D Vasini Bai, a women innovator from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, has developed ten varieties of Anthurium, a flower with high market value, by cross-pollination. Anthurium (Anthurium spp.) is a vast group of beautiful blooming plants available in a wide range of colors. The plants of the varieties are having high demands due to its use as indoor decorative plants. During the last year, over 8500 plants, as well as the flowers, have been sold to the market of mainly Pune and Thiruvananthapuram. The innovator has been propagating it through cuttings & seeds and supplying some plants and flowers throughout the country, but she was unable to meet the demand due to the time-consuming technique of propagation method.

Therefore, the National Innovation Foundation-India has facilitated mass multiplication and large scale production of four highly demanded varieties through tissue culture technique at the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bangalore, for the diffusion of the varieties in similar agroclimatic zones of the country.

Anthurium is one of the best domestic flowering plants in the world. They are beautiful but also purify the surrounding air and remove harmful airborne chemicals like formaldehyde, ammonia, toluene, xylene, and allergens. Its importance of removing toxic substances from the air, NASA has placed it in the list of air purifier plants.Anthurium has larger economic importance because of its eye-catching and beautiful inflorescence and fetches a good market price.

The uniqueness of these varieties developed by D Vasini Baiare large and medium-size flowers with uncommon color combinations of spathe and spadix (viz. light and dark orange, magenta, green and rose color combination, dark red and white colors). She has also developed a new method for raising the seedlings in limited space using corrugated asbestos sheets. For transplanting grown-up seedlings, she uses concrete troughs instead of pots. These methods have helped her in growing more plants in limited space, thus reducing the costs and maintenance and increasing the income at the same time. She sells the Anthurium flowers and plants to local florists as well as in cities like Pune and Mumbai at an average price of rupees 60-75 per flower.

Vasini Bai has received a number of awards and recognition for developing the Anthurium varieties. In March 2017, she was awarded with state award at the Ninth National Biennial competition organized by National Innovation Foundation-India (NIF) by the then President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

Her interest in developing new Anthurium variety instigated in the late 1970s when her son brought two plants of Anthurium. She was attracted to the beauty of the plants and wanted to raise more such plants for developing new variety with uncommon color combinations. She started experimenting using various techniques, trials, and errors. In 1980, she manually cross-pollinated for the first time, and after years of experiments in 1985, she developed the first variety of Anthurium- Dora (single plant with 8-10 leaves and multiple flowers with orange-colored spathe). She continued her work, and during 1985–2000, she developed another five varieties viz. Dora- I, Dora –II, Dora –III, Dora –IV and Dora – V. The other five varieties Akash, George, Giant Pink, JV Red, and JV Pink were developed later through manual cross-pollination.

The National Innovation Foundation-India (NIF) facilitated validation trials of Vasini Bai’s varieties along with six parent varieties under the varietal testing programme at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. The innovator’s varieties were reported to be healthy, vigorous with prominent and distinguishable characters of spathes and spadix ranging from light pink, pink, red, white, violet and orange. The leaves were found to be shiny, medium-large, and heart-shaped. The flower spathes were bright coloured and had short spadix, and these parameters were comparable with existing commercial varieties.

Salient features of the Anthurium varieties are Large beautiful flowers Different colors of spathe and spadix Long stalks Better shelf life Good market value

NIF has also facilitated mass multiplication and large scale production of the varieties --Dora, George, JV Pink and JV Red which have significant market value through tissue culture technique at Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bangalore for diffusion of the varieties in similar agroclimatic zones of the country.

Scientists from Pune based Agharkar Research Institute (ARI), an autonomous institute under the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India have developed a microreactor that that can produce large quantities of uniform size of nanoparticles, thus serving a major requirement in biomedical technology.

The device could synthesize metal, semiconductor, and polymer nanoparticles by continuous flow active microreactor. Dr Dhananjay Bodas and his team from ARI who put together this microreactor on the basis of their earlier studies published in the journals Materials Science and Engineering and ACS Applied Materials and Interface also discovered that the parameters such as concentration of reactants, flow rate, agitation, reaction temperature as well as time, determined the size of nanoparticles and their distribution.

