(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | April: 2017

Science & Technology, Defense, Environment

NASA’s ‘Europa Clipper’ set to launch in the 2020s (Free Available)
Great Barrier Reef is experiencing second straight year of mass coral bleaching (Free Available)
Indian researcher has been able to increase wheat grain yield by 20% (Free Available)
Despite high institutional delivery, breastfed children are still low (Free Available)
Using biofuels to help power jet engines can reduce particle emissions (Free Available)
GRAPES-3 experiment at TIFR’s Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ootacamund is getting upgraded (Free Available)
A group of marine researchers from Kerala is attempting to combat corrosion of steel (Free Available)
Air Force will have 123 Tejas jets by 2024-25 (Free Available)
Scientists have developed a new wireless Internet based on infrared rays (Free Available)
Large Hadron Collider accelerator helps in finding 5 new sub-atomic particles (Free Available)
Govt proposed a law to provide social security net to the 47.41 crore workforce (Only for Online Coaching Members)
Rapid pace of melting of earth’s polar ice (Only for Online Coaching Members)
Hubble space telescope has detected a supermassive black hole (Only for Online Coaching Members)
Indian researchers found a new target that can be used for new antibiotics (Only for Online Coaching Members)
A protein “switch” within the tiny capillaries of the brain controls the blood flow (Only for Online Coaching Members)
Tupolev-142M anti-submarine warfare aircraft to be decommissioned (Only for Online Coaching Members)
India in discussions with Sri Lanka and several Southeast Asian nations for Dhruv (Only for Online Coaching Members)

NASA’s ‘Europa Clipper’ set to launch in the 2020s

NASA’s ‘Europa Clipper’ set to launch in the 2020s will probe the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
When the mission was still in the conceptual phase, it was informally called Europa Clipper, but NASA has now adopted that name as the formal title for the mission.
The moniker harkens back to the clipper ships that sailed across the oceans of Earth in the 19th century.
The mission plan includes 40 to 45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon’s icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.
Europa has long been a high priority for exploration because it holds a salty liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust.
The ultimate aim of Europa Clipper is to determine if Europa is habitable, possessing all three of the ingredients necessary for life: liquid water, chemical ingredients, and energy sources sufficient to enable biology.

Indian researcher has been able to increase wheat grain yield by 20%

Indian researcher has been able to increase wheat grain yield by 20% and also improve the resilience of wheat to environmental stress such as drought.
By using a precursor that enhances the amount of a key sugarsignalling molecule (trehalose-6- phosphate (T6P)) produced in wheat plant, Dr. Ram Sagar Misra, has been able to increase the amount of starch produced and the yield.
The technique The T6P molecule stimulates starch synthesis, which in turn, increases the yield. Since the pathway of T6P molecule is the same in other plants, the yield can potentially be increased by using suitable precursors.
While genetic methods can increase the T6P level two-three fold, the four precursor compounds were able to achieve 100-fold increase in the sugar-signalling molecule level compared with plants that did not receive the molecule.
In field trials using wheat, a tiny amount of precursor given to the plant increased the yield significantly — the grains produced were bigger as the amount of starch content in the grains increased by 13-20% compared to controls that got only water.
To study the resilience of wheat to drought-like conditions when treated with the precursor molecules, the researchers carried out two different studies.
Resilence to drought In the first case, four-week-old wheat plants already treated with the precursor molecules were not watered for nine days to simulate a droughtlike condition.
More trials on a larger scale are needed to confirm the role of the precursor molecules in increasing yield and withstanding drought-like conditions.

Using biofuels to help power jet engines can reduce particle emissions

Using biofuels to help power jet engines can reduce particle emissions in their exhaust by as much as 50 to 70%, according to a new NASA study that bodes well for airline economics and Earth’s environment.
The observations quantify the impact of biofuel blending on aerosol emissions at cruise conditions and provide key microphysical parameters, which will be useful to assess the potential of biofuel use in aviation.
Contrails are produced by hot aircraft engine exhaust mixing with the cold air that is typical at cruise altitudes several miles above Earth’s surface, and are composed primarily of water in the form of ice crystals.
Researchers are most interested in persistent contrails because they create long-lasting, and sometimes extensive, clouds that would not normally form in the atmosphere, and are believed to be a factor in influencing Earth’s environment.
Soot emissions also are a major driver of contrail properties and their formation.
The tests involved flying NASA’s workhorse DC-8 as high as 40,000 feet while its four engines burned a 50-50 blend of aviation fuel and a renewable alternative fuel of hydro processed esters and fatty acids produced from camelina plant oil.

A group of marine researchers from Kerala is attempting to combat corrosion of steel

Turning to nanotechnology, a group of marine researchers from Kerala is attempting to combat corrosion of steel used for making fishing boats.
Corrosion of steel has been a major cause of concern for the fishing sector of Kerala where steel vessels have almost replaced wooden ones.
There is enhanced threat of corrosion in the case of welding joints and the hull of a vessel. The non-availability of good quality steel (BIS 2062 Grade B steel) as specified for boat-building has compounded the problem.
Conventional methods of coating of steel materials with ceramic, polymeric and electro-deposition are effective only to a limited extent. Corrosion-protection methodologies usually employ organic or inorganic-based coatings on steel.
The researchers pointed out that the major disadvantages shown by these coatings are poor adhesion, coating defects, poor scratch resistance, optical transparency, low coating flexibility and vulnerability to abrasion.
Even the recently introduced nanomaterial-incorporated polymer coatings have their own set of challenges — they tend to develop pinholes and pores, which could lead to the penetration of corrosive agents into the matrix followed by corrosion.

