Current Affairs Quiz - October, 2022

Notes:
India has entered into a collaboration with California for research and innovation in the field of zero-emission vehicles.
The California-India ZEV Policy programme is aimed at supporting ZEV uptake in India, promoting the development of an EV industry in India and contributing to India’s industrial growth. As part of the collaboration, a new India ZEV Research Centre was also set up.

Notes:
Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) announced a collaboration deal with Google to promote Sanskrit.
ICCR and Google signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to advance the tech major’s artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) language technology for translating Sanskrit literature to many other languages and vice-versa.

Notes:
Uttar Pradesh cabinet approved a Micro Small Medium Enterprises Promotion Policy (MSME) 2022 and Uttar Pradesh Bioenergy Policy-2022.
The state cabinet also approved a proposal to reorganise the State Planning Commission as the State Transformation Commission (STC) on the pattern of the Niti Aayog. STC would act as a policy think tank to the government as well as perform the work of planning commission.

Notes:
As per University Grant Commission (UGC) Guidelines, Higher Educational Institutions can now create up to 25 percent seats for foreign students.
Universities will be free to choose their admission policy for foreign students, while adopting a transparent admission process. This 25 percent of the supernumerary seats for international students will not include the students under exchange programmes.

Notes:
According to a latest research, Tropical Race 4 (TR4), a new fusarium species, is on the rise in the African country –Mozambique.
It is a fungus that affects bananas and is found to be spreading rapidly across the world and threatening food security in Africa. Fusarium is a filamentous fungus or a type of plant pathogen.

Notes:
Dr. A K Anil Kumar, Senior Scientist in ISRO is elected as the Vice President of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), during its Annual Conference held in Paris.
International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is the world’s leading space advocacy body with 433 members in 72 countries. IAF encourages development of astronautics for peaceful purposes and supports dissemination of scientific information.

Notes:
The Andhra Pradesh government notified fresh safety guidelines to institutionalise preventive measures to check accidental leakage of toxic gases and dangerous chemicals in factories.
The new guidelines were issued under the AP Fire Service Act, 1999. In May 2020, leak of styrene vapour from a Polymer plant near Visakhapatnam left 12 persons dead and around 1,000 people sick. There was a leak of poisonous gas from a apparel manufacturing unit two times this year.

Notes:
The ‘Digital India Conference of State IT Ministers’ was recently held in New Delhi. It was held under chairmanship of the Minister for Communications, Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Union Minister announced that Rs 26,000 crore had been approved to install new 25,000 towers in the next 500 days.

Notes:
The Australian government has announced a zero extinctions target for the country’s plants and animals. This is the first time a federal government announcing such a target.
The goal forms part of a 10-year plan to improve the trajectory of 110 species and 20 places, and protect an additional 50m hectares of land and sea area by 2027. The number of priority species has increased from 100 to 110 and locations have increased from six to 20.

Notes:
The Nobel Prize for Physics 2022 is being shared by three scientists, Alain Aspect, John F Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their work on quantum mechanics.
The three scientists conducted a series of experiments on entangled quantum states, where two separate particles behave like a single unit. Their results will have implications in the fields of quantum computers, quantum networks and secure quantum encrypted communication.