For Your Knowledge

INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY 2019

International Literacy Day 2019 will be celebrated at Sunday, on 8thof September.

INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY CELEBRATION

According to the global monitoring report over education it is noted that one among the five man and two third women is illiterate. Some of them have minimum literacy skills, some children are still out of school and some are irregularly attending the school. South and West Asia is noted to have the lowest adult literacy rate of about 58.6%. The countries with the lowest literacy rate are Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

The day is celebrated having special themes, programs and goals of education all over the world. The theme of year 2007 and 2008 celebration was the Literacy and Health (strong attention over the epidemics to prevent people from the communicable diseases like HIV, Tuberculosis, cholera and Malaria). The theme of the year 2009 and 2010 was the Literacy and Empowerment of women whereas the theme of 2011 and 2012 celebration was the Literacy and Peace.

The importance of celebrating the day is to promote the public consciousness about extraordinary value of written word and requirement to encourage the literate rate of the society. Some of the writers writing to support literacy improvement are Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho, Philippe Delerm, Paul Auster, Philippe Claudel, Fatou Diome and many more.

Some of the companies, charity organizations, Global Development Research Center, Rotary International, Montblanc and the National Institute for Literacy are also involved in supporting the social literacy. Literacy shapes the life of human beings as well as builds up their cultural identity.

WHY INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY IS CELEBRATED

Celebrating the International Literacy Day is to promote the human attention towards the literacy and know their rights for social and human development. Literacy is as important as food to be alive and success. It is too necessary to eradicate the poverty, lowering the child mortality, controlling the population growth, attaining the gender equality and etc.

Literacy has the ability to raise the family status and hence the country status. It is celebrated to encourage the people towards getting continuous education and understand their responsibilities for the family, society and the country.

INTERNATIONAL LITERACY DAY THEMES

International Literacy Day celebration takes place on a specific theme of the year in order to make it effective by executing some strategic plan to resolve the problems related to the illiteracy all over the world in many countries. Some of the year wise themes of the International Literacy Day are mentioned below:

> Theme for 2006 was “Literacy sustains development” to focus on achieving social progress.

> Theme for 2007 and 2008 was “Literacy and Health” to focus on literacy and epidemics (communicable diseases like HIV, Tuberculosis, Malaria, etc).

> Theme for 2009-2010 was “Literacy and Empowerment” to focus on gender equality and empowering women.

> Theme for 2011-2012 was “Literacy and Peace” to focus on importance of literacy for peace.

> The theme for 2013 was “Literacies for the 21st Century” to promote global literacy.

> Theme for 2014 was “Literacy and Sustainable Development” to promote sustainable development in the areas of social development, economic growth, and environmental integration.

> Theme for 2015 was “Literacy and Sustainable Societies”.

> The theme of 2016 was “Reading the Past, Writing the Future”.

> The theme of 2017 was “Literacy in a digital world”.

> Theme for the international literacy day of 2018 was “Literacy and skills development”..

The Hindu 19 August 2019

For Your Knowledge

         MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS OF INDEPENDENT INDIA

• In 1951, India’s first general election was held. The voter turnout was 45.7%.
• In 1951, India started a new legacy when we hosted the first Asian Games.
• In 1966, Reita Faria Powell became the first Asian woman to win the Miss World.
• In 1974, our first organised resistance to destruction of forests, the Chipko movement, began.
• In 1974, we also entered into the nuclear club and carried out our first nuclear test in Pokhran.
• In 1975, Aryabhatta, our first man-made satellite, named after the 5th century mathematician, was launched. Since then we never looked back and progressed in this field.
• In 1979, Mother Teresa’s charitable work was noticed at a global level when she won the Nobel Prize for Peace.
• In 1983, India won the cricket World Cup for the first time, and made a mark as world-class sportsmanship.
• In 1984 Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to enter space opening the doors for bigger outer space ventures.
• In 1991, India opened its gates to the global market and initiated economic liberalization.
• In 1999, India defeated Pakistan in the Kargil War and re-captured Tiger Hill.
• In 2005, India became one of the few nations to enact the Right to Information (RTI).
• In 2007, India became one of the first few countries to have a woman head of state when Pratibha Patil took over as President of India.
• In 2007, India won the T20 World Cup.
• In 2008, we always had hits and misses at the Olympics, but we reached new heights when Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal in the 10m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
• In 2009, A.R. Rehman brought a proud moment for the country when he received an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire.
• In 2011, India won the cricket World Cup again.
• In 2011, we decided to take a stand against the system and supported Anna Hazare in his campaign against corruption.
• In 2012, Defence Research and Development Organisation successfully tested the missile Agni – V, taking a big step towards being more powerful.
• In 2012, the Indian government declared the Golden Quadrilateral complete. Over 40,000 km of highways and expressways were added to our infrastructure.
• In 2014, after years of battling with Polio, India was declared polio free.
• In 2014, we became the first country to reach the Mars orbit in the very first attempt.
• In 2014, after several years of disappointment, our hockey team made a glorious comeback when they defeated Pakistan in the 2014 Asian Games.
• In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi made us proud when he received the Nobel Prize for Peace.
• In 2015, India successfully reduced its school dropout rate by 90%, ensuring primary education to all its children.
• In 2015, the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, New Delhi, won the award of best Airport from Airport International Council.
• In 2016, India carried out surgical strike across the border on terror outfits in Pakistan territory.
• In 2017, India’s first full time woman Defence Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman took charge.
• In 2017, India’s Manushi Chillar was crowned Miss World in an event in China.
• In 2018, India’s longest railroad bridge over Brahmaputra (Bogibeel Bridge) was inaugurated by the Prime Minister in Assam.
• In 2018, India launched its first ever Semi High Speed electric train named Train 18 or Vande Bharat Express.
• In 2019, India launched Chandrayaan-2, its second moon exploration mission on 22nd July 2019.
• In 2019, Government of India abrogated Article 370 from the state of Jammu & Kashmir on 5th August 2019.

