Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Sept 15, 2015

ANSWER: Cyrus Poonawalla- Lincoln House

Explanation:
Industrialist Cyrus Poonawalla has paid INR 750 crore for Lincoln House at South Mumbai’s Breach Candy location. The building was constructed in 1938 and it is a grade III heritage building. It was formerly known as Wankaner Palace.

ANSWER: Insta Health Solutions

Explanation:
Bengaluru origin Practo backed by Chinese major Tencent and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner acquired hospital information management company Insta Health Solutions. The acquisition was for INR 76 crore in a cash and equity deal. This is the third acquisition for Practo in less than six months, earlier acquisitions being app based fitness management platform Fitho Wellness and product outsourcing company Genii. Practo was founded in 2008 by Shashank N D and Abhinav Lal. It raised USD 90 million from Tencent in August along with other investors like Google Capital, Sequoia Capital and Altimeter Capital.

ANSWER: Karnataka

Explanation:
Karnataka will become the first state to have a dedicated startup council for infrastructure, incubation and similar facilities. Startup council will also seek easy clearance for emerging businesses. DIPP is in charge of facilitating the formation of this council. It aims to replicate the information technology revolution brought about by IT reforms in Karnataka.

ANSWER: Pratik Seal

Explanation:
Housing Dot Com CMO Pratik Seal has resigned from the company less than a year into the tenure. He headed the Look Up marketing campaign. Portal spend INR 150 crore funding on this campaign. Company has hired a new CMO and this ouster follows the exit of former Housing Dot Com founder Rahul Yadav.

ANSWER: Martina Hingis

Explanation:
Sania Mirza claimed her second Grand Slam title at the US open by beating fourth seeds Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslavl Shvedova 6-3, 6-3. Earlier victories for the Hingis-Mirza pair included Wimbledon. Martina Hingis finished the year with 2 Grand Slams in partnership with Sania and 3 with Laender Paes.

ANSWER: Narsingh Pancham Yadav

Explanation:
Narsingh Pancham Yadav bagged a bronze medal at the Men’s 74 freestyle category securing a berth for the 2016 Rio Games. He was the only Indian to win a medal at the tournament. Double Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar has been absent for a year and Narsingh has now attained the change to represent India in the 74 kg division. In his semifinal bout, Narsingh went down to Unurbat Purevjav of Mongolia For the bronze medal play-off, he got his act together to outplay Zelimkhan Khadjiev of France 12-8 to make it to the podium.

ANSWER: Ecologically Sensitive Area-Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu

Explanation:
ESA has been declared in the six states with Karnataka having the largest share of 20,668 sq km under the zone. This comes after entire western ghats was suggested to be declared ESA by the Madhav Gadgil led Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. This was followed by a recommendation by the K Kasturirangan High Level Working Group which recommended 60,000 sq km of the Western Ghats be declared as ESA. Only 56,825 sq km was declared however and a monitoring centre has also been set up in the Western Ghats for this.

ANSWER: bNAbs- Broadly Neutralising Antibodies

Explanation:
A new antibody called banks has been promoted to prevent HIV infection associated with AIDs. bNAbs has been found in blood samples of HIV patients whose immune system has naturally contained the infection. Antibodies protect the patient through recognition of protein called envelope spike present in surface of HIV strains and neutralising the impact of this virus. CalTech researchers have discovered one bNAb which may recognise the rapidly changing signature protein during the course of the HIV infection making it easier to detect and neutralise.

ANSWER: Cryonics

Explanation:
Cryonics from greek world kryos meaning icy cold, is a preservation of animals and humans at freezing temperature for future healing in case a treatment is developed. In case future science can lead to a condition of perpetual youth, cryonics would be successful. Cryonics was a neologism developed by Karl Werner in 1965 in association creation of Cryonics Society of New York. The first person to be frozen with the aim of revival was James Bedford frozen in early 1967.
Major advancement in tissue preservation came in 1990s end with vitrification, chemicals being added to tissue to freeze as glass rather than ice crystals. As of 2011, over 200 people have been cryopreserved to date using this method.

ANSWER: Keystroke dynamics

Explanation:
A biometric measures unique human characteristics and Indian researchers J. Visumathia and P. Jesu Jayarin have discovered a new keystroke algorithm which uses unique online human typing patterns to make authentications online reliable. Internet use entails obstacles like loss of password, capabilities of hackers and easy access to methods such as bots and phishing, which can be eliminated through the use of keystroke dynamics as a biometric. Keystroke template algorithm measures existing models to improve precision and can be used as a viable e-security measure.

ANSWER: one isotope each of heavy elements berkelium and neptunium and two isotopes of the element americium.

