Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
State Bank of India has launched a new work from home facility for its employees. The board of the bank has approved the plan whereby its employees can work from home using mobile devices.

Notes:
Tapan Ray, the 1982 batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer and currently the corporate affairs secretary, has taken additional charge as the new Economic Affairs Secretary. He succeeded Shaktikanta Das, who retired on May 31, 2017 after serving the government for 37 years in various capacities.

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Currently (June, 2018), Apollo Global Management LLC tops the list of the world’s top 10 private equity firms, with just under $150 billion in total private equity assets under management(AUM) for 2015. Blackstone is the world’s second biggest private equity firm. 

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Mulberry silk is the most popular variety of silk in India, accounting for around 79% of the country’s silk production. In 2022, India produced nearly 26,000 metric tons of mulberry silk. The other varieties of silk produced in India are:

• Tasar, which accounted for 8.02% of the total raw silk production
• Eri, which accounted for 20.55% of the total raw silk production
• Muga, which accounted for 0.71% of the total raw silk production

India is the second largest producer of silk in the world. The five states that produce the most silk are Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Jammu & Kashmir.

Notes:
In a major digital initiative to help plan the traffic flows and optimize freight operations, Ministry of Railways has launched Smart Freight Operation Optimisation and Real Time Information (SFOORTI) App for freight managers. The app provides features for monitoring and managing freight business using Geographic Information System (GIS) Views and Dashboard. With this application both passenger and freight trains can be tracked over Zones, Divisions and Sections in single GIS View. The app provides a bird’s eye view of all freight assets in a single window and end to end rake movement on Geospatial view. Expected traffic at interchange points can be viewed to evaluate daily performance. Position of rakes for specific type of stock can be viewed through this application.

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Recently, China launched the world’s longest secure telecommunications network, a 712-km quantum communication line. It is part of a 2,000-km quantum communication line connecting Beijing and Shanghai. Quantum communication lines are highly secure and it is almost impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through them.

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Team Indus comprises about 100 people mostly engineers is led by Rahul Narayan. It is the only Indian team participating to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize. The team has tied up with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the aim of hoisting India’s flag through an unmanned spacecraft on the lunar surface on January 26, 2018, the 69th Republic Day.

Notes:
SERIIUS stands for the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States. It is co-led by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc)—Bangalore, India, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, Colorado, USA. It aims to accelerate the development of solar electric technologies by lowering the cost per watt of photovoltaics (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) and create a strong workforce development program in solar energy science and technology. Supercritical carbon dioxide-based power generation is said to offer an efficient alternative to conventional steam-based power plants and reduce the carbon footprint of power generation significantly.

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Swayam is a 1-U picosatellite (CubeSat) developed by the students of College of Engineering in Pune. This satellite provides point-to-point communications for the UHF HAM band. The Satellite was launched by ISRO on June 22, 2016 along with Cartosat-2C by Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-34. The satellite has been placed in low earth orbit (LEO) around the Earth at a height of 515 km. The project was completed over a span of 8 years and more than 200 students worked on it. The scientific objective of the satellite is to demonstrate passive attitude control to stabilise and appropriately orient the satellite. This technique has been used for the first time on an Indian Satellite.

Notes:
NASA has launched a balloon mission to improve weather forecasting by capturing the images of a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds on the cusp of our atmosphere.  Data from these clouds, known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs), may help scientists better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans, lakes and other planetary atmospheres.