Current Affairs Questions

Explanation :

• On March 27, 2019, India conducted Mission Shakti, an anti-satellite missile test, from the Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam Island launch complex, Odisha(formerly known as Wheeler Island).
• This was a technological mission carried out by DRDO. The satellite used in the mission was one of India’s existing satellites operating in lower orbit.
• The significance of the test is that India has tested and successfully demonstrated its capability to interdict and intercept a satellite in outer space based on complete indigenous technology.
• The test made India the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to have tested an ASAT weapon.

Explanation :

• A ramjet is a form of air-breathing jet engine that uses the vehicle’s forward motion to compress incoming air for combustion without a rotating compressor. Fuel is injected in the combustion chamber where it mixes with the hot compressed air and ignites.
• A ramjet-powered vehicle requires an assisted take-off like a rocket assist to accelerate it to a speed where it begins to produce thrust.
• Ramjets work most efficiently at supersonic speeds around Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound) and can operate up to speeds of Mach 6. However, the ramjet efficiency starts to drop when the vehicle reaches hypersonic speeds.
• A scramjet engine is an improvement over the ramjet engine as it efficiently operates at hypersonic speeds and allows supersonic combustion. Thus it is known as Supersonic Combustion Ramjet, or Scramjet.
• A dual mode ramjet (DMRJ) is a type of jet engine where a ramjet transforms into scramjet over Mach 4-8 range, which means it can efficiently operate both in subsonic and supersonic combustor modes.

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 :

• Sodium hypochlorite is a chemical compound with the formula NaOCl or NaClO, comprising a sodium cation (Na+) and a hypochlorite anion (OCl−or ClO−).
• It may also be viewed as the sodium salt of hypochlorous acid.
• The anhydrous compound is unstable and may decompose explosively.
• Sodium Hypochlorite is a chlorine compound often used as a disinfectant or a bleaching agent.
• Household bleach is, in general, a solution containing 3–8% sodium hypochlorite, by weight, and 0.01–0.05% sodium hydroxide; the sodium hydroxide is used to slow the decomposition of sodium hypochlorite into sodium chloride and sodium chlorate.

Explanation :

• Reverse osmosis (RO) is a process that removes foreign contaminants, solid substances, large molecules and minerals from water by using pressure to push it through specialized membranes.
• As its name implies, RO takes osmosis, a natural process that occurs in every cell-based organism—plants, animals and even people—and reverses it.
• Unlike osmosis, which is a passive process, reverse osmosis requires external force (pressure) to work.
• Pressure is applied to a highly concentrated solute solution (e.g., salt water) to pass through a membrane to a lower concentrate solution.

Application

• RO is used to produce highly purified water for drinking water systems, industrial boilers, food and beverage processing, cosmetics, pharmaceutical production, seawater desalination, and many other applications.

Explanation :

• On 17^th January, 2020 the Union Minister of Law and Justice inaugurated the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Blockchain Technology set up by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
• It has been set up with the aim of providing blockchain as a service and to help all stakeholders to benefit from shared learning, experiences and resources.
• It will focus on building a robust infrastructure to provide Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS).

Blockchain Technology

• Blockchain, sometimes referred to as Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), makes the history of any digital asset unalterable and transparent through the use of decentralization and cryptographic hashing.
• It is an especially promising and revolutionary technology because it helps reduce risk, stamps out fraud and brings transparency in a scaleable way for myriad uses.

Explanation :

• A fuel cell is a device that generates electricity by converting chemical energy into electrical energy. Every fuel cell has two electrodes called, respectively, the anode and cathode. The reactions that produce electricity take place at the electrodes.
• Hydrogen is the basic fuel, but fuel cells also require oxygen. One great appeal of fuel cells is that they generate electricity with very little pollution–much of the hydrogen and oxygen used in generating electricity ultimately combines to form harmless by product- water.
• The most common type of fuel cell for vehicle applications is the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell. In a PEM fuel cell, an electrolyte membrane is sandwiched between a positive electrode (cathode) and a negative electrode (anode).

Examples

• Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells
• Direct methanol fuel cells
• Alkaline fuel cells
• Molten carbonate fuel cells
• Solid oxide fuel cells

Advantages

• Low-to-Zero Emissions
• High Efficiency
• Reliability
• Fuel Flexibility
• Energy Security
• Durability
• Scalability
• Quiet Operation

Explanation :

• The IndiGen initiative was undertaken by CSIR in April 2019, which was implemented by the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.
• Called as the IndiGen Genome project, its outcomes will have applications in a number of areas including predictive and preventive medicine with faster and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases.

Aim

• To test if it’s possible to rapidly and reliably scan several genomes and advise people on health risks that are manifest in their gene.
• To understand the variation and frequency of certain genes that are known to be linked to disease.

Benefits

• The project will have applications in a number of areas including predictive and preventive medicine with faster and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases.
• The outcomes of the IndiGen will be utilized towards understanding the genetic diversity on a population scale.
• Other benefits include epidemiology of genetic diseases to enable cost effective genetic tests, carrier screening applications for expectant couples, enabling efficient diagnosis of heritable cancers and pharmacogenetic tests to prevent adverse drug reactions.