Important Current Affairs 16/8/2018

Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman Award:

The Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman  is conferred to persons once a year on the Independence Day in recognition of their substantial contribution in the field of –

Sanskrit

Persian

Arabic

Pali

Prakrit

Classical Oriya

Classical Kannada

Classical Telugu

Classical Malayalam

The award introduced in the year 2002, is given to selected young scholars in the age group of 30 to 45 years. It carries a certificate of honour and a onetime cash prize of Rs.1 lakh.

RUCO (Repurpose Used Cooking Oil) initiative

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) launched RUCO – Repurpose Used Cooking Oil. RUCO is an ecosystem that will enable the collection and conversion of used cooking oil to biodiesel. India is one of the largest consumers of vegetable oil and so has the potential to recover almost 220 crore litre of Used Cooking Oil (UCO) for the production of biodiesel by the year 2022.  Coincidently RUCO in Hindi means stop, and so RUCO will serve as a word of caution to businesses and consumers to step back and stop usage of the cooking oil that has been repeated heated for frying foods.

According to FSSAI regulations, the maximum permissible limits for Total Polar Compounds (TPC) have been set at 25%, beyond which the cooking oil is unsafe for consumption.

TPC is used to measure the quality of oil. The level of TPC increases every time oil is re-heated.

Higher level of TPC in cooking oil leads to health issues like-

Hypertension

Atherosclerosis

Alzheimer’s disease

Liver disease.

FSSAI-

(FSSAI) has been established under Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 which consolidates various acts & orders that have hitherto handled food related issues in various Ministries and Departments.

Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India is the Administrative Ministry for the implementation of FSSAI.

Purpose of Creation –

It was created for laying down science based standards for articles of food and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption.

The Chairperson is in the rank of Secretary to Government of India.

Indian human spaceflight programme

India to launch first manned space mission by 2022: PM Modi

This Mission is called Gaganyaan mission.

After Successful launch of the Gaganyaan mission, India will be the the fourth nation to do so after the United States, Russia and China.

Postal Highway

Postal Highway also called Hulaki Rajmarg runs across the Terai region of Nepal, from Bhadrapur in the east to Dodhara in the west, cutting across the entire width of the country.

It is the Oldest highway in Nepal constructed by Juddha Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana & Padma Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana to aid transportation and facilitate postal services throughout the nation

Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana

Odisha government has launched Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana, a health for all scheme, on the occasion of the 72nd Independence Day.

The Scheme will provide Rs. 5 lakh per family per annum for all Secondary and Tertiary Cashless Health Care Assistance. Women beneficiaries can get health cover upto Rs. 7 lakh.

This scheme will benefit 3.5 crore people (70 lakh families) at any govt. and private empanelled hospitals.

All beneficiaries currently enrolled under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), as well as other low-income families, are covered under the BSKY.

Kanyashree scheme

Scheme by – West Bengal

Scheme received the United Nations Public Service Award last year.

By this initiative the girls are being motivated in various ways –

1.Increase in female education and female empowerment.

2.Delaying their marriages until the age of 18.

Parker Solar Probe

Launched by - NASA

This is first time that any mission will reach as close as it seems impossible. The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 43 million km.

This was the first time a NASA spacecraft was named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

The goals of the mission are-  

·         Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.

·         Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind.

·         Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles

Corona

The corona is hotter than the surface of the sun. The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth. Nasa hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment.

Visit for More Info - https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

India’s first genetic bank for wildlife conservation

India has got its first scientific and most modern national wildlife genetic resource bank, located in Hyderabad at the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES), a research wing of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB).

Key Notes-

The state-of-the-art bank is equipped with sophisticated equipment to preserve the genetic resources that could be utilised to virtually resurrect an animal species in case it goes extinct.

The bank that contains genetic resources of about 250 wildlife species.

The Genetic Resource Bank will store genetic material of Indian species. It will also help in protecting India’s biodiversity and environment.

It is India’s only research facility engaged in conservation and preservation of wildlife and its resources. It was established in 1998 with the help of Central Zoo Authority of India, CSIR and the government of Andhra Pradesh.

The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT)

Astronomers have used an Indian telescope to discover the most distant radio galaxy ever known, located at a distance of 12 billion light-years. The galaxy, from a time when the universe was only 7% of its current age was found using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune.

Radio galaxies are very rare objects in the universe. They are colossal galaxies with a supermassive black hole in their centre that actively accretes gas and dust from its surroundings.

GMRT  is Located near Pune (narayangaon) in India.

It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

 At the time it was built, it was the world's largest interferometric array offering a baseline of up to 25 kilometres 

Delhi Police gets India’s first all-women SWAT team

Delhi will be the first police force in the country to have an all-women SWAT team.

SWAT - Special Weapons And Tactics

The maximum numbers of members (13) are from Assam and five each from Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Manipur.

Uighurs

They are a Muslim ethnic minority mostly based in China’s Xinjiang province. 

Xinjiang shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

World Congress of Philosophy:

Held - Beijing, China.