*High Yield Topics from economics, international

affairs, environment, tech, etc

A thread.

1. Blue Economy
-sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth,
improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health
of ocean ecosystem.
2. Climate refugees

Term “climate refugees” was coined to describe the

increasing large-scale migration and cross-border mass
movements of people that were partly caused by weather-
related disasters.
3. Debt-trap diplomacy

Debt-trap diplomacy is when a richer country lends to

poorer countries – that are resource-rich or strategically
placed – overwhelming them with debts that are not
sustainable.
Lead them to give up their strategic assets or give in to
political leverage.
4. Digital Silk Road

-term introduced in 2015 by an official Chinese government

white paper, as a component of BRI.
-DSR aims to improve digital connectivity in participating
countries, with China as the main driver of the process.
-Also research PEACE cable.
5. Greenwashing

Greenwashing happens when a company makes an

environmental claim about something the organization is
doing that is intended to promote a sense of environmental
impact that doesn't exist.
6. Dobson Unit

-most common unit for measuring ozone concentration

- One Dobson Unit is the number of molecules of ozone
that would be required to create a layer of pure ozone 0.01
millimeters thick at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius and
a pressure of 1 atmosphere

7. Polar Vortex

Stratospheric polar vortex is a large-scale region of air that

is contained by a strong west-to-east jet stream that circles
the polar region.
 8. Regenerative agriculture

An approach to farming that seeks to rehabilitate and

enhance the entire ecosystem of the farm by placing a heavy
premium on soil health with attention also paid to water
management, fertilizer use, and more.
 9. Seasteading

The concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called

seasteads, outside the territory claimed by any government.
 10 . Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)

A state where the amount and quality of land resources

necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and
enhance food security remain stable or increase within
specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.
 11. Thwaites Glacier

A large, rapidly changing glacier in Antarctica, currently

responsible for approximately 4% of global sea level rise.
- also called the 'Doomsday Glacier'
-part of the Amundsen Sea
12. Vertical Farming

The practice of growing crops in vertically stacked layers,

often integrated into other structures like skyscrapers, used
warehouses, or shipping containers.
13. Wolf Warrior Diplomacy

A term referring to the assertive approach of Chinese foreign

policy, characterized by confrontational responses to
criticisms from foreign nations.

14. Zero-Waste Cities

Cities implementing strategies to eliminate waste,

typically through a circular economy model where
waste is reduced, reused, and recycled.
-without burning, and with no discharges to land, water or
air that threaten the environment or human health.
15. Transboundary Pollution

Pollution that originates in one country but, by crossing

borders through pathways like water or air, can cause
damage in another country.

-Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution,

often abbreviated as Air Convention or CLRTAP

16. AI Ethics

A set of values, principles, and techniques that employ

widely accepted standards of right and wrong to guide moral
conduct in the development and use of artificial intelligence
technologies.
 17. Sentient AI

-A form of artificial intelligence that has the capacity to

have subjective perceptual experiences, or "feel" things.
-Google engineer Blake Lemoine said LaMDA AI was
sentient.

18. ChatGPT

An artificial intelligence text generation model

-developed by OpenAI
-that can generate human-like text based on the input it
receives.
- GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer
Fine-tuned process -> reinforcement learning from human
feedback (RLHF)
 19. LLMs
- Stands for large language model (LLM)

-is a language model consisting of a neural network with

many parameters (typically billions of weights or more),
trained on large quantities of unlabeled text.

- ChatGPT, Bard, GPT3 etc are LLMs

20. AGI

Stands for Artificial General Intelligence,

-a type of artificial intelligence that has the ability to

understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range
of tasks at a level equal to that of a human being.
 21. Food Sovereignty

The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate

food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable
methods, and their right to define their own food and
agriculture systems.
22. Right to Repair

Refers to legislation that allows consumers the ability to

repair and modify their own consumer electronic devices.

-Ministry of Consumer Affairs (MCA) has set up a

committee to come up with a Right to Repair framework.

23. Zero-Day Vulnerability

A software security flaw that is unknown to those who

should be interested in its mitigation (including the vendor of
the target software).

24. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

An ambitious infrastructure development and investment

project led by China, aimed at improving regional
cooperation and connectivity on a trans- continental scale.
25. Blockchain Technology

A decentralized and distributed digital ledger technology

that securely records information across multiple systems,
making it difficult to change, hack, or cheat the system.

26. DeFi

- Decentralized Finance
-A blockchain-based form of finance that does not rely on
central financial intermediaries such as brokerages,
exchanges, or banks.

27. ESG

An acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance,

three central factors in measuring the sustainability and
societal impact of an investment in a company or business.
28. Geostrategic Competition

The political, economic, and military rivalry between major

powers that occurs in geographical areas of strategic
importance.