Air Force will have 123 Tejas jets by 2024-25

If the present development and capacity enhancement plans go as scheduled, the Indian Air Force will have 123 Tejas jets, indigenously made light combat aircraft, on its fleet by 2024-25.
To enable this, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) is in the process of setting up a new assembly line for the jets and is involving the private sector in a big way.
The IAF has placed orders for 40 jets in two batches of which the first 20 are in the initial operational configuration (IOC) and the remaining 20 in the final operational configuration (FOC).
Last July, the IAF operationalised the first Tejas squadron, 45 Flying Daggers, with three aircraft. Two more aircraft will join the squadron shortly.
Last November, the Defence Acquisition Council gave initial clearance for 83 aircraft in the Mk-1A configuration with specific improvements sought by the IAF.
Apart from the development, the low production rate of eight aircraft a year is delaying the induction of Tejas into the IAF.
The government recently gave sanction for setting up another assembly line to increase the production rate to 16 a year.
The IAF is in urgent need of new fighters and the LCAs will replace the MiG fighters which are being phased out. The IAF is scheduled to phase out all 11 squadrons of MiG-21 and MiG-27 fighters by 2024 on completion of their technical life.

Scientists have developed a new wireless Internet based on infrared rays

Scientists have developed a new wireless Internet based on infrared rays that is reportedly 100 times faster than existing Wi-Fi networks.
The wireless network developed by researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands not only has a huge capacity — more than 40 Gbit/s but does away with the need to share Wi-Fi as every device gets its own ray of light.
The wireless data comes from a few central ‘light antennas’, which can be mounted on the ceiling, that are able to precisely direct the rays of light supplied by an optical fibre.
The antennas contain a pair of gratings that radiate light rays of different wavelengths at different angles (‘passive diffraction gratings’).
Changing the light wavelengths also changes the direction of the ray of light. A safe infrared wavelength is used that does not reach the retina in the eye.
If a user is walking about and a smartphone or tablet moves out of the light antenna’s direction, then another light antenna takes over, researchers said.
The network tracks the precise location of every wireless device using its radio signal transmitted in the return direction, they said.
Current Wi-Fi uses radio signals with a frequency of 2.5 or five gigahertz. The new system uses infrared light with wavelengths of 1,500 nanometres and higher.
Researchers managed to achieve a speed of 42.8 Gbit/s over a distance of 2.5 metres.
The system has so far used the light rays only to download; uploads are still done using radio signals since in most applications much less capacity is needed for uploading.

Large Hadron Collider accelerator helps in finding 5 new sub-atomic particles

Scientists using the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator have discovered a new system of five particles all in a single analysis.
The uniqueness of this discovery is that observing five new states all at once is very rare, researchers said.
The LHCb experiment is one of seven particle physics detector experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider accelerator at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research).
The collaboration has announced the measurement of a very rare particle decay and evidence of a new manifestation of matter —antimatter asymmetry, to name just two examples.
The new particles were found to be in excited states — a particle state that has a higher energy than the absolute minimum configuration (or ground state) — of a particle called Omega-c-zero.
Omega-c-zero decays via the strong force into another baryon, called Xi-c-plus, (containing a “charm”, a “strange” and an “up” quark) and a kaon K-.
Then the Xi-c-plusparticle decays in turn into a proton p, a kaon K- and a pion p+.
The next step will be the determination of the quantum numbers of these new particles — characteristic numbers used to identify the properties of a specific particle — and the determination of their theoretical significance.
This discovery will contribute to understanding how the three constituent quarks are bound inside a baryon and also to probing the correlation between quarks, which plays a key role in describing multi-quark states, such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks.

Tupolev-142M anti-submarine warfare aircraft to be decommissioned

The Navy’s iconic Tupolev-142M anti-submarine warfare aircraft will be decommissioned.
The planes have been the mainstay in guarding the Indian Ocean region for almost three decades.
The Soviet-era aircraft, one of the most formidable airborne reconnaissance platforms around the world, has been part of major operations since its induction in 1988.

India in discussions with Sri Lanka and several Southeast Asian nations for Dhruv

As part of efforts to enhance defence cooperation and boost exports with friendly countries, India is in discussions with Sri Lanka and several Southeast Asian nations for the supply of Dhruv.
Supplying defence equipment and providing assistance in setting up domestic manufacturing capability have become the new normal in India’s defence cooperation with regional countries.
This time, India is putting specific emphasis on maintenance and training in view of its experience of Dhruv sales to Ecuador, which got embroiled in legal issues.
Amid much fanfare in 2009, India bagged a deal to supply seven of these helicopters to Ecuador worth $45.2 million after defeating several global platforms.
However, the euphoria was short-lived as four of them crashed. In October 2015, Ecuador unilaterally terminated the contract and in 2016, put the three helicopters on sale.
Following this, HAL had moved a local court there. Of the four crashes, two had been attributed to pilot error and one to mechanical failure.
Dhruv, designed and developed by the HAL, is powered by the Shakti engine jointly developed by it and Turbomeca of France. Over 200 helicopters are in service with the Indian military.
The three Services have constantly complained about lack of spares and support for the fleet. The situation has slightly improved in recent times.
To increase the delivery rate, the HAL recently set up a second assembly line in Kanpur, which is expected to produce 12 helicopters a year.