Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2019

Notes:
The Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) has identified nine Science and Technology missions with focus on ‘Science for People and People for Science’. These missions include Natural Language Translation (NLT), Quantum Frontier, Artificial Intelligence (AT), National Biodiversity Mission (NBM), Electric Vehicles, Bioscience for Human Health, Waste to Wealth, Deep Ocean Exploration and AGNIi (Accelerating Growth for New India’s Innovations). The missions are aimed at understanding and conserving biodiversity, developing sustainable agricultural processes, leveraging precision health for personal well-being, recovering wealth from waste, developing and using AI, quantum computing, connected mobility solutions and other technologies to address frontier scientific questions and the challenges that the country in particular and the planet in general face.

Notes:
The Union Cabinet has recently approved the “Flood Management and Border Areas Programme (FMBAP)” for Flood Management Works in entire country and River Management Activities and works related to Border Areas for the period 2017-18 to 2019-20 with a total outlay of Rs.3342.00 crores. The FMBAP Scheme will be implemented throughout the country for effective flood management, erosion control and anti-sea erosion. The proposal will benefit towns, villages, industrial establishments, communication links, agricultural fields, infrastructure etc. from floods and erosion in the country. The catchment area treatment works will help in reduction of sediment load into rivers. The funding pattern for FM Component for works in general category States will continue to be 50% (Centre) : 50% (State). For projects of North Eastern states, Sikkim, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the Centre will bear 70% of the cost. The aim of the Scheme is to assist the State Governments to provide reasonable degree of protection against floods in critical areas by adopting optimum combination of structural and non-structural measures and enhancing capabilities of State / Central Government officials in related fields.

Notes:
Krishna Kumari Kohli has become the first-ever Thari Hindu woman to be elected to the Senate of Pakistan in March 2018 and chaired the session of the Upper House of Parliament on the occasion of the International Women’s Day (IWD-2019). She is known for her campaigns for women’s rights, against bonded labour, and against sexual harassment in the workplace. Her election to Senate represented a major milestone for women and minority rights in Pakistan. Krishna belongs to the Kohli community from the remote village of Dhana Gam in Nagarparkar area of Sindh province where a sizeable number of Hindus live. Hence, Krishna became the first Hindu Dalit woman and the 2nd Hindu woman elected to the Senate after Ratna Bhagwandas Chawla.

Notes:
Subhash Chandra Garg , a 1983 batch IAS officer of Rajasthan cadre, has been designated as the new Finance Secretary (FS) of India. He is also the current Union Economic Affairs Secretary. He succeeded Ajay Narayan Jha. As per the convention, the senior-most among the five secretaries in the Finance Ministry is designated as the Finance Secretary. Here, Ajay Bhushan Pandey is the Revenue Secretary, Rajiv Kumar is Secretary in Department of Financial Services, Atanu Chakraborty is Secretary in Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and Girish Chandra Murmu is the Expenditure Secretary. Pandey and Kumar are 1984 batch IAS officers of Maharshtra and Jharkhand cadre respectively. Chakraborty and Murmu are 1985 batch IAS officers of Gujarat cadre.

Notes:
Kavinder Singh Bisht has clinched gold in the 56kg-category at the 38th GeeBee Boxing Tournament in Helsinki, Finland. In it, 3-time Asian medallist Shiva Thapa (60kg) and three other Indian pugilists – Govind Sahani, Commonwealth Games bronze-medallist Mohammed Hussamuddin and Dinesh Dagar – claimed silver medals to end a fine campaign in the tournament. Besides, Sumit Sangwan (91kg), former youth world champion Sachin Siwach (52kg) and Naveen Kumar (+91kg) got bronze in their categories.

