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(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | January: 2016
Science & Technology, Defense, Environment
- For saving Asian vulture from fatal drugs (Free Available)
- GSA T -15 set to replace INSA T -3A, 4B (Free Available)
- Scientists developing battery-free pacemakers (Only for Online Coaching Members)
- IISc: cleaning rivers using a nano-composite (Only for Online Coaching Members)
- Ozone Depletion by Refrigerators, Automobile ACs Small but Measurable (Only for Online Coaching Members)
For saving Asian vulture from fatal drugs
- After successfully campaigning for the ban on multi-dose vials of painkiller drug diclofenac in veterinary use, conservationists have stepped up pressure for withdrawing two more drugs, which they say, are fatal for Asian vultures.
- It was recently that the authorities slapped a ban on the 30 ml multi-dose vials of the drug, which was largely responsible for the decline of the vultures, which used to feed on bovine carcasses.
- The bird conservationists pointed out that “twenty years ago there were tens of millions of vultures in the Indian sub-continent. They provided a valuable ecosystem service by disposing of millions of tonnes of waste carrion from dead cattle each year.
- Nowthey, and the services they provided, are nearly all gone,” according a publication of Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE), a consortium of eleven organisations.
- The “three species of Gyps vultures endemic to South and Southeast Asia, oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis), long-billed vulture (G. indicus) and slender-billed vulture (G. tenuirostris), are the worst affected and are threatened with glob-al extinction after rapid population declines, which began in the mid-1990s.
GSA T -15 set to replace INSA T -3A, 4B
- GSAT -15, the mainly communications satellite being put in space next week, will replace two older space-craft that will likely expire in the coming months.
- Its 24 transponders are solely in the Ku band and will cater to DTH (direct-to-home) television first, besides supporting the thousands of VSAT operators who provide broadband services; and DSNG (digital satellite news gathering) for TV news channels.
- GSAT -15 will not add new transponder capacity to thecountry; it will ‘ensure sustainability of service ‘for the capacity-hungry DTH sector’.
- It will also carry the third GAGAN satellite navigation transponder as a back-up for airlines and other users of augmented GPS-based systems.
- GSAT -15, weighing 3,164 kg, will be launched in the wee hours of November 11 (IST) from Kourou in French Guiana (in South America) on the European Arianespace’s Ar-iane-5 launcher.
- GSAT -15 will be flown along with Saudi Arabia’s Arabsat-6B/Badr-7.