Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Aug 22, 2017

ANSWER: Swasth Bachche, Swasth Bharat

Explanation:
‘Swasth Bachche, Swasth Bharat’ Programme is an initiative of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.

It is to prepare a physical Health and Fitness Profile Card for more than 12 lakhs of Kendriya Vidyalaya students.

It was launched in Kochi.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Shri. Prakash Javadekar unveiled the Profile Card.

Strengthening the education sector of the country through the empowerment of general education is the aim of Modi Government.

Ensuring quality education for all is also the aim of Government. Kendriya Vidyalayas in Kerala shows more quality than the Kendriya Vidyalayas of all other states.

A system to involve children, a part of household chores is needed.

Swasth Bachche, Swasth Bharat exhibition and the display of Yoga by children were also held.

About the Scheme

• Swasth Bachche, Swasth Bharat programme will provide a comprehensive and inclusive report card.
• It is for children covering all age groups and children of different abilities.
• Making students, teachers and parents aware about the importance of good health and fitness and encouraging 60 minutes of play each day is an objective of the programme.
• Swasth Bachche, Swasth Bharat programme also intends to imbibe values of Olympics and Paralympics amongst students.
• Bring back the childhood amongst children and make physical activity and recreational games an integral part of learning process.
• Motivating potentially outstanding performers in various games and sports of excellence are on the anvil.
• The scheme is also using technology for data capture and analytics, and giving access to schools, parents and teachers are also the objectives of the programmes.

ANSWER: Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems

Explanation:
Ministry of Home Affairs will undertake steps to integrate the various organs of the Criminal Justice System such as the Police, Courts, Prisons, Prosecution, Forensic Laboratories, Finger Prints and Juvenile Homes.

With the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) database, the Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) will be a useful resource for all stakeholders including the policy makers.

Digital Police Portal will enable citizens to register FIRs online and the portal will initially offer seven Public Delivery Services in 34 States & UTs.

This is like Person and Address Verification e.g. of employees, tenants, nurses etc, permission for hosting Public Events, Lost & Found Articles and Vehicle theft etc.

Besides, the portal will enable restricted access to law enforcement agencies on topics such as Antecedent Verification and make assessment of FIRs.

Out of 15,398 Police Stations under the CCTNS project, 14,284 Police Stations are using CCTNS software.

The CCTNS portal will provide investigator the complete record history of any criminal from anywhere across the country.

The software offers Google-type Advance Search engine and analytical reports.

The portal offers 11 kinds of search and 44 types of reports.

Recently, the software was used to trace few mentally challenged women from Tamil Nadu in Uttarakhand and reunited with their families.

ANSWER: Mussel

Explanation:
Inspired by the animal world, scientists have developed a strong glue that could make performing surgery on foetuses safer.

Researchers made by the glue after studying how mussels maintained a tenacious grip on slippery rocks.

An adhesive that can prevent the amniotic sac from tearing after surgery could help the foetus remain in the womb longer.

This would potentially lead to a healthier future for the baby.

Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, infused the mussel adhesive in a special polymer to make the glue.

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
A Festival of India is being organized in Cote d’Ivoire and concurrently accredited countries of Liberia and Guinea from 15 August, 2017-28 January, 2018.

The Festival will showcase diverse Indian culture, i.e. classical and folk dances. The events will be held in four cities of Cote d’Ivoire, namely, Abidjan, Yamoussoukro and Grand Bassam and Daloa and capital cities of Monrovia of Liberia and Conakry of Guinea.

Following events will be showcased:-

1. Bharatnatyam Dance Group
2. Mohiniattam Dance Group
3. Folk Dance of Arunachal Pradesh Rinchin Droma
4. Manipuri Dance Group

ANSWER: Hangzhou

Explanation:
China today launched its first cyber court specialising in handling internet-related cases in the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou.

This is amid a spike in the number of online disputes.

The Hangzhou Internet Court in Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang Province will handle cases such as online trade disputes and copyright lawsuits.

The cases handled by the court will be tried online.

Yesterday, the Hangzhou municipal legislature appointed the president, vice presidents and judges of the court.

Hangzhou is home to many Internet companies, including e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The latest report from the China Internet Network Information Centre showed that China had about 751 million netizens and 724 million mobile Internet users as of the end of June.

ANSWER: Vijay

Explanation:
Vijay is the name of the country’s first calf delivered by a surrogate or recipient cow through In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) technology carried out in a mobile laboratory.

In the past few years, indigenous cow breeds have been destroyed due to cross-breeding.

