[Science] Answerkey for Mock Questions set by Tushar (Science & Tech Portion only)

Few days, I had uploaded the Mock Questions for GS Paper II framed by Tushar. (Click ME)
He has provided the answerkeykey for mock questions for “Science & Tech” portion of that question paper. Here it goes,

1. Modified Embaraer EMB 145I aircraft.
2. Accelerated Technology Assessment and Commercialization (ATAC)
3. Project Ahaar / BASIX-AAHAR
4. HuGaMMA Report.
5. MCA-21.
6. London Declaration  on Neglected Tropical Diseases. (NTD)
7. Sevottam Model.
8. OVR SagarNidhi
9. Mobile Based Crime and incident reporting platform (MCIRP)
10. Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD)
11. ASTROSAT and its instrumentation.
12. Bio Toilet
13. The Defense Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR)
14. Reservetrol
15. In Vitro meat.
16. Difference between 3G and LTE mobile technology.
17. Difference between the CMOS and CCD image sensors.
18. Tandem Solar Cell and its advantages.
19. Gratzel Solar cell and its characteristics.
20. Nuclear Powered Crops.
21. Hydroponics and its potential advantages.
22. Curiosity rover
23. TARA’s expedition
24. Saturated Fats
25. Pebble Reactor.
26. Generations of the Nuclear Reactors.
27. Trophy Molecules
28. Leap second and Y