About Rangeen Machhli App: 

• It is designed to meet the growing needs of the ornamental fisheries sector, providing crucial knowledge resources for hobbyists, aquarium shop owners, and fish farmers. 
• It is developed by ICAR-CIFA with support from the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY).
• Features
  • It provides multilingual information on popular ornamental fish species in eight Indian languages, making it accessible to a wide audience.
  • The app offers comprehensive details on care, breeding, and maintenance practices to both farmers and hobbyists.
  • One of its key features is the "Find Aquarium Shops" tool, which allows users to locate nearby aquarium shops through a dynamic directory updated by shop owners, promoting local businesses and connecting users with reliable sources for ornamental fish and aquarium-related products.
• In addition, the app includes educational modules for both newcomers and professionals in the ornamental fish industry.

What is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)?

• It is the apex body for coordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture in the entire country under the aegis of DARE, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Q1: What is Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana?

PMMSY was launched in September 2020 with an aim to double the income of fish farmers and fishers in the country. It focuses on sustainable development of India's fisheries sector and is a part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat scheme.

Source: Union Minister Shri Rajiv Ranjan Singh Launches 'Rangeen Machhli' App

About Scheme of budgetary support for the cost of Enabling Infrastructure for Hydro Electric Projects (HEP):

• This scheme, set to run from FY 2024-25 to FY 2031-32, aims to enhance infrastructure and support the development of hydro power in India.
• The scheme addresses major challenges such as remote locations and inadequate infrastructure by broadening its scope to cover additional costs.
  • This includes funding for the construction of transmission lines, upgrading pooling substations, and developing ropeways, railway sidings, and communication infrastructure.
  • It also supports the strengthening of existing roads and bridges leading to project sites.
• The scheme is set to supporthydro power projects with a cumulative generation capacity of approximately 31,350 MW.
• It applies to all hydro projects over 25 MW, including private sector projects, and Pumped Storage Projects (PSPs).
• Budgetary support limits have been revised to Rs. 1 crore per MW for projects up to 200 MW, and Rs. 200 crores plusRs. 0.75 crore per MW for projects above 200 MW, with potential increases up to Rs. 1.5 crore per MW in exceptional cases.
• The scheme also incorporates a rigorous approval process, where budgetary support will be granted following cost appraisals by the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIB) and Public Investment Board (PIB), and subsequent approval by the Competent Authority.
• The projects whose Letter of Award of the first major package is issued by June 30, 2028, will be eligible under the scheme. 

Q1: What is HydroElectric Power?

Hydroelectric power, electricity produced from generators driven by turbines that convert the potential energy of falling or fast-flowing water into mechanical energy.

Source: Cabinet approves Modification of the scheme of Budgetary Support for the cost of Enabling Infrastructure for Hydro Electric Project

About National Instructional Media Institute: 

• It was formerly known as Central Instructional Media Institute (CIMI) was established in December 1986 by the Government of India as a Subordinate Office under Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGE&T), Ministry of Labour & Employment
• Presently, NIMI is functioning as an autonomous institute under Directorate General of Training (DGT), Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), the Govt. of India.
• It is the nodal organization for development of Instructional Media Packages (IMP), including digital content, Question Banks for assessment, for different Vocational courses.

Recent initiative of NIMI

• It has launched YouTube Channels for Industrial Training Institute.
• It will provide high-quality training videos to millions of learners across India’s Industrial Training Institute (ITI) skill ecosystem, available in nine languages.
• The new channels—offered in English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Telugu, and Kannada—are aimed at helping learners improve their technical skills through free, easy-to-access digital resources.
• Each channel has tutorials, skill demonstrations, and theoretical lessons, all curated by industry experts to ensure relevance in today’s vocational training landscape.
• This initiative aligns with India's National Skill Development Mission and the goals of the New Education Policy (NEP).
• NIMI encourages ITI students, instructors, and skilling enthusiasts to subscribe to their preferred regional channels to stay updated with the latest content.

Q1: What is the National Skill Development Mission?

It was approved by the Union Cabinet in 2015 to create convergence across sectors and States in terms of skill training activities. The mission shall consolidate and coordinate skilling efforts, and expedite decision-making across sectors to achieve skilling at scale with speed and standards.

Source:  Free Online Training in Regional Languages: NIMI Launches YouTube Channels for ITI Students

About Onitis bordati: 

• It is a dung beetle species belonging to the genus Onitis.
• Appearance: Males of most species have distinctive forelegs that are long, slender, and curved, often with teeth or spines.
• Dung beetle species were previously only found in Vietnam and Thailand.
• Ecological Significance: They are known for their ecological functions, such as seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and pest control, and plant growth.
• Threats: Habitat destruction and climate change posing significant threats.

Key facts about Nongkhyllem Wildlife Sanctuary

• Location: The Sanctuary falls in the Eastern Himalayan Global biodiversity hot spot and is located in the state of Meghalaya.
• The area consists of undulating plains to low hills, which are part of the Archaean Meghalaya Plateau.
• The area has become broken and rugged, especially towards west and north, because of continuous erosion by the rivers Umtrew, Umran, Umling, Umtasor and other smaller streams.
• The Umtrew is the main river of the area and the rest named above are its tributaries. The Umtrew also marks the western boundary of the Reserve Forest and the Sanctuary.
• Fauna: It is home to Clouded Leopard, majestic Elephants, and the powerful Himalayan Black Bear.
• Flora: Shorea robusta, Tectona grandis, Terminalia myriocarpa, Gmelina arborea etc.

Q1: What are Biodiversity hotspots?

These are regions that contain a high level of species diversity, many endemic species (species not found anywhere else in the world) and a significant number of threatened or endangered species.

Source: New Dung Beetle Species Discovered In Meghalaya’s Nongkhyllem Wildlife Sanctuary

About OpenAI o1: 

• It is a new large language model trained with reinforcement learning to perform complex reasoning.
• It thinks before it answers—it can produce a long internal chain of thought before responding to the user.
• This model can reason through complex tasks and solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding, and math.
• According to the company, the model is a progressive step toward achieving human-like AI.
• It also demonstrates tangible improvements in key areas, such as generating code and tackling complex, multistep challenges with greater proficiency than its predecessors.
• It has trained these models to spend more time thinking through problems before it responds, much like a human would.
• The o1 model scored 83 per cent on the qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad, OpenAI said in its blog post. This is a vast improvement from the 13 per cent scored by its predecessor, GPT-4o.
• OpenAI’s previous GPT models were simply taught to provide answers by detecting patterns in training data.
• But, in the case of o1, researchers at the organisation first taught the model using a system of rewards and penalties.
• Then, o1 was taught to process user queries by breaking them down and going through them one step at a time.
• Currently, the o1 can neither browse the internet nor process files and images. It also lacks factual information about recent world events.

Q1: What are Large Language Models (LLMs)?

A large language model (LLM) is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) program that can recognize and generate text, among other tasks. LLMs are trained on huge sets of data—hence the name "large."These are built on machine learning: specifically, a type of neural network called a transformer model.

Source: OpenAI unveils o1, a new AI model trained for ‘reasoning’: Here’s what it can do better