A News Snippet

News in micro-format…..for you all dear aspirants of MPSC/UPSC exams.

• Update 25 Mar 2014: Towed Pinger Locator: The Pinger Locator is towed behind a vessel at slow speeds, generally 1-5 knots, depending on the depth. The tow array carries a passive listening device for detecting pingers that automatically transmit an acoustic pulse.The TPL-25 Towed Pinger Locator System is able to locate black boxes on downed Navy and commercial aircraft down to a maximum depth of 20,000 feet anywhere in the world. Commercial aircraft pingers are mounted directly on the flight recorder, the recovery of which is critical to an accident investigation.
• 07 Oct 2013 : चंदीपूर(ओडिशा) – अण्वस्त्रवाहू ‘पृथ्वी-2’ क्षेपणास्त्राची चाचणी घेण्यात आली. जमिनीवरून जमिनीवर मारा करण्याची आणि ३५० किलोमीटरवरील लक्ष्य भेदण्याची क्षमता
• Indian Hockey Team won cup: third Sultan of Johor Cup with a thumping 3-0 victory over host Malaysia in the title clash of the under-21 hockey tournament at Taman Daya Hockey stadium in Johor Bahru in Malaysiaon on Sunday, 29th Sep 2013.
• The National Food Security Ordinance, 2013 notified by the Union government entitles 67% of the population to receive subsidised grains from government every month.
• Project Loon – Google is releasing 30 hi-tech balloons in a trial of technology designed to bring the internet to places where people are not yet connected. This was entire Earth will be online. The balloons are being launched from New Zealand’s South Island this month (Jun 2013) in the first trial of the pioneering plan dubbed Project Loon. Mobile phone users could receive signals from balloons floating in the stratosphere if a project launched by Google this week succeeds.
• The Castle Naggar: A hotel in Himachal Pradesh is given Heritage Status in Aug 2012. Naggar was the capital of the erstwhile Kullu state for about 1460 years. The castle was built by Raja Sidhi Singh in the 16th century
• Indian Parliament’s 1st session completed 60 yrs on 13th May 2012- Rajya Sabha was constituted for the first time on 3 April 1952 and had its first Session on 13 May 1952. First Lok Sabha was constituted on 17 April 1952 and met on 13 May 1952.
• Sikkim has been the first Nirmal State (Nirmal Gram Puraskar) in the country having achieved full sanitation coverage. 
• Maharshtra-Bhushan Award: 2011-2012 – Dr. Anil Kakodkar 
• RISAT – I Launched: India’s PSLV C19 launch vehicle injected India’s first microwave radar imaging heaviest (1858 kg) satellite ( RISAT – I) into orbit nearly 18 minutes after blast off from launch pad at Sriharikota on Thursday. It can penetrate clouds and image earth day and night. It will be used for agriculture imaging and to study floods. The satellite can give an estimation of area under cultivation and flood within one hour of the calamitty. Soil moisture, forest biomass, coral reef and geological aspect can be tested. Satellite cost Rs 378 crore while PSLV cost Rs 110 crore. 
• The Indian Navy on 4 April 2012 inducted a Russian-origin nuclear submarine, INS Chakra. This 8000-ton vessel will help India strengthen its position in the Indian Ocean region. Apart from India the other nations which possess the capability to operate nuclear vessel includes US, Russia, France, the UK and China.
• India and UAE signed an agreement on 4 April 2012 to ease the entry of Indian contract workers in the Emirates. The agreement was signed in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It provides for an electronic contract registration and validation system to safeguard and protect the interests of migrant Indian workers. This would ensure a transparent, legal and less cumbersome migration of Indian workers to the Emirates.
• BDNF gene is linked to obesity in humans.
• महाड सत्याग्रह: २० मार्च २०१२ ला “महाड सत्याग्रहाला” ८५ वर्षे पूर्ण झालीत.
• चिमणी दिवस: 20 March 2012 चिमणी दिवस (Sparrow Day)  साजरा करण्यात येत आहे.
• Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) : this nuclear power station is situated at Koodankulam in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu. It is a collboration of India and Russia.
• Sachin Tendulkar’s 1st Century: 9th Sep 1994 at Colombo – 110 runs, 8 fours, 2 sixers v/s Australia. 
• Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th Century: 16th Mar 2012 at Mirpur- 114 runs, 12 fours, 1 sixer v/s Bangladesh (Baller – Shakib Al Hasan). Sachin took 138 balls to get the 100th Century.
• Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram: was launched in June 2011 to provide free entitlements to pregnant women and sick newborns for cashless delivery, C-section, drugs and consumables and diagnostics.
• National Rural Health Mission- was launched in 2005.
• H1N1: Between April 2011 and March 2012, total 58 positive H1N1 cases were reported, of which 50 were from Pune and 4 from Nashik and 4 from Aurangabad.
• Polio : There has been no new case of Polio during last 1 year (Apr 2011 to March 2012).
• 1st Budget of Free India- 26 Nov 1947
• Kakodkar Committee – on railway safety. Sam Pitroda Committee – on the modernisation of Indian Railways.
• Japan Earthquake & Tsunami of 2011 completed 1 year on 11 Mar 2012.  Earthquake had occurred at 14:46 hrs JST. Duration : 6 minutes. Magnitude: 9.0. Depth: 32 Kms. Tsunami: upto 133 ft (40.5m). It wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant,where meltdowns triggered the worlds worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
• Cloud Computing: providing software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from remote data centers over the Internet.
• India has no Extradition Treaty with Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Maldives, Myanmar and Pakistan. India has Extradition Treaties with the USA (1999), Canada (1987), Britain (1993) and has Extradition Arrangements with Italy (2003) and Australia (1971).  India and Bangladesh may sign an extradition treaty soon.
• Telomere Test: A new blood test that will tell you how long you will live. A simple blood test like the one that estimates cholesterol, Telomere Test will tell patients the rate at which they are ageing.
• Wheeler Island (a missile testing facility): an island off the coast of Orissa, India. 150 km from the state capital Bhubaneshwar. Located approximately 10 kilometers off the East coast of India on the Bay of Bengal and about 70 kilometers south of Chandipur in Orissa. The island is approximately 2 kilometers long and occupies about 390 acres (1.6 km2). Access to the test facility is by ship as there is no bridge or airport connecting the island to the mainland. 
• Prithvi: A missile (with different variants) that can be used as “surface-to-surface”, “ship-to-surface”, “surface-to-air”, and “Air-to-surface” missile.
• Endo-Atmosphere & Exo-atmosphere: missile defense battle space is divided between intercepts in the atmosphere at an altitude below 100 kilometers (Endo-Atmosphere) and out of the atmosphere (Exo-atmosphere).
• Supercontinent Amasia to form in 50 million yrs: Plates of the Earths crust are always moving. The last supercontinent Pangea formed 300 million years ago was preceded by three others. Pangaea,where giant reptiles and dinosaurs arose,formed at 90 degrees to the Rodinia,the supercontinent before it,which in turn formed at 90 degrees to the supercontinent before it,Nuna.
• Why plants NEVER get sunburnt : Plants make their own chemical sunscreen within their leaves. UVR8 – A protein in their leaves actually detects the presence of UV-B rays and starts off a chemical reaction that protects the leaves.
• Heavy smoking by parents around the time of conception increases the risk of the child developing Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL),the common form of childhood cancer.
• The National Family and Health Survey (NFHS), last carried out in 2004-05:   In India –Malnourished Population: 213-230 million; Under-weight Kids (age under 5yrs): 44%; Under 5 Mortality (Death): 6.6%; Anaemic Infants : 72%; Anaemic Married Women: 52%.
• SIV – Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a virus which is closely related to HIV: rhesus monkeys get infected with it.
• India’s first woman photo-journalist Padma Vibhushan Homai Vyarawalla (98) died on 15th Jan 2012.  As an employee of the British Information Services, she photographed events leading to Independence; including a meeting where leaders voted for the June 3 plan for India’s partition. She also photographed the first flag hoisting ceremony at Red Fort on August 15, 1947, the departure of Lord Mountbatten from India and the funerals of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
• A new molecule Criegee biradicals can convert pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, into compounds which can lead to cloud formation, helping to shield the Earth from the Sun.
• NMSI – Nuclear Materials Security Index,a rating and ranking of the security framework in 32 nations that possess one kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear materials.
• TDR-TB – Totally Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis.  Iran first reported TDR-TB, India is 2nd to report this deadly form of the disease. Earlier forms of TB : Multi-Drug-Resistant TB (MDR-TB ) and Extremely Drug-Resistant TB (XDR-TB).
