current affairs for ias exam 2011 science technology defense environment august 2010 www.upscportal

8/6/2019 Current Affairs for IAS Exam 2011 Science Technology Defense Environment August 2010 Www.upscportal

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Science & Technology, Defence, Environment

August 2010

First reactor at Koodankulam to go critical by year-end: AEC Chairman

The first reactor of the Koodankulam nuclear power project is expected to go critical by the

year-end, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) Chairman Srikumar Banerjee said.

According to Mr. Banerjee, indigenous uranium production in the country was expected to

increase.A positive development had been the estimation of uranium deposits in Tummalapalle,

Andhra Pradesh, that would provide an alternative to sourcing from Jharkhand.

The Tummalapalle mine, which was the first in the country to adopt alkali leaching processingin place of the conventional acid leaching method, would go on stream in 18 to 20 months, he

said.

Earlier, Mr. Banerjee lauded the efforts of scientists in putting together the Annapurna,' the

new wonder in the IMSc's high performance super computer legacy that has produced the

Kabru,' Vindhya' and Aravalli' clusters. Annapurna' is a factory-integrated cluster in the non-commercial domain with 1.5 Tera Bytes

memory and 30 TB storage stack. Its peak speed of 12 Tera Flops (TF) makes it the seventh

fastest HPC machine in the country. Among broad-based scientific institutions, the Annapurna'cluster is the third fastest.

Minor oil spill as vessels collide

A minor oil spill resulted from a collision of two merchant vessels, MSC Chitra and MVKhalijia-III, off the Mumbai coast.

MSC Chitra had sailed up to four nautical miles into the sea and MV Khalijia-III was inbound,

a Defence press note said.

Global coordination centre mooted to shore up Internet security

A proposal has been made for the creation of a global security coordination centre that will help

the Internet web address system combat exploitation by malicious software, as the Confickerworm did last year.

Thanks to a coordinated global response, a measure of success was achieved in countering the

worm and blocking its spread, said a recent report of the Internet Corporation for Assigned

Names and Numbers (ICANN). It has suggested the establishment of a Community EmergencyResponse Team for the global Domain Name System (DNS-CERT).

A worm is a piece of malicious software created to stealthily infect computers in order toperform certain tasks. The spread of the Conficker worm, which exploited the vulnerability in

the Windows OS to infect computers, had peaked last year, with its variants emerging andinfecting millions of computers . Such infected computers are then made part of larger

networks, called botnets, for operations conceived by the worm's creator or creators.

The rapid spread of the Conficker worm had been viewed with great concern by security

experts worldwide. The threat perception has since subsided, following a significant decline inthe rate at which the worm has been infecting computers, but millions of machines remain

infected, and security experts continue tracking it for any sign of resurgence.

Since the Conficker worm depended on specific web addresses for communication, it became


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one of the battlegrounds for a counter-offensive by security experts and organisations led by theConficker Working Group.

What the worm did from the infected computers was to generate domain names or web

addresses and select some of them to connect with and update itself and execute the latest

commands of its creators. Thus, a key counter-measure involved was to block the creation ortransfer of web addresses being used by the worm for its operations, in which ICANN had

played a crucial role.

The worm tried to overcome the defence mounted against it by generating thousands of webaddresses from which it could randomly exploit some for its purposes, but the experts have beenlargely able to counter this tactic.

India, U.K. to develop next generation wireless systems

A consortium of nine U.K. institutions and seven Indian scientific institutions are all set todesign the next generation of wireless systems across India.

The project, India-U.K. Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) of Excellence in Next

Generation Networks Systems and Services, is being led by Gerard Parr from the University ofUlster in Northern Ireland and Ashok Jhunjhunwala at the Indian Institute of Technology-

Madras.

Test range in Chitradurga coming up

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is building a new test range in

Chitradurga district in Karnataka for its aeronautics missions for flight-testing sophisticated

unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), air-to-ground weapons, huge parachutes, Light CombatAircraft Tejas, aerostats and also for testing electronic warfare systems.

