Current Affairs Quiz - March, 2019

Notes:
Delhi-based Journalist and author, Raghu Karnad has won the 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize under non-fiction category for his debut book ‘The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War’ in London. Hence, Karnad has become the 2nd Indian to receive the prestigious prize, since Jerry Pinto won it for his novel ‘Em And The Big Hoom’ in 2016. Karnad is one of the 8 winners chosen across four categories—fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry— this year. Each of the eight winners won $165,000 as prize money to support their writing. In terms of the award money, Windham-Campbell Prize is one of the richest literary awards worldwide. The Windham-Campbell Prize was established in 2013 by writer Donald Windham to honour his late partner Sandy Campbell. It is now co-presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Notes:
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has recently released the 2018 report on patents filed by members of its Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The United Nations (UN) data shows the United States remained the leading individual country for patent applications in 2018. But on a regional basis, Asia’s surge continued. It’s a sign of innovation shifting from west to east because more than half of all international patent applications filed last year came from Asia. In the main category-the PCT, the US led the way with 56,142 applications, followed by China (53,345) and Japan (49,702). Germany and South Korea came in a distant fourth and fifth, with fewer than 20,000 applications each. India registered the largest innovation jump of any country last year. Patent applications jumped more than 27% – from 1,583 in 2017 up to 2,013. Chinese telecommunications behemoth Huawei also set new record for the number of patent applications filed a single corporation in one year with 5,405. Patent filings are seen as a measure of the spread of science and technology in a country. Patent protection also provides monopoly rights to the inventor.

Notes:
Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has recently released the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC). These guidelines urge businesses to actualize the principles in letter and spirit. For this purpose, the National Voluntary Guidelines on Social, Environmental and Economic Responsibilities of Business, 2011 (NVGS) have also been revised. According to the guidelines, businesses should conduct and govern themselves with integrity in a manner that is ethical, transparent and accountable. Businesses should provide goods and services in a manner that is sustainable and safe. It should also respect and promote the well-being of all employees, including those in their value chains.

Notes:
Indian paddler Archana Kamath clinched a silver in the under-21 women’s singles section of the Seamaster ITTF Challenge Plus 2019 Oman Open table tennis tournament at Muscat. Archana started playing table tennis at the age of 9 years. She won her first U-12 and also a U -18 State title in 2011, and retained her Karnataka State No 1 Sub-Junior ranking throughout 2012 with some consistent performances. Since 2013 her career graph has seen a very steep rise. As a player, she describes herself as a fierce attacker.

Notes:
The World Tuberculosis Day (WTD) is observed every year on 24th March to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease. The 2019 theme “It’s time” pressurizes world leaders to act on their commitments.

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:
K Govindaraj has been re-elected as president of the Basketball Federation of India (BFI). The BFI is the governing and controlling body of Basketball in India. It is responsible for the development and promotion of the sport at all levels. BFI manages all the national level basketball operations in India. It is involved in organizing training camps and national tournaments, and in preparing Indian teams for both men and women international competitions in various age categories. The national team of India is also called as Young Cagers

Notes:
The researchers at IIT-Delhi have designed an “Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based low-power electronic hardware system” to easily detect Malaria, Tuberculosis (TB), Intestinal parasite, and Cervical cancer in a few milliseconds. The research is focused on building an intelligent Neuromorphic system which can be used for healthcare access in resource-constrained areas with limited access to human specialists. The approach demonstrated by the researchers is portable, low-power and can classify with high accuracy in detection of the diseases.The long-term impact and goal of this work will be to enable potential future deployment of the platform in rural and resource-constrained areas and improve the access to diagnostic health-care. According to World Health Organisation (WHO), cervical cancer is the 4th most frequent cancer in women with an estimated 570,000 new cases in 2018 representing 6.6% of all female cancers.

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:
Prafulla Rajguru (82), the veteran journalist and academician, has passed away in Jorhat, Assam on March 28, 2019. Rajguru had retired as the head of the department of English from DCB Girls College in Jorhat in 1997 and after his retirement he joined leading Assamese daily ‘Amar Asom’ as executive editor of the Jorhat edition where he served till 2000.Rajguru authored four books and was a member of several social organisations like the Asom Sahitya Sabha. He was also the founder president of Jorhat Press Club and was its adviser till his death.