1. NASA will launch Parker Solar Probe in 2018 to explore ____________’s outer atmosphere, onboard Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle. It aims at Tracing how energy and heat move through solar corona and what accelerates solar wind as well as solar energetic particles.
2. Scientists discovered 4 new balsam species from various locations in Eastern Himalayas in ________________. They are - Impatiens haridasanii, Impatiens pseudocitrina, Impatiens nilalohitae and Impatiens roingensis.
3. World Health Organisation (WHO) has given its pre-qualification to Typbar Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine (TVC) developed by Hyderabad (____________) based Bharat Biotech for global use.
- Typbar TCV is world’s first typhoid vaccine clinically proven to be administered to children from six months of age to adults, and confers long-term protection against typhoid fever.
4. A new endangered flowering plant species named ‘Primula Zhui’ has been discovered by scientists in Yunnan Province of ______________.
5. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will soon launch two missions - GOLD (Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk) and ICON (_____________________), to explore ionosphere (96 km above Earth’s surface).
- ICON will launched in low-Earth orbit (LEO) located at 560 km above Earth and GOLD will be launched in geostationary orbit over Western Hemisphere (about 35,398 km above earth).
- It will help in full-disk view of ionosphere and upper atmosphere beneath it every half hour.
6. Scientists at University of California (______________) stated that increase in warmer global temperatures and dryer weather conditions could pose a threat to survival of fragile cocoa plant, leading to disappearance of chocolate by 2050. To avoid this, gene-editing technology CRISPR must be used to evolve crops that can survive environmental challenges.
7. _______________ launched Swift 7, that claims to be the world’s thinnest laptop, priced at $1,699. It has thickness of 8.98mm and is powered by Intel Core i7 processor.
8. India’s fastest and first multi-petaflops (PF) supercomputer named Pratyush (meaning Sun) unveiled at Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM). It will enable better weather related forecasts including monsoon, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, lightning etc.
- Pratyush has 6.8 PF computational power installed at two MoES Institutes. 4.0 Peta Flops HPC facility at IITM, Pune and 2.8 Peta Flops facility at NCMRWF, Noida.
- Pratyush is fourth fastest supercomputer in world for weather and climate research, after supercomputers in Japan, US and UK.
- It will enable mapping regions in India at resolution of 3 km and globe at 12 km.
- Fastest Supercomputers in world -
-
| Supercomputer |
Peak speed
(Rmax) |
Location |
| TaihuLight (Sunway) |
93.01 PFLOPS |
________ |
| Tianhe-2 (NUDT) |
33.86 PFLOPS |
China |
| Piz Daint (Cray) |
19.59 PFLOPS |
Switzerland |
| ZettaScaler (Gyoukou) |
17.14 PFLOPS |
Japan |
| Titan (Cray) |
17.59 PFLOPS |
USA |
9. Scientists from Duke University in North Carolina (________________) for first time have developed working human skeletal muscle from stem cells in lab.
- Stem cells are undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells and can divide to produce more stem cells, found in multicellular organisms.
- Scientists developed human skeletal muscle using adult skin or blood cells that were reprogrammed into a juvenile, versatile state. This may benefit several people suffering of degenerative muscular diseases. It will allow scientists to grow endless amount of functioning muscle in lab to test to test drugs and gene treatments for degenerative diseases.
10. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched 31 satellites along with Cartosat-2 surveillance satellite (weighing total 1383 KG), onboard Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40) rocket.
Among 31 satellites, 3 belong to India and rest 28 are of six other countries.
Cartosat-2 series Satellite weighs ______________ KG, making it heaviest satellite that PSLV has carried till now. It will beam high-quality images for cartographic, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and utility management.
11. Researchers from Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) discovered a new species of moth, scientifically named Elcysma Ziroensis in Talley Wildlife Sanctuary in ____________.
12._______________'s Hubble and Spitzer space telescope discovered SPT0615-JD as farthest known galaxy in universe so far (2,500 light-years away). It is a cluster of 500 million year-old stars.SPT0615-JD was found in Hubble’s Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS) and companion S-RELICS Spitzer programme.
13. A new research at ________________________'s Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IIS) has proved D - 29 virus as capable of desdtroying cancer cells. The research is led by Scientist Soumya Kamilla. Now challenge is to transmit this virus to cancerous cells in body. Upon success in this, the method can be much more successful than Chemotherapy in eleimnating cancer.
14. ________________ scientists for first time have successfully cloned two identical long-tailed macaques (monkeys), named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua using same technique that produced Dolly sheep two decades ago. This makes them world’s first primates (order of mammals that includes monkeys, apes and humans) to be cloned from non-embryonic cell.
- These identical long-tailed macaques were cloned using process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), that involves transferring the nucleus of cell, which includes its DNA, into egg whose nucleus is removed.
- Similar work in primates earlier, had always failed, leading some scientists to wonder if primates were resistant.
15. ___________ tested a new technology that allows aircraft to fold their wings between zero and 70 degrees while inflight. Built from a shape memory alloy, it operates without a hydraulic system, reducing wing weight by up to 80%.
16. Researchers discovered 161 million-year-old fossils of a tiny bird-like dinosaur named Caihong juji from _______________ that sported flashy rainbow feathers and a bony crest on its snout to attract mates.
17. Rotavac became first Indigenously developed vaccine from India to be pre-qualified by ______________, enabling selling it internationally. Rotavac is first vaccine entirely developed in India to get this _________________ status in safety and efficacy.
- Rotavac is developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech Limited and protects against childhood diarrhoea caused by rotavirus. It was developed under collaboration between India and USA.
18. Scientists found a small population of Red Handfishes (Thymichthys politus), walking along seabed off ______________'s south coast in Tasmania. This species is only found in isolated island state of south-eastern Tasmania. In this small habitat within radius of 20 metres, fishes walk on seabed, instead of swimming.
19. Scientists from ______________'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered a new material for next-generation smart windows that will not only get a tinted look when Sun is too bright but will also convert solar energy into electricity. Researchers discovered a form of perovskite that works well as a stable and photoactive semiconductor material that can reversibly switch between transparent and non-transparent state, without degrading its electronic properties.
20. World’s biggest flooded cave has been discovered in __________________, after researchers connected 2 underwater caverns in eastern part of nation, to reveal biggest flooded cave on planet. It is significant discovery as it could shed new light on ancient Maya civilization. The total length of cave is 347-kms, after connecting cave system named Sac Actun (262 km) with 83-km long Dos Ojos cave system.
21. Indian Scientist Satish Tailor has developed a new thermal spray coating technology for use in gas turbine engine in spacecraft, called controlled segmented YSZ (______________) Plasma sprayed coating technology.
It can reduce thermal spray coating cost by 50%.
Current costly techniques such as SPS or EB-PVD develop cracks through very expensive processes and are not controllable, while YSZ develops vertical cracks (segmentation) in coating, beneficial for gas turbine engine application used in spacecraft. It can be industrially adopted to make a strain-tolerant coating more economical.
