Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Dec 03, 2016

ANSWER: Praveen Mahajan

Explanation:
Senior civil servant Praveen Mahajan on Dec 1 became the first woman President of the All India Tennis Association. She replaced veteran administrator Anil Khanna who was forced to quit by the Sports Ministry.

AITA appointed former Indian Revenue Services officer Mahajan after its Executive Committee chose her unanimously for the post till the election is conducted.

Mahajan was also the first woman chief of the Central Board of Excise and Customs/CBEC. CBEC is the apex policy deciding body for indirect taxes.

Currently, she holds the post of administrative member of the Central Administrative Tribunal.

The Ministry asked Khanna to resign, because his election as President in 2012 was against the Sports Code that bars an official from re-election after two consecutive terms of four years.

A cooling off period is required before the person is eligible for the post again.

After agreeing to resign, Khanna was re-elected AITA President for a 4 year term till 2020. But he chose to resign and AITA as per the Constitution, elevated Mahajan one of the 10 Vice Presidents.

A special general meeting will be held by March 2017 to permit members to let the President for the remaining period closing 2020.

Apart from Mahajan, two others were eligible for post of president as per the age and tenure of the sports code

AITA: All India Tennis Association

• AITA was founded in March, 1920.
• Affiliation: International Tennis Federation
• Regional Affiliation: Asian Tennis Federation
• Headquarters: RK Khanna Tennis Complex, African Avenue, Delhi
• Official website: www.aitatennis.com

ANSWER: TeamIndus

Explanation:
Bengaluru based private aerospace company TeamIndus has announced it will send a spacecraft to the moon on Dec 28, 2017 abroad an ISRO rocket. The mission’s aim is to land this spacecraft on the moon.

It needs to travel at least 5000m and the beam high resolution video, data and images back to earth

In 2008, the Chandrayaan 1 became the first India space mission to send a spacecraft that circled the moon.

Except for the launch vehicle, all the technology powering the rover and the lander is developed in-house by Team Indus.

The company has high profile investors like Ratan Tata (Chairman Emeritus of the TATA Group) Sachin and Binny Bansal (Flipkart) and Nandan Nilekani (co-founder of Infosys Ltd)

It is staffed by a 100 member team of engineers, space enthusiasts, former Air Force pilots and ex ISRO employees

It is one of the 4 international teams and the only one from India to run the Google LunarXPrize a, USD 30 million or INR 200 crore competition to encourage private companies to launch space missions

Two US based companies Moon Express and Synergy Moon and Israeli company SPACE 1L have announced agreements with space launch vehicle companies like SpaceX

Other than technical requirements, prize rules also require the companies to be 90 percent privately funded.

Chandrayaan-1

India’s first mission to the moon.
Launched from SDSC, SHAR, Sriharikota
Date of launch: Oct 22, 2008
Spacecraft carried 11 scientific instruments built in: India, US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria
Weight: 1380 kg (Mass at lift off)
Onboard power: 700 Watts
Mission Life: 2 years

Scientific Payloads from India:

1. Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC)
2. Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI)
3. Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI)
4. High Energy X - ray Spectrometer (HEX)
5. Moon Impact Probe(MIP)

Scientific Payloads from abroad:

1. Chandrayaan-I X-ray Spectrometer (CIXS)
2. Near Infrared Spectrometer (SIR - 2)
3. Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA)
4. Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini SAR)
5. Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3)
6. Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM)

ANSWER: 83

Explanation:
ISRO is set to launch 83 satellites, 80 of them foreign, in one go in January 2017.

• The 80 satellites weighing 500 kg belong to Israel, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Switzerland and the US
• International customer satellites are being launched as a part of the commercial arrangement between them and Antrix Corporation Ltd, the commercial arm and PSU under the ISRO.
• It is the first mission of its kind in the ISRO space history.