• Tuberculosis – kills 1000 patients EVERYDAY in India. Among tuberculosis patients, drug resistance develops mainly because patients fail to complete the 6- to 9-month first treatment phase. “They feel better within a couple of months of taking the drugs and so they stop taking them. However, the TB germs in the body are not completely vanquished and they again multiply,
• PISA – The Programme for International Student Assessment evaluates education systems around the world by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students.Over 70 countries participate in PISA,which assesses the skills and knowledge (reading,mathematical,problem solving and scientific literacy) students have acquired at the end of their compulsory education.
• Scientific Research spending: India 0.9% of GDP, China 1.42% of GDP,  US (largest economy in the world) – 2.6% of GDP. India plans  to double the percentage of R&D spending by the end of the 12th Plan period.
• Clade C has caused the greatest number of HIV infections around the globe, infecting half of the 34 million people with HIV.
• India and Japan signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in February 2011.
• One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of adequate nutrition are in India.
• mortality rate of children less than five years of age is 66 per cent.
• Blue Brain Project: uses the information available from the hundreds of thousands of publications of neuroscientists on one hand, and ability of computer programmers to create connectivities between the millions of “neurons” in silico on the other. Combining the two to build a facility that would aim at data integration and help build brain models. (a brainchild of Dr. Henry Markram of Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Meridian : newly-launched Russian communications satellite failed to reach its planned orbit and crashed in the Siberia region on Friday, 23rd Dec 2011. Was launched from Plesetsk Space Center, Russia.
• Npas4 : a gene that turns on when memories are stored in the brain. It could help pinpoint the exact locations of memories in the brain and might open up new avenues for altering or even creating memory.
• Hippocampus: a brain structure known to be critical in forming long-term memories.
• Autologous Blood Transfusion: a process in which a patient donates his/her blood or blood components,which is then re-infused into him/her during or after a surgery. It is the opposite of widely practised Allogeneic Blood Transfusion in which, the patient is given someone else’s blood.
• Planetary scientists claim that the Hubble telescope has found hints of building blocks of life on Pluto.
• CoreScan – a technology that quickly and accurately quantifies visceral adipose tissue (VAT) or belly fat,during a whole body composition analysis. It helps healthcare professionals manage VAT and obesity-related disease including hypertension,diabetes, dyslipidemia and metabolic syndrome.
• LHC – the worlds largest machine,the LHC is located in a 27-kilometre ring-shaped tunnel near Geneva that straddles the Franco-Swiss border up to 175metres below ground.
• Chi-b (3P) – a God like particle which was uncovered in the debris from colliding protons during Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Chi-b (3) comprises two relatively heavy particles,the beauty quark and its antiquark. They are bonded by the socalled strong force which also causes the atomic nucleus to stick together.
• Kepler-20: This star is 950 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.  This star is outside of our solar system. 2 planets (similar to Earth) Kepler-20E and Kepler-20F are orbiting this star.
• Harshini Kanhekar :India’s  first woman firefighter
• Bayer Young Environmental Envoy 2011, an environment summit in Germany – 2 winners (BYEE 2011 Award) from India – Mayur Rastogi (innovated “smokeless gas stove” that reduces deforestation and exposure to indoor air pollution. Has the potential to run equally well on agricultural residues like rice husk) and Tanvi Gadgil (use of wheat straw as an abundant, low-cost, non-food feedstock for anaerobic digestion to produce energy and a useful bio-fertilizer as the by-product).
• Vitamin B can help beat memory loss – found naturally in food such as beans,meat,whole-grains and bananas.  Helps maintain mental processes,such as planning,organising and recalling information.
• Felicity Aston– a British woman -skiing toward the South Pole – is attempting to become the first woman to cross Antarctica alone.
• There has been 45% reduction in child labour between 2004-05 and 2009-10
• Maharashtra Assembly approved a new law Maharashtra Essential Services Maintenance Act, 2011 (MESMA) to penalize employees striking work in any service, type of employment or class, which adversely impacts public life or maintenance of services essential to the community. (Courtesy – TOI, Dec 18th, 2011)

(Sources – The above information has been compiled from The Hindu, The Times of India, Mainstream, Wikipedia, Science Reporter)