The DRDO already has an Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-sea, near Balasore,

Orissa, from where different missiles are flight-tested. Wheeler Island, off the Orissa coast,

comes under this ITR and it is from that Agni series of missiles are flight-tested.

Jairam on U.N. panel for global sustainability

Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests, will be one of the 21 members

of the United Nations' (UN) newly formed High-level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Mr. Ramesh was invited to serve on the panel by UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon. It will be

co-chaired by South African president Jacob Zuma and Finnish president Tarja Halonen, and

includes foreign and environment ministers, environmentalists, diplomats and businessmen, as

well as former Heads of State from around the world.

They have been tasked with producing a report by December 2011, which will outline a newsustainable development paradigm.

Indiato have forest satellite in 2013: Jairam

To boost efforts towards environmental conservation and increasing green cover, India will

have a dedicated forest satellite in 2013.

India is adding to its green cover. We do our own satellite imaging and going by the 2007

information, when the imaging was done last, we have added three million hectares of forestcover in the last 10 years. In fact, we will be launching a dedicated forest satellite in 2013 which

would monitor our forest cover on a daily basis, Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for

Environment and Forests said in a reply during Question Hour.

Now, polymer currency

By the year-end, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will come out with polymer (plastic) notes of


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Rs. 10 denomination and follow it up with such notes of other denominations.

Later, Rs. 20 and Rs. 50 notes will also be issued, said an RBI source.

Polymer notes are in circulation in countries such as New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and

Hong Kong.

Rs. 10 notes are in maximum circulation with comparitively higher production cost

Gas supply sought for 4 power projects

The Union Power Ministry has sought an allocation of 14.5 million standard cubic metres perday (mscmd) of gas from the Reliance Industries' KG basin facility for four power projects

poised to produce nearly 4,136 MW of power during the current Plan.

Apart from Anil Dhirubhai Ambani-owned Reliance Power Limited (RPL), the Ministry hassought allocation for three other projects including that of Torrent Power.

The Power Ministry had sought 14.5 mscmd of gas for the four projects during the last meeting

of the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.The request was made on the ground that these projects have most approvals and would be

commissioned by March 31, 2012.

The Power Ministry, in its submission to the EGoM, had recommended allocation of 8 mscmdof gas for the 2,400 MW expansion project planned by RPL at Samalkot in Andhra Pradesh onthe basis that the project had environmental clearance besides land, water and all other

infrastructure facilities.

It had also sought 4.48 mscmd of gas for the 1,200 MW project Torrent Power is setting up at

Dahej SEZ in Gujarat, 0.4 mscmd for 100 MW unit of Pandurang Energy Systems at WestGodavari District and 1.62 mscmd for 436 MW plant of RVK Energy at East Godavari District,

both in Andhra Pradesh.

Besides the four projects, GMR is also in queue for 3.88 mscmd of gas for its 2x284 MW

Vemagiri project in East Godavari District.

The company also entered into gas transportation agreement with GAIL for transporting gas,which the project will need from April 2011.

In addition, Lanco has sought 3.5 mscmd of gas for 742 MW Stage-III expansion of its

Kondapalli project that will be commissioned by June 2011.

Nokia announces Project Ujjwal'

Celebrating 15 years of mobility in India, Nokia India has announced an initiative, Project

Ujjwal, to drive 100 per cent household mobility in five villages in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh.Nokia will provide mobile devices, preloaded with the Nokia Ovi Life Tools service to over 500

households in five villages in Dehli Gram Sabha, for free.

New superbug spreading from India, Pakistan

Health tourists flocking to south Asia have carried a new class of antibiotic-resistant

superbugs to Britain, researchers reported, warning that the bacteria could spread worldwide.

Many hospital infections that were already difficult to treat have become even more impervious

to drugs due to a recently discovered gene that can jump across different species of bacteria.

This so called NDM-1 gene was first identified last year by Cardiff University's Timothy Walshin two types of bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli in a Swedish patient

admitted to hospital in India.

