Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2018

Notes:
The Mayor of Kolkata Municipal Corporaton (KMC) has recently launched India’s first Flood Forecasting and Early Warning System (FFEWS) for Kolkata City to help city officials and citizens act decisively to minimize damage before and during disasters. India’s first comprehensive city-level ‘FFEWS’ will reduce economic loss and impacts on livelihood and improve flood awareness and safety at community level. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded the design and implementation of the FFEWS through a $1 million technical assistance to KMC from its Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund under the Urban Financing Partnership Facility.

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The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded jointly to Dr. James P. Allison of the United States and Dr. Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation. Both the doctors, working separately, showed in the 1990s how certain proteins act as “brakes” on the immune system’s T-cells, limiting their ability to attack cancer cells, and that suppressing those proteins could transform the body’s ability to fight cancer. They used immunotherapy to help the cells of the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. Until their breakthroughs cancer treatment consisted of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Their work led to a fourth class of treatment, harnessing the immune system, what the Nobel committee at the Karolinska Institute called “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.”

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India’s first AICTE Training and Learning (ATAL) Academy will be established by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in Jaipur. In a bid to introduce upgraded teaching methods and modules to make technical education more effective and accountable, AICTE is building the training academies where the faculties would be trained on the eight-module course. The training will be mandatory for new teachers from 2019 & it will be necessary for the existing teachers and assistant teachers while applying for promotions. Beside Jaipur, three other academies slated to come up in Baroda (Gujarat), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala) and Guwahati (Assam) by 2019. The academies were being built on land provided free of cost by the respective state governments with minimum built-up infrastructure facility around the area. These academies will equip candidates with the latest changes in technical education.

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Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan has recently launched an innovative initiative called SATAT (Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation) in New Delhi on 1st October 2018 to promote Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) as an alternative fuel. In it, Public sector oil marketing companies – Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum – will seek expression of interest from potential entrepreneurs to set up CBG production plants and make it available in the market for use as auto fuel. The Bio-gas is produced naturally through a process of anaerobic decomposition from waste / bio-mass sources like agriculture residue, cattle dung, sugarcane press mud, municipal solid waste, sewage treatment plant waste, etc. After purification, it is compressed and called CBG, which has pure methane content of over 95%. Compressed Bio-Gas is exactly similar to the commercially available natural gas in its composition and energy potential. Thus, this move will benefit vehicle-users as well as farmers and entrepreneurs.

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Rio Paralympic gold medallist Thangvellu Mariyappan has been named as flag-bearer of the Indian contingent for the 3rd Paralympic Asian games to be held in Jakarta, Indonesia from October 6-13. India will field its biggest ever contingent of 302 members including athletes, coaches, support staff, escorts and officials. The Indian contingent were initially denied entry on Oct 1 when they arrived at the Games Village as the Sports Ministry had not till then cleared funds to the tune of $2.5 lakh. However, the issue was later resolved.

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The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister, Prakash Javadekar has recently announced the “Swachh Campus rankings 2018” under different categories. In it, Haryana’s Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) has been declared the cleanest government varsity by the HRD Ministry, followed by Guru Nanak Dev University in Punjab’s Amritsar. The rankings were decided on the basis of a survey under the ‘Swachhta Hi Sewa’ campaign. The Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in the national capital has been ranked third among the government institutions followed by Algappa University in Tamil Nadu’s Karaikudi and Acharya Nagarjuna University in Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur. The universities were assessed for toilets adequacy and maintenance, garbage clearance system, hostel kitchen hygiene and sophistication of equipment, water purity, storage, distribution facility, campus greenery and rainwater harvesting, use of solar systems and villages or neighbourhood adoption for hygiene.

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The 31st All India Railways Chess tournament 2018 has started at Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on October 3. The 4-day tournament has formally inaugurated by General Manager of Southern Railway, SM Kulshreshta. The event is being conducted in Swiss League Format at both team and individual levels. Around 87 players including five grandmasters and 18 international masters from 14 Zonal Railways and seven Production Units from across Indian Railways are participating in the event. The successful players from this tournament will represent Indian Railways in the National Chess Championship to be held in November 2018.

Notes:
On the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu inaugurated the world’s largest dome at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT)’s World Peace University (MIT-WPU) campus at Loni Kalbhor, Pune. The dome is 160 ft in diameter and 263 ft tall. It is larger in area than the dome at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (which is 136 ft. in diameter and 448 ft. in height). The prayer hall can accommodate about 3,500 people and is embellished with more than 50 statues of saints, philosophers, scientists and statesmen from India and the world. Each of the statues, created by the noted artist ‘Ram V. Sutar’, is 4m in tall and weighs up to two tonnes. The dome will be home to teachings of saints, spiritual leaders, philosophers and scientists from around the world as it will profess humanity and world peace. It will house India’s first library called Saint Dnyaneshwara World Peace Library which will have books sourced from over 100 countries across the globe.

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On October 4, the first ever Indo-Vietnam Coast Guard joint exercise – Sahyog HOP TAC -2018’ held in the Bay of Bengal off Chennai between Indian and Vietnam Coast Guards (VGC). According to an official press release, Coast Guard ships Shaurya, Arnvesh and inreceptor boat C-431 along with a Dornier aircraft and Chetak helicopter participated in the joint exercise. The purpose of the exercise was to acquaint the coast guards of the two countries with each others’ capabilities and strengthening the working level relationship to rescue lives at sea. The highlight of the exercise was a scenario of hijacking an oil ship and subsequent rescue of its crew in the coordinated joint operation of both the countries. The exercise was conducted under the supervision of Inspector General Paramesh Sivamani Commander Coast Guard Eastern region, and was witnessed by Vietnam Coast Guard Commandant Major General Nguyen Van Son.

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Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu has recently released the policy on the biometric-based digital processing of passengers at airports called “Digi Yatra” to make hassle-free air travel for passengers. Digi Yatra is about Facial Recognition based passenger processing which is a common standard being adopted the world over. It will facilitate paperless travel and avoid identity check at multiple points. In the first phase in February 2019, Hyderabad and Bengaluru international airports will have the system on a pilot basis. In the second phase, in April 2019, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) will roll out the programme initially at Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune and Vijayawada airports later on, all airports will adopt the system. Under the Digi Yatra, passenger can get a Digi Yatra ID by sharing minimum details like Name, e-mail ID, Mobile number and details of one approved Identity proof where Aadhar ID is not mandatory. This DigiYatra ID will be shared by passengers while booking ticket. Airlines will share the passenger data and DigiYatraID with the departure airport