6th Sep. Prelims Sure Shot

The Hindu Prelims News

National Mission for Clean Ganga

• NMCG is a registered society under the Societies Registration Act 1860.
• NMCG has a two tier management structure and comprises of Governing Council and Executive Committee (both are headed by Director General, NMCG).
• Executive Committee is authorized to accord approval for all projects up to Rs. 1000 crore.
• Similarly, the State Programme Management Groups (SPMGs) acts as implementing arm of State Ganga Committees. It attempts to bring all stakeholders on one platform to take a holistic approach towards the task of Ganga cleaning and rejuvenation.

How Facial Recognition Works?

• Facial recognition analyzes the characteristics of a person’s face images input through a digital video camera. It measures the overall facial structure, including distances between eyes, nose, mouth, and jaw edges. These measurements are retained in a database and used as a comparison when a user stands before the camera.

Every face has numerous, distinguishable landmarks, the different peaks and valleys that make up facial features. Each human face has approximately 80 nodal points. Some of these measured by the Facial Recognition Technology are:

• Distance between the eyes
• Width of the nose
• Depth of the eye sockets
• The shape of the cheekbones
• The length of the jaw line

These nodal points are measured creating a numerical code, called a face print, representing the face in the database.

Institution of Eminence status

• The Human Resource Development Ministry has awarded the status of Institute of Eminence to the IIT-Madras, the IIT-Kharagpur, Delhi University, Benares Hindu University and the University of Hyderabad.
• These institutions will not be subject to UGC inspections, and are free to set their own courses and curriculum, fee structure and merit-based admission systems.
• They will have complete academic, administrative and financial autonomy.

In vitro fertilization

• In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro.
• IVF is a major treatment for infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed.
• The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman’s ovulatory process, removing ovum or ova (egg or eggs) from the woman’s ovaries and letting sperm fertilise them in a fluid medium in a laboratory.
• The fertilised egg (zygote) cultured for 2-6 days in a growth medium and is then transferred to the mother’s uterus with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy.

Carnatic Music

• The course of the evolution of Indian music saw the emergence of two different sub systems as Hindustani and Carnatic music. In Haripala’s “Sangeeta Sudhakara”, written in the 14th century A.D., the terms Carnatic and Hindustani are found for the first time.
• South Indian Music, as known today, flourished in Deogiri the capital city of the Yadavas in the middle ages, and that after the invasion and plunder of the city by the Muslims, the entire cultural life of the city took shelter in the Carnatic Empire of Vijayanagar under the reign of Krishnadevaraya. Thereafter, the music of South India came to be known as Carnatic Music.
• The advent of Purandaradasa, in the year 1484, marked a very important landmark in the development of Carnatic music. He effected such a thorough systematisation and refinement in the art. The birth of the Musical Trinity – Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri – at Tiruvarur between the years 1750 to 1850 A.D. ushered in an era of dynamic development in Carnatic music. It was the ‘Golden Age’ of music throughout the world. Carnatic music reached its pinnacle of artistic excellence during this period. 
• The Carnatic branch is Kriti based and the composition in this style has several parts to it- 1. Pallavi, 2. Anu Pallavi, 3. Varnam, 4. Ragamalika. It is composed of 72 ragas. Major instruments are – Veena, Mridangum, Mandolin, Flute and Violin.