Science And Technology Current Affairs

• Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh declared that the Union government had approved two more tiger reserves in Karnataka. Following the government’s approval, B.R. Hills in Chamarajanagar district and Kudremukh in Chikmagalur district became the 40th and 41st tiger reserves in the country. The minister also observed that shifting of the 700 families living in the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary was one of the most successful examples of relocation in the India.
  
• The expert group on strategies for low carbon growth submitted its report. The expert group was headed by Kirit Parikh. The expert group was set up in the aftermath of the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit with the objective of suggesting a low carbon growth strategy including sector-specific initiatives. The report by the expert group suggested a possibility of a higher range of emission intensity reduction up to 35% by 2020 over 2005 level. The Parikh expert group found that implementing the existing policies would make sure an emission intensity reduction of almost 25% at growth rate of 8% and a 24% reduction at 9% growth. The expert group further stated that fuel efficiency in transport sector, including the railways, emission cut in industries like steel, oil, cement and gas by adopting new technologies will be the part of a low carbon strategy.
  
• The Indian Union Ministry of Environment gave its approval to India’s first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) specialising in infrastructure development in Himalayan region in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh. The IIT with 8000 students and 800 faculty members will be spread in an area of 500 hectares in Kamand region of the district. Of this land, 125 hectares will be forestland.
  
• The Union Minister of Environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh stated on 6 May 2011 that it had cleared the 400 MW Maheshwar hydroelectric power project on the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh. The ministry had given stop-work order after it was discovered that the Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power Corporation had failed to implement its resettlement and resettlement programme meant for people living in villages whose homes will be destroyed because of the construction of dam. The Narmada Bachao Andolan had spearheaded the protest against the project.
  
• Pig-nosed Turtles are facing extinction threat because of large scale poaching. The demand for tortoise meat is high because people think that it has aphrodisiacal qualities. Pig-nosed turtle is listed on the IUCN red list of threatened species. It was added to the list in 1996.Pig-nosed Turtle weigh over 20 kg and grows to about 70 cm in shell length. The turtle is best adapted to an aquatic lifestyle with the exception of marine turtles.
  
• Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) unveiled a supercomputer on 2 May 2011, which is to be India's fastest supercomputer in terms of theoretical peak performance of 220 TeraFLOPS (220 Trillion Floating Point Operations per second). The supercomputing facility named as Satish Dhawan Supercomputing Facility is located at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram.The new Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) based supercomputer named SAGA-220 (Supercomputer for Aerospace with GPU Architecture-220 TeraFLOPS) is being used by space scientists for solving complex aerospace problems. The supercomputer SAGA-220 was inaugurated by Dr K Radhakrishnan, Chairman, ISRO at VSSC.SAGA-220 Supercomputer is fully designed and built by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre using commercially available hardware, open source software components and in house developments.
  
• The first American in space, late Alan Shepard, was honoured with his own stamp on 4 May 2011 on the eve of the 50th anniversary of his flight. The success of Shepard's flight had helped lead America to the moon. Shepard later became the fifth man to walk on the moon. He died in 1998 at age 74.The Postal Service dedicated the Forever stamp to commemorate Shepard's suborbital flight on 5 May 1961. He is the first astronaut to be honoured, all by himself, on a stamp. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first man to go to space and he had defeated Alan Shepard by one month.
  
• On 3 May 2011, the Department of the Environment and Forests of India declared of setting up a National Environmental Appraisal and Monitoring Authority (NEAMA) as a part of efforts to bring in institutional reforms and improve environmental governance. As a professional, science-based and autonomous entity tasked with environmental appraisals and monitoring of compliance, NEAMA is planned to mark a major improvement over the prevailing system of the institutional reforms and environmental governance.NEAMA is expected be more effective in addressing conflict of interest issues through separation of the processes of appraisal and approval. The appraised projects look for an approval of the Department of the Environment and Forests of India to ensure the principle of executive accountability.
  
• First Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Non-communicable Disease Control was organised in Moscow by World Health Organisation on 28 and 29 April 2011. At the conference mental disorders was included in the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) list at India’s insistence. India achieved a major success on the global platform by pushing for inclusion of mental health in the list of non-communicable diseases. Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad led the Indian delegation to Moscow.Mental health as a NCD was adopted in the Moscow Declaration on 29 April 2011. It was agreed that that NCDs such as mental disorders significantly contribute to the global disease burden.

