Current Affairs Quiz - May 2022

Notes:
Calcutta University has been ranked first among all the central and state-aided public universities in the country by Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings 2022.
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham was placed at 41st place in the overall table. India is the fourth most-represented nation across the rankings, with 64 universities featuring in total along with Turkey. Australia’s Western Sydney University is ranked at the top spot in the overall ranking, which includes 1,406 institutions.

Notes:
As per the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a higher ‘Species threat abatement and restoration (STAR)’ score indicates greater presence of threatened species.
India’s total national STAR score was 41,817, of which 11,585 was for mammals, 10,843 for birds and 19,389 for amphibians. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka host 51 per cent of the country’s STAR score. India’s national STAR score represented 3.4 per cent of the global STAR.

Notes:
‘Lingua Franca’ is a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
Recently CBSE announced to Kokborok in its curriculum. A confederation of 56 tribal organisations in the state hailed CBSE’s decisions while they called for Roman Script for Kokborok Choba. This is in the backdrop of Union Home Minister’s statements that ‘Hindi would be made compulsory for all Northeast states and Devanagari script will be introduced for all languages without a script.’

Notes:
According to the RSF 2022 World Press Freedom Index, India’s ranking has fallen down to 150th position from last year’s 142nd place.
This year, Norway (1st) Denmark (2nd) and Sweden (3rd) were ranked at the top positions, while North Korea remained at the bottom of the list of 180 countries and territories. Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) or Reporters without Borders, a global media watch-dog releases the report every year.

Notes:
Sai Divya, research scholar in Satellite Communications from Andhra Pradesh has developed CubeSat LakshyaSAT, a research nano-satellite.
After she sent the prototype of the Cubesat to the UK, B2Space Company launched the satellite. The CubeSat model, placed inside a space box platform, was sent to the stratosphere to collect various parameters of the stratosphere using a high altitude balloon.

Notes:
Open, a neo-banking fin-tech portal recently raised capital to push up its value over a billlion dollars and became India’s 100th unicorn.
Open, a five-year-old Bengaluru-based neo-bank, raised USD 50 mn recently. Earlier, Google, Temasek, Visa, and Japan’s SoftBank invested USD 100 million in the startup. 14 Indian Startups entered the Unicorn Club In 2022 while 42 startups and 2 listed companies touched the billion-dollar valuation in 2021.

Notes:
Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution announced that the second phase of the mandatory hallmarking of gold jewellery and gold artefacts will come into force from June 1, 2022.
The second phase will cover additional three caratages of gold jewellery namely 20, 23 and 24 carats. 32 new districts under the mandatory hallmarking regime where an Assaying and Hallmarking Centre (AHC) has been set up post implementation of the first phase. A consumer can get the purity of their unhallmarked gold jewellery tested in AHCs.

Notes:
Karnataka’s Forest Department had recommended ‘in principal approval’ of environmental clearance for various Jog Development Projects including a five-star hotel.
Regional Empowered Committee (REC) of the Environment Ministry sought additional clarifications on the project. It also sought to know if any environmental study has been conducted about the impact, and any precautionary measures have been taken in the proposed activities.

Notes:
Under the Haryana Government, around five lakh school students of classes 10th and 12^th will receive tablets.
These devices come with pre-loaded content along with personalised and adaptive learning software, and 2GB of free data. Haryana government has also announced to form two task forces for the education sector, to work on the infrastructure and sanitation of schools.

Notes:
The Health department in Kerala has developed a mobile application named Shylee for population-based screening for lifestyle diseases.
It is one of the components of the ‘Nava Kerala Karma Padhati’. The app has been developed to enable ASHAs to collect information on diabetes, blood pressure, heart diseases, respiratory diseases, cancer and other lifestyle diseases and its risk factors among all those above 30 years.