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:
Union Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Steel, Dharmendra Pradhan has recently launched Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC) in New Delhi to encourage the spirit of innovation at the community level. The aim of the initiative is to encourage the spirit of innovation through solution-driven design thinking to serve society. The ACIC is a new initiative of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) to support community innovation drive in the country. It will provide a platform in many of the rural, tribal areas and Tier-II and -III cities and unserved regions to have access to latest technologies for innovation and to ideate and create prototypes for innovation.

Notes:
S S Deswal, a 1984 batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre, has been given the additional charge of the counter-terror force National Security Guard (NSG). He succeeded Sudeep Lakhtaki and will hold the post in an additional capacity till a successor or regular DG is appointed. Deswal, the chief of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force, is Lakhtakia’s batchmate but his cadre is Haryana. The NSG is a counter terrorism unit under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). It is also known as the ‘black cats’ & was raised in 1984 for combating terrorist activities with a view to protect states against internal disturbances. The NSG DG post is occupied by an IPS officer.

Notes:
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has released a study titled “Economic Valuation of Tiger Reserves in India: A Value+ Approach”. The study is authored by the Centre for Ecological Services Management at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (Bhopal). It estimates the economic valuation of Bandipur Tiger Reserve and 9 other tiger reserves in the country. The purpose behind the report is to enhance tiger conservation by highlighting the holistic economic benefits of protected areas. The researchers used an array of methods to determine the economic, scientific, educational, cultural and recreational services of tiger parks. The reserves surveyed are Melghat Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra), Nagarjunasagar Srisailam (Andhra Pradesh), Anamalai (Tamil Nadu), Bandipur (Karnataka), Dudhwa (Uttar Pradesh), Pakke (Arunachal Pradesh), Palamau (Jharkhand), Panna (Madhya Pradesh), Similipal (Odisha), and Valmiki (Bihar). Founded in 1982, the IIFM is a premier national level institute engaged in education, research, training and consultancy in the area of Forest, Environment and Natural Resources Management and allied sectors.

Notes:
A 23-year-old Indian-origin doctor, Bhasha Mukherjee has been crowned Miss England after fending off competition from dozens of other models. She holds two different medical degrees & has an IQ of 146, which makes her officially a ‘genius’. Mukherjee speaks five languages – English, Bengali, Hindi, German and French -and has a Bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from the University of Nottingham. As winner of Miss England, she will be entered into the Miss World contest and will also bag a holiday to Mauritius.

Notes:
The 16th edition of Census 2021 will be conducted in 18 languages out of the 22 scheduled languages, while Census 2011 was in 16 of the 18 scheduled languages declared at that time. It also will introduce a code directory to streamline the process. Importantly, the latest census, as per the existing plan, will not collect caste data. The option of “Other” under the gender category is now “Third Gender”. It will be conducted in two phases: the houselisting phase with 34 parameters from April 2020 to September 2020 and the population enumeration phase with 28 parameters from February 9 2021 to February 28 2021. The decennial exercise would involve 31 lakh trained enumerators, with data collected digitally using Android based mobile phones. The Census data would be available by the year 2024-25 as the entire process would be conducted digitally and data crunching would be quicker.

Notes:
Kanti Bhatt (88), the veteran Gujarati journalist, author and columnist, has passed away in Mumbai. He was born on 15th July 1931 in Sachra village in erstwhile Bhavnagar state of Gujarat. He started his journalism career in the late 1960s as a financial journalist in Mumbai. He also worked as journalist, writer, columnist and editor in various Gujarati publications like Chitralekha, Mumbai Samachar, Janshakti, Sandesh, Yuva Darshan, Jansatta, Vyapar and Abhiyan. Bhatt was also the founding editor of one of the leading Gujarati magazines ‘Abhiyan’, which he launched with his wife Sheela, also a veteran journalist and member of the Editors Guild of India.

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:
The Union Government has approved Rs 4,900 crore Kosi-Mechi Interlinking project for interlinking of Kosi and Mechi rivers of Bihar. This is the second major river interlinking project in the country to be approved after the Ken-Betwa project in Madhya Pradesh. The ambitious Kosi-Mechi project is unique in many ways. It will not only prevent recurring floods in north Bihar but also provide irrigation for a whooping over 2.14 lakh hectares of cultivable land in Araria, Purnea, Kishanganj and Katihar districts, collectively called Seemanchal region. This approval comes after this project secured the last remaining mandatory technical-cum-administrative nod from Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). Mechi is an important tributary of Mahananda river.

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.