Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Mar 08, 2017

ANSWER: Both of the above

Explanation:
World Health Organisation (WHO) on 6 March 2017 made the announcement that more than 1 in 4 deaths of children under 5 years of age are attributable to unhealthy environments.

The revelations were made by WHO in its two new reports, titled “Inheriting a Sustainable World: Atlas on Children’s Health and the Environment” and “Don’t pollute my future! The impact of the environment on children’s health.”

The WHO went on to state that indoor and outdoor air pollution, unsafe water, lack of sanitation, second-hand smoke and inadequate hygiene take the lives of 1.7 million children under 5 years.

Diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia are the most common causes of death among children aged 1 month to 5 years.

The reports state that these causes are preventable access to safe water and clean cooking fuels.

Infants and pre-schoolers have an increased risk of pneumonia in childhood, and a lifelong increased risk of chronic respiratory diseases, such as asthma, when they are exposed to indoor and outdoor air pollution and second-hand smoke.

Every year, 570000 children under 5 years die from respiratory infections attributable to indoor and outdoor air pollution and second-hand smoke.

Each year, 270000 children die during their first month of life from conditions, including prematurity. Malaria is responsible for 200000 deaths of child under 5 years annually.

Every year, 361000 child under 5 years die due to diarrhoea, as a result of poor access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

200000 child under 5 years die each year from unintentional injuries attributable to the environment, such as poisoning, falls and drowning.

ANSWER: Smart Mosquito Density System

Explanation:
AP has sent a proposal for the deployment of a Smart Mosquito Density System to the Union Ministry of Urban Development.

Once approved, the system will be the first-of-its-kind project in the country.

Under the system, modern technologies will be deployed to detect mosquito breeding before malaria and other vector-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and zika become an epidemic.

Initially, the system will be deployed in three urban local bodies of the State - Vijayawada, Vishakhapatnam and Tirupati.

Optical sensors will be fixed to electricity poles to capture density, species and gender of mosquitoes before moving in to exterminate them.

As per the initial proposal, around 10 sensors will be deployed per a square kilometre area.

On this basis, a total of 1,850 sensors will be deployed across 185 square kilometres of three cities.

The devices will analyse and transfer mosquito density data along with location to a central database. Special applications will be developed to prepare mosquito density heat maps based on the information received from sensors.

About the Project

• The Smart Mosquito Density System will operate autonomously and use state-of-the-art internet of things (IoT) technology.
• It will alert health and other agencies of emergencies.
• These thematic maps will help government agencies in prioritising sprays.
• The system will help the authorities in identifying breeding at exact location and that too with the right sprays for a particular species.
• Smart phones and web applications will be used to report sprays by location.
• There will be analytics to monitor the effectiveness of sprays.

ANSWER: Rabi Ray

Explanation:
Noted socialist leader and former Lok Sabha speaker Rabi Ray passed away at age 91.

He had served as the Union minister of health and family welfare in the Morarji Desai led Government from January 1979 to January 1980.

He was the speaker of ninth Lok Sabha from 1989-1991.

In 1991, he was re-elected to the 10th Lok Sabha from Kendrapada in Odisha.

He was also a ex chairman of Common Wealth Speakers Forum.

He was born on November 26, 1926 at Bhanragarh village in Khurda district of Odisha.

Born on 26 November 1926, Rabi Ray passed obtained his bachelor’s degree in History from the Ravenshaw College in Cuttack.

Later, he studied Law in the Madhusudan Law College in Cuttack.

In 1948, he joined the Socialist Party as its member. During 1953-54, he held the post of the Joint Secretary of the All India Samajwadi Yuvak Sabha.

Under the leadership of Rammanohar Lohia, Ray founded the Socialist Party in Orissa in 1956.In 1967, he was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha from Puri constituency in Orissa.

He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Orissa in 1974.

ANSWER: Both of the above

Explanation:
Oil and gas experts Melody Meyer and Atul Gupta were on 6 March 2017 appointed as advisors of Hydrocarbons major Cairn India.

As advisors, they will provide strategic direction and delivery focus to Cairn India. The aforesaid appointments were made in a move to gear up in achieving the aim of contributing 50 per cent of India’s overall crude production through 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

Cairn India seeks to invest Rs 30000 crore in five new projects.

These are Enhanced Oil Recovery projects for Bhagyam and Aishwariya, Raageshwari Deep Gas (RDG), Barmer Hill tight oil and Aishwariya Hill tight oil.

Meyer, a United States citizen, has 37 years of experience with Chevron Corporation.

She was the Asia-Pacific President of Chevron Corporation where she was responsible for driving Chevron’s exploration and production (E&P) activities across nine countries in the region.

Atul Gupta has also served as the Managing Director of Hindustan Oil Exploration Company of HOEC Bardahl India from August 2006 to August 2008.

Cairn India is one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in India. It is a subsidiary of the natural resources company Vedanta Ltd, led by Anil Agarwal.

Headquartered in Gurgaon, the company has operational offices in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.

ANSWER: Electronic virtual assistant

Explanation:
HDFC Bank launched electronic virtual assistant (EVA), India’s first artificial intelligence-driven banking chatbot, for customer services.

It can answer millions of customer queries across multiple channels instantly. It can assimilate knowledge from thousands of sources and provide answers in simple language in under 0.4 seconds.

Since its launch Eva has answered over 1 lakh queries from thousands of customers from 17 countries across the world.

The system becomes smarter as it learns through its customer interactions.

ANSWER: Paramahansa Yogananda

Explanation:
Special Commemorative Postage Stamp marking 100 years of Yogoda Satsang Math was released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a function in New Delhi.