29. Gig Economy

-A labor market characterized by the prevalence of

short-term contracts
- Eg: cab drivers of Uber, delivery personnel of
Zomato etc
30. Global Minimum Tax

A proposed system where multinational corporations are

required to pay at least a minimum level of tax on their
profits, regardless of the country in which they operate.
- OECD, 15% tax
31. Negative Emissions

Technologies or methods that remove more carbon dioxide

from the atmosphere than they emit.
-Other terms include Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and
Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR).
32. One Health Approach

A collaborative, multisectoral approach — working at

local, regional, national, and global levels — to achieve
optimal health and well-being outcomes recognizing the
interconnections between people, animals, plants, and their
shared environment.
33. Regenerative Economy

An economic system that works to renew, replenish, and

restore its own sources of energy and materials, promoting
sustainable and resilient societies.

34. Neuralink

A neurotechnology company, co-founded by Elon Musk,

that develops implantable brain–machine interface
technology.
35. Algorithmic Bias

The systematic and repeatable errors in a computer system

that create unfair outcomes, such as privileging one
arbitrary group of users over others.

Look for examples and tell me.

36. Bioprospecting-

The exploration of natural sources for small molecules,

macromolecules and biochemical and genetic information
that could be developed into commercially valuable
products for the agricultural, bioremediation, cosmetics,
nanotech, or pharma industries

37. Differential Privacy

A system that allows companies, governments, and

organizations to share aggregate data about users while
maintaining the privacy of individual users.
38. Exascale computing

Computing systems capable of at least one exaFLOP, or a

billion billion calculations per second, representing a
thousandfold increase over the first petascale computer.

39. Flygskam (Flight Shaming)

A Swedish term that refers to the feeling of being ashamed or

embarrassed to take an airplane because of the environmental
impact.

40. Green Ports

-Ports that adopt and implement green policies and

regulations to reduce environmental impacts from their
operations.

-ministry of ports, shipping and waterways launched the

“Harit Sagar" Green Port Guidelines, aimed at achieving
zero carbon emissions
41. Light Fidelity (Li-Fi)

A wireless communication technology which uses visible

light to transmit data at very high speeds.

Check full form of wifi also.

42. Ocean Conveyor Belt

A global-scale circulation process that occurs in the world's

oceans where cold, salty water sinks in the North Atlantic,
driving a global flow of ocean currents.
43. Re-wilding

The restoration of an area of land to its natural uncultivated

state (used especially with reference to the reintroduction
of species of wild animal that have been driven out or
exterminated).

Latest example: cheetah rehab in which state?

44. Social Impact Bonds

-A contract with the public sector, where it pays for better

social outcomes in certain areas and passes on the part of the
savings achieved to investors.
-Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation signed an MoU
with UNDP India to co-create India’s first SIB
45. Digital Twin Technology

A digital replica of a living or non-living physical entity that

can be used for various purposes.
46. Genetic Privacy

The concept of a person’s right to control the acquisition,

disclosure, and use of his or her genetic information.

47. Feminization of Poverty

A phenomenon referring to the widening gap between

women and men caught in a sequence of economic
deprivation and scarcity.
 48. Microbial Fuel Cells

A bio-electrochemical system that drives an electric current

by using bacteria and mimicking bacterial interactions found
in nature.

49. Peak Oil

-point in time when the maximum rate of global oil

production is reached, after which it is argued that
production will begin an irreversible decline
-forecasts of the year of peak oil range from 2019 to
2040
- King Hubbert introduced the term in 1956
50. Deep Learning

A subset of machine learning in artificial intelligence (AI)

that has networks capable of learning unsupervised from
data that is unstructured or unlabeled.

In news, because of LLMs like ChatGPT etc

51. Cap and Trade

An approach to controlling pollution by providing economic

incentives for reducing the emissions of pollutants
 52. Internet of Behaviors (IoB)

-concept that brings together the best of data analysis,

behavioural analysis, and technology
-a form of IoT dedicated to gathering and analyzing data
on human behavior that can then be applied to reflect or
influence behavioral patterns

53. Volcker Disinflation

-: Refers to the policy measures taken by Federal Reserve
chairman Paul Volcker to combat inflation in the 1980s,
leading to a period of slowed economic growth.
- In news coz of current inflation episode in US
54. Phillips Curve: The graphical representation of the
short-run relationship between unemployment and
inflation.
55. SWIFT

-SWIFT payments are transactions made through an

intermediary bank that allows you to send/receive
electronic payments internationally.
Principal function - to serve as the main messaging
network through which international payments are
initiated
Context: Ukr-Russia

56. Dedollarisation

refers to countries reducing reliance on the U.S.

dollar as a reserve currency, medium of exchange
or as a unit of account.
Context: INR payments for Russian trade
BRICS working on common currency to replace
USD
idea initiated by Russia, China
 57. Nord Stream 2:

-This is a natural gas pipeline that was built to transport gas

from Russia to Germany.
-The pipeline was completed in 2021, but it was not put
into operation due to the Ukraine-Russia war.
 58. NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens):

-A type of digital asset

-created to represent ownership or proof of authenticity of
unique items or content, using blockchain technology.

59. Stablecoin:

A type of cryptocurrency that attempts to peg their

market value to some external reference like the
U.S. dollar.
-claim to be backed by fiat currencies
-unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, stablecoins' prices
remain steady
60. Yield Curve Control:

-A monetary policy operation where a central bank uses its

powers to control bond interest rates by pledging to buy or
sell as many bonds as needed to maintain the yield at a
specific target level.
Bank of Japan has been following this.