Three Indian satellites are:


• Cartosat-2 series (weighing 730 kg as primary payload).
• INS-IA
• IB

ISRO


• Indian Space Research Organisation: Space Agency of GoI
• Headquarters: Bengaluru
• Vision: Harness space technology for national development.
• Founded in: 1969.
• It led the erstwhile Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR).
• INCOSPAR was established in 1962, after the initiative of India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru and scientist Vikram Sarabhai.
• ISRO: Institutionalised space activities in India.
• Managed by Department of Space, reporting to PM (India).

ANSWER: Dhasai

Explanation:
A small village in Thane’s district, Murbad Taluka is set to become the country’s first cashless one.

For Dhasai village, bypassing cash transactions is a result of efforts by NGO Swatantryaveer Savarkar Rashtriya Smarak in collaboration with the Bank of Baroda. The NGO approached the bank with the request to provide infrastructure.

NGO’s chairman Ranjit Sarvakar is also Director at Maharashtra Military School in Murbad.

After the former approached the bank with a request to provide infrastructure, Dhasai was selected as the population is less than 10,000.

There are 3-4 such villages in every taluka in Thane which can go cashless.

RuPay cards and cashless transactions were explained to the villagers who then became part of the digital economy revolution.

ANSWER: Magnetic

Explanation:
Scientists have found that stimulating the brain with magnets can aid in retrieving forgotten memories, which helps people suffering from depression or schizophrenia.

Mental illness is associated with the inability to choose what to think about; scientists are now taking the first step towards mechanisms that control how we think.

Researchers have found that the brain stores less important information beyond the range of tools that monitor brain activity, and they succeeded in snapping the information back to active attention with magnets.

Researchers used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation to apply a focused electromagnetic field to the precise part of the brain involved in storing information.

They found they could trigger the sort of activity indicative of focused attention.

Further, if they cued research subjects, a TMS pulse would snap the stowed away memory back into attention prompting subjects to think they were cued to focus on the word.

This suggests a state of memory apart from the spotlight attention of active working memory and deep storage of more significant things in LTM.

Know the Human Brain

• The human brain weighs around 2 percent of the body’s weight.
• It uses 20% of its total energy and oxygen intake.
• The brain constitutes 73 percent water.
• It takes 2% dehydration to affect cognitive skills such as attention and memory.
• 90 minutes of sweating can temporarily shrink the brain as much as a single year of ageing.
• 25% of the body’s cholesterol is in the brain.
• Each nerve cell in the brain connects with 40,000 synapses on an average.
• All brain cells are not alike.
• The human brain generates 12-25 watts of electricity enough to power an LED light.

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
All things made by humans - from houses and roads to farms and mines– and the products used are known as technosphere. US Scientist Peter Haff has coined the term technosphere.

It weighs about 30 trillion tons, as per an estimate made by the global team led by University of Leicester geologists.

The technosphere is enough to put 50 kgs on every square meter of the surface of the earth.

This is a new phenomenon which is expanding rapidly.

The technosphere refers to all of the structures constructed by humans to stay alive, on the planet, houses, factories,farms, mines, roads, airports and shipping ports as well as computer systems together with discarded waste.

Humans and human organisations form part of it too.

There is more to the technosphere than the production of mass– it also involves creation of everything from simple to complex items.

The Anthropocene concept- highlighted to showcase the impact humans have made on the planet- has provided a deep understanding of how humans have changed the earth.

In the distant geological future, technofossils could be used to characterise and date the Anthropocene

The technosphere is expanding at a rapid pace and is a new phenomenon in the planet.

Anthropocene

• Defines earth’s most recent geologic time period as human influenced.
• Holds that there is global evidence earth system processes are altered by humans.

Earth system processes comprise:


• Atmospheric
• Geologic
• Hydrologic
• Biospheric
• Other systems

Anthropocene = anthropo(meaning human) and cene( meaning epoch) in geologic time.

• It is a new period either following or within the Holocene.
• Holocene is an epoch which began in 8000 BC around 10,000 years ago.