Yogoda Satsang Society of India was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1917. It is a non-profit religious organization.

Outside the India, it is known as the Self-Realization Fellowship.

The word Yogoda was coined by Paramahansa Yogananda.

It is fusion of Yoga, union, harmony, equilibrium and balance meaning that which imparts.

Yogoda Satsang Math

• President : Mrinalini Mata
• Headquarters : Dakshineswar
• Location : Dakshineswar, India
• Affiliations : Self-Realization Fellowship

ANSWER: Natural geological processes

Explanation:
The Centre will prepare an exhaustive plan to meet the challenges of arsenic contamination in groundwater in the Ganga-Brahmaputra fluvial plains.

This has severely affected many districts of UP, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam and Manipur.

There is an urgent need to start a nationwide movement to make people aware of arsenic contamination and urged individual and NGOs to join the government in this task.

Arsenic in groundwater is caused by natural geological processes. Long-term exposure to arsenic in drinking water can cause skin cancer and other diseases.

Though numerous measures, including alternate arrangement for supply of arsenic-free water and planting arsenic removal plants, have been taken in the last three decades, the entire population of the affected districts could not be covered.

Another aim is tapping alternate safe aquifers (water bearing permeable rock) for supply of arsenic-free groundwater.

Water wells have also been constructed tapping arsenic-free aquifers using state-of-the-art technology in parts of Ballia and Ghazipur districts of UP.

ANSWER: Open Acreage Licensing Policy

Explanation:
India on March 8, 2017 announced an open acreage licensing policy for oil and gas exploration.

This is allowing bidders to carve out areas where they want to drill as the energy- hungry country looks at greater foreign investment to boost output.

The world's third-largest oil consumer will conduct auction of oil and gas blocks under the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) twice a year, with the first round being held in July this year.

OALP auction will be held under the overhauled exploration licensing policy allows pricing and marketing freedom to operators and shifts to a revenue sharing model.

The July auction will be India's first major exploration licensing round since 2010, although it had recently awarded 31 small discovered fields mainly to state-owned and local firms under the liberalised Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy (HELP).

Crude Oil and Natural Gas & OALP: Know More

• India's domestic crude oil production of 36.95 million tons in 2015-16 barely met 20 per cent of its oil needs.
• Natural gas output at 32.249 billion cubic metres meets less than half of its needs.
• OALP will be a departure from the current licensing policy of government identifying the oil and gas blocks and then putting them on auction.
• It gives an option to a company looking for exploring hydrocarbons to select the exploration areas on its own.
• This selection can be done based on the seismic and well data that the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons has put in a National Data Repository.
• NDR offers a total of 160 terabyte data of India's 26 sedimentary basins.

ANSWER: Commonwealth initiative to tackle domestic violence

Explanation:
The Commonwealth is launching an initiative to help member states tackle domestic violence.

The “Peace in the home” programme will include toolkits to help governments across the Commonwealth involve multiple agencies - such as schools, doctors and hospitals, as well as government - and law enforcement agencies to work together effectively.

It will help countries highlight and share details of initiatives that had been particularly successful at dealing with domestic violence.

There will also be a mentoring programme for women, and an initiative to address the issue of violence around elections and politics.

The programme, which is being launched on Women’s Day, will continue through till 2018, when there is expected to be an accord on ending domestic violence in the Commonwealth.

The secretariat would also launch an initiative to map the economic cost of domestic violence in Commonwealth countries, as well as focus on strengthening laws protecting women and girls across the group.

UN estimates one in three women has suffered from domestic violence.

Commonwealth: Know More

• The Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth), also known as simply The Commonwealth.
• It is an intergovernmental organisation of 52 member states that are mostly former territories of the British Empire.
• GDP (nominal) : 2014 estimate
• Headquarters : Marlborough House , London
• GDP (PPP) : 2014 estimate
• Working language : English

ANSWER: Twitter

Explanation:
To celebrate International Women's Day, Twitter is enabling users across India to spotlight the women who inspire them with the hashtags #SheInspiresMe or #SheLeadsIndia.

These hashtags will trigger a #WomensDay emoji.

The emoji would be the gender symbol for females and a representation of feminism and will be available till April 1.

Twitter has also partnered with digital video storytelling platform @SheThePeopleTV, to host a special #BlueRoom session to talk about the issues women in media and technology face.

The session would be live on March 8 at 5:30 p.m. from both @TwitterIndia and @SheThePeopleTV handles, the statement added.

ANSWER: Nimble Storage

Explanation:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is purchasing the flash storage company for $12.50 a share or about $1 billion.

The deal represents about a 41% premium to Nimble's closing price on March 6, 2017.

This acquisition is exactly aligned with the strategy and capital allocation approach that is laid out.

The focus is on high-growth and higher-margin segments of the market.

HPE is the enterprise information company formed in 2015 after splitting off from the computer and printing company Hewlett-Packard, which renamed as HP Inc.

The deal is expected to close in April.

Nimble Storage is the San Jose, Calif.-based provider of predictive all-flash and hybrid-flash storage solutions.

Flash Storage: Know More

• Flash storage is a fast-growing market and an increasingly important element of today's hybrid IT environment.
• The overall flash market was estimated to be approximately $15 billion in 2016.
• It is expected to be nearly $20 billion by 2020, with the all-flash segment growing at a nearly 17 percent compound annual growth rate 1.

Nimble: Know More


• Nimble was founded in 2007 and has approximately 1,300 employees worldwide.
• The company delivered revenue of $402 million in its most recent fiscal year, up 25 percent year over year.
• Nimble's strong application performance in its entry to midrange flash storage solutions is backed by an intelligent, predictive analytics engine that delivers a simplified customer experience.