defense.
- Headquarters: Brussels, Belgium.
- Functions:
- Political: NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust, and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
- Military: NATO is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. If diplomatic efforts fail, it has the military power to undertake crisis-management operations. These are carried out under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty or under a United Nations mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organisations.
2 .What is International Astronomical Union (IAU)?
The International Astronomical Union recently confirmed the existence of three currently unnamed moons — one around Uranus and two orbiting Neptune.
About the International Astronomical Union (IAU):
- The IAU is a senior body governing international professional astronomical activities worldwide.
- It was established in 1919 as the first of a series of international unions for the advancement of specific branches of science.
- Its mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects, including research, communication, education, and development, through international cooperation.
- The IAU is made up of various divisions, commissions, and working groups representing the various areas of astronomical research, teaching, and other endeavours.
- Membership:
- Its individual members are professional astronomers from all over the world, at the Ph.D. level and beyond, who are active in professional research, education, and outreach in astronomy.
- The IAU also has junior members.
- IAU membership spans 92 countries. Out of those countries, 85 are National Members.
- IAU activities range from the definition of fundamental astronomical and dynamical constants and unambiguous astronomical nomenclature, rapid dissemination of new discoveries, organization of international observing campaigns, and promotion of educational activities in astronomy to early informal discussions of possible future international large-scale facilities.
- It is the only organization recognized professionally for the naming of astronomical bodies, which it does solely on the basis of merit, history, or discoverer’s privilege.
- The IAU holds a general assembly every three years in varying parts of the world at which professional astronomers meet to discuss research, new cooperative ventures, and similar matters of professional interest.
- The IAU also works to promote research, education, and public outreach activities in astronomy for the public.
- Headquarters: Paris, France.
3. What is Genie AI Model?
Recently, Google DeepMind has just introduced Genie, a new model that can generate interactive video games from just a text or image prompt.
About Genie AI Model:
- It is a foundation world model that is trained on videos sourced from the Internet.
- The model can “generate an endless variety of playable (action-controllable) worlds from synthetic images, photographs, and even sketches.”
- It is the first generative interactive environment that has been trained in an unsupervised manner from unlabelled internet videos.
- Specifications: When it comes to size, Genie stands at 11B parameters and consists of a spatiotemporal video tokenizer, an autoregressive dynamics model, and a simple and scalable latent action model.
- These technical specifications let Genie act in generated environments on a frame-by-frame basis even in the absence of training, labels, or any other domain-specific requirements.
- Genie can be prompted to generate a diverse set of interactive and controllable environments although it is trained on video-only data.
- It makes playable environments from a single image prompt.
- It can be prompted with images it has never seen. This includes real-world photographs, and sketches, allowing people to interact with their imagined virtual worlds.
- It is trained more on videos of 2D platformer games and robotics.
- Genie is trained on a general method, allowing it to function on any type of domain, and it is scalable to even larger Internet datasets.
- The standout aspect of Genie is its ability to learn and reproduce controls for in-game characters exclusively from internet videos.
- This is noteworthy because internet videos do not have labels about the action that is performed in the video, or even which part of the image should be controlled.
- It allows you to create an entirely new interactive environment from a single image.
4. Pey Jal Survekshan Awards
Recently, the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs announced the first Pey Jal Survekshan Awards.
About Pey Jal Survekshan Awards:
- A distinguished array of 130 awards is set to be bestowed, reflecting the remarkable accomplishments of cities and states.
- The award consists of various categories;
- Pey Jal Gold, Silver, and Bronze City Awards, where Gold signifies top performers in their respective population categories (1 to 10 Lakh, 10 to 40 Lakh, and More than 40 Lakh),
- Silver denotes the 2nd position, and Bronze the 3rd.
- The awards extend to commendations for Best Water Body, Sustainability Champion, Reuse Champion, Water Quality, City Saturation, and AMRUT 2.0 Rotating Trophy of the Year.
- Parameters: It encompassed diverse parameters, including access, coverage, water quality at treatment plants and households, sustainability regarding the health of water bodies, availability of SCADA/ flowmeters, and reuse of treated used water.
- Cities will be graded on a star rating scale, ranging from 5 stars to No star, encapsulating their performance across these critical criteria.
- Pey Jal Survekshan ensured clean water through independent NABL lab testing at the source and citizen end.
- Using a GIS-enabled web portal, geo-tagging, and infrastructure mapping, the survey collected accurate and transparent data.
- Significance: Its results are expected to drive ULB decision-making, enhance service delivery, and foster citizen engagement, instilling a sense of ownership and knowledge dissemination about water conservation and optimal use.
What is the AMRUT Mitra initiative?
- It aims to actively involve women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in the urban water sector, designating women as key contributors and emphasizing their role in household water management.
- The Mitras will be engaged in executing AMRUT 2.0 projects, focusing on activities such as billing, collection, leak detection, plumbing works, water quality sampling, and maintenance of infrastructure.
- The overarching goal of AMRUT Mitra is to instil a sense of ownership among women, promoting inclusivity and diversity in traditionally male-dominated sectors while ensuring access to safe drinking water for households and addressing gender inequality.
- The anticipated outcomes include upliftment of the socio-economic status of women SHGs, aligning closely with the objectives of AMRUT 2.0, increased awareness, positive community impact, and a model for future initiatives.
Places In News
Pampore Region: It is in Jammu & Kashmir
- known as the centre of the country’s saffron (referred to as “red gold”) cultivation
- Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the “saffron crocus”. The vivid crimson stigma and styles, called threads, are collected and dried for use mainly as a seasoning and colouring agent in food
- Iran, India, Spain and Greece are the major saffron-producing countries with Iran occupying the maximum area and contributing about 88% of the world’s saffron production.
- Though, India occupies the 2nd largest area but produces approximately 7 per cent of the total world production.
