Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2017

Notes:
Indian shooter Ankur Mittal has clinched the individual as well as the team gold medal in men’s double trap at the 7th Asian Shotgun Championship at Astana, Kazakhstan on August 5, 2017. Mittal shot 71 in the six-man final to finish at the top of the podium. With scores of Sangram Dahiya and Mohammad Asab added to Mittal’s final total, India managed to bag the top prize in the team event also. Dahiya had a score of 43 and Asab had shot 34.

Notes:
The Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy (IGNFA) is an organization under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (India) to impart knowledge and skills to the professional foresters and help them to develop competence for managing the country forest and wildlife resources on a sustainable basis. It is located at the New Forest campus of Forest Research Institute (FRI) in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Currently, IGNFA is functioning as a Staff College for the officers of the Indian Forest Service (IFS).

Notes:
The researchers at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru have developed a low-cost highly sensitive nanometre-scale carbon monoxide sensor by employing an innovative fabrication technique. It is known that Carbon Monoxide (CO) can have adverse effects on the health of people exposed to it. Thus, it becomes necessary to have good, low-cost carbon-monoxide sensors. Typically, a sensor would be a thin, current carrying plate whose resistance changes on exposure to carbon monoxide. This in turn changes the value of the current flowing through it. This change when measured indicates the level of carbon monoxide in the air. The research is published in Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical.

Notes:
Narendra Singh Tomar, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, has recently launched a Swachh Survekshan (Gramin)-2017 in New Delhi to encourage states and districts to improve their sanitation coverage and Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM). Under the Swachh Survekshan Gramin, all districts of the country will be ranked on the basis of performance, sustainability and transparency. So far, 4,600 villages and 1.4 lakh households have been covered under Swachh Sarvekshan (Gramin) Survey. The Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar has stated that toilet usage have increased to 91% in the country whereas overall toilet coverage in rural India has reached to 66%.

Notes:
The Nal Sarovar Bird Sanctuary (NSBS) is located to the west of Ahmedabad near Sanand Village in Gujarat. it is the largest wetland bird sanctuary in Gujarat and one of the largest in India. It harbors over 250 species of wetland birds such as rosy pelicans, flamingoes, white storks, brahminy ducks and herons.

Notes:
The 2017 India – ASEAN Youth summit will be held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh from August 14 to 19, 2017 with theme ‘Shared values, common destiny’. This event is being organized in collaboration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat and the India Foundation. Over 100 delegates from 10 ASEAN countries – Brunei, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – will participate in the summit. This forum will enhance people-to-people contacts between India and ASEAN countries.

Notes:
India shooter Shapath Bhardwaj (15) from Merrut has become the India’s youngest athlete to be named in the Union Government’s Target Olympic Podium (TOP) scheme. He is among 45 elite athletes, including Olympic medallists PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Saina Nehwal, to be selected for the scheme. The TOP scheme elite athletes identification committee, which is chaired by ace shooter and Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, selected the athletes after evaluating their performance in relation to the international standard. The purpose of the TOP committee is to identify and support potential medal prospects for 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games under the TOP scheme.

Notes:
The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Google India has launched Android Skill Development programme to impart mobile development training on the Android and Web platform and to improve the quality of mobile app development ecosystem in India. The NSDC is a public-private partnership enterprise under the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship. Under the initiative, NSDC will introduce a specific course with the scope to train developers to create applications for the mobile platform that can be used on smartphone and tablets running on the Android operating system. The NSDC and Google India will also work together to focus on up-skilling Android trainers under the programme.

Notes:
Upendra Kushwaha, the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, has launched the NCERT’s Web portal for supply of textbooks to schools and individuals at a function in New Delhi on August 9, 2017. The portal will ensure better distribution of textbooks across the country and address the concerns of schools and parents, regarding unavailability of textbooks. The Web Portal can be accessed at www.ncertbooks.ncert.gov.in. The schools will be able to log on to the portal, by entering their respective Boards’ affiliation numbers and other details, till 8th of next month for placing their orders for the session 2018-19. Soon, the portal will also be opened to the individual buyers. They can place their orders by login in onto the portal, and books will be delivered at their doorsteps with nominal postal charges. The NCERT textbooks can also be downloaded, free of cost, from its website.

Notes:
Recently, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to close down those technical colleges which recorded less than 30% admissions in the last five years. According to AICTE data, there are around ten thousand three hundred fifty engineering institutions in the country that are approved by the AICTE with a total intake capacity of over 37 lakh students. Out of this, 27 lakh seats are lying vacant. Anil D Sahasrabuddhe, Chairman of AICTE, has stated that council has been actively working on reducing the quantity of engineering institutions across the country due to poor demand and falling quality of education. Beside this, the AICTE has also reduced the penalty for closing down the institution that was a deterrent for many colleges which were willing to shut amid poor demand.