Current Affairs Quiz - February 2022

Notes:
Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) have found a new mammal species in the country namely the White Cheeked Macaque, in Arunachal Pradesh.
The Macaque was first discovered in China in 2015 and its existence was not known in India before this. The White Cheeked Macaque has white cheeks, long and thick hair on the neck and a longer tail than other Macaques. It is the last mammal to have been discovered in Southeast Asia.

Notes:
Seven Indian Army personnel, who were part of a patrol team, were struck by an avalanche in the high-altitude area in the Kameng sector of Arunachal Pradesh.
All the seven personnel were later found deceased. The area is located at an altitude of 14,500 feet and had been witnessing heavy snowfall since the last few days. The Army had lost six personnel to avalanches and snow-slides in the Siachen Glacier in 2019, and 11 others in other parts of the country.

Notes:
A Parliamentary committee has recommended increase in guaranteed days of work from 100 to 150, in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)
They also highlighted that the scheme is a last “fall-back” option for many in the rural areas. The Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, headed by Shiv Sena member Prataprao Jadhav tabled the report in Lok Sabha.

Notes:
Indian documentary ‘Writing with Fire’, directed by filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh, has been nominated at the 94th Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature category.
Writing with Fire is the only Indian documentary to be nominated at this year’s Oscar awards. It focuses on the rural newspaper run by Dalit women called Khabar Lahariya and her transition from print to digital in recent years.

Notes:
Mumbai Central Division of Western Railway, has achieved a milestone of loading the 100th Textile Express from Chaltahan (Surat area) to Sankrail (Kharagpur Division).
The first Textile Express was started on 1st September2021. The milestone has been achieved within a span of five months. Surat textile sector is prominent in the western part of India. Textile Express fetched revenue of over ten crore rupees to Railways.

Notes:
The country’s first commercial-scale biomass-based hydrogen plant is being developed up in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh.
The plant will produce a tonne of hydrogen per day from 30 tonnes of biomass feedstock. It will also produce biochar and methane.

Notes:
Scientists in the United Kingdom have achieved a new milestone in producing nuclear fusion energy, or imitating the way energy is produced in the Sun.
A team at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in central England generated 59 mega joules of sustained energy during an experiment. A kg of fusion fuel contains about 10 million times energy of that of a kg of coal, oil or gas.

Notes:
Astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, along with astronomers from BITS Pilani have devised an Artificial Intelligence-based algorithm, to identify potentially habitable ones with a high probability.
As per current estimates, the number of planets in our Galaxy alone is estimated to be in billions. It is an ‘Anomaly detection method’, which is based on the assumption that Earth is an anomaly, with the possibility of existence of few other anomalies.

Notes:
Madhwacharya was a Hindu philosopher and the chief proponent of the Dvaita (dualism) school of Vedanta.
Madhvacharya was born in the Karnataka in 13th-century India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his tributes to  Madhwacharya on the occasion of Madhwa Navami.

Notes:
As per the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, India reported an 11 per cent jump in cyber crime in 2020.
A total of 50,035 cases were registered under cyber crimes in 2020. This is an 11.8 per cent in registration over 2019 (44,735 cases). In 2020, 60.2 per cent of cyber-crime cases registered was for the motive of fraud. It is followed by sexual exploitation (6.6 per cent) and extortion (4.9 per cent).