ANSWER: Both a and b

Explanation:
Earth’s orbit is currently cluttered with more than half a million bits of debris, mostly rocket and satellite remnants that can destroy anything in the flight path.

The 106-year-old Japanese fishing net maker Nitto Seimo Co is working with the Japanese space agency to develop mesh material for capturing space debris.

The material will tether and drag bus sized pieces of space junk into the atmosphere for incineration.

Scientists will get the first indication of whether the metallic line will work once it is tested in orbit next month.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is leading the cleanup effort.

The experiment is part of the international cleanup effort to protect astronauts and somewhere around USD 900 billion worth of space stations, satellites and other infrastructure relied for telecommunications, weather forecasting, earth navigation and monitoring.

About Space Debris

• Space debris travels at 17,500 mph i.e. approximately 28,163 km/h.
• The impact of even a small sized projectile can cause catastrophic damage.

Space faring nations have pursued different strategies for debris namely:


• Harpooning
• Sweeping
• Lassoing
• Dragging
• The space debris are then dragged into a “graveyard orbit” where they won’t collide with operational equipment.
• NASA’s Hubble Telescope has a 1 cm hole in one of its dish antennas.
• Solar panels have been cracked by small debris.

ANSWER: Pakistan

Explanation:
China and Pakistan on 1st Dec 2016 launched a direct rail and sea freight service with the first cargo train departing from China’s SW Yunnan province.

The service was launched with the first cargo train loaded with 500 tons of commodities leaving Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan.

Yunnan is an inland province in SW China.

The train has left for Karachi, cutting transport cost by over 50%.

About the Maritime Silk Road Initiative

• This rail and sea freight service is part of Maritime Silk Road Initiative.
• In this, the USD 46 billion CPEC/China Pakistan Economic Corridor Project is also included.
• CPEC was launched in 2015.
• It was linked up to NW China and Gwadar seaport deep in southern Pakistan.
• Pakistan-China trade under CPEC has already started in Oct 2016.

ANSWER: Both are the same

Explanation:
Late Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s ashes were taken on 30th Nov to a symbolic reunion with fallen comrade in arms Ernesto Che Guevara .

This marks the first stop in the journey of the ashes across Cuba

The flag covered urn was placed in a mausoleum and museum dedicated to Guevara

The urban will be placed next to 19th century independence hero Jose Marti in the eastern city of Santiago in Cuba eventually

Cubans are observing 9 days of mourning for Casto following his death.

Casto ruled from 1959 till 2006, handing power over to brother Raul.

About Che Guevara

• Full Name: Ernesto Guevara
• Moniker: Che
• He met Castro in 1955 while in exile in Mexico.
• He was a doctor by profession.
• He won the crucial battle for Cuba’s freedom in 1958 in Santa Clara.
• He was given high ranking positions in the government.
• Guevara left in 1966 to lead a guerrilla expedition in Bolivia.
• He was executed on Oct 9, 1967 at La Higuera.
• His remains were taken back to Santa Clara three decades later.
• Santa Clara is also home to a museum dedicated to the revolutionary icon.

ANSWER: North Korea

Explanation:
UNSC on 30th Nov 2016 voted to tighten sanctions on North Korea.This was after North Korea carried out the country’s fifth and largest nuclear test.

Council unanimously approved the sanctions resolution following months of diplomatic arguments over how to respond to N. Korea’s nuclear test.

North Korea conducted this nuclear test in Sept 2016.

DPRK/Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 over nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The fresh sanctions target the country’s hard currency revenue by placing a cap on coal exports, cutting them by at least 62 percent.

The sanction will cut down USD 800 million per year the hard currency that they country has to fund its prohibited weapons programs.

The prohibited weapons programs constitute a full 25 percent of North Korea’s entire export revenues.

Sanctions will also ban the country’s exports of non-ferrous metals and sanction 11 government officials as well as 10 entities linked to the country’s nuclear weapons program.

