GK & Current Affairs Quiz: May 17, 2019

Notes:
India’s G.S. Lakshmi has become the first-ever woman to be appointed to ICC’s International Panel of Match Referees and will be eligible to officiate in international games with immediate effect. Lakshmi, 51, who first officiated as a match referee in domestic women’s cricket in 2008-09, has overseen three women’s ODI matches and three women’s T20 International matches. Her compatriot Claire Polosak recently became the first female umpire to officiate in a men’s One-Day International (ODI). In another major appointment, Australia’s Eloise Sheridan has joined Polosak on the ICC Development Panel of Umpires, meaning the number of women on that panel is now up to eight. Lauren Agenbag, Kim Cotton, Shivani Mishra, Sue Redfern, Mary Waldron and Jacqueline Williams are the other women officials on that panel.

Notes:
India has been unanimously chosen as co-chair of the Consultative Group (CG) of Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) for the fiscal year 2020. The decision was taken during the meeting of GFDRR held in Geneva, Switzerland on the margins of the 6th Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (GPDRR) 2019. This will give India an opportunity to work with the member countries and organizations with a focused contribution towards advancing the disaster risk reduction agenda during the course of the year. The GFDRR is a global partnership that helps developing countries better understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change. It is is a grant-funding mechanism, managed by the World Bank, that supports disaster risk management projects worldwide.

Notes:
Captain Aarohi Pandit, a 23-year-old pilot from Mumbai, has become the world’s first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo in a Light Sports Aircraft (LSA). She completed the feat when she landed at Iqaluit Airport in Canada on 13 May, having flown there from Wick in the UK. Her journey was broken into five legs, with stops at Iceland and Greenland. It also made Pandit the first female pilot in the world to successfully complete a solo flight across the Greenland ice cap in an LSA. This is part of her ongoing year-long global circumnavigation flight which was launched by friend Keithair Misquitta on July 30. Both the friends began their trip for Women Empower (WE) Expedition in the tiny aircraft christened ‘Mahi’ in August 2018. ‘Mahi’ is a tiny, single-engine Sinus 912 weighing a little of 400 kg or nearly equivalent to a Bullet motorcycle, manufactured by Pipistrel of Slovenia, and is also the first LSA registered by Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) India.

Notes:
In Madhya Pradesh, women will handle the entire work of counting votes in Harda district of the state. As per reports, the initiative is probably the first of its kind. Harda district is a part of Betul parliamentary seat and the counting of votes of Timarni and Harda assembly segments will take place at Harda district headquarter. At present, 84 women are being trained for counting in Polytechnic College. Apart from the counting of votes, only women will be deployed for the security of the counting centre. Betul was voted on 6 May and the women had taken the responsibilities of voting in 60 all women polling booths in Harda district. Now they are ready to take accountability of counting on 28 tables. More than 75 percent of voting has been recorded in Harda district, so the number of votes is also high.

Notes:
A team of researchers at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created a next-generation plastic, called Poly Di-Ketoenamine (or PDK), that can be fully recycled into new materials of any colour, shape, or form, without loss of performance or quality. They have designed a recyclable plastic that, like a Lego playset, can be disassembled into its constituent parts at the molecular level. According to the journal Nature Chemistry, unlike conventional plastics, the monomers of PDK plastic could be recovered and freed from any compounded additives simply by dunking the material in a highly acidic solution. The acid helps to break the bonds between the monomers and separate them from the chemical additives that give plastic its look and feel. After testing various formulations, the researchers demonstrated that not only does acid break down PDK polymers into monomers, but the process also allows the monomers to be separated from entwined additives.