Notes:
The students from IIT Kharagpur have devised unique solutions ranging from detecting counterfeit currency to nuclear radiation tracking through wearable sensors at the recently concluded nationwide competition, Smart India Hackathon 2019. They developed a code for a smartphone application to address the problem of detecting fake Indian currency. For this, the 6-member team have developed an image processing application which can detect counterfeit currency. The application, which can be installed on smartphones, can be used by people at various touch points thus reducing chances of fraud. A user can upload a currency note image and the mobile app would verify its authenticity using 25 features extracted from the front and rear side of the currency note. In case of detection of a fake note, the user will also be notified of the failure checkpoints. The six students who developed the code are T.Y.S.S. Santosh, Satish Kumar Reddy, Vipul Tomar, Sai Krishna, Drishti Tulsi and D V Sai Surya.

Notes:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider and the largest machine in the world. It is in news because The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has approved the experiment designed to look for light and weakly interacting particles at the LHC. It is planning a new experiment to look for particles associated with the mysterious dark matter which makes up about 27% of the universe. This novel experiment will help diversify the physics programme of colliders such as the LHC, and will allow the researchers to address unanswered questions in particle physics from a different perspective. FASER (or the Forward Search Experiment) will complement CERN’s ongoing physics programme & extend its discovery potential to several new particles. The FASER detector’s total length is under 5m and its core cylindrical structure has a radius of 10cm. It will be installed in a side tunnel along an unused transfer line which links the LHC to its injector, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). A collaboration of 16 institutes is building the detector and will carry out the experiments which will start taking data from LHC between 2021 and 2023. LHC is a giant lab in a 27-kilometre tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border. India is an associate member in the LHC project.

Notes:
The Madhya Pradesh government has taken the ordinance route to increase reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from 14% to 27%. In this regard, Governor Anandiben Patel has recently signed the ordinance to amend the Madhya Pradesh Lok Seva (Anusuchit Jatiyon, Anusuchit Jan Jatioyon aur Anya Pichhade Vargon ke Liye Arakshan) Adhiniyam, 1994. With this, MP is possibly the only state in India to have 27% quota for OBCs. At present, the state provides 20% reservation to Scheduled Tribes (STs), 16% to Scheduled Castes (SCs) and 14% to OBCs. OBCs are estimate to constitute nearly 52% of the state’s population, and OBC groups have often demanded an increase in reservation to reflect their strength in the state. As per analysts, the move has been taken to woo OBC voters before the Lok Sabha elections 2019.

Notes:
In USA, the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an imaging system which could be deployed to find tiny tumours, as small as a couple of hundred cells, deep within the body. They used their imaging system, named “DOLPHIN,” which relies on near-infrared light, to track a 0.1-millimetre fluorescent probe through the digestive tract of a living mouse. They also showed that they can detect a signal to a tissue depth of eight centimeters, far deeper than any existing biomedical optical imaging technique. The researchers hope to adapt their imaging technology for early diagnosis of ovarian and other cancers that are currently difficult to detect until late stages. According to the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, existing methods for imaging tumours all have limitations that prevent them from being useful for early cancer diagnosis.

Notes:
Erode turmeric (of Tamil Nadu) has finally got a Geographical Indication (GI) tag on 6th March 2019, which will help the farmers and traders from the region to claim sole rights over the famed ‘Erode Manjal’. The Geographical Indication Registry of India granted the coveted status based on the application filed by ‘Erode Manjal Vanigarkal Matrum Kidangu Urimaiyalargal Sangam’. The GI tag is granted to products that are special for a particular geographical area and prevents misuse of the popularity of the products by others. ‘Erode Manjal’ is famous across the globe. The cultivar is called Erode local, i.e., Chinnanadan. Erode turmeric is a rhizome, both finger and bulb obtained from the Erode local cultivar. The crop is grown in hot moist conditions prevalent in the area with temperature ranging from 20 degrees to 37.9 degrees Celsius with an average of 600 to 800 mm rainfall in a year. The turmeric thrives best on the loamy or alluvial soils. Quality parameters of the turmeric included 2.5 to 4.5% of curcumin content, a golden yellow colour and resistance to pests after boiling.