Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 23 February 2015

:: National ::

An online legal research initiative started by an Indian student research fellow with the Harvard Law School Centre offers a level playing field for his counterparts spread across 140 law schools and colleges in the country.
The Standard India Legal Citation (SILC), an online India-centric legal citation manual which can be accessed free of cost, provides legal research material ranging from parliamentary debates, circulars of government bodies like RBI and SEBI to academic papers on Indian family laws to help law students with their academic work.
Citations help readers easily find reference to cases and facts.

An Israeli company has come up with a hands-free smartphone which functions by tracking the head movements of users, thus coming in handy for people with disabilities.
Sesame Enable has designed the phone for people with spinal cord injuries, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebral palsy and other conditions that hamper the use of hands.
The Android smartphone is equipped with a proprietary head-tracking technology, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
The phone comes with an advanced computer vision algorithm and a front-facing camera that tracks user’s head movements and allows them to control a cursor on screen. The cursor is essentially a virtual finger, letting users do what others can with a regular smartphone.
The $1,000 phone recently won the Verizon Powerful Answers’ Award with $1 million in prize money.
Its developer, Giora Livne, who is physically challenged, now plans to give away 30 phones to people with disabilities nominated by their peers.
Mr. Livne came up with the idea after seeing a TV demonstration for a game controlled with head movements. With a background in electrical engineering, he recognised the technology’s potential to help him and others.

NASA astronauts at International Space Station (ISS) have successfully completed the first of three spacewalks to create parking spots for Boeing and SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the orbital laboratory.
The 6-hour, 41-minute-spacewalk by Expedition 42 astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts was meant to prepare the ISS for a pair of international docking adapters that will allow future commercial crew vehicles to dock.
The cable routing work is part of a reconfiguration of station systems and modules to accommodate the delivery of new docking adapters that commercial crew vehicles will use later this decade to deliver astronauts to the orbital laboratory.
The spacewalk was the first for Mr. Virts. Mr. Wilmore now has spent 13 hours and 15 minutes in the void of space during two spacewalks.
Astronauts have now spent a total of 1,159 hours and 8 minutes conducting space station assembly and maintenance during 185 spacewalks, NASA said.