Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2019

Notes:
Rizia Rahman (79), the renowned Bangladeshi novelist and the Ekushey Padak winning author, has passed away in Dhaka on August 17, 2019. She was born in Kolkata in 1939 and migrated to East Bengal after the partition. Rizia wrote in all genres of creative work viz. short stories, poems, essays and children’s fiction but she was renowned for her novels. Some of her well-known novels are as follows: Bong Theke Bangla, Rokter Okshor and Ghar-Bhanga-Ghar.

Notes:
Indian cricket team has won the T20 Physical Disability World Cricket Series in England. In the final, India defeated England by 36 runs at the Blackfinch New Road ground in Worcester. The Indian team called itself Wadekar Warriors, in memory of former India captain Ajit Wadekar, who played an active role in All India Cricket Association for Physically Challenged (AICAPC). The AICAPC organised the selection and preparation for the event. The 6-nation tournament was organised by England and Wales Cricket Board.

Notes:
Dr. K Thangaraj, Chief Scientist at the city based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has bagged the prestigious J C Bose Fellowship for his outstanding scientific contributions in the field of population and medical genomics. The J C Bose fellowship is awarded to active scientists in recognition of their outstanding performance by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science & Technology. Dr Thangaraj is a population geneticist. Some of his major works includes finding out the origin of Indian population– how humans migrated from Africa during different episodes and populated different parts of India. These studies led to further work on understanding how these populations interbred. He also showed how in the last 2000 years Indians started practicing endogamy resulting in many population specific genetic disorders.

Notes:
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) in collaboration with IIT Kanpur has developed a kit to spread sexual-abuse awareness among children by using interactive means to teach them about personal safety. The kit is a set of cards, posters, short animation clips and games. It can be used by teachers or NGOs to conduct an interactive workshop for children about sexual-abuse awareness. The kit also features game cards as an intervention to assess the learning acquired by children. It can be used in classrooms for kids aged between 8-12 and in a group of 30-35 students in one session. It has manuals, reading and video material for the teacher or workshop facilitator to read and understand how to conduct the workshop. The workshop kit has been vetted by the psychologists at Central Institute of Psychiatry of Ranchi, and a revised version will be developed based on their feedback.

Notes:
By using sugar, sulphuric acid and salt, the researchers of IIT Hyderabad have developed a cheap and efficient nano-carbon catalyst to help in the production of biofuel precursors. The catalyst showed better efficiency and selectivity than the commercially available variants to produce the desired C15 oxygenated hydrocarbon — a precursor to diesel and jet fuel. This development is important as States like Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh /Telengana produce a large amount of corncob waste in the country. This can be converted into valuable fuel instead of being burnt. The nano-carbon catalyst developed by the institute can enable conversion into biofuel (fuel from biological sources rather than fossil fuels) and provide an additional earning opportunity for the corn farmer, besides being a sustainable energy source.

Notes:
Top Indian sprinters Hima Das and Mohammad Anas have won a gold each in women’s and men’s 300m races respectively at the 2019 Athleticky Mitink Reiter event in Czech Republic. This was Hima’s 6th gold in 2019 in European races since July 2. On the other hand, Mohammad Anas won the gold clocking 32.41 seconds. India’s Nirmal Tom clinched a bronze in the same event by clocking a timing of 33.03 seconds. National record holder Anas has already qualified for 400m event for the World Championships to be held in Doha in September-October while Hima is yet to achieve it.

Notes:
On 18th August 2019, visitors to the Injambakkam beach in Chennai and Besant Nagar’s Eliot’s Beach noticed a blue shimmer on the waves i.e. Popularly known as ‘Sea Tinkle’. According to marine experts, the Noctiluca algae were behind this blue glow phenomenon. The algae exhibit the phenomenon of bioluminescence (or biologically produce light when disturbed). The light is produced by a chemical reaction in the presence of oxygen involving an enzyme called “luciferase”. Bioluminescence has been observed in fireflies, a few beetles and in marine creatures such as Anglerfish and copepods. Though the sight that algae produce is beautiful, their arrival may not be good news for marine health. Noctiluca are known to be voracious predators of planktonic organisms(diatoms) that leads to disruption of the marine food chain. Such blooms have been reported annually in the Northern Arabian Sea since the early 2000s. Goa, Mumbai and the backwaters of Kerala have witnessed these algal blooms. Recently the magical glow featured in the Malayalam movie Kumbalangi Nights, which gained much attention.

Notes:
Russia has launched a rocket carrying life-sized robot to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It is set to arrive at the station on Saturday. The robot, named Fedor (Experimental Demonstration Object Research), is the first ever sent into space by Russia. Fedor stands some one metre and 80 centimetres tall (5ft 11 inches) and weighs 160 kgs. In order to test a new emergency rescue system, the robot was the Soyuz rocket’s only passenger. During its 10 days at the ISS, Fedor will learn new skills such as connecting and disconnecting electric cables using standard items from a screwdriver and a spanner to a fire extinguisher.

Notes:
The first-ever International Day for Victims of Acts of Violence based on Religion or Belief is observed on 22nd of August 2019 to honour the victims and survivors of heinous acts who often remain forgotten. This is a great opportunity to raise awareness about religious intolerance, and violence and discrimination against anyone based on their religion or belief.

Notes:
The flagship scheme of Rajasthan government has topped the 16-state chart detailing implementation of the free medicine scheme i.e. run under the National Health Mission (NHM). The NHM assessed the performance of the states on the basis of effective implementation of Drugs and Vaccine Distribution Management System (DVDMS), stock of essential drugs, value of drugs about to expire along with other such parameters. According to an NHM letter, the DVDMSA (coverage in Rajasthan is 77.26% and proportion of online drug distribution counters – 96.03%. The expired quantity proportion viz. breakage, wastage and loss are just 7.43%.