They also include an array of other measures for cracking down on DPRK’s access to the international banking system and on its export.

North Korea

• Official Name: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
• Location: East Asia, in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.
• Pyongyang is its capital and its largest city.
• Bordering nations: China, South Korea
• Official language: Korean
• Official script: Choson'gul
• Government: Totalitarian
• Supreme Leader/ Chairman of the Assembly Presidium: Kim Jong-un

ANSWER: Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan

Explanation:
Union HRD Minister Shri. Prakash Javadekar launched the Vittiya Saksharta Abhiyan in New Delhi on Dec 3, 2016.

The minister appealed to faculty and young students to join the Abhiyan and encourage, create awareness and motivate people around the world to use a digitally enabled cashless economic system for funds transfer.

India is currently undergoing a transformational shift towards digital economy.

Technology was stressed as a means of leveraging to bring financial digital literacy and step forward towards a digital economy.

The Union Minister also appeared to higher educational institutes to receive nothing in cash including fines, fees and deposits.

Stress was also laid on paying nothing in cash– wage/salary/vendor payments.

Aim was to develop a cashless campus covering shops, canteens and services.

Young students were also asked to spread the message of a digital economy.

Modes of Online Digital Payment include:

• Prepaid cards
• Debit card/Ru Pay
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data/USSD
• Mobile Wallet
• Adhaar enabled payment system/AEPS
• Unified Payment Interface(UPI)
• Point of Sale (Physical/Virtual)

These digital platforms are easy to use, convenient, secure and accessible anytime by anyone anywhere.

ANSWER: It contains traces of animal fat.

Explanation:
The new £5 note issued by the Bank of England has angered the vegetarians after it was revealed that it contains traces of animal fat.

The 5 pound note entered circulation in Sept 2016. But the presence of the meat substance was only confirmed on 28th Nov 2016 by a Bank of England tweet.

The new five pound notes are printed on polymer, a film which is thin and made of plastic; it is more durable and safer as compared to paper money.

Within the polymer pallets used in the creation of the film is a substance called tallow derived from animal fat.

Tallow is commonly used in candles and soap.

About the Protest

• Online petition initiated by Doug Maw has gained more than 90,000 signatures calling the notes unacceptable.
• Vegan communities such as Hindus, Sikhs and Jains have also joined in the protest.
• As per the petitioners, the presence of animal fat is a violation of vegan preference to not harm animals.
• The new note is not the only one based on polymer.

New polymer notes of the following denominations will also be out:


• £10: 2017
• £20: 2020

Decision to shift to polymer is because:


• Notes last longer
  
• They stay cleaner
• They are harder to copy.

ANSWER: Black Sea

Explanation:
Ukraine began its two day military drill over the Black Sea on Dec 1, 2015 placing Russia in combat mode. The drill involves testing surface-to-air missiles. This marks the first ever missile test drill for Ukraine.

What has escalated tensions with Russia is that Ukraine’s testing location is really close to the Russian controlled Crimea.

The drill was conducted in Kherson region on the coast of the Black Sea. It involved S-300 medium range missiles. In total, 16 missiles were launched and all of them reached their targets. The missiles came within 18 miles of the Crimean airspace.

The main purpose of the drill is to build Ukraine air defence.

Russia sent several letters to Kiev, calling the drills a violation of international law and sovereignty of Russia.

Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko has held that the tests are in accordance with international law.

Russia positioned warships off Crimea’s western coastline and threatened to shoot down any missile that enters the Crimean airspace.

About Crimea

• Crimea was formerly a part of Ukraine.
• In 2014, Russia annexed the Supreme Council of Crimea and other important places.
• This led to the installation of a pro Russian government in Crimea.
• A referendum in March 2014 saw a majority of Crimean voters favour separation from Ukraine and choose to remain with the Russian Federation.
• UN called the referendum invalid and passed a resolution asking international organisations and States not to recognise Russian annexation of Crimea.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin defends the move and opposed the annexation tag.