Current Affairs - 2019-20

Notes:
Ram Shankar Katheria, a BJP MP from Agra, has been appointed as the new chairman of National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) for a period of three years. The post has been lying vacant since the retirement of the previous chairman PL Poonia in 2016. Beside this, L. Murugan has appointed as Vice-Chairman of the NCSC and K. Ramulu, Dr. Yogendra Paswan and Dr. Swaraj Vidwan as its Members. The commission is a constitutional body to safeguard interests of the dalits.

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In a major digital initiative to help plan the traffic flows and optimize freight operations, Ministry of Railways has launched Smart Freight Operation Optimisation and Real Time Information (SFOORTI) App for freight managers. The app provides features for monitoring and managing freight business using Geographic Information System (GIS) Views and Dashboard. With this application both passenger and freight trains can be tracked over Zones, Divisions and Sections in single GIS View. The app provides a bird’s eye view of all freight assets in a single window and end to end rake movement on Geospatial view. Expected traffic at interchange points can be viewed to evaluate daily performance. Position of rakes for specific type of stock can be viewed through this application.

Notes:
In the equilateral triangle centroid, incentre, orthocentre, coincide at the same point.
∴ Height 3 = in radius
∴ Height = Median = 33 = 9 cm
Hence option [B] is the right answer.

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Southern birdwing is the largest butterfly of India, endemic to peninsular India. It was recently in news when the State Forest department of Karnataka sent a proposal to the state government to declare Southern Bird Wing butterfly as the state butterfly. 

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NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter on July 4, 2016, has revealed several secrets of the Planet Jupiter. The Great Red Spot is a giant, spinning and persistent storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere, like a hurricane on Earth, and is almost twice the size of our planet earth. It has been discovered in southern hemisphere of Jupiter and is observed since 400 years. Similarly, String of Pearls are massive counter clockwise rotating storms that appear as white ovals in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere.

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Hyderabad-based ICRISAT, or International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, has recently launched molecular breeding project for pulses.

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The Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has launched of Pradhan Mantri Yuva Yojana (PMYY) to scale up an ecosystem of entrepreneurship for youngsters. PMYY is MSDE’s flagship scheme on entrepreneurship education and training. The scheme spans over five years (2016-17 to 2020-21) with a project cost of 499.94 crore rupees. It will provide entrepreneurship education and training to over 7 lakh students in 5 years through 3,050 institutes. It will provide easy access to information and mentor network, incubator, credit and accelerator and advocacy to create a pathway for the youth. The institutes under the PMYY include 2,200 institutes of higher learning (colleges, universities, and premier institutes), 500 ITIs, 300 schools and 50 entrepreneurship development centres through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

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The GOLF (Global Oscillations at Low Frequencies) experiment on the SOHO mission aims to study the internal structure of the sun by measuring the spectrum of global oscillations in the frequency range 10?7 to 6 10?3 Hz. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO, is the most comprehensive space mission ever devoted to the study of the Sun and its nearby cosmic environment known as the heliosphere. Recently, a team of researchers have discovered solar seismic waves which revealed that Sun’s core is rotating four times faster than its surface. Earlier it w… it was assumed that sun’s core rotate at same speed as the surface. The discovery was made using 16 years of observations from GOLF (Global Oscillations at Low Frequencies) instrument on Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, a joint project of ESA and NASA.

Notes:
Recently, the Ministry of Power has directed NTPC Ltd to source up to 10 per cent of its thermal fuel requirements from straw pellets, especially buying those generated in Punjab and Haryana during the winter season. The move is aimed at luring farmers away from stubble burning. As per recent reports from NASA, crop stubble burning is the major reason behind smog pollution in Delhi.