Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
The ‘QS Best Student Cities Ranking’ has been compiled by global education consultancy QS Quacquarelli Symonds. London has been named as the world’s best city for students for the second consecutive year, followed by Tokyo and Melbourne. According to the rankings, India’s best student city is Bengaluru (81st), followed by Mumbai (85th), Delhi at 113 and Chennai at 115, out of a total of 120 cities in the list. The ranking highlighted each city’s performance across six categories – the number of top-ranked universities; the proportion of a city’s population made up of students; quality of life on offer; job opportunities available after graduation; affordability; and the feedback of the students themselves.

Notes:
Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty have become the first Indian pair to win a BWF Super 500 badminton tournament. They beat World champions Li Jun Hui and Liu Yu Chen of China in the summit clash of Thailand Open 21-19, 18-21, 21-18 in Bangkok to win the men’s doubles category.

Notes:
India off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has been chosen as the Professional Cricketers Association’s(PCA) Player for the month of July 2019 for his consistent performances in the county championships. Ashwin signed with Nottinghamshire for six County Championship matches as practice for India’s World Test Championship fixture against West Indies that gets underway later this month. In three matches, he took 23 wickets at 19.91 and scored 197 runs at 39.40.

Notes:
The 3rd edition of India’s largest education brainstorming event “ScooNews Global Educators Fest (SGEF-2019)” is being held in Udaipur, Rajasthan on August 09-10. It will bring together over 500 educators to discuss the way towards establishing India as the next global education powerhouse. The theme for the fest is ‘Education for Sustainability: Moving on from conformity to creativity’. The fest will provide an excellent platform for individuals and organizations contributing to the cause of education, schools as well as start-ups to debate on innovation with industry leaders on Industry-Academia partnerships, showcase their products among peers and network with like-minded people. Celebrity educator Anand Kumar of Super 30, Sonam Wangchuk of 3 Idiots Fame and various others will speak on key issues concerning Education in the new world.

Notes:
The NASA scientists have characterized the first potentially habitable world outside our own solar system that may be suitable for life. The super-earth planet — named GJ 357 d — was spotted by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. It is estimated that planet is about six times the size of our planet and located a mere 31 light-years away. The planet orbits a dwarf star in the Hydra constellation and may have the right conditions to support liquid water as it lies within its star’s habitable zone. It may be noted that a super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth’s, but substantially below those of the Solar System’s ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.

Notes:
In a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country, Mohali traffic police have launched 3-D Smart Traffic Signal devised by the students of a Chandigarh university. The wireless system, called ‘Intelights’, has been installed at the traffic crossing near the Airport Road, on a pilot project basis, and will regulate traffic signals with a smart bird’s eye view wireless sensor system. Intelights proposes a 360-degree solution to curb the rising problem of traffic congestion. One of the major reasons for traffic congestion is the inefficient working of traffic signal timers installed at intersections. Presently, the timers of traffic lights display a preset value which leads to waste of time. For instance, consider a scenario where green light of ’20 seconds’ is displayed but there is no vehicle present at that particular intersection – thus leading to unnecessary waste of time. To tackle this issue, ‘Intelights’ proposes an Intelligent Traffic Timer Control; which uses dynamic signal control technology to adjust the timers of red, yellow and green lights according to the traffic density at an intersection. The system uses existing CCTV cameras to gather live traffic video feed, and automatically evaluates the traffic density using Artificial Intelligence, and sets the signal timers accordingly. This process is repeated for every cycle of traffic lights to keep traffic flowing smoothly.

Notes:
The Western and Central Railways have introduced a new Biometric Token System (BTS) by which passengers travelling in the general coach, where seats are not reserved, are given a token roughly 3 hours before the train’s departure. These tokens are issued on a first-come, first-served basis after accepting biometric information of individual passengers. The tokens carry a serial number on them, which governs the order in which passengers will board the train. The use of biometrics cuts out the touts and helps genuine passengers. It would provide relief to passengers and prevent jumping of queue. The system is also cost-effective, as an average of Rs 20 was spent on each train.

Notes:
The Delhi government has launched a project titled ‘Oral History Programme’ that seeks to record oral histories of the city as told by its senior citizens. The project is an attempt to democratise knowledge by recording stories told by hundred of common people in Delhi from different strata of society over the next two years. It is undertaken by Delhi Archives in collaboration with Ambedkar University. It aims to document the history of the city from the perspective of its inhabitants. The project will enable a richer representation of the city than allowed by official records and written documents. The Oral History programme is actually reviving a 3-decade old project of the Delhi Archives. In the 1980s, the official repository of the city’s records began an oral history programme that interviewed eminent personalities, including Gulzarilal Nanda, who served as the acting prime minister of the country twice, and Sushila Nayyar, a close aide of Mahatma Gandhi. But the project was stopped after 56 eminent people were interviewed.

Notes:
Kandikuppa Sreekant has taken charge as the new Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Power Grid Corporation of India. He shall be on post till 31st December 2023 i.e. the date of his superannuation or until further orders, whichever is earlier. Prior to this post, he was serving as the director (finance) of Power Grid. POWERGRID is an Indian state-owned electric utilities company headquartered in Gurugram. It transmits about 50% of the total power generated in India on its transmission network.

Notes:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced its “Vikram Sarabhai Journalism Award in Space Science, Technology and Research” to recognize and reward journalists who have actively contributed towards the field of space science, applications, and research. Basically, the awards are part of the centenary year celebrations of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, father of Indian space programme. The nominations are open to all Indians who have a good experience in journalism. The articles published from 2019 to 2020 will be considered. The names of the selected candidates will be announced on August 1st, 2020. There are two categories of awards, wherein the first category holds a cash price of Rs 5,00,000, a medal and citation and two journalists or freelancers of print media will be awarded. On the other hand, the second category of the award holds 3 cash prizes of Rs 3,00,000, 2,00,000 and 1,00,000 and citation each for journalists or freelancers of print media.