The Hindu 17 August 2019

For your Knowledge

                                 Lets Know more about our Tricolor 

Do you Know Flag hoisting is done in accordance with flag code of India 2002.  This Code was made by Ministry of Home affairs.  Please read the PDF as whole to know more about our tricolor.

Flag Code of India is meant to preserve the Integrity and respect of the tricolor

Significance and Meaning of the National Flag of India

The Tiranga is a horizontal rectangular tricolour of India saffron, white and India green. It has an Ashoka Chakra, a 24-spoke wheel, in the shade of navy blue at its centre.

On August 15, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, hoisted the national flag at Lahori Gate of the Red Fort in Delhi. Henceforth, on each Independence Day, the incumbent Prime Minister customarily unfurls the tricolour and addresses the nation.

Notably, the Indian National Flag is a horizontal rectangular tricolour of India saffron, white and India green. It has an Ashoka Chakra, a 24-spoke wheel, in the shade of navy blue at its centre.

The Tiranga was adopted during a meeting of the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947. It went on to become the official flag of the

Dominion of India on August 15, 1947.

The flag is based on the Swaraj flag, a flag of the Indian National Congress designed by Pingali Venkayya which was first unfurled in 1923.

By law, the flag is to be made of khadi, a special type of hand-spun cloth or silk, made popular by Mahatma Gandhi and its manufacturing process and specifications are laid out by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission has the right to manufacture the flag.

Usage of the flag is governed by the Flag Code of India and other laws relating to the national emblems.

According to the Flag code of India, the Indian flag has a ratio of two by three. All three stripes of the flag (saffron, white and green) are to be equal in width and length. The size of the Ashoka Chakra is not specified by the Flag code of India.

The flag was first proposed by Mahatma Gandhi to Indian National Congress (INC) in 1921 and subsequently the centre representing a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi's goal of making Indians self-reliant by fabricating their own clothing was created.

The design was then modified to include a white stripe in the centre for other religious communities.

The saffron, white and green win the flag; represent courage and sacrifice, peace and truth, and faith and chivalry respectively.

Days before India gained independence; a specially constituted Constituent Assembly decided that the flag of India must be accepted by all parties and faiths. Thus, a new version of the Swaraj flag was chosen where even though the tricolour remained the same, the charkha was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra representing the eternal wheel of law

Rules for Hoisting our Tiranga

1. The national flag of India is ideally made of hand-spun and hand-woven wool, cotton, and silk or khadi fabric. It is always rectangular in shape and the ratio of its length to height is 3:2.

2. When the Flag is flown, it should occupy the position of honour. The Flag should be positioned with the saffron band on top and the green band at the bottom.

3. Where it’s customary to hoist the Flag on a building, it will be flown on all days, including Sundays and public holidays. The flag will be hoisted from sunrise to sunset, irrespective of weather conditions.

4. Tiranga should not be in a disheveled condition. It shouldn’t be torn, damaged or disrespected in any manner.

5. The Flag should never be stuffed with sweets, flowers or confetti while unfurling.

6. The tricolour should never be hoisted at half pole. Once hoisted, one should keep in mind that the flag should never touch the ground or trail in water.