They further derived a mathematical equation using dimensional analysis to predict process parameters accurately for achieving true monodispersity (maintaining a uniform size of nanoparticles), and succeeded in synthesizing uniform size of nanoparticles in continuous flow active microreactors (a device in which chemical reactions take place in a confinement with dimensions below 1 mm) with support fromSERB,DST.

Nanoparticles possess unique size-dependent properties, which make them useful in biomedical technology but difference in their sizes which arises due to conventional methods of synthesizing them, reduces their efficiency. Maintaining a uniform size of the nanoparticles is a challenge faced by the biomedical industry. Besides, these methods use multiple reagents, are time consuming and produce toxic by-products.

Scientists fromInternational Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI) an autonomous institute under the Department of Science &Technology,Govt. of India in collaboration with Nanomechanics Inc., Oak Ridge, USA havejointly developed an advanced tool for mapping nano-mechanical properties of materials like multi-phase alloys, composites, and multi-layered coatings.

The tool called NanoBlitz 3D has also been found to yield excellent results on a wide range of material systems, includingglass-fibre-reinforced polymer composites, dual-phase steels, softwood and shale. An important aspect of this technique is its high-throughput, with just a few hours of testing required for generating more than 10,000 data points that can be processed using machine learning (ML) algorithms.

It enables the performance of a large array, typically consisting of 1000s high-speed nano-indentation tests, wherein each indentation tests takes less than one second to measure hardness and elastic modulus of a givenmaterial.In addition, it provides capabilities to carry out advanced data analysis, such as identifying and quantifying the mechanical properties of constituent phases, features or componentsof multi-phase alloys, composites, multi-layered coatings and so on.

The high-speed mapping capabilities of the tool can also be used to quickly establish structure-property linkages at a micrometer length scale or higher, which can help to understand multiscale mechanics and aid in development of hierarchical materials. This, in turn, expedites the development of high-performance novel materials under an Integrated Computational Material Engineering (ICME) approach.

The product was released in San Antonio, USA by Dr. G. Padmanabham, Director, ARCI, on the sidelines of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society 2019 Annual Meeting and Exhibition.As data science is considered as the new avenue for accelerating materials design and discovery, this technique with high-fidelity and high-throughput can greatly contribute to this new paradigm.

Approval in this regard was recently given by the National Biofuel Coordination Committee (NBCC). Even sugar mills have simultaneously ramped up hand sanitiser manufacturing capacity to almost 100,000 litres per day to cater its rising demand following the coronavirus outbreak. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Background: The Government of India launched the EBP programme in 2003 for undertaking the blending of ethanol in petrol to address the environmental concerns due to fossil fuel burning, provide remuneration to farmers, subsidize crude imports and achieve forex savings. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Besides, the National Policy on Biofuels, 2018 envisages that during an agriculture crop year when there is projected over supply of food grains as anticipated by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, the policy will allow conversion of these surplus quantities of food grains to ethanol, based on the approval NBCC. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Related- What are ethanol and molasses? Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is a liquid that has several uses. At 95% purity, it is called rectified spirit and is used as the intoxicating ingredient in alcoholic beverages. At 99%-plus purity, ethanol is used for blending with petrol. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Both products are made from molasses, a byproduct of sugar manufacturing. For making sugar, mills crush sugarcane which typically has a total fermentable sugars (TFS) content of 14%.massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

The TFS component consists of sucrose along with the reducing sugars glucose and fructose. Most of this TFS component gets crystallised into sugar, and the remaining part is called molasses. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Molasses stages: The molasses go through three stages — A, B, and C, the last one being where the molasses are most un-crystallised and non-recoverable. The ‘C’ molasses roughly constitute 4.5% of the cane, and have a remaining TFS of 40%.massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

After C-molasses are sent to the distillery, ethanol is extracted from them. Every 100 kg of TFS yields 60 litres of ethanol. Thus, from one tonne of cane, mills can produce 115 kg of sugar (at 11.5% recovery) and 45 kg of molasses (18 kg TFS) that gives 10.8 litres of ethanol. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

