Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
Bibhu Kalyan Nayak from Bhubaneswar has become the first Indian to be appointed Chair of International Hockey Federation (FIH) Health and Safety Committee by the world governing body. He will serve a two-year term lasting till the first executive board meeting after Congress 2020. He has extensively trained in Sports Traumatology and Sports and Exercise Physiology from National Institute of Sports Medicine at Havana, Cuba & National Sports Centre at Madrid, Spain. Nayak also served as a medical officer for the 2018 Men’s World Cup. He was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps of the Indian Army in 1995 and has worked in the Army Sports Institute, Pune for six years.

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Forbes has recently compiled a first-ever list of the World’s Best Bank 2019 in terms of customer services and technological advancements. The private lender, HDFC Bank, was ranked at the top of the Forbes list of Indian banks, followed by ICICI Bank, DBS, Kotak Mahindra Bank and IDFC Bank. However, India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), did not even make it to top 10 of the list and was ranked 11th by the customers.Forbes had partnered with Statista, a market research company, to measure the best banks in 23 countries. Interestingly, this survey ignored any financial performances like P&L statements and balance sheets in favour of a customer’s opinion. The survey compiled data from around 40,000 customers around the world for their opinions on their banking relationships. The banks were rated on the basis of 5 key attributes – trust, digital services, financial advice and fees.

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Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh has been sworn-in as the new prime minister of the State of Palestine by President Mahmoud Abbas at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The 18th Palestinian government since the establishment of the Palestinian Authrity in 1995 was sworn in according to a presidential decree issued by Abbas. The State of Palestine is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative center is currently located in Ramallah. It is recognized by 136 UN members and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations – which implies recognition of statehood. It is a member of the Arab League, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, G77, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and other international bodies.

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Pradeep Choubey (70), the renowned Hindi poet, has passed away in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh on April 12, 2019. He was the younger brother of celebrated humorist, satirist and poet Shail Chaturvedi. Born on 26th August 1949 in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, Choubey shifted to Gwalior. He quit his job at Dena Bank to pursue his passion of poetry and travelled across the nation enthralling audiences with his punches, several of them targeted at the orthodox elements of society. Besides humour, he was famous for satirical comments on the system.

Notes:
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has recently successfully test fired the underdevelopment long range subsonic cruise missile ‘Nirbhay’ from launch complex-3 of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur, Odisha. It has a operational range of 1000 km and can fly very low to the ground to avoid detection by enemy radar called terrain hugging capability. The state-of-the-art missile is the India’s first indigenously designed and developed long-range sub-sonic cruise missile. It is capable of loitering and cruising at 0.7 Mach at altitude as low as 100 metre and covered the designated target range in 42 minutes and 23 seconds.

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The critically endangered ‘Kakapos’ – the world’s fattest species of parrot – have enjoyed a record breaking breeding season, according to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC). This year, 76 chicks have been hatched under the DOC’s conservation scheme, with 60 expected to reach adulthood. This will significantly boost the population which has grown to 147 adults since a small number of the plump green, yellow and black birds were discovered in 1970. The kakapo is an “unusual” parrot as the females control the breeding process and only mate every two to four years when their favourite fruit grows in New Zealand’s Rimu trees – the period is known as a “mast year”. New Zealand’s kakapo recovery programme is so tightly monitored that although they remain in the wild, each one has a radio transmitter attached to its body and there are monitoring systems embedded in their nests. It is claimed that kakapo is probably one of the most intensively managed species in the world.

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By using data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, the researchers discovered deep lakes (more than 300 feet, or 100 meters) filled with methane on Saturn’s moon Titan. The team also found “phantom lakes” that fill and empty periodically. It must be noted that Titan is the only known body in our solar system other than Earth with a liquid on its surface. But rather than a water cycle, it has a methane and ethane cycle. The new findings represented further evidence about Titan’s hydrological cycle, with liquid hydrocarbons raining down from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the sky. This is comparable to Earth’s water cycle. Titan, with a diameter of 5,150 km, is the solar system’s second largest moon, behind only Jupiter’s Ganymede. It is bigger than the planet Mercury. The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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The researchers at Tel Aviv University have successfully “printed” the world’s first three dimensional (3D) vascularised engineered heart using a patient’s own cells and biological materials to completely match the immunological, cellular, biochemical, and anatomical properties of the patient. Their findings were published in a study in Advanced Science. Until now, scientists in regenerative medicine have been successful in printing only simple tissues without blood vessels. But the latest feat is the first time scientists have created a complex organ with biological materials. The process of creating the 3D printed heart started with a biopsy of fatty tissue taken from patients. The cellular material from the tissues was used as the ” bionic ink” for the print job. That allowed researchers to create complex tissue models including cardiac patches and eventually an entire heart. The proof-of-concept feat could pave the way for a new type of organ transplant.

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Richard Powers has been honoured with the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in fiction category for his innovative novel ‘The Overstory’, which shows us the world through the perspective of nature.

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A site containing the 220-million-year-old fossilized remains of nearly a dozen dinosaurs has been discovered in western Argentina. According to Argentinian paleontologist Ricardo Martinez of the University of San Juan, there are almost ten different individuals, with practically no sediment. The discovery is doubly important because there are at least 7 or 8 individuals of dicynodonts, the ancestors of mammals, the size of an ox. There were also remains of archosaurs, reptiles that could be the ancestors of great crocodiles. The find was discovered in September 2018 in San Juan province, about 1,100 kilometres west of Buenos Aires. The site is between one and two metres in diameter and about the same depth, leading scientists to speculate it was a former drinking hole at a time of great drought, and the creatures died of weakness at the spot. Argentina has been a rich source of fossils from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras over the years – of most creatures not found in the northern hemisphere.