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International Current Affairs May 2011

• South Pacific island nation SAMOA, currently positioned to the east of the International Date Line on 9 May 2011 decided to forego a day (28 December 2011) and shift to the time zone on its west to facilitate trade with Australia and New Zealand. The island nation in the South Pacific is currently 21 hours behind both countries, Australia and New Zealand. This implies that that the nation loses two working days a week with them. However with its decision to move to the other side of the date line, Samoa will move three hours ahead.
  
• India ratified in the second week of May 2011, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its three protocols and the United Nations Convention against Corruption. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime is the main international instrument in the fight against transnational organised crime. It recognises the need to foster and enhance close international cooperation in order to tackle those problems. The convention is further supplemented by three Protocols, which target specific areas and manifestations of organized crime namely Protocols to combat (1) trafficking in persons (2) migrant smuggling and (3) illicit trafficking in firearms.
  
• In the 2nd May 2011 Canadian Federal Election, Canada's Conservatives had a decisive victory making it a majority in Canada's Parliament. Conservative Party won 54% of the seats in the Parliament and secured a stable four-year term in power. It acquired 167 seats in the Canada's Parliament. The Liberals were reduced to a dismal third place. Ignatieff even lost his own seat in a Toronto suburb. Candian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper’s victory, along with Conservative party’s control of the Senate, put the Conservatives in firm control of the federal agenda for the first time since the early 1990s.
  
• Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 11 September 2001, terror attacks was killed on 1 May 2011 in his luxury hideout in Pakistan in a fire fight with U.S. forces. President Barack Obama broke the news in the White House on 1 May. Bin Laden was killed after a gun battle with Navy SEALs and CIA paramilitary forces at a compound in the city of Abbottabad in Pakistan. The operation was codenamed Operation Geronimo. He was shot in the left eye and killed inside a secured private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs in a covert operation. Abbottabad is home to three Pakistan army regiments and thousands of military personnel and is dotted with military buildings. The team returned to Afghanistan with bin Laden's body and the body later buried at sea.
  
• Prince William and Catherine (Kate) Middleton were married at Westminster Abbey, London on 29 April 2011. 1900 guests watched the couple exchanging their vows, while millions of people around the world watched the ceremony live on TV. Prince William wore a military uniform, a tunic, with a crimson and gold sash and gold sword slings, from the Irish National Guards. On 29 April 2011, the day of wedding, Prince William was given the title of the Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus by Queen Elizabeth II. After marriage Miss Catherine Middleton became Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge. The title of duke is the highest rank below that of monarch in the British nobility.
  
• Vanuatu, a small island nation in the South Pacific is set to become the 154th member of the World Trade Organisation. Once the WTO's General Council approves the accession package in its next meeting, Vanuatu will have six months to complete the ratification. Russia and Algeria are the two main trade economies outside the WTO.
  
• Lobsang Sangay was on 27 April 2011 elected Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-exile. He would take over the political duties relinquished by spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. Sangay got 55 per cent votes out of 49189 votes. He defeated his nearest rival Tethong Tenzin Namgyal by 8646 votes. As many as 83399 exiled Tibetan settled in India, Bhutan, Nepal, Australia, United States, Japan, Russia and other countries exercised their franchise to elect the Prime Minister and 43 members of Tibetan Parliament-in-exile. The tenure of the newly elected Prime Minister would be five years.
  
• The leaders of two main Palestinian-factions, Fatah and Hamas on 4 May 2011 signed a reconciliation agreement. The agreement signed between the two factions paved the way for the formation of transitional national unity government followed by elections. The accord signed helped to end a four year feud between Fatah and Hamas and the signing of the account will be followed by preparations for the formation of an interim government. Three separate committees will be formed, which will plan for the upcoming polls as well as recommend internal reforms within the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). PLO is the umbrella group of the Palestinian factions. The pact is widely seen as fallout of the Egyptian uprising that resulted in the formation of military-led transitional government in Cairo that played a key role brokering the intra-Palestinian accord. Both factions aim at a new and viable Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

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