prelimns special 2

Colombo Security Conclave (CSC): It is a security-focused 

group operating in the Indian Ocean region. India, Sri 

Lanka, Maldives, and Mauritius are permanent members. 

Bangladesh and Seychelles are observers. Its secretariat is 

in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

• Katchatheevu: It is a small uninhabited island administered 

by Sri Lanka. The island is situated in the Palk Strait between 

Neduntheevu (Sri Lanka) and Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu) but 

within the maritime boundaries of Sri Lanka.

• Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC): It is a statutory body 

under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B). It 

is tasked with regulating the public exhibition of films under 

the provisions of the Cinematograph Act, of 1952. Films can 

be shown in India only after they have been certified by the 

Board.

• Finfluencers: Financial influencers — popularly known as 

‘finfluencers’ — are people who offer financial advice to the 

public and share personal experiences about money and 

investment in stocks via social media platforms like Twitter, 

Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook.

• Greedflation: It refers to price inflation caused by corporate 

greed for high profits.

• Dark patterns: Dark patterns refer to the ways in which 

websites manipulate or deceive users into making certain 

choices or taking specific actions that are not in the best 

interest of users but benefit the company implementing them. 

This term was coined by Harry Brignull, a London-based 

User Experience (UX) designer, in 2010.

• Human challenge studies: It is also known as Controlled 

Human Infection Studies (CHIS). In these studies, human 

beings are exposed to diseases to understand the various 

facets of infectious microbes and the diseases or conditions 

caused by such pathogens.

• Undersea cables: Undersea cables, also known as ‘submarine 

cables’, are laid on the ocean floor and help transmit data 

across two or more landing points using fibre optic technology. 

The cables are made of thin glass fibres encased in layers of 

plastic or steel wires for protection and fitted with rapid-firing 

lasers and receptors on either end. Their carrying capacity 

is measured in terabits per second (Tbps). Presently, almost 

97% of the global internet traffic is serviced through roughly 

500 undersea submarine cables and only 3% is transmitted 

by satellites.

• Denotified, Nomadic, and Semi-Nomadic Communities (DNCs): 

The term 'De-notified Tribes' stands for all those communities 

which were once notified under the Criminal Tribes Acts, 

enforced by the British Raj between l87l and I947. These 

Acts were repealed by the Independent lndian Government in 

l952, and these communities were "De-Notified". Terms such 

as nomads and semi-nomads are applied to 'social groups 

who undertook a fairly frequent, usually seasonal physical 

movement as part of their livelihood strategy in the recent 

past. Committees set up for their empowerment: Ayyangar 

Committee (1949), Kalelkar Committee (1953), Renke 

Commission (2009), Idate Commission (2014).

• Anthropocene epoch: Anthropocene (from the Greek for 

“human” and “new”) is a proposed geological epoch that 

began when human activity, especially since the onset of the 

Industrial Revolution, started to have a significant impact on the 

Earth. The term was first coined in 2000 by Nobel Prize-winning 

chemist Paul Crutzen and biology professor Eugene Stoermer.

• UN High Seas Treaty: The UN High Seas Treaty, also known 

as the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) 

treaty, is the first-ever legally binding agreement governing 

the high seas. The Treaty aims to conserve and sustainably 

use marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction 

through effective implementation of the UNCLOS and 

enhanced international cooperation. Parts of the sea that are 

not included in the territorial waters or the internal waters of 

a country are known as the high seas, according to the 1958 

Geneva Convention on High Seas.

• Miyawaki plantation: Miyawaki plantation is the Japanese 

method of creating dense urban forests in a small area. It 

is named after Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who 

developed this methodology in the 1970s. He received the 

Blue Planet Prize in 2006 (The prize was created by the Asahi 

Glass Foundation in 1992, the year of the Rio Earth Summit).

• Evergreening of loans: It is a practice where banks revive a loan 

by a borrower who is on the verge of default by granting more 

loans to the same borrower. In other words, evergreening 

refers to giving a fresh loan to a borrower to pay up an old 

loan. The process of evergreening of loans is a form of 

zombie lending, which is essentially the rolling over of debts 

of unviable borrowers that would have otherwise defaulted.

• Crawford Lake: It is located in Ontario, Canada. It is 

meromictic, i.e. a lake that has layers of water that do not 

intermix. It has been described as the "golden spike" showing 

the global human impact on Earth.