Civil Service Bytes

Here are some key points you need to know: The bill seeks to add 106 inland waterways to the existing six National Waterways on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture and comments of several state governments The bill will also look after the renovation and maintenance of the existing waterways Out of the 106 new waterways, 18 have already been identified. These include five waterways each from Karnataka and Meghalaya, three each from Maharashtra and Kerala, one each from Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan The bill also aims to help the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) to develop the feasible stretches for Shipping and Navigation. Let us look at the six existing National Waterways in India: National Waterway 1 (NW1) The National Waterway No. 1 uses a 1,620-kilometre stretch of the Ganges River. It was declared a national waterway in the year 1986 and runs from Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal....

Asia is the world's largest peak continent. Mount Everest in the Himalayas is the highest  in  the world. The Dead Sea in the West is the lowest point  in  the world. The coldest point in Asia is the frozen waste  of  Northern Siberia. Himalayas is the example of young mountain  range. The 'Takla Makan' is one of several deserts  in  the  Central Asia. Singapore is one of the world's densely populated  places. India is the world's largest democracy while  China  is  a  communist power. The booming 'Tiger Economy' has developed in countries such as Taiwan which borders  the  Pacific  Ocean. Norilsk is one of several era industrial complexes built in Russia. It is a processing centre of rich minerals reserves found  nearby. Mumbai is India's leading industrial city and  has  a  thriving  stock market. Half of the world's oil and gas reserves are  in Asia. J...

Sirocco is a type of hot wind blowing from Sahara  to Mediterranean. Swahili is the oldest surviving African language. The country Zaire has the maximum Hydro- electric  Power  potential  in Africa. The country Djibouti is facing the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. Dar-es-Salam is the easternmost terminus of Tanjara railways which begins from Katanga  mineral  belt. Ostrich is the flightless bird of Kalahari Desert. Ethiopia is the place of origin of coffee. Pretoria is the administrative capital of S. Africa. Nilots are the aborigines of upper    Nile. River Zaire is the only river that crosses the equator  twice. Nubian  desert  lies  in Egypt. The countries Ethiopia and Somalia form  the  Horn  of Africa. High Veld is the temperate grassland of South  Africa. Africa is the most tropical of all   continents. Most part of Kalahari Desert lies in Botswana. The Farmers of the Egypt ar...

Pluto’s largest moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean which has frozen long ago and expanded, pushing and stretching the natural satellite’s surface like ‘Hulk’ while causing massive fractures, a new NASA image has shown. The new image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest that Charon’s tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and — like the fictional superhero Bruce Banner tearing his shirt as he becomes the Incredible Hulk — Charon’s surface fractured as it stretched, researchers said. ‘Pull apart’ tectonic faults The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by NASA’s passing New Horizons in July 2015 is characterised by a system of “pull apart” tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys — the latter sometimes reaching more than 6.5 kilometres deep. The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice. This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charo...

In cities, the air, surface and soil temperatures are almost always warmer than in rural areas. This effect is known as the Urban Heat Island – a term which first came into use in the mid-20th century. Until the 1980s, this effect was considered to have relatively little practical significance. In fact, given that most studies were done in cities with cold winter climates, a warmer temperature was seen as a potential benefit, because it reduced the need for heating. But since then, we’ve found a number of reasons to be concerned. For one thing, it became clear that the Urban Heat Island effect of cities was influencing air temperature records, which are used to assess climate change. In other words, it became important to remove urban “contamination” from weather station records to ensure their accuracy. What’s more, as populations in warm and hot cities have increased, so too has the demand for indoor cooling – typically met by air conditioning. This even applies in c...

The South Asian Monsoon has been weakening since the 1950s with an increased incidence of extreme rainfall events. Now, a paper in the journal  Climate Dynamics  lead authored by Dr. R. Krishnan attributes this weakening to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, atmospheric aerosols and land-use changes. Dr. Krishnan is a scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune. The monsoon is mainly driven by thermal contrast between the Indian subcontinent and the adjoining ocean. As the land warms up the air above the land surface is heated and rises up and is less dense than the cool air over the ocean. This contrast in temperatures and densities causes the cool moisture bearing winds from the western Indian Ocean to move into the land mass and bring monsoon rains to the subcontinent. This scenario, however is  changed due to the presence of greenhouse gases, aerosols in the atmosphere or if the land has been subjected to increased deforestation. ...

Persistent above normal temperatures have been recorded in many regions of the country After the monsoon, it’s the winter season which has played truant with India. More than half of the winter season has passed, but the characteristic chill felt in many parts is missing due to persistent above normal temperatures. Palam in New Delhi witnessed a maximum temperature of 25.7°C on January 12, 2016, which was 6°C above normal. Minimum temperature in this region on the morning of January 13 was 13.9°C, 7°C above normal. Srinagar, which is in the middle of  Chilai Kalan  (40-day harsh winter period), witnessed minimum temperature of -2.5°C on January 13, which is still 5°C above normal. Most places in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, western Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha in Maharashtra witnessed maximum temperatures which were 2-5°C above normal on January 12.  This warm weather might be good news fo...

Deserts are areas that receive little precipitation, classified as an area that receives less that 250 millimeters (10 inches) of annual precipitation on average. The classification also takes into account the potential evapotranspiration, or the amount of water that could be evaporated in the region. Because of the lack of precipitation, deserts are often dry and barren in landscape, and commonly thought of as having hot climates. However, deserts can be hot or cold, and they exist in regions all across the world. The largest two deserts on Earth are both cold deserts, which are covered in ice and snow. The largest deserts in the world are polar deserts: the Antarctic Desert and the Arctic Desert. The Antarctic Desert covers an area of 13,829,430 square kilometers over the South Pole. Antarctica is the most extreme continent on Earth, as the coldest, driest and windiest place in the world ,and the highest elevation. The Arctic Desert is the northernmost region of the Earth, co...

THE HIMALAYA DESCRIPTION ITS ORIGIN AND ALL PASSES IN HIMALAYA WITH VERY INTERESTING MAPS & CONCISE ,CAN BE EASILY REVISED. THE HIMALAYAS consist of four lithotectonic mountain ranges, namely  (i) the Trans-Himalaya or the Tethys Himalaya,  (ii) the Greater Himalaya,  (iii) the Lesser Himalaya, and  {iv) lhe Shiwalik orthe Outer Himalaya. extend from the eastern boundary of Pakistan to the border of Myanmar for about 2500 km with a varying width of about 500 km in the west and about 320 km in the east. lie to the north of the Ganga-Brahmaputra Plains and are separated from the plains by the Himalayan Front Fault (HFF). Include parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. Their offshoots run in a north-south direction along the India-Myanmar boundary through Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram. Origin of the Himalayas The origin of the Himalayas has been a point of contention among the geo...