International Organizations, Defence, Books & Authors, World History

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The General Assembly is a deliberative body of the United Nations Organization. This body consistis of five representatives of each member state. But each member state has only one vote. The main function of this organ is to consider issues relating to international peace and security and to discuss important international problems. UNO has a Secretary General. The official languages of UNO are English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. Now [2006] UN has 192 member countries.

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The International Court of Justice is the judicial organ of the U.N.O. It has its headquarters at The Hague (Netherlands). It is composed of fifteen judges elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council for nine years. Its main function is to solve the legal disputes of the member states of UNO.

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After the Second World War, Germany was divided into two separate nations. East Germany was fully under the control of the U.S.S.R. West Germany was supported by the U.S.A. and her allies. A wall was erected across Berlin to separate these two German territories. It was the famous Berlin Wall. But with the collapse of U.SS.R, the German reunification took place on October 3, 1990.

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The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928. Penicillin is a secondary metabolite of certain species of Penicillium and is produced when growth of the fungus is inhibited by stress. It is not produced during active growth.

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Ethology is the scientific and objective study of animal behavior, usually with a focus on behavior under natural conditions. The term was first popularized by American myrmecologist (the study of ants) William Morton Wheeler in 1902.

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In 1970, American virologists Howard Martin Temin and David Baltimore along with Japanese virologist Satoshi Mizutani, working independently, reported the discovery of an enzyme that could synthesize proviral DNA from the RNA genome of RSV. This enzyme was named RNA-directed DNA polymerase, commonly referred to as reverse transcriptase.

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The steam engine was developed over a period of about a hundred years by three British inventors. The first crude steam powered machine was built by Thomas Savory, of England, in 1698; Thomas Newcomen, also of England, in 1711; and James Watt in 1765. Watt set out to improve upon Newcomen’s design in 1763. He figured out a way to push a piston back and forth in its cylinder and more importantly, he found out a way to make this back-and-forth motion turn a wheel. So, he is considered as the real inventor of steam engine.

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Bryology is the study of ancient plants, like mosses, that grow in moist, humid environments. These plants are some of the oldest species on Earth. Bryophytes are small plants that grow close together and do not have a vascular system, which makes them very similar to those first plants that grew on Earth millions of years ago.

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The Ashoka Chakra is India’s highest peacetime military decoration awarded for valor, courageous action or self-sacrifice away from the battlefield. It is the peace time equivalent of the Param Vir Chakra, and is awarded for the “most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent valour or self-sacrifice” other than in the face of the enemy.

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‘The Argumentative Indian’ is a 2005 non-fiction book by scholar and historian Ramachandra Guha containing a collection of essays exploring aspects of history and modern Indian society.