How more ethanol can be produced? Mills can also produce only ethanol from sugarcane, without producing sugar at all. In this case, the entire 14% TFS in the cane is fermented. Here, a mill can make 84 litres of ethanol and zero kg of sugar. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

In between the two extreme cases, there are intermediate options as well, where the cane juice does not have to be crystallised right till the final ‘C’ molasses stage. The molasses can, instead, be diverted after the earlier ‘A’ and ‘B’ stages of sugar crystal formation. Mills, then, would produce some sugar, as opposed to fermenting the whole sugarcane juice into ethanol.massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

If ethanol is manufactured using ‘B’ heavy molasses (7.25% of cane and with TFS of 50%), around 21.75 litres will get produced along with 95 kg of sugar from every 1 tonne of cane. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Why focus on more ethanol? Mills currently have all-time-high stocks of sugar, and they have been at loggerheads with farmers over non-payment of dues. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Mill owners insist that the reason behind their woes is excess production of sugar and fall in its price. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

Under the circumstances, ethanol is the only real saviour — both for mills and cane growers. Recently, the government approved an increase in the price of ethanol to be procured by public sector oil marketing companies from sugar mills for blending with petrol for the 2019-20 supply year from December 1. massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs also allowed conversion of old sugar into ethanol, which again is expected to help mills deal with the current overproduction in the sweetener and make timely payments to farmers for the cane delivered by them. Ethanol production has been additionally facilitated with the government mandating 10% blending of petrol with ethanol.

Why showcase Kasaragod? Kasaragod reported the third case of COVID-19 in the country — a student airlifted from Wuhan on February 3. The district administration mounted a massive exercise to trace the 150-odd contacts of that one student.

According to figures uploaded by the Kerala government, Kasaragod has had 169 cases and zero deaths until April 19, a unique achievement in itself, given the fact that a large proportion of the district’s population have settled abroad. Of those infected, 123 people have recovered so far, leaving only 46 active cases among the original 169.

What is the Kasaragod model? It involves aggressive testing, technology, foolproof contact tracing, and an effective public awareness campaign.

A special officer was appointed to coordinate functioning of the district administration and for effective coordination between line departments at field and secretariat levels.

Section 144was imposed in the entire district, with seven drones employed for surveillance. Under the Care for Kasaragod initiative, a detailed action plan — common coordinated action plan — was drawn up for combating COVID-19 so that all stakeholders could turn to it when the situation arose.

As per the Action plan: All quarantined people were tracked using GPS. All essentials were home-delivered in the containment/cluster zones, irrespective of whether they were rich or poor.

A campaign on social distancing called “Break the Chain” was carried out to deliver the message of social distancing. Core teams were formed with incident commanders to rush to various areas and take quick action.

It had a very strong social welfare component, which included free food kits for the poor and migrant workers, a strong check on hoarding and black-marketing, and health checkup on alternate days for migrants or the destitute.

Community kitchens supplied free food. Jana Jagratha Samitis at the ward level ensured that the messaging reached every person.

Tests and quarantine measures: A total of 17,373 people were quarantined. On an average, 100-150 samples were tested every day and new testing labs were started. The medical college in Kasaragod with 200 beds and an ICU facility was operationalised in four days. There is also a 709-bed COVID-19 care centre.

ASHAs and health inspectors carried out household surveys. All primary and secondary contacts of high-risk cases (those aged 60 or above) were quarantined in isolation centres. This was done as many homes did not have separate toilets.

What are the other successful models containment? AGRA MODEL: Under the cluster containment and outbreak containment plan in Agra, the district administration identified epicentres, delineated the impact of positive confirmed cases on the map, and deployed a special task force as per a micro plan made by the district administration.

The hotspots were managed through an active survey and containment plan. The “hotspot” area was identified within a radius of 3 km from the epicentre, while a 5 km buffer zone was identified as the containment zone.

BHILWARA MODEL: This entailed complete isolation of Bhilwara city with Section 144 CrPC being imposed.