7. The national flag should be hoisted at a fast pace but lowered slowly. It is to be noted that while hoisting and lowering the Flag, bugle sound should play.

8. While the flag is being hoisted, everyone should face it. People should stand in attention and sing the national anthem.

9. No other flag should fly higher than the Indian flag or placed side-by-side.

10. The Flag should be taken down in the evening and should be folded and kept in a wooden box.

Display of Tiranga

The Tiranga is colored with saffron as the top band, white band in the centre, dark green band at the bottom and a navy blue Asokha Chakra placed at the centre of the white band.

Correct horizontal and vertical display of the flag

Placement protocol for the Indian flag with another country's flag

The Hindu 16 August 2019

Lets Play

   Do this without lifting your pencil

  

When I was five years old, a kid in my neighborhood challenged me with a puzzle that I’ve remembered ever since. As it turns out, there’s much more to this puzzle than meets the eye.

Puzzle 1: Draw this shape without picking up your pencil or redrawing the same stretch of line more than once. ........

............ More 

For your Knowledge

Why is the Sun orange when white stars are the hottest?

The reason the Sun shines so bright is that it’s hot. And the colour it glows depends on how hot it is. You are right that a star that glows white is hotter than one that glows orange. And it’s true the Sun often looks orange. But it isn’t really orange. It is white. Well, it’s a bit on the yellow side but it’s mostly white. But even white stars aren’t the hottest.

The hottest stars are actually blue

The blue giants that burn bright and briefly

The very hottest stars actually glow blue. We call them blue giant stars.

These blue giants are around 80 times larger than our Sun – so they are really, really big. They live and die very quickly. They are so hot and so big they burn through their fuel very quickly and last just a few million years.

That might sound like a long time but it’s not much compared to how long our Sun will live.

When our Sun was a million years old, it was still just a child. It’s about 5 billion years old now and will live to about 10 billion years. So you could say the Sun is now middle-aged. It’s about halfway through its life.

So blue giants are hottest, white stars are very hot, but there are also orange stars that burn less hot. There are even red stars, which are a bit cooler again. They are half or even a quarter the size of our Sun and, while they are still burning hot, they are nowhere near as hot as our lovely Sun.

NASA uses filters to take photos of the Sun, and the filters make it look orange

So why does the Sun look orange, then?

A lot of the pictures we take of the Sun make it look orange because of special filters we use to take the photos. The Sun is putting out so much light that we would not be able to photograph the detail on its surface unless we cut some of the brightness out. That’s what the filters do.

At sunrise and sunset, the Sun can look especially orange to our eyes. That’s because, at those times of day, its light has to travel through a lot of the Earth’s atmosphere (the layer of swirling air that surrounds our planet). And all the dust and stuff in the atmosphere makes the light scatter and change so it looks less blue and more orangey-red.

Only Bored Astronomers Find Gratification Knowing Mnemonics

In the olden days, astronomers used letters to try to sort different types of stars. As we learned more about stars, the order changed, and labels became quite mixed up! Today we still use this naming system to remember the order of stars from hottest to least hot. It goes like this: O, B, A, F, G, K, M. (Some versions have more letters at the end).

The O-stars are the blue giants, while our Sun is a “G-class” star. That means it’s not the hottest but it’s not the coolest either.

Those letters are hard to remember, so astronomers came up with different tricks to remember it. One memory trick is called a “mnemonic”, where you pretend each letter stands for a word. It’s easier to remember a sentence instead of a bunch of letters.

One student in my class came up with this mnemonic: “Only Bored Astronomers Find Gratification Knowing Mnemonics” (gratification means something like happiness).

Another one I like is: “Orange Butterflies And Frogs Get Knitted Mittens”

Source
http://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/3276289/curious-kids-why-is-the-sun-orange-when-white-stars-are-the-hottest-

The Hindu 8th August 2019

The Indian Express 7th August

For Your Knowledge

             How is global warming heating up the Earth?

We know that both the planet’s air and its oceans have been getting warmer over the last 100 years or more. We know this because it has been measured directly, by weather scientists called “meteorologists”.

Almost all parts of the world have reliable weather records going back many years. These records have been used for a long time to describe and explain what “normal” weather is like around the world. But more recently, they have shown how “normal” weather has changed over time.

The new normal

Of course, the weather changes a lot naturally; from season to season, and day to day. But we know what sort of patterns to expect. For example, we know it’s cold in winter and warm in summer.

These patterns are what we call the “climate”: normal weather, plus its daily and seasonal differences.

So when scientists talk about “climate change”, they mean important and out-of-the-ordinary changes to normal weather. This includes extreme weather like storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves happening more often.

