Important Fact For Prelims (6th March 2019)

• 06 Mar 2019

AL-NAGAH III 2019

• Exercise Al Nagah III is the bilateral joint exercise between India and Oman.
• The third in the series of the joint exercise will be be held from 12 to 25 March 2019 at Jabal Al Akhdar Mountains in Oman.
• The exercise will see both the armies exchanging expertise and experience in tactics, weapon handling and firing, with an aim to enhance interoperability in counter terrorist operations in semi urban mountainous terrain.
• Exercise Al Nagah III follows the first two joint exercises that were held in Oman in January 2015 and India in March 2017 respectively.

Nostro Accounts

• Reserve Bank of India has fined Allahabad Bank for non-compliance of directions with regard to Nostro accounts.
  • Nostros, a term derived from the Latin word for "ours,"are frequently used to facilitate foreign exchange and trade transactions.
  • A nostro account is a bank account held in a foreign country by a domestic bank, denominated in the currency of that country.

Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR)

• National Housing Bank has proposed to increase the Capital Adequacy Ratio of Housing Financing Companies (HFCs) to 15% as a precautionary measure against liquidity risk.
  • The CAR is a measure of a bank's available capital expressed as a percentage of a bank's risk-weighted credit exposures.
  • The Capital Adequacy Ratio, also known as capital-to-risk weighted assets ratio (CRAR), is used to protect depositors and promote the stability and efficiency of financial systems around the world.

London Patient

• Recently a person suffering from HIV has been treated in London called as ‘ London Patient’.
  • He becomes the second person to be free of the HIV virus after a bone marrow transplant.
  • He has been cured with CCR5-delta 32 technique, which is based on a stem cell transplant involving CCR5-delta 32 homozygous donor cells.

The Berlin Patient

• Timothy Ray Brown is considered to be the first person cured of HIV.
• He was treated in Berlin and to preserve his identity, later he came to be known as "The Berlin Patient”.

China's Artificial Sun

• China coming up with artificial sun made of electrons and ions by year end

Artificial Sun

• HL-2M Tokamak device is used in it to replicate the nuclear fusion process that occurs naturally in the sun.
• The artificial sun's plasma is mainly composed of electrons and ions, and the existing Tokamak devices have achieved an electron temperature of over 100 million degrees Celsius in its core plasma, and an ion temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius, and it is the ion that generates energy in the device.
• Challenges
  • Achieving an ion temperature above 100 million degrees Celsius is one challenge to reach the goal of harnessing the nuclear fusion.
  • The other two challenges are containing the fusion within a limited space in the long term, and providing a sufficiently high-density profile.