Rapid Fire Current Affairs | 18 Oct 2023

Bathukamma Festival

The nine-day-long annual festival of flowers Bathukamma began on a colorful note across Telangana.

  • It is a colorful floral festival celebrated by women with exotic local flowers.
    • The festival coincides with the monsoon, bringing water to ponds and wildflowers in vibrant colors.
    • Local flowers like 'gunuka,' 'tangedu,' 'banti,' and 'nandi-vardhanam' are abundantly used.
  • The festival begins a week before the ‘Saddula Bathukamma’ (the grand finale of the Bathukamma festival) which falls two days before Dussehra.
    • During the entire preceding week, women make ‘boddemma’ (a deity of Gowri – mother Durga – made with earthly mud) along with Batukamma and immerse it in the pond.
    • This helps reinforce the ponds and helps it retain more water.
  • The festival reinforces the bond between humans, the earth, and water, with rituals aimed at preserving natural resources.

Pain as a Warning System

  • Pain is subjective and psychological, primarily associated with tissue damage, and serves as a warning system.
    • Pain receptors in the skin and body tissues are activated by chemical stimuli during potential damage.
  • Acute pain has effective treatment options, but chronic pain (long-standing pain) is complex, and influenced by psychological factors.
  • Pain thresholds, which provide an indirect measure of pain, can be evaluated using a range of techniques.
    • Among these methods, a commonly employed one is the dolorimeter, which utilizes heat sources and precise timing mechanisms. Additionally, pressure algometers offer a safer alternative for measuring pain thresholds by applying pressure to a flat bony surface.
  • Some individuals lack the ability to feel pain or feel it minimally, leading to higher risks and shorter life expectancies.

Estivation

Recently, estivation, an intriguing animal survival strategy during hot and dry summers, has gained recognition for its remarkable adaptations to extreme conditions.

  • Estivation is a biological phenomenon whereby the animal enters a long period of dormancy, or inactivity, in response to high temperature or maybe even drought-like conditions to conserve energy and water in a difficult time.
    • It helps animals avoid desiccation, a condition characterized by extreme dryness of the skin and shields them from the risk of predation.
  • Examples of Estivation:
    • West African lungfish (Protopterus annectens) burrows into the mud of a drying water body and secretes a cocoon of mucus around itself during a drought.
    • Desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) dig burrows and retreat into them in hot summer months.

Maiden Test Flight of Gaganyaan

The Gaganyaan mission’s Flight Test Vehicle Abort Mission-1 (TV-D1) will take place on 21st October 2023 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

  • TV-D1 will demonstrate the performance of the Crew Escape System.
  • The ultimate aim of Gaganyaan project is to demonstrate human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bring them back safely to earth, by landing in Indian sea waters.

Read more: Gaganyaan mission

69th National Film Awards

Recently, the President of India presented 69th National Film Awards in various categories in New Delhi.

  • As a part of the event, the Dadasaheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award for the year 2021 was presented to Ms. Waheeda Rehman.
  • Dadasaheb Phalke, also known as the "Father of Indian Cinema," was a prominent film director, producer, and screenwriter who is credited with making India's first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913.
    • Phalke was a pioneer in Indian cinema and made over 100 silent films during his career.

Read more: Dadasaheb Phalke Award