Current Affairs Quiz - January, 2020

Notes:
Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge will launch the environmental prize called the Earthshot. The multi-million pound award will be given to five winners each year for the next 10 years, starting from 2021. Its aim is to provide at least 50 solutions to the world’s greatest problems by 2030.

Notes:
The US Congress has demanded the Department of energy to investigate the concrete dome full of nuclear wastes due to the threat posed by the rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands. The Runit Dome holds tonnes of radioactive wastes from dozens of US atomic bomb tests that were carried out during the Cold War.

Notes:
The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi will inaugurate the 107th edition of the Indian Science Congress (ISC) at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru, Karnataka from January 3 to 7, 2020.The theme of the five-day event will be ‘Science and technology: rural development’. The congress would also host various programmes like Women Science Congress, Children Science Congress, Science Communicators Meet and Farmer’s Science Congress.

Notes:
The result of Swachh Survekshan League 2020 was recently released by the Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri for the first and second Quarters of this year. Under the category of cities with 10 lakh plus population, Indore topped in both the first and second quarters. The famous city of Madhya Pradesh, Indore was also the topper of the league in the previous year. Bhopal and Surat were ranked second and third in the first quarter respectively and Rajkot and Navi Mumbai in the second quarter.

Notes:
SPARMVs refer to Self Propelled Accident Relief Medical Vans which are vehicles to provide relief during Railway accidents and disasters. Indian Railways is gradually replacing locomotive hauled Accident Relief Medical Vans (ARMVs) with Self Propelled Accident Relief Medical Vans (SPARMVs) to improve response during disaster. Another kind of vehicles, which Railways proposes to include are high speed Self Propelled Accident Relief Trains (HS-SPARTs) with speed of 160 kmph. Railways will soon procure them.

Notes:
The 27th edition of National Children’s Science Congress was recently organised in the capital city of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram. The Congress was inaugurated by the Vice President of India, Venkiah Naidu. More than 650 young student scientists from many states and union territories across the country and some students from the Middle East countries participated in the event and exhibited their projects and inventions.

Notes:
The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi has launched the Indian Science Technology and Engineering facilities Map (I-STEM) portal during the Indian Science Congress at Bengaluru. All academic institutions with R&D facility and research labs across the country will list themselves in the portal, so that a live inventory about the research facilities available in India will be created. The researcher can apply online for the research facility after he/she maps it in the portal.

Notes:
The second tallest statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the world is recently unveiled at Ahmedabad, Gujarat by the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani. This 50 feet tall bronze statue is the second tallest statue of Patel only after the ‘Statue of Unity’, located in the Narmada district of Gujarat. Ram Vanji Sutar, the famous sculptor and designer who designed the 182 feet tall statue of unity has also designed this statue.

Notes:
The 14th edition of the famous Global Healthcare summit is proposed to be held in Vishakhapatnam in January 2021. An association called the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin organises this three-day-event. The 13th summit was conducted in Hyderabad, in the month of July, 2019. The event is proposed to be jointly organised by the Andhra Pradesh state Government. More than 500 doctors and health care professionals are expected to participate in the summit.

Notes:
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is set to launch its new block-chain based platform, which is named as ‘Vajra’. The new payment platform will be based on ‘Distributed Ledger Technology’ (DLT).
The platform is expected to make the payments secure and the transactions would be stored in a decentralised database. The bank nodes after receiving the requests from the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will process them on the Vajra platform.