Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2019

Notes:
India’s deepest shaft cave has been discovered at Krem Um Ladaw in East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya during the 28th edition of the annual ‘Caving in the Abode of the Clouds Expedition’. The cave has a 105 m deep shaft entrance passage. The cave has a 105 m deep shaft entrance passage. This comes a year after the discovery of the world’s longest sandstone cave – Krem Puri – near the village of Laitsohum in Mawsynram region of East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. With a length of 24,583 metres, Krem Puri was discovered back in 2016 but the actual length of the cave was obtained by the Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association (MAA) during one of its expeditions. The cave system has fossils of dinosaurs, especially the Mosasaurus, a giant reptile that lived 66-76 million years ago. With all these discoveries , Meghalaya has become one of the top caving regions of the world.

Notes:
India has moved up two places to rank 76th on a global energy transition index 2019. This annual list, compiled by Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF), has ranked 115 economies on how well they are able to balance energy security and access with environmental sustainability and affordability. Sweden remains on the top on this annual list and is followed by Switzerland and Norway in the top three. Among major economies, the UK is ranked 7th, Singapore 13th, Germany 17th, Japan 18th and the US 27th. Within Asia, Malaysia is ranked highest at 31st, Sri Lanka is 60th, Bangladesh 90th and Nepal 93rd. The report said that India is amongst the countries with high pollution levels and has a relatively high CO2 intensity in its energy system. Despite this, India has made significant strides to improve energy access in recent years, and currently scores well in the area of regulation and political commitment towards energy transition. The report suggested there was a ground for optimism regarding India despite the current outdated energy system not being ready for the transition because an enabling environment is being built to support the future transition.

Notes:
On 21st March, Italy’s PRISMA Earth observation satellite launched into orbit by the European Vega rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. PRISMA (or Precursore Iperspettrale della Missione Applicativa) is a small hyperspectral imaging satellite i.e. designed to provide information about environmental monitoring, resources management, pollution and crop health. The satellite includes a medium resolution camera that can view across all visual wavelengths, as well as a hyperspectral imager that can capture a wider range of wavelengths between 400 and 2500 nanometers. The satellite will operate in a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning that it circles the Earth in such a way that the sun is always in the same position as the satellite takes pictures of the planet below. PRISMA has been constructed by OHB Italia and will be operated by the Italian Space Agency “Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)”.

Notes:
On 25th March, US President Donald Trump has officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. With this, Israel has got an absolute right to self-defence. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, and subsequently annexed it in 1981. But, Israel’s sovereignty over the territory is not recognized by the international community. Mr Trump’s move reversed more than a half-century of the US policy over the issue. Meanwhile, Russia said, it feared a new wave of tensions in the West Asia following the decision by Washington to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, which are claimed by Syria. The Syrian government has criticized the move calling it a blatant attack on its sovereignty. The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau in south-western Syria. It is located about 60km south-west of the Syrian capital ‘Damascus’, and covers about 1,200 sq km. The area is also a key source of water for an arid region. Rainwater from the Golan’s catchment feeds into the Jordan River. The area provides a third of Israel’s water supply. The land is fertile, and the volcanic soil is used to cultivate vineyards and orchards and raise cattle. The Golan is also home to Israel’s only ski resort.

Notes:
The book titled “Every Vote Counts-The Story of India’s Elections” has been authored by former Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla. It was launched by former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari in New Delhi. This book is about how the electoral machinery works in India. It explains about India is on the cusp of change, and with its parliamentary elections coming up.

Notes:
Peter Tabichi, a science teacher from rural Kenya who donates most of his salary to help poorer students, has been crowned the world’s best teacher and awarded a $1m prize in Dubai. He is the maths and physics teacher at Keriko secondary school in Pwani Village, in a remote part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, has won the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2019. Tabichi gives away 80% of his income to help the poorest students who live in poverty and are either orphans or from single-parent families. He changed the lives of his students in many ways, including the introduction of science clubs and the promotion of peace between different ethnic groups and religions. He has also helped to address food insecurity among the wider community in the famine-prone Rift Valley. Drug abuse, teen pregnancies, drop-outs, and suicide are common, and the school has one computer, poor internet access, and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1. In spite of those circumstances, Tabichi’s science students have won various national science competitions, and qualified to participate at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2019 in the US.

Notes:
On 1st of April 2019, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch a 436 kg electronic intelligence satellite Emisat for the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) along with 28 satellites of international customers from the spaceport of Sriharikota. It will also demonstrate its new technologies like three different orbits with a new variant of PSLV rocket ‘PSLV-C45’. Emisat is a satellite based on ISRO’s Indian Mini Satellite -2 (IMS-2) bus platform. It has been developed for monitoring radar network by India and is intended for electromagnetic spectrum measurement. It will be placed in an orbit of about 753 km altitude. The customer payloads are from Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland and the US. They will be hurled into space at an altitude of about 505 km.

Notes:
For the first time in the world, researchers at the GRAPES-3 muon telescope facility in Ooty have measured the electrical potential, size and height of a thundercloud that passed overhead on December 1, 2014. The study of thunderclouds is helpful in navigation of aircraft and preventing short circuits in aeroplanes. At 1.3 gigavolts (GV), this cloud had 10 times higher potential than the previous record in a cloud. This is not because clouds with such high potentials are a rarity, but rather, because the methods of detection have not been successful so far. The structure of Cloud is that clouds have negative charges along their lower side and positive charges on top and can be several kilometres thick. If balloons are used to measure the potential difference between the top and bottom, they will take hours to traverse the distance. Unfortunately, thunderstorms last only for about 15-20 minutes, and this method fails. The GRAPES-3 experiment (or Gamma Ray Astronomy PeV EnergieS phase-3) located at Ooty in Tamil Nadu and is designed to study cosmic rays with an array of air shower detectors and a large area muon detector.

Notes:
The world’s largest e-waste recycling facility has recently opened at the Dubai Industrial Park in United Arab Emirates (UAE) on an area of 280,000 square feet. 120 million dirhams ($5 million) project has been set up by “Enviroserve’ company with support of Swiss Government Export Finance Agency. It will service international e-waste recycling efforts across Africa, Middle East and Caucasus region. The facility will utilise state-of-the-art reclamation technology, which surpasses the European Union’s standards for e-waste. It will process Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), IT Asset Disposition (ITAD), refrigerant gas and specialized waste. It has a processing capacity of 100,000 tonnes of total integrated waste per year, of which 39,000 tonnes is e-waste. The facility can process the entire range of WEEE from consumer and industrial to commercial and military.

Notes:
In the wake of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, Facebook has launched two new India-specific -tools to boost civic engagement on its platform — Candidate Connect and Share You Voted. The first feature ‘Candidate Connect’ allows people to see short 20 second videos uploaded by candidates and cross compare them with what other candidates have to say on the same pre-selected topic in 12 Indian languages. While, the “Share You Voted” will provide people with polling information and enable them to announce and celebrate their vote. Facebook has also set up 24×7 response team for elections for monitoring and tracking of objectionable content in real time round the clock. The election response team will be based in Singapore and will work closely with the Election Commission of India (ECI).