(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | December: 2014

Science & Technology, Defense, Environment

Students developed low-cost, portable Braille printer

  • In a bid to make technology affordable and accessible to visually-impaired persons, Sandeep Konam, a B. Tech. final-year ECE student at IIIT, Idupulapaya, and a group of IITians are engaged in not only developing a low-cost portable Braille printer that could cost as much as an average Android mobile but also in integrating graphics, tables and images in Indian language

  • Mentored by Elliott J. Rouse, Post-Doctoral Associate of Biomechatronics Group, MIT Media Lab, and assisted by premier institutions such as L.V. Prasad Eye Institute Innovation Centre, Cyient (formerly Infosys) and the Tata Centre for Technology and Design, the low-cost Braille printer, a counterpart to ink printers, using solenoids to control the embossing pins, could revolutionize the facility for the visually impaired and persons with a low vision.

Orbiter sent picture of dust storm activities on Mars

  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) sent a picture of regional dust storm activities over the northern hemisphere of the Red Planet, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

  • “Regional dust storm activities over northern hemisphere of Mars - captured by Mars Colour Camera on-board Mars Orbiter Mission”, ISRO said.

  • It said the image was taken at an altitude of 74,500 kms from the surface of Mars. MOM spacecraft had sent its first images of the planet on Thursday, a day after creating history by becoming the only such Endeavour so far to have met with success on the maiden attempt.

  • MOM aims to study the Martian surface and mineral composition and scan its atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life.

  • The spacecraft is equipped with five instruments, including a sensor to track methane or marsh gas, a colour camera and a thermal-imaging spectrometer to map the surface and mineral wealth of the planet.

  • The spacecraft was launched on its nine-month-long odyssey on a PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, 2013. It had escaped the Earth’s gravitational field on December 1 and was placed in the Martian orbit on September 24.

Pesticides in tea ‘Trouble Brewing’

  • The Centre’s anti-NGO tirade got a boost with the Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) backed by former Greenpeace member Dr. Patrick Moore taking on foreign funded groups for “derailing the progress of the Indian agricultural sector.”

  • Rajju Shroff, chairperson, CCFI, told the media that the Federation plans to file a case in the Bombay High Court against Greenpeace for its report on pesticides in tea titled ‘Trouble Brewing’. The report released in August had said that a large number of tea samples tested positive for a cocktail of toxic pesticides.

  • Mr. Shroff said that Greenpeace had failed to share raw data publicly and there is secrecy on the tea report. He said the report maligned the Indian farmers and it even said that tea samples contained monocrotophos and DDT, which was not sprayed on tea.

  • Greenpeace campaigner Neha Saigal clarified that the CCFI had sent them legal notices demanding that raw data be shared publicly. Ms. Saigal said Greenpeace had shared data with two or three companies, which demanded raw data.

Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050

  • Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050, aided by plummeting costs of the equipment to generate it, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the West’s energy watchdog, said.

  • IEA reports said solar photovoltaic (PV) systems could generate up to 16 per cent of the world’s electricity by 2050, while solar thermal electricity (STE) — from “concentrating” solar power plants — could provide a further 11 per cent.

  • “The rapid cost decrease of photovoltaic modules and systems in the last few years has opened new perspectives for using solar energy as a major source of electricity in the coming years and decades,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.

  • Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels constitute the fastest growing renewable energy technology in the world since 2000, although solar is still less than 1 per cent of energy capacity worldwide.

  • The IEA said PV expansion would be led by China, followed by the United States, while STE could also grow in the United States along with Africa, India and the Middle East.

Whale shark found washed ashore at Panambur

  • A 10-ft-long whale shark was found washed ashore at the Panambur beach. The whale shark, among the largest fish species in the world, is commonly found in deep seas around the Lakshadweep Islands, and it, probably, is the first incident of a whale shark found washed ashore at Panambur.
  • An average whale shark is around 30 feet in length and weighs around 9,000 kg.

Scientists to come up with an ‘invisibility cloak’

  • Scientists at the University of Rochester have discovered a way to hide large objects from sight using inexpensive and readily available lenses, a technology that seems to have sprung from the pages of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter fantasy series.

  • Cloaking is the process by which an object becomes hidden from view, while everything else around the cloaked object appears undisturbed.

  • The so-called Rochester Cloak is not really a tangible cloak. Rather, the device looks like equipment used by an optometrist. When an object is placed behind the layered lenses it seems to disappear.

  • Previous cloaking methods have been complicated, expensive, and not able to hide objects in three dimensions when viewed at varying angles, they say.

Earth’s water is older than the solar system

  • Up to half the water on Earth is likely older than the solar system, raising the likelihood that life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, according to a study.
  • The research in the journal Science found that “a significant fraction” of the water on Earth was inherited from interstellar space, and was there before the Sun was formed some 4.6 billion years ago.
  • Researchers can tell where the water comes from by examining the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, in water molecules. Water or ice that comes from interstellar space has a high ratio of deuterium to hydrogen, because it forms at such low temperatures.
  • But scientists have not known how much deuterium was removed in the process of the Sun’s birth, or how much deuterium-rich water-ice the solar system would have produced when it was first born.
  • Scientists simulated the origin of a planet under conditions where all the deuterium from space ice has already been eliminated.

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