In the first phase, essential services were allowed; in the second phase, the shutdown was total with the city and district borders sealed and checkposts at every entry and exit point. Trains, buses and cars were stopped. The district magistrates of neighbouring districts too were asked to seal their borders. The message from Bhilwara was “ruthless containment”.

PATHANAMTHITTA MODEL: Kerala deployed technology to a large extent in the Pathanamthitta model too. Every person who had entered the district was screened and a database created so that they could be reached at short notice.

Graphics were created showing the travel route of the positive cases and publicised. This led to self-reporting. As people realised from the route maps and the travel times that they had come in contact with someone positive for COVID-19, many walked up to be screened or treated.

What is the issue? In an April 17 decision, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry imposed restrictions saying companies from countries that share borders with India can invest ‘only under the government route’.

The revised FDI policy was aimed at curbing opportunistic takeovers/acquisitions of Indian companies due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. But, it is expected to mainly hurt China. China’s footprint in the Indian business space has been expanding rapidly, especially since 2014. The latest measures will prevent Chinese expansion in India.

What are China’s concerns? The amended policy makes every type of investment by Chinese investors subject to government approval.

It neither distinguishes between greenfield and brownfield investments nor listed and unlisted companies. It also does not distinguish between the different types of investors, such as industry players, financial institutions, or venture capital funds.

Besides, making government approval necessary for acquisitions in private companies by Chinese investors will only reduce the number of potential investors available for a prospective seller, and drive down the valuation.

Such a blanket application could create unintended problems. What has the China said? The latest FDI measures by government of India do not conform to the consensus of G20 leaders and trade ministers to realise a free, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, predictable and stable trade and investment environment, and to keep our markets open.

Companies make choices based on market principles and hence India should revise relevant discriminatory practices, treat investments from different countries equally, and foster an open, fair and equitable business environment.

The Principle of Non-Discrimination in International Trade Law (GATT perspective): Non-discrimination is a key concept in WTO law, not to say is both central and essential to assuring the success of the multilateral trading system.

The principle of non-discrimination rests on two pillars: the most-favored nation (MFN) treatment obligation and the national treatment obligation.

The principle of non-discrimination is so fundamental for the balance of rights and obligations within the WTO that it continues to induce legal effects even when subject to certain exceptions.

How India defends its latest move? India’s tweaking FDI rules are not in violation of WTO norms that allow countries to make such changes when issues of national security are at stake.

India is not the only country to make such modifications in policy. Several countries in Europe had changed their laws or made new ones to cope with similar situations.

What provoked the government? The Indian government appears to have been spooked by the People’s Bank of China raising its stake in India’s largest non-banking mortgage provider HDFC and amid warning calls by MSMEs to prevent a ‘shopping spree’ by Chinese investors of heavily discounted Indian companies.

What next? While the government would term the move as an act of self-defence and one that follows global pattern, this pre-emptive economic strike would impact foreign investment inflows in India and could follow a Chinese retribution against Indian companies with investments in China.

However, in times of a global pandemic, one can hardly cast a shadow on the government’s motive. As the country braces for the fallout of this decision, it is imperative for the government’s bold move to be immediately followed by a comprehensive FEMA notification and SEBI clarification that addresses the above concerns.

Key facts: The RPSF is a short-term strategy that feeds into IFAD’s longer-term development objectives.

IFAD will initiate the Facility with US$40 million of seed funding from grant resources and expects to mobilize at least US$200 million from Member States and other donors to scale up support.

The Facility will leverage the UN Secretary-General’s Response and Recovery Fund and the work of other multilateral partners to achieve food security for the millions of poor rural people in the most remote and vulnerable communities.

Objectives: It aims to improve the food security and resilience of poor rural people by supporting production, market access and employment. The ultimate goal of the RPSF is to accelerate the recovery of poor and vulnerable rural people from the COVID-19 crisis.

Significance of this facility: This initiative aligns with the UN socio-economic response framework and complements IFAD’s broader COVID-19 response efforts.

