Monthly Current Affairs Quiz - August, 2017

Notes:
Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice President of India, will officially launch the Sports Ministry’s much- awaited National Sports Talent Search Portal at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi on August 28, 2017. The portal will provide a three step simple process for registration, profile creation and upload of achievements. Approx 1000 kids will be selected and they will receive scholarships of Rs 5 lakh per year for eight years. It will be available in English and other regional languages so that it is easier for any boy or girl who is talented in a particular sport to upload his or her achievements from any part of the country. The portal will also be available as App which can be downloaded on smartphones.

Notes:
Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, has constituted a task force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for India’s economic transformation. The 18-member panel, headed by Dr. V. Kamakoti of IIT Madras, will comprise of experts, academics, researchers and industry leaders. It will explore possibilities to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) for development across various fields. In addition to regular members, it will have official participation from NITI Aayog, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Department of Science & Technology, UIDAI and DRDO. The task force will submit concrete and implementable recommendations for government, industry and research institutions.

Notes:
The Chitwan National Park (CNP) is located in the subtropical Inner Terai lowlands of south-central Nepal and covers an area of 932 square kilometres. The park is considered to have the highest population density of sloth bears with an estimated 200 to 250 individuals. It is also home to golden jackals, fishing cats, jungle cats, leopard cats, large and small Indian civets, Asian palm civets, crab-eating mongooses and yellow-throated martens.

Notes:
Indian football team has won the 2017 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) under-15 football Championship by defeating Nepal by 2-1 in the final at Kathmandu in Nepal on August 27. Vikram Pratap Singh was declared best player of the championship. India won all four matches in the championship. In the league matches, India beat Maldives by 9-0 and host Nepal by 2-1. In the semifinal India defeated Bhutan by 3-0. India scored 16 goals and conceded just two.

Notes:
Lewis Hamilton, a British racing driver who races in Formula One for the Mercedes AMG Petronas team, has won the 2017 Belgian Grand Prix at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Stavelot, Belgium on August 27, 2017.

Notes:
Dhruv Garg, an Indian-origin boy from Wokingham in south east England, in the United Kingdom (UK) has got the highest possible score of 162 on a Mensa IQ test that placed him in the top 1% people in the world who achieved this feat. Garg, who goes to Reading School, a grammar in Berkshire, has also been developing an app to combat social isolation by helping lonely people meet up. The app connects people who live in the same area who want to meet new people. Mensa is believed to be the largest and oldest high IQ society in the world. Membership is open to anyone who can demonstrate an IQ in the top two per cent of the population, measured by a recognised or approved IQ testing process.

Notes:
India and Germany has recently signed pact on technical cooperation under the Indo-German Energy Programme – Green Energy Corridors (IGEN-GEC). The main purpose of this programme component is to improve the sector framework and conditions for grid integration of renewable energy. As per the pact, both the countries will work on improving market mechanisms and regulations for integration of renewable energies, advancing technical and institutional conditions in specified target states, regions and on a national level, adding human capacities to handle systemic (strategic, managerial, financial, technical) renewable energies integration in an efficient and effective manner.

Notes:
Lawachara National Park (LNP) is located at Kamalganj Upazila, Maulvi Bazar District of Bangladesh and covers an area of 12.5 km2. It is a major national park and nature reserve in Bangladesh. There are 460 species, of which 167 species are plants, 4 amphibian species, 6 reptile species, 246 bird species, 20 mammal species, and 17 insect species. The park is considered of critical importance because the last viable population of critically endangered Western Hoolock Gibbons survive here.

Notes:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has launched the world’s first IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) bank at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant (UMP) in Oskemen, Kazakhstan. The $150 million facility will help ensure a steady supply of low enriched uranium for countries’ nuclear power programmes. The bank is owned and managed by IAEA. It is the first of its kind LEU bank not to be under control of any individual country. The IAEA LEU Bank will be a physical reserve of up to 90 metric tons of low enriched uranium suitable to make fuel for a typical light water reactor, the most widely used type of nuclear power reactor worldwide. The LEU Bank will serve as a last-resort mechanism to provide confidence to countries that they will be able to obtain LEU for the manufacture of fuel for nuclear power plants in the event of an unforeseen, non-commercial disruption to their supplies. The LEU can be used to make enough nuclear fuel to power a large city for three years.

Notes:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched its navigation satellite IRNSS-1H into the orbit by the rocket PSLV C39 from the Satish Dhavan Space Centre at Sriharikotta, Andhra Pradesh on August 31, 2017. Though, the IRNSS-1H mission was failed as heat shield did not open up for the deployment of the satellite. The IRNSS-1H was a part of the indigenous navigation system called ‘NavIC,’ that was initially planned to have a constellation of seven satellites. NavIC system is equivalent to the GPS service, having footprint over the whole of India and about 1500 kilometers from its borders on all sides. It helps user agencies to plan and monitor their vehicular movement on the road and on the sea. It can alert fishermen while approaching international maritime boundaries and help public to locate precisely the addresses they require.