NDM-1 stands for New Delhi metallo-betalactamase-1.


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Worryingly, the new NDM-1 bacteria are resistant even to carbapenems, a group of antibioticsoften reserved as a last resort for emergency treatment for multi-drug resistant bugs.

Oil contamination: TERI offers help

The Director of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) based in New Delhi will be in

Mumbai to meet the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board officials to offer help in containing

the oil leak that happened from MSC Chitra.

TERI has developed oilzapper' technology and the institute wants to use it to contain the

contamination. We have used this technology successfully for nearly a decade on land. It iscompletely organic and has no side-effects, Dr. Banwari Lal, Director of TERI, said.

The process of using it is called bioremediation. In this, a combination of microbes or bacteria

is used to clean the oil spill. The microbes feed on oil and degrade it completely. They emitcarbon dioxide which is absorbed in the atmosphere. These microbes die within few hours and

form food for other marine animals.

It can be used on sea as well as on land, with certain variation of microbes. This is time

consuming (takes around two months) but much preferred to the chemical method. In the

chemical method, emulsifyers are sprayed over the slick. That does not clean up the oil, butmakes it invisible. The oil settles on the sea bed contaminating it, Dr. Lal said.

The other method is creating makeshift bioremediation tanks near the affected area. In this

method, the contaminated sand has to be physically scooped out and shifted to the tank.Considering the expanse of the contamination, it is going to be very difficult and cumbersome

to scoop out tonnes of sand to the tanks. But if that can be done, we are completely sure we

can treat it, Dr. Lal added.

E-waste management project launched

The Mumbai-Pune corridor may be the hot spot for investors. It is also the highest producer of

India's electronic waste.

About one third of India's electronic waste is generated in this region. A stakeholders'

consultation on e-waste management was conducted in Pune to address the issue. Here a E-waste management was launched.

Nishank asks PM to scrap power project

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has written to Prime Minister

Manmohan Singh to immediately scrap the 600-MW Loharinag Pala power project being

constructed by NTPC on the Bhagirathi in Uttarkashi.

The project envisages putting the river inside a 13-km-long tunnel which has been opposed by

environmentalists as well as holy men who feel that such an attempt would ruin the perennial

flow of the Ganga as well as bio-diversity of the region, he said.

He pointed out that the State Government had scrapped the Pala Maneri and Bhaironghatipower projects about 18 months ago to respect public sentiment and safeguard the region's bio-

diversity.

Don't clear Vedanta's mining project: panel

The Union government should not clear Vedanta's bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri hills

of Orissa as it violates the environment and forest law, according to a panel set up to investigate

the proposal.

The Vedanta Company has consistently violated the Forest Conservation Act [FCA], the ForestRights Act [FRA], the Environment Protection Act [EPA] and the Orissa Forest Act in active


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collusion with the State officials, said the report of the four-member panel, headed by PlanningCommission member N.C. Saxena. The report was submitted

The report also catalogued the negative impact that the mining is likely to have on the region's

biodiversity and on the Dongria and Kutia Kondh tribal communities, which have economic and

cultural ties to the land.

Mobile phone user base will cross 100 crore by 2014

Global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said the mobile subscriber base in India

would cross the 100-crore mark by 2014, while there will be over 10 crore 3G broadbandsubscribers by 2015.

In its latest report titled Mobile Broadband Outlook 2015', PwC said the boom in the telecom

sector is expected to continue for the next three to five years, driven by high subscriber

additions mostly in non-urban areas. The Indian telecom market has been growing at acompound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 30 per cent since 1995 and going

strong. With additions of more than 1.4 crore subscribers per month in the year 2009, the

wireless subscriber base has grown to 63.55 crore in June 2010, second only to China, it said.

Work on 700 MWe nuclear reactors in Rajasthan to begin soon

The ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of two indigenous nuclear power reactorsof 700 MWe capacity each at Rawatbhatta in Rajasthan will take place in two to three weeks.

