Zero Budget Natural Farming:

• Himachal Pradesh has launched Zero Budget Natural Farming project to promote organic farming.
• Zero Budget Natural Farming, as the name implies, is a method of farming where the cost of growing and harvesting plants is zero.
• This means that farmers need not purchase fertilizers and pesticides in order to ensure the healthy growth of crops.
• It is, basically, a natural farming technique that uses biological pesticides instead of chemical-based fertilizers.
• Farmers use earthworms, cow dung, urine, plants, human excreta and such biological fertilizers for crop protection. It reduces farmers’ investment. It also protects the soil from degradation.

NASA’s Kilopower Project

• NASA has invented a small nuclear reactor Kilopower, It can generate a reliable power supply by using uranium-235 reactor core.
• This power system could provide up to 10 kilowatts of electrical power enough to run two average households continuously for at least 10 years.
• This reactor will be used for electronic propulsion systems and for providing safe and plentiful energy for future robotic and human missions for Mars and beyond.

SkyRev360:

• SkyRev360 is a fully automated and comprehensive data gathering, invoicing and collection service which eliminates inaccuracies, errors and delays for better revenue management.
• SkyRev360 has been developed in collaboration with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) under the Government of India’s Make in India initiative.

Prompt Corrective Action:

• The Finance Ministry is planning to initiate a performance review of heads of public sector banks that are under the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) as part of the reform process.
• PCA norms allow the regulator to place certain restrictions such as halting branch expansion and stopping dividend payment.
• It can even cap a bank’s lending limit to one entity or sector.
• Other corrective action that can be imposed on banks include special audit, restructuring operations and activation of recovery plan.
• Banks’ promoters can be asked to bring in new management, too. The RBI can also supersede the bank’s board, under PCA.

Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration:

• A long lost NASA satellite has been found alive. NASA has confirmed it stumbled across radio transmissions from Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) science satellite, which lost contact with mission control over 12 years ago.
• IMAGE was the first satellite mission dedicated to imaging the Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth’s magnetic field and containing extremely tenuous plasmas of both solar and terrestrial origin.
• Invisible to standard astronomical observing techniques, these populations of ions and electrons have traditionally been studied by means of localized measurements with charged particle detectors, magnetometers, and electric field instruments.
• Instead of such in situ measurements, IMAGE employed a variety of imaging techniques to “see the invisible” and to produce the first comprehensive global images of the plasma populations in the inner magnetosphere.
• With these images, space scientists were able to observe, in a way never before possible, the large-scale dynamics of the magnetosphere and the interactions among its constituent plasma populations.

Indian Chhau dance:

• Originating in eastern India, Chhau features dancers in colorful masks and costumes performing movements inspired by animals, birds, martial arts and tribal and folk customs.
• The practice was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. Chhau shows typically depict episodes from classic Hindu epics.
• It is found in three styles named after the location where they are performed, ie. the Purulia Chau of Bengal, the Seraikella Chau of Jharkhand, and the Mayurbhanj Chau of Odisha. 
• The dance is traditionally an all males troupe, regionally celebrated particularly during spring every year.

RemoveDEBRIS:

• RemoveDebris, a mission that will test different methods to clean up space junk is getting ready for launch.
• RemoveDEBRIS is aimed at performing key Active Debris Removal (ADR) technology demonstrations (e.g capture, deorbiting) representative of an operational scenario during a low-cost mission using novel key technologies for ADR.
• The project is co-ordinated by the Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey, UK, and involves the collaboration of a number of mission partners.
• The mission will comprise of a main satellite platform that once in orbit will deploy two CubeSats as artificial debris targets to demonstrate some of the technologies (net capture, harpoon capture, vision-based navigation, dragsail de-orbitation).