HNSS: Key Facts for Prelims

• HNSS is a lift irrigation project that lifts water from the Krishna River at Malyala site in Nandyal district to provide water to the arid Rayalaseema belt.
• Total canal length: 554 km, making it one of the longest lift irrigation projects in India.
• It provides irrigation support to 6.02 lakh acres and drinking water to 33 lakh people in four districts.
• The project is critical for the drought-prone Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh.

Krishna River: Key Facts for Prelims

• Krishna River originates from Mahabaleshwar in the Western Ghats, Maharashtra.
• It flows through Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh before draining into the Bay of Bengal.
• Total length: approximately 1,400 km.
• Major tributaries: Tungabhadra, Bhima, Musi, Munneru, Ghataprabha, and Malaprabha.
• The Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (constituted in 1969 under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956) allocated Krishna waters among the three riparian states.

Vikram-1: Key Technical Facts

• India’s first privately developed orbital-class launch vehicle, named after Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, father of India’s space programme.
• Four-stage rocket: three solid-fuel stages and one liquid upper stage (Orbital Adjustment Module).
• Payload capacity: approximately 350 kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
• Height: 22 metres; structure: carbon-composite airframe.
• Stage-1 (Kalam-1200 motor): 11 metres long, 1.7-metre diameter, containing around 30 tonnes of propellant.
• The Orbital Adjustment Module is a miniature cousin of PSLV’s PS4 stage.

3D-Printed Raman Engine & Carbon-Composite Airframe

• Skyroot’s “Raman” engine was test-fired in 2020 as a fully 3D-printed engine; the printed injector halved mass and cut components and lead time by 80% versus conventional manufacturing.
• Regenerative cooling channels can be printed in shapes no drill can reach, though porosity and batch variability demand obsessive quality control.
• Carbon-fibre composite offers strength per unit weight many times that of aerospace aluminium or maraging steel; Skyroot claims a five-fold saving over the best rocket steel.
• Vikram-1’s Stage-1 is India’s longest single-piece composite rocket stage. Rocket Lab’s Electron (USA) pioneered the all-carbon-composite approach.

Vikram-1 vs PSLV vs SSLV: Comparison

What is Embodied AI

• Embodied AI is the field where intelligence is distributed across brain, body, and environment, not confined to a central processor alone.
• The core claim: a body is not just a delivery mechanism for intelligence but is part of the computation itself, contrasting with traditional symbolic AI’s internal world-models disconnected from physical interaction.
• Australian roboticist Rodney Brooks argued robots could act intelligently through a layered “subsumption architecture” of simple reflexes tightly coupled to sensors and motors, without programming a world model.

Key Concepts in Embodied AI

• Morphological Computation: offloading computational work onto the physical structure of the body rather than the brain.
• Passive-Dynamic Walker: a robot that walks without motors purely due to leg geometry and joint design.
• Simulation-to-Real Gap: policies succeeding 95% in simulation drop to ~60% in the real world — the central challenge of embodied AI.
• The embodied AI market is projected to reach $23 billion by 2030.

Neuromorphic AI: Key Facts

• Neuromorphic AI focuses on how processors are built, mimicking the physical mechanics of biological neurons.
• It uses Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), where neurons fire only when a threshold is exceeded, making them energy-efficient and suited for time-sensitive tasks.
• Only actively spiking neurons consume energy, making neuromorphic chips notably power-efficient and suited for motion sensing, real-time event processing, and always-on tasks.

Embodied AI vs Neuromorphic AI

What are EGRs: Definition and Key Facts

• EGRs are exchange-traded securities representing ownership of physical gold (specified purity) stored in SEBI-regulated vaults.
• They can be held in a demat account, traded on exchanges, and converted into physical gold through a prescribed process.
• Purity standards: 999 (99.9% pure) and 995 (99.5% pure).
• Six denominations available: 10 mg, 100 mg, 1 g, 10 g, 100 g, and 1 kg.
• Settlement cycle: T+1 (receipts credited to buyer’s demat account the next trading day).
• Trading hours: Monday to Friday, 9 am to 11:30 pm (extended to 11:55 pm during US daylight saving period).
• No GST on EGR trading; however, 3% GST applies on physical delivery.

Benefits of EGRs

• Transparent price discovery via exchange trading ensures uniform gold prices across India.
• No concerns over gold purity, as it is stored in SEBI-regulated vaults.
• Eliminates the need for home storage or a bank locker.
• Offers liquidity, settlement guarantee, fungibility, and portfolio diversification.
• Can be converted to physical gold whenever needed.

NMHC: Key Features and Design

• Phase 1 includes six museum galleries, a jetty walkway, and display of maritime artefacts spanning ancient, medieval, colonial, and modern times.
• The maritime museum will be the world’s largest maritime museum at approximately 7 lakh sq ft.
• It will have 14 interconnected galleries organised around a recreated Lothal settlement, beginning with an 18-metre-high arrival hall.
• Features large water tanks, immersive projections, suspended artefacts, and underwater-themed installations.
• The centrepiece is an 80m × 80m living-history recreation of Lothal town with Harappan streets, dockyards, markets, and civic spaces.
• Phase 1B (₹3,000 crore) will include eight additional galleries and a 50-dome theatre.

Lothal: Key Facts for Prelims

• Lothal is one of the most prominent sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), believed to have existed around 4,500 years ago.
• Located in Saragwala village, Dholka taluka, Ahmedabad district, Gujarat.
• Excavated by S.R. Rao of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1955 to 1960.
• It contains the world’s oldest known artificial dock, connected to an old course of the Sabarmati River.
• Lothal connected the Indian subcontinent to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and West Asia through maritime trade.
• It had a well-planned grid layout with a dedicated warehouse, bead factory, and a citadel (acropolis).