General Awareness : Science & Technology - February, 2014

(General Awareness For Bank's Exams) Science & tech
February - 2014


‘Hejje’, mobile application

  • Tiger-tracking and wildlife conservation have a new mobile application for vigorous monitoring and better coordination of anti-poaching camp personnel at Bandipur.

  • For, “Hejje” (Pug mark), an indigenously developed Android-based application, was launched at Bandipur. It will help coordinate foot patrolling of forest staff apart from providing the range forest officers live update of their respective anti-poaching patrolling activities such as patrol time, water level in lakes, suspicious activities, tree population and forest fires.

  • The application, launched by Conservator of Forests and Director of Bandipur Tiger Reserve H.C. Kantharaj, has been developed by KeyFalcon Solutions of Bangalore.

  • Tigers in Bandipur, a prime tiger habitat, are vulnerable to poaching. Effective protection of this habitat calls for modernisation, and the induction of “Hejje” adds a new protocol to the monitoring system.

  • The adjoining BRT Wildlife Sanctuary makes use of a similar application called “Huli”.

HIV salvage therapy

  • ·India has launched third-line drug therapy for people living with HIV/AIDS and extended free anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to more of them by revising the eligibility norm.

  •  The third-line therapy, sometimes called salvage or rescue therapy, is prescribed for people who have limited drug options left — after the failure of at least two drug regimens and with evidence of HIV resistance to at least one drug in each line or the latter cause alone. The highly expensive therapy will be provided free.

  •  Announcing these measures at the launch of the National AIDS Control Programme Phase IV (2012-2017) here, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said the third-line therapy would enhance longevity and improve the quality of life of patients.

  •  For receiving free ART, the minimum CD4-count limit had been reduced from 500 to 350. The count is a measure of the viral load.

  • The government has tabled the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Prevention and Control) Bill, 2014, in the Rajya Sabha. It seeks to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and protect the human rights of people living with it.

  •  At present, India is estimated to have 2.39 million people living with HIV/AIDS.

  • The Bill seeks to prohibit any kind of discrimination against the infected person — for instance, denial or termination of employment or occupation, unfair treatment, denial of access to any sector and forcible HIV testing.

Solar Impulse

  • ·Indians are going to witness a spectacle in the skies as world's first day and night flying solar-powered wide bodied aircraft will fly into India as part of its round the globe journey.\

  • Termed as ‘Signature in the Skies,’ the flying laboratory will provide Indian clean energy and aviation enthusiasts a lifetime experience. Switzerland based Solar Impulse, world’s first day and night-abled solar-powered aircraft is all set to visit India in April 2015.

  •  It is for the first time in history that an airplane has succeeded in flying night and day without fuel, powered by only solar energy. It is launched by Bertrand Piccard and Mr. Borschberg.

Jade Rabbit

China’s first lunar rover Jade Rabbit, which woke up ten days ago after being declared dead, has entered its third “planned dormancy” even as mechanical issues that might cripple the vehicle still unresolved.

The rover named Yutu (Jade Rabbit) in Chinese entered its 14-day dormancy, with the mechanical control issues unresolved, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Yutu touched down on the moon’s surface on December 15, some hours after lunar probe Chang’e-3 landed.

The rover was designed to roam the lunar surface for at least three months to survey the moon’s geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources.

China is the third country to soft-land on the moon after the United States and the Soviet Union. Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of China’s lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth.

The country has also sent probes to orbit the moon in 2007 and 2010, the first of which crashed onto the lunar surface at the end of its mission.

According to the SASTIND, the Chang’e-2 has become China’s first man-made asteroid, and is currently 70 million km from the Earth.

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria

Oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as three billion years ago, much earlier than previously thought.
 
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside provide a nontraditional way of thinking about the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history.

A general consensus asserts that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago during the so-called Great Oxidation Event (GOE).
 
However, according to new research, oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as 3 billion years ago.
 
Oxygen concentrations in the atmosphere potentially rose and fell episodically over many hundreds of millions of years, reflecting the balance between its varying photosynthetic production and its consumption through reaction with reduced compounds such as hydrogen gas.

The oldest known gem

  • · A tiny gem found on an outback sheep station in Western Australia has been declared the oldest known piece of our planet.

  • The zircon is said to be 4.4billion years old and was found by geoscience professor John Valley from the University of Wisconsin in the United States.

  •  He was on a field trip to an area called Jack Hills about 600km north of Perth in 2001 when he found the specimen. It's an area known for its ancient gem stones which date back to when the Earth's temperatures cooled and formed a crust. 

  •  Prof. Valley said the zircon was formed when the Earth had cooled sufficiently to form a crust.

Discovery of 715 new planets.

  •  NASA's Kepler mission has announced the discovery of 715 new planets.

  •  These newly verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

  •  Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process.

  •  Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

  •  One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.

  •  This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1700.
    Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets.

India’s largest solar plant

Current Affairs
General Awareness
Study Material