It seeks to improve the resilience of rural livelihoods in the context of the crisis by ensuring timely access to inputs, information, markets and liquidity.

The planned interventions fall into four main categories: Providing inputs and basic assets for productionof crops, livestock and fisheries.

Facilitating access to markets to support small-scale farmers in selling their products in conditions where market functions are restricted. Targeting funds for rural financial services to ensure sufficient liquidity and to ease repayment requirements so as to maintain services, markets and jobs.

Promoting the use of digital services to deliver key information on production, weather, finance and markets.

Eligibility: All IFAD-supported country programmes that are at risk of not achieving their development outcomes due to COVID-19 are eligible to receive funding from the RPSF.

Preference will be given to countries with low institutional and financial capacity to respond to the crisis. Ceiling amounts for countries and projects will be determined by the total amount of financing available.

About the New Development Bank: It is a multilateral development bank operated by the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

The New Development Bank was agreed to by BRICS leaders at the 5th BRICS summit held in Durban, South Africa in 2013.

It was established in 2014, at the 6th BRICS Summit at Fortaleza, Brazil. The bank is set up to foster greater financial and development cooperation among the five emerging markets.

In the Fortaleza Declaration, the leaders stressed that the NDB will strengthen cooperation among BRICS and will supplement the efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global development.

The bank will be headquartered in Shanghai, China. Unlike the World Bank, which assigns votes based on capital share, in the New Development Bank each participant country will be assigned one vote, and none of the countries will have veto power.

Roles and functions: The New Development Bank will mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries, to supplement existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development.

About Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi: It is implemented as a central sector scheme by the Government of India. This scheme was introduced to augment the source of income of many small and marginal farmers.

Under the Scheme an amount of Rs.6000/- per year is transferred directly into the bank accounts of the farmers, subject to certain exclusion criteria relating to higher income status. The entire responsibility of identification of beneficiaries rests with the State / UT Governments.

Ambit: The Scheme initially provided income support to all Small and Marginal Farmers’ families across the country, holding cultivable land upto 2 hectares. Its ambit was later expanded w.e.f. 01.06.2019 to cover all farmer families in the country irrespective of the size of their land holdings.

Exceptions: Affluent farmers have been excluded from the scheme such as Income Tax payers in last assessment year, professionals like Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, Chartered Accountants etc and pensioners pensioners drawing at least Rs.10,000/- per month (excluding MTS/Class IV/Group D employees).

Similar programmes by states: Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana- MP. The Rythu Bandhu scheme- Telangana. Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income augmentation (KALIA)- Odisha.

Usually, the MPC meets six times a year. But, in FY20, it had an extra meeting in view of the pandemic and the urgent need to assess the current and evolving macroeconomic situation.

About MPC: The RBI has a government-constituted Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) which is tasked with framing monetary policy using tools like the repo rate, reverse repo rate, bank rate, cash reserve ratio (CRR).

It has been instituted by the Central Government of India under Section 45ZB of the RBI Act that was amended in 1934. Functions: The MPC is entrusted with the responsibility of deciding the different policy rates including MSF, Repo Rate, Reverse Repo Rate, and Liquidity Adjustment Facility.

Composition of MPC: The committee will have six members. Of the six members, the government will nominate three. No government official will be nominated to the MPC. The other three members would be from the RBI with the governor being the ex-officio chairperson. Deputy governor of RBI in charge of the monetary policy will be a member, as also an executive director of the central bank.

Selection and term of members: Selection: The government nominees to the MPC will be selected by a Search-cum-Selection Committee under Cabinet Secretary with RBI Governor and Economic Affairs Secretary and three experts in the field of economics or banking or finance or monetary policy as its members. Term: Members of the MPC will be appointed for a period of four years and shall not be eligible for reappointment.

How decisions are made? Decisions will be taken by majority vote with each member having a vote. RBI governor’s role: The RBI Governor will chair the committee. The governor, however, will not enjoy a veto power to overrule the other panel members, but will have a casting vote in case of a tie.

What is RBI Monetary Policy? The term ‘Monetary Policy’ is the Reserve Bank of India’s policy pertaining to the deployment of monetary resources under its control for the purpose of achieving GDP growth and lowering the inflation rate.

