British Academy Book Prize: This was formerly known as the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize. It was established in 2013. It was established to reward and celebrate the best works of non-fiction that demonstrate rigour and originality and have contributed to public understanding of other world cultures and their interactions. The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for humanities and social sciences. The eligible books come from the subjects that fall within those disciplines, from archaeology, history, and psychology to philosophy, languages, and cultural studies. Nandini Das who is a Professor in the English faculty at the University of Oxford, won the award for her book ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’ The winner gets the £25,000 prize cash award, and each of the shortlisted works will receive £1,000 each.
State Food Safety Index: Recently, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) published the State Food Safety Index. The Index is an annual assessment released by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).It was started in 2018-19 to create a competitive and positive change in the food safety ecosystem in the country. The index will help in providing safe and nutritious food to our citizens. This index is based on the performance of the State/ UT on five significant parameters, namely, Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing, Infrastructure and Surveillance, Training and Capacity Building and Consumer Empowerment In the 2023 index, a new parameter called ‘Improvement in SFSI Rank’ was added. The Index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model that provides an objective framework for evaluating food safety across all States/UTs. The States/UTs are classified into 3 categories, namely large states, small states, and UTs, for evaluation and assessment.
Future Leaders Scholarship Programme: The scholarship programme will support 30 of the country’s most talented Master’s scholars over the next three years. The scholarship will cover the full cost of tuition and living expenses. It will be for students studying Master’s programmes in engineering, natural sciences, business, and medical research. In this programme, half of the scholarships are reserved for female scholars. It will build a pathway for the most talented students in India to deepen their studies and expand their experiences at one of the world’s top universities. Alongside the new scholarship programme, the university also signed a new partnership with the UK government’s Chevening Scholarships programme. It will provide funding for an additional three Master’s scholars from India over the next three years.
INFUSE Misssion: The Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscope Experiment (INFUSE) was launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It was launched to study the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant. The INFUSE mission is expected to collect information about the remnant for a few minutes from a height of 150 miles (240 km). Specifically, the instrument will gather light streaming from the Cygnus Loop in far-ultraviolet wavelengths. It will observe how the supernova dumps energy into the Milky Way by catching light given off just as the blast wave crashes into pockets of cold gas floating around the galaxy. It will study the Cygnus Loop and try to understand the life cycle of stars.
