Current Affairs Quiz - April, 2019

Notes:
The 8th edition of Home Expo India 2019 began at India Expo Centre and Mart in Greater Noida on April 16. It covers sectors with maximum thrust and growth potential in home decor, furnishing, furniture, flooring and textiles. About 500 companies in permanent marts will be exhibiting their collection under these categories. The 3-day exhibition has been organized by the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts.

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By using data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, the researchers discovered deep lakes (more than 300 feet, or 100 meters) filled with methane on Saturn’s moon Titan. The team also found “phantom lakes” that fill and empty periodically. It must be noted that Titan is the only known body in our solar system other than Earth with a liquid on its surface. But rather than a water cycle, it has a methane and ethane cycle. The new findings represented further evidence about Titan’s hydrological cycle, with liquid hydrocarbons raining down from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the sky. This is comparable to Earth’s water cycle. Titan, with a diameter of 5,150 km, is the solar system’s second largest moon, behind only Jupiter’s Ganymede. It is bigger than the planet Mercury. The research was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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The World Heritage Day (WHD) is celebrated every year on April 18 to promote the cultural heritage across the world. The 2019 theme is ‘Rural Landscapes’. It is also a day of international solidarity in favor of strengthening and safeguarding heritage world-wide. The day also aims to seek recognition for the people involved in preserving the sites, especially scientists, archaeologists, geographers and engineers. As of 2018, India has 36 World Heritage Sites including Western Ghats, Sundarbans National Park, Taj Mahal, City of Ahmadabad, Nalanda University, Mahabodhi Temple in Bihar and Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh.

Notes:
A site containing the 220-million-year-old fossilized remains of nearly a dozen dinosaurs has been discovered in western Argentina. According to Argentinian paleontologist Ricardo Martinez of the University of San Juan, there are almost ten different individuals, with practically no sediment. The discovery is doubly important because there are at least 7 or 8 individuals of dicynodonts, the ancestors of mammals, the size of an ox. There were also remains of archosaurs, reptiles that could be the ancestors of great crocodiles. The find was discovered in September 2018 in San Juan province, about 1,100 kilometres west of Buenos Aires. The site is between one and two metres in diameter and about the same depth, leading scientists to speculate it was a former drinking hole at a time of great drought, and the creatures died of weakness at the spot. Argentina has been a rich source of fossils from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras over the years – of most creatures not found in the northern hemisphere.

Notes:
Saudi Arabia will host the 15th edition of G20 summit in its capital Riyadh, which is scheduled to be held on November 21-22, 2020. This would be the first G20 summit to be hosted by an Arab country. The summit’s agenda will include financial, economic and social issues including energy, the environment, climate, the digital economy, trade, agriculture, healthcare, education and labour. The G20 consists of Germany, the US, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, France, South Africa, South Korea, India, the UK, Italy, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the European Union.

Notes:
Amar Paul (97), the legendary Bengali folk singer, has passed away in Kolkata on April 20, 2019. Born on May 19, 1922, at Brahmanbaria in undivided Bengal in an area now in Bangladesh, Paul had started taking music lessons from his mother Durgasundari Paul. Afterwards, he learnt classical music from Ayat Ali Khan and folk music from Mani Chakraborty and Suren Chakraborty. He surfaced as a folk singer for the All India Radio in the early 1950s. Paul lent his voice in a number of films including Satyajit Ray’s “Hirak Rajar Deshe”. He has penned several books on folk songs of Bengal and received accolades from various academies around the world.

Notes:
Ravinder Kumar Passi has been appointed to the post of chairman of the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH). He succeeded O P Prahladka. EPCH is a non-profit organisation, with an objective to promote, support, protect, maintain and increase the export of handicrafts.

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The UAE Space Agency and Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) have recently announced that 85% of the Hope Probe project has been completed. Hope Probe is an ambitious dream project of UAE to send a mission to Mars. Hope Probe is scheduled to be launched in July 2020. With a successful launch, UAE hopes to become the first Arabic and Islamic country to make the Mars Mission dream a reality. The Hope Probe has been developed in accordance with Mars Exploration Programme Analysis Group (MEPAG), the global scientific community which is working on Mars exploration and coordinated with international entities to ensure the best results. The objectives of the Emirates Mars Mission will be to add to the global efforts to explore space and the surrounding planets. For the first time, a Mars exploration project will be able to take a global picture of the Martian atmosphere. It will do so by taking an integrated picture of the atmosphere throughout the day and for a long period of time, helping to create a better understanding of the planet’s atmosphere in different seasons of the year.

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India’s largest IT services company, Tata Consultancy Services(TCS) has partnered with the Department of Posts (DoP) to modernise a network of more than 1.5 lakh post offices across the country. The multi-year digital core programme will transform the DoP into a multi-service digital hub, modernise the delivery of mail and packages, enhance customer experience and launch innovative services that will drive new revenues. At the heart of this transformation is the Core System Integration (CSI) program designed and implemented by TCS. This involved deploying an integrated ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution that caters to mail operations, finance and accounting, and HR functions. Besides, it will also connect the network of more than 1.5 lakh post offices to make this largest distributed ePostal network in the world. The integrated solution is built to cater to the Department’s immense scale, and future needs. It supports the HR needs of over 500,000 employees, services over 40,000 concurrent users, and processes over 3 million postal transactions a day.

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The researchers have finally detected the most ancient type of molecule in our universe in space for the first time ever. They used NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) to detect helium hydride in a planetary nebula NGC 7027 about 3,000 light-years away from Earth. Helium hydride ion (HeH+) was the first molecule that formed when, almost 14 billion years ago, falling temperatures in the young universe allowed recombination of the light elements produced in the Big Bang. At that time, ionised hydrogen and neutral helium atoms reacted to form HeH+. Despite its importance in the history of the early Universe, HeH+ has so far escaped detection in astrophysical nebulae — cloud of gas and dust in outer space. Hence, the detection of this special molecule brings a long search to a happy ending, and eliminates doubts about understanding of the underlying formation and destruction of the early universe. SOFIA is the joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to construct and maintain an airborne observatory. Being the world’s largest airborne astronomical observatory, the telescope has the ability to produce a higher resolution image, three times higher in quality than those captured by other observatories.