The Reserve Bank of India Act 1934 empowers the RBI to make the monetary policy. What the Monetary Policy intends to achieve? As per the suggestions made by Chakravarty Committee, aspects such as price stability, economic growth, equity, social justice, and encouraging the growth of new financial enterprises are some crucial roles connected to the monetary policy of India.

While the Government of India tries to accelerate the GDP growth rate of India, the RBI keeps trying to bring down the rate of inflation within a sustainable limit.

In order to achieve its main objectives, the Monetary Policy Committee determines the ideal policy interest rate that will help achieve the inflation target in front of the country.

Monetary Policy Instruments and how they are managed? Monetary policy instruments are of two types namely qualitative instruments and quantitative instruments. The list of quantitative instruments includes Open Market Operations, Bank Rate, Repo Rate, Reverse Repo Rate, Cash Reserve Ratio, Statutory Liquidity Ratio, Marginal standing facility and Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF).

Qualitative Instruments refer to direct action, change in the margin money and moral suasion.

The model- Artificial Neural Networks based global Ionospheric Model (ANNIM)– has been developed using long-term ionospheric observations to predict the ionospheric electron density and the peak parameters.

How it works? Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) replicate the processes in the human brain (or biological neurons) to solve problems such as pattern recognition, classification, clustering, generalization, linear and nonlinear data fitting, and time series prediction. The target (output) of ANNs is the electron density as a function of altitude for any given location and time.

Potential: ANNIM has successfully reproduced large scale anomalies of the ionosphere. It also captured the general morphological features of the ionosphere during disturbed space weather periods, such as geomagnetic storms which occurs when the magnetic cloud originated from Sun (known as Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)) interacts with the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The model may be utilized as a reference model in the ionospheric predictions and has potential applications in calculating the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning errors.

Significance of the model and the need for data on this: The ionospheric variability is greatly influenced by both solar originated processes and the neutral atmosphere origin, and therefore, difficult to model.

Scientists have tried to model the ionosphere using theoretical and empirical techniques; however, the accurate prediction of electron density is still a challenging task.

Tracking the variability of the Ionosphere is important for communication and navigation.

It is a pro-democratic front formed by thousands of internet users from Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong in social networks against the authoritarianism of the Chinese Government and its supporters.

The informal movement began by defending itself against the insults of pro- Chinese twitter users against Thailand. It has now ended up forming a social network group to combat Chinese “propaganda”.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI): West Texas intermediate (WTI), also known as Texas light sweet, is a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing.

This grade is described as light crude oil because of its relatively low density, and sweet because of its low sulfur content. It is the underlying commodity of New York Mercantile Exchange’s oil futures contracts.

Why in News? US oil markets created history when prices of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the best quality of crude oil in the world, fell to “minus” $40.32 a barrel in New York. This is the lowest crude oil price ever known.

IIT Bombay has developed a platform named World Wide Help (WWH) which can be used to connect people seeking medical help with helpers, such as doctors.

How it works? The WWH platform can be used with an app or a phone. The user simply calls a dedicated number and can input basic data such as the age of the person in need of help and whom they wish to solicit help from. They can supply the phone number, too.

This is registered as a task in the app and assigned to a primary helper who is a junior doctor or medicare professional. Further, the task may be re-designated by the primary helper to a senior doctor, who is the second level of helper.

Matterhorn is a mountain of the Alps. It is situated in the Pennine Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy.

Its summit is 4,478 metres (14,692 ft) high, making it one of the highest summits in the Alps and Europe.

The Matterhorn is mainly composed of gneisses from the Dent Blanche nappe, lying over ophiolites and sedimentary rocks of the Penninic nappes.

Sometimes referred to as the Mountain of Mountains, the Matterhorn has become an iconic emblem of the Alps in general.

Why in News? Indian Tricolour of more than 1,000 meters in size was projected on Matterhorn Mountain, Zermatt, Switzerland to express solidarity to all Indians in the fight against COVID-19.