This follows the clearance given to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL)

by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) for excavating the foundation for these two

reactors, said Sudhinder Thakur, Executive Director, NPCIL. These pressurised heavy waterreactors (PHWRs) will use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as both moderator and

coolant.

The excavation of the foundation for two PHWRs of 700 MWe each at Kakrapar in Gujarat was

nearly complete and the NPCIL was awaiting permission for the first pour of the concrete, Mr.Thakur said.

Four more 700 MWe reactors two each at Kumharia in Haryana and Bargi in MadhyaPradesh would be built.

The 700 MWe PHWRs are the largest reactors to be built by the NPCIL, which had earlier built

two PHWRs of 540 MWe each at Tarapur in Maharashtra.

At present, the country has 19 operating reactors with a total generation capacity of 4,560 MWe.

Phosphine gas concentration on Chitra

High concentration of phosphine gas has been found in the forepeak area of MSC Chitra, theDirectorate General of Shipping informed.

Experts are expected to arrive to make an action plan for its removal or neutralisation, a pressnote said. As a result, work on up-righting the vessel has been put on hold.

Suspected canisters containing pesticide were also found at Elephanta Island. A team fromUnited Phosphorous Ltd. was on the site to ensure safety of workers.

Chitra spill: oilzapper' to be used for bioremediation

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which carried out the bioremediation process byusing the oilzapper' technology at the Awas beach at Alibaug, will now monitor its site there to

understand the impact of the toxic chemicals mixed with oil.

The oilzapper technology works effectively to clear the oil, but the presence of a mix of other


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toxic substances renders the situation complex. Though TERI has extensive experience inclearing oil spills, it is unsure how the microbes will react to other chemical toxic substances.

After using this technology on the Awas beach in Alibaug, TERI plans to carry out a similar

process on the beach at Navy Nagar.

The oilzapper technology cannot be used in the mangroves, which have been the worst affected.

The experts in that field have suggested that we leave the mangroves untouched for a naturalflushing-out process.

M.P. opposes setting up of biotech regulatory authority

The Madhya Pradesh government has reacted strongly to the setting up of the proposed

Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI), accusing the Centre of attempting to

impinge upon the autonomy of the State.

The BRAI Bill was approved by the Union Cabinet under the chairmanship of Prime MinisterManmohan Singh, and is expected to be tabled in the current session of Parliament.

Orissa, Kerala, Assam and several other States have also been opposing the Bill.

The proposed Bill will set up the BRAI, having the role of a clearing house/facilitator/approver

for applications pertaining to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). It is also expected to

take over the functions of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, which will assume therole of appraiser instead of approver.

According to Section 81 of the Bill, the Act will have an overriding effect over State-level acts

and regulations since it makes the proposed authority solely responsible for releasing and

controlling GMOs throughout the country and envisages only an advisory role for States.

According to critics, placing the BRAI under the Department of Biotechnology will result in a

direct conflict of interest since the department is the promoter of GMOs in India. Activists have

instead called for a National Biosafety Authority under either the Ministry of Environment andForests or the Ministry of Health, since environment and health are expected to be directly

affected by GMOs.

Another buffalo calf cloned

A cloned buffalo calf was born at the Karnal-based National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI),

where two calves were cloned a year ago, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR)

announced.

The buffalo calf, named Garima-II, was born through the new and advanced hand-guidedcloning technique.' It weighs 32 kg and is apparently normal and healthy.

Intent' dropped; Lok Sabha adopts nuclear liability Bill

With the government conceding a major point to the Opposition on supplier liability, the Lok

Sabha passed the controversial Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010. With the BJP and the Left proposing similar language, a government amendment rectifying

Section 17(b) sailed through unanimously. In all, the House adopted 18 amendments moved bythe government before passing the Bill by voice vote.

Facebook has dethroned Google-owned Orkut as No.1 social networking site in

India.

With over 2-crore visitors last month, Facebook has shown stupendous growth in the past fewmonths, overtaking Orkut, said global research firm comScore, Inc.


