1) Taiwan’s “porcupine doctrine”: The “porcupine doctrine”, which was proposed in 2008 by US Naval War College research professor William S Murray, is a strategy of asymmetric warfare focused on fortifying a weak state’s defences to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses rather than taking on its strengths.
- It is about building defences that would ensure that Taiwan “could be attacked and damaged but not defeated, at least without unacceptably high costs and risks”.
2) Cantillon effect: The Cantillon effect refers to the idea that changes in the money supply in an economy causes redistribution of purchasing power among people, disturbs the relative prices of goods and services, and leads to the misallocation of scarce resources.
- It is generally accepted by economists today that an increase in the overall money supply in an economy causes a proportionate rise in the prices of goods and services over the long-run
- This is in line with the quantity theory of money, according to which the total amount of money in an economy plays a crucial role in determining the general price level.
- Cantillon, however, noted that when money supply is expanded, the fresh money does not get evenly distributed across the economy all at once as assumed by most economists. The fresh money is rather injected into particular sections of the economy first and thus people in these sections of the economy are enriched when compared to people in the rest of the economy.
3) Yellow Sea: Yellow Sea or Huang Hai or Hwanghae is a large inlet of the western Pacific Ocean lying between mainland China and the Korean peninsula.
- It is situated to the north of the East China Sea.
- The Bo Hai Sea is the north-western extension of the Yellow Sea. It is connected to the Yellow Sea via the Bohai Strait.
4) Nadis of Rajasthan: Popularly called nadis or talabs (village ponds), these are sleepy countryside – traditional water harvesting structures.
- These are shallow depressions strewn across the rural landscape in the arid regions of Jodhpur and Barmer districts.
- They are used for storing water from an adjoining natural catchment during the rainy season.
5) Indian Virtual Herbarium: Recently, the Union Environment Minister inaugurated India’s largest online herbarium database, the ‘Indian Virtual Herbarium’ web portal.
- Indian Virtual Herbarium is the biggest virtual database of flora in the country, as it contains details of about one lakh plant specimens.
- It was developed by the scientists of the Botanical Survey of India (BSI).
- The digital herbarium also includes features to extract the data State-wise and users can search plants of their own States which will help them to identify regional plants and in building regional checklists.
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