The weather records tell us that the 20 warmest years on record all happened in the past 22 years. They also tell us that no one under the age of 34 has lived through a single month that was colder than “normal”.

The obvious question is: why is this happening? Scientists know that the Earth has gone through periods long ago when it’s been warmer or cooler than it is now. But the chances of the recent run of warm years happening naturally is very, very small.

We know that, because it’s never been measured before: the last 30 years has probably been the warmest period of the last 1,400 years.

The only way to explain the steady warming of the past century, and especially the faster warming in the past 30 years, is through the effect of human activity.

Burning up

Fuels such as coal and oil are burned to power cars, trucks, trains and aeroplanes; to run offices, farms and factories; to heat and light homes.

These fuels are made from a material called carbon, and when they are burned, they make a gas called carbon dioxide. This gas escapes into the atmosphere and stays there for a long time, maybe even hundreds of years.

Science experiments have shown that this carbon dioxide gas is good at trapping heat, so when there’s more of it in the air, the world warms up. About half of all the carbon dioxide that’s ever come from burning carbon was created in the last 30 years, which is also when the fastest warming has happened.

A warmer world

The effects of warming temperatures can already be seen in many ways around the world. Unfortunately, most of these effects cause trouble for people.

More frequent and longer-lasting droughts and heatwaves are likely, which will make it hard for people working outside in jobs like farming or construction. And it will probably be harder to grow food crops in drier soils.

In cold places like the Arctic, the warming climate melts extra snow and ice, adding water to the oceans that will cause the sea to eat away at many coasts.

In the world’s high mountain ranges, melting snow and ice make water, which flows into major rivers. But this river water will eventually be lost, as the weather gets warmer and there’s less and less snow and ice.

Many of these changes will make life harder for people, who may then want or need to leave their homes and move to other places.

It’s easy to feel unhappy, thinking about the effects of global warming. But it’s really important to remember that the future isn’t fixed: what eventually happens is up to us. If we make changes – for example, by using renewable energy and wasting less food – we can change the future for the better.

For More http://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/3257057/curious-kids-how-is-global-warming-heating-up-the-earth-

Important

      SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION in today's MILLENNIALS

Introduction

Social media is a great way to connect with our friends and relatives living at distant places. It is also a great place to meet like-minded people, boost our business, follow our favourite celebrities, enhance our knowledge and see what is happening around the world. However, using social media excessively can have negative repercussions. Many people grow addicted to social media and this has an impact on the normal functioning of their lives.

Social Media Addiction: Increasing by the Day

Social media has brought the world closer. People of different age groups around the world have social media accounts. While many social media users keep their profiles low key others keep it up to date. There is yet another category of social media users. These people post almost everything happening in their life on their social media accounts and spend most part of their day scrolling through different pages on social media sites. They have profiles on all the social media platforms and are addicted to them.

The number of social media addicts is increasing with every passing day. This is because social media platforms are coming up with several new and interesting ways to keep people engaged and hooked on to them.

Ways to Overcome Social Media Addiction

It may seem difficult to overcome social media addiction at once however you can do so with little effort over the time. Here are some ways to overcome social media addiction:

1. Limit the Time

There are apps that help you limit the time spent on different apps on your mobile. They send an alert when you exceed the time set for using a particular app. It is a good idea to download such an app to limit your social media usage. You can decrease this time gradually.

2. Stop the Notifications

Turn off the notifications for all your social media platforms on your phone. When you know you won’t be notified about any new update, you will not wait for your phone to beep or have the urge to constantly view the notification. There will be no disturbance and you will be able to concentrate better on the task at hand.

3. Delete the App

It is suggested to delete few social media apps from your phone and stay active only on few of them. Also, don’t place these apps on your home screen. This simple trick can also go a long way in overcoming your social media addiction.

4. Spend Time with Family and Friends

Keep your phone aside when you are with your family and friends. Talk to them, indulge in activities you enjoy and listen to all that they have to say. Plan to spend more and more time with them as you try to overcome your social media addiction. This can serve as a good distraction from the false world you have created for yourself.

5. Indulge in Your Favourite Activity

Identify the activities you love the most. It may be dancing, gardening, singing, jogging or anything else, for that matter. Engage in these activities for an hour or so each day to keep your mind off social media.

Conclusion

Social media addicts display compulsive behaviour. They often disconnect from the real world and become socially isolated. It is important to recognize this problem and overcome it to lead a happy and healthy life.

Activities at KV Mdgr Library

Class VII students  narrating story 

The Hindu 1st August