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Interestingly, Twitter.com had the highest rate of growth among the top five social networkingsites, increasing 239 percent to 33-lakh visitors, while Yahoo! owned two of the top 10 social

networking sites Yahoo! Pulse (35-lakh visitors) and Yahoo! Buzz (18-lakh) visitors, it

added.

Agni-V will be test-fired soon, says Antony

India is getting ready to test Agni-V, its longest range surface-to-surface ballistic missile of

5,000 km, according to Defence Minister A.K. Antony.

Laying the foundation stone for a Rs.700-crore expansion of Midhani (Mishra Dhatu NigamLtd), a Government of India enterprise, he urged scientists and technocrats to treat any denial of

technology as a godsend as such discrimination led to the development of the 5,000 km range

missile.

He said the country looked up to Midhani to extend critical materials support to many

programmes of national importance, including manufacture of fighter aircraft like Sukhoi-

MKII, Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), Arjun and T-90 tanks by ordnance factories,commercial launch of the PSLV, the GSLV and GSLV Mark-II by ISRO and for increasing

nuclear power generation beyond 18,000 MW by 2020.

Polavaram project: Sonia Gandhi assures national status

In a development that should culminate in fruition of the State government's effort, UPA

chairperson Sonia Gandhi has assured that national status will be accorded to the Polavaram

project taken up by the State government across the Godavari as part of Jalayagnamprogramme.

She gave this assurance in a communication addressed to Chief Minister K. Rosaiah in response

to his repeated requests seeking the status of a national project for Polavaram. Referring to his

plea,

In his letters earlier to the UPA chairperson, the Chief Minister said Polavaram would be a boonto all the regions and ensure balanced development of the State. While power generated by its

960-MW hydel station would be supplied to all the regions, the project would help irrigate 7.2lakh acres of land in Coastal Andhra, meet the needs of Visakhapatnam to the tune of 24 tmcftand serve a population of 28 lakh in 540 villages. Besides, it would stabilise Krishna delta (13

lakh acres) and Godavari delta (10.13 lakh acres).

In Telangana, two massive lift schemes were being implemented to benefit 1.33 lakh acres in

Khammam district, based on the Polavaram reservoir. Moreover, the diversion of 80 tmcft of

water from Polavaram to the Krishna delta, would facilitate diversion of water thus saved to theRayalaseema region.

Sowa-Rigpa now part of Indian medical system

The Rajya Sabha has passed a Bill to include Sowa-Rigpa within the ambit of the Indian

medical system. It is practised in the sub-Himalayan region and other parts of the country,

besides Tibet, Mongolia, Japan and some other countries.

The Bill seeks to include registered practitioners of Sowa-Rigpa in the Indian Medical Council.The Indian Medicine Central Council (Amendment) Bill, 2010, seeks to include Sowa-Rigpa

along with Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani medicine in the system, set minimum standards for

education, and maintain a register of all practitioners in these fields.

It was being done as recommended by the National Medicinal Plant Board, which is working onIndian herbs and plants used in various traditional systems. A task force was set up by the

Health Ministry to reach out to inaccessible areas and places, where tribals live in, to identify

their system of medicine and practitioners.


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Chandrayaan-II to have seven indigenous payloads

India's second moon mission, Chandrayaan-II, will carry seven indigenous payloads.

Two of these scientific instruments will be carried by a rover, which will detach itself from thesatellite and make a soft-landing.

Of the five payloads in the orbiter (main satellite), three are new and the rest improved

versions of payloads flown on ChandrayaanI, an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)

press release said.

The Rs. 425-crore mission is scheduled to be launched in 2013.

A Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) from the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) andSolar X-ray Monitor (XSM) from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, will

map the major elements on the lunar surface.

This payload is similar to Chandrayaan-I's X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS), designed for X-rayspectroscopic mapping.

Chandrayaan-2, with a lift-off weight of 2,650 kg, will be launched by a Geosynchronous

Satellite Launch Vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

current affairs for ias exam 2011 science technology defense environment august 2010 www.upscportal

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