Explanation:
Newly discovered exotic nuclei are a result of study to develop new methods of synthesis for super heavy elements. Other participants included scientists from Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA and the joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia. This new technique will pave the way for advancement of a field of science called experimental physics

ANSWER: SpARCS1049+56

Explanation:
The galaxy cluster discovered by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is the first to demonstrate that gigantic galaxies at the centre of massive clusters made of stellar fossil old red/dead stars can expand considerably by feeding off gas stolen from remaining galaxies. The new galaxy at the heart of the cluster is churning out new stars at a rapid rate.

There is a phenomena called wet merger when gas rich galaxies collide so that gas is converted into new stars. The latest discovery is one of the first instances of wet merger at the cluster core of the galaxies.

ANSWER: Socioeconomic and educational backwardness and autonomous religious practices

Explanation:
Government has taken the decision to streamline criteria for classification of communities as scheduled tribes basing it on 5 criteria -- primitive traits, distinctive culture, shyness of contact, geographical isolation and backwardness and 2 additional criteria— socio-economic and educational backwardness, and autonomous religious practices. Government will also rework the existing criteria. Under the new rules, a state government would now send its proposal for inclusion of a community as ST to the ministry of tribal affairs, which would take the views of the Registrar General of India, Anthropological Society of India and the National Commission of Scheduled Tribes (NCST) all at once.

ANSWER: Ravi Venkatesan

Explanation:
Ravi Venkatesan has been appointed as chairman, BOB. He is also the chairman and founder of Social Ventures Partner India and the author of “Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere” published by Harvard Business Review.

ANSWER: Tatsumi Kimishima

Explanation:
Nintendo has named Tatsumi Kimishima as the president of the company at a board meeting where new title of creative fellow was announced for senior MD and star game designer Shigeru Minamoto. Another senior executive, Genyo Takeda was appointed as the Technology Fellow. Kimishima has been MD of the company and with Nintendo since 2000. Iwata was president from 2002 till 2014. Nintendo has decided to go into games for mobile devices early this year, a move it was against during Iwata’s time.

ANSWER: Hormusji N. Cama and Riyad Matthew

Explanation:
Hormusji N Cama, Director of Bombay Samachar (the oldest continually published newspaper in India from 1855)and Riyad Mathew, Director of Malayala Manorama, were unanimously elected Chairman and Vice Chairman respectively of the Press Trust of India.

Cama succeeds Mahendra Mohan Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of the Jagran Prakashan while Mathew succeeds him as Vice Chairman.

Cama has served two terms as INR President and he is currently Chairman of Readership Studies Council of India apart from being the board of ABC and Council for Fair Business Practices. Mathew has worked as a AP correspondent in Washington before joining Malayala Manorama.

Apart from Cama, Gupta and Mathew, other members of the PTI board include: K.N. Shanth Kumar/Deccan Herald, Vineet Jain/TOI, Aveek Kumar Sarkar/Ananda Bazar Patrika, Viveck Goenka/Indian Express, N Ravi/The Hindu, M.P. Veerendra Kumar/ Mathrubhumi, Sanjoy Narayan/Hindustan Times, Vijay Kumar Chopra/Hind Samachar and R. Lakshmipathy/Dinamalar.

ANSWER: Gujarat

Explanation:
In a bid to improve India’s rank (142) for ease of doing business, WB and DIPP released state wise rankings where Gujarat topped the list at 71.14%. It was followed by Andhra Pradesh at 70.12% and Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh jointly came third.

ANSWER: Frank D. Gilroy

Explanation:
Frank D. Gilroy’s award winning piece on a veteran’s fraught return home “The Subject Was Roses” earned him the Pulitzer. He served in the army during the 1940s and was also a Tony Award winner. The Oscar nominated playwright was an alumnus of Yale Drama School and he wrote for the 1971 Shirley MacLaine drama “Desperate Characters”

ANSWER: Malcolm Turnbull

Explanation:
Former Australian PM Tony Abbott lost a leadership ballot through members of his own party in a vote 54 Yes to 44 No to replace him. Party whip Scott Buchholz announced that Liberal Party leader and communications minister Malcolm Turnbull will replace Tony Abbott. Turnbull called for a leadership poll following an opinion survey which called for changes to the conservative coalition government.

ANSWER: Aerobic cultivation

Explanation:
Conventional method of rice cultivation uses 5000 litres of water for producing 1 kg of rice from which 2000 litres is lost due to seepage losses and flooding. New approach called aerobic rice cultivation involves growing crops in aerobic condition, where there is plenty of oxygen in the soil. Suitable areas for aerobic rice cultivation comprise irrigated lowlands where there is lack of rainfall to sustain rice production. TN, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha, Karnataka and east UP are areas where this method of rice cultivation is practices. Water productivity is said to be higher in aerobic rice by 64-88 percent and utilises only 3500 litres of water to produce 1 kg of rice.