Current Affairs Question - 23 July 2020

Explanation :

• A meta material is any material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials.
• They are made from assemblies of multiple elements fashioned from composite materials such as metals and plastics.
• The materials are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they influence.
• These derive their properties not from the properties of the base materials, but from their newly designed structures.

Applications

• Potential applications of meta materials are diverse and include optical filters, medical devices, remote aerospace applications, sensor detection and infrastructure monitoring, smart solar power management, crowd control, radomes, high-frequency battlefield communication and lenses for high-gain antennas, improving ultrasonic sensors, and even shielding structures from earthquakes.
• Meta materials offer the potential to create super-lenses. Such a lens could allow imaging below the diffraction limit that is the minimum resolution that can be achieved by conventional glass lenses.

Explanation :

• Founded in 2002, the Global Fund is a partnership designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemic.
• Microsoft founder Bill Gates was one of the first private foundations among many bilateral donors to provide seed money for the partnership.
• Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Global Fund is the world's largest financier of AIDS, TB, and malaria prevention, treatment, and care programs.
• The Global Fund is a financing mechanism rather than an implementing agency.
• Programs are implemented by in-country partners such as ministries of health, while the Global Fund secretariat, whose staff only have an office in Geneva, monitor the programs.