Science & Technology - Current Affairs for July, 2015

The project is also expected to provide free Wi-Fi connectivity across the country. The agreement was signed at the office of Sri Lankan Prime Minister in Colombo. Google will install high altitude 'floating telecom tower' balloons which will provide full broadband internet coverage. The Google Loon balloons have transceivers which can connect to cell phone networks filling gaps in their networks. This will be a boon for people living or travelling in sparsely populated areas like mountains and deserts.

The ban will come into effect on August 21. According to Germany's drug regulator, the Federal Institute for Medicines and Medical Products and it will be applicable to all 28 member nations. GVK Bio had vehemently denied the allegations. The company offered to conduct fresh studies of the medicines involved at its own cost.

The latest discoveries are from the flyby prior this month of New Horizons that has revealed unprecedented views of the distant dwarf planet as a complex world. NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld said that with ice, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology.

The scientific name of this vaccine is RTSS while its trade name is “Mosquirix”. It has taken 30 years to develop this vaccine and would be the first licensed human vaccine against a parasitic disease. World’s first-ever malaria vaccine has been developed by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in partnership with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative. The EU regulators also recommended that the vaccine should be licensed for use in babies in Africa at risk of the mosquito-borne disease.

Kepler-452b is an exoplanet orbiting the G-class star Kepler-452. It was identified by the Kepler space telescope and its discovery was publicly announced by NASA on 23 July 2015. It is the first near-Earth-size planet discovered orbiting within the habitable zone of a star very similar to the Sun. It is the fourth-most Earth-like exoplanet known to date. The star is 1,400 light-years away from the Solar System; at the speed of the New Horizons spacecraft, about 58,536 km/h (36,373 mph), it would take approximately 25.8 million years to get there.

Windows 10 will be offered as a free upgrade to most consumers. According to a Microsoft statement, upgrading to Windows 10 would be easy for customers having a genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 PC or tablet. Microsoft said the Windows 10 is the most secure Windows ever. Armed with new innovative features like Cortana, an Xbox app and Microsoft Edge, the software would be available in 190 nations.

Use of this technique will help in reducing the level of cholesterol in Ghee up to 85 to 90 percent. It also does not affect the taste and quality of the ghee.

The launchers proposed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in the coming years i.e. till March 2017 include Ten Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV), Two Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicles (GSLV) and one developmental flight of GSLV Mk III.

The spacecraft blasted off on schedule from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in the barren Kazakh steppe, carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan. The three astronauts were originally scheduled to travel to the orbiting lab in late May but Russia put all space travel on hold after the failure of the unmanned Progress freighter taking cargo to the ISS in late April.

With this, HDFC became the first bank in India to offer the service of Watch Banking.

C-DAC through its e-Hastakshar initiative enables citizens with valid Aadhaar ID and registered mobile number to carryout digital signing of their documents on-line.

Two Wi-Fi products launched by C-DOT viz. Long Distance Wi-Fi and Solar powered Wi-Fi address the connectivity problem of rural areas, hilly terrain, highways, dense vegetation, tunnels etc. C-DOT has also developed a light weight Green Power Source to make the solution self-sustainable. Using this solution, reach of BharatNet can be increased beyond Panchayats to the remotest part of country. 100 Gbps OFC link system called “Suteevra” addresses the telco’s requirement of optimizing communication transport backbone in smart cities, IT parks, Industrial Complexes, Inter City Traffic, Data Centres etc.

The Port is supposed to be existed between 1000AD - 3500 AD. The researchers are also of the opinion that they may discover a dockyard similar in structure to Lothal dockyard in Gujarat which was discovered by Archeological Survey of India (ASI) in 1954.

With this, Uttarakhand became first Indian state to install a system that can detect earthquakes and disseminate warnings.

The warning could be issued some seconds before the earthquake strikes. An official release issued by Ministry of Earth Science said, India is also planning to launch a satellite to track the changes that take place on earth's surface before the tremors.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) conducted its thirtieth flight on 10th July’15, deploying five British satellites into a Sun - Synchronous orbit. Liftoff occurred at 21:58 local time from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

This was announced during the first meeting of Science Express Climate Change Special (SECCS) chaired by Union Minister of Science and Technology Dr Harsh Vardhan on 8 July 2015 in New Delhi.

Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a new class of exotic subatomic particles called the pentaquarks. Pentaquark was first predicted to exist in the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson particle before it, the particle eluded science for decades until its detection at the LHC.

After travelling almost five billion kilometres, the Probe, which was launched from earth nine years ago, is now within two million kilometres of the dwarf planet. New Horizons should pass close to Pluto tomorrow, taking photographs and collecting data from the surface. The Probe has already relayed some photographs back to earth on Wednesday.

India has test-fired its indigenously developed Nag anti-tank guided missile. It can hit a target upto seven kilometres, from a helicopter. Three-round trial of helicopter-launched Nag (HeliNa) missile were conducted on 12th July’15 at the Chandhan firing range in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer. HeliNa is a helicopter-launched version of Nag and has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme.

Gagan, which stands for GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation, is a satellite-based system meant to improve the accuracy and integrity of the navigation systems. India will become the fourth country globally to do so. It will augment GPS signals over the Indian landmass, the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia, the Middle East and the Arabian Sea widening its reach up to Africa. At present radio navigation aids are used for precision landing and approaches at Indian airports. It will make it easier for aircraft movements to small airports which do not have navigation aids.

The Asteroid named ‘316201 Malala’ is located in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It orbits around the Sun every 5.5 years and is more-than 2 mile wide.

It is a naval variant of Prithvi-II, was launched by personnel of the Strategic Forces Command from an Offshore Patrolling Vessel. Dhanush, a manoeuvring missile, can carry a nuclear payload of 500 kg and target both land-based and sea-based targets. The missile has already been inducted into the armed forces.

Kalvari, first of the Indian Navy’s Scorpene class stealth submarines being built under the Project 75, under collaboration with M/s DCNS, France, achieved a major milestone on 6th Apr’15 with her ‘undocking’ at the Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL).

The portal also provides information to the general public on details of various ITI's, their affiliation details and number of seats available in the those institutes. Mr Dattatreya said that students can get E-Certificates after completion of course and the employers will also be able to cross check genuinity of candidates by using the portal.

This ATM is attached to Reverse Osmosis plant and the consumers can get 20 liters of water for just Rs. 2. Children will be provided with free water. This will help solve the water crisis in Sonkh town in Mathura district, where it is launched.