While in human beings, IVF technology comes to the aid when either of the couple is infertile, in the case of cows, our objective is to protect the breed in its original form.

In its lifetime (15 years on an average), a cow gives birth to 10 calves at the most.

Through IVF technology, it can give birth to 20 calves in a year through recipient cows, which means nearly 200 in its lifetime.

About 50 embryos can be produced by a donor cow in a year.

A similar experiment was carried out about five years ago by the National Dairy Research Institute at the lab-level.

This is the first time that the procedure was successfully implemented at a farm, with the help of a mobile laboratory.

The aim is to take the technology to the farmer.

The scientists carry out the entire procedure in front of the farmer, with their mobile IVF lab,

In Vijay’s case, the donor cow, Ratan, belongs to the Gir breed, whose population across the country is around one lakh currently.

Unevenly spread across Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, on an average, it gives 10-12 litres of milk daily.

Under the JK Trust’s initiative, JK BovaGenix, aimed at promoting genetically superior indigenous cattle breeds, the oocytes, or immature eggs, of the donor cow were collected.

The oocytes were kept in a special incubator, which worked as an artificial uterus, for nearly 24 hours.

Meanwhile, semen was collected from a Gir bull. The process of fertilisation then began - in a petri dish inside the incubator, at a temperature of 38.5 degree centigrade.

After seven days, the oocytes developed into an embryo, which was transferred to the recipient cow.

The oestrus cycle in cows occurs every 21 days.

The embryo can be transferred to the cow seven days before its oestrus cycle. Its body will then accept it as its own embryo and the chances of pregnancy will increase.

Additionally the success rate of IVF technology in cows is 40 per cent and the procedure can be done on the donor cow at least 10-12 times in a year.

Other than Ratan, the oocytes of three more donor cows - one Gir breed and two Khillar breed - were collected in November.

The other three surrogate mother cows are due to give birth in the next two weeks.

Similarly, the oocytes of three cows (Tharparkar breed) that belong to Chandrakant Bharekar, who owns another ‘cow farm’ near Pune, were also collected.

The embryos were transferred to recipient cows in November.

These surrogate mother cows are expected to give birth this week.

At present, JK Trust has two state-of-the-art Embryo Transfer and IVF laboratories, known as Dr Vijaypat Singhania Centre of Excellence Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Livestock.

This is at Gopalnagar, near Bilaspur, in Chhattisgarh and Vadgaon-Rasai near Pune.

ANSWER: Superconductivity

Explanation:
Scientists have discovered a potential new state of matter.

This may help explain phenomena like superconductivity.

Superconductivity is extensively used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), particle accelerators, magnetic fusion devices, and microwave filters.

Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US showed that among superconducting materials in high magnetic field.

This phenomenon of electronic symmetry breaking is common.

The ability to find similarities and differences among classes of materials with phenomena such as this helps.

It establishes the essential ingredient that cause novel functionalities such as superconductivity.

The high-magnetic-field state of the heavy fermion superconductor CeRhIn5 revealed a state in which the material’s electrons aligned in a different way.

These are in a way to apparently reduce the symmetry of the original crystal.

This something that now appears to be universal among unconventional superconductors.

Unconventional superconductivity develops near a phase boundary separating magnetically ordered and magnetically disordered phases of a material.

ANSWER: Smallest

Explanation:
Scientists in the UK have developed the world’s smallest surgical robot with low-cost technology used in mobile phones and space industries.

The robot, called Versius, mimics the human arm and can be used to carry out a wide range of procedures.

It is in these that a series of small incisions are made to circumvent the need for traditional open surgery.

These include hernia repairs, colorectal operations, as well as prostate, ear, nose and throat surgery.

Such procedures reduce complications and pain after surgery and speed up recovery time for patients.

The robot is controlled by a surgeon at a console guided by a 3D screen in the operating theatre.

The robot is much easier to use than existing systems, and take up about a third of the space of current machines.

For robots to revolutionise surgery, they need to be versatile, easy to use and small.

This is so that surgical staff can move them around the operating room or between operating theatres, or pack them away when they are not being used.

This is the first robotic arm to be designed specifically for laparoscopic surgery which does that.

One of the key benefits of the robot is that it works like a human arm and contains technology that detects resistance to make sure the right amount of force is used when the instruments are inside the patient.

Researchers used electronics from mobile phones to help the robot “think” and process information, and gear box technology.

This is originally designed for the space industry to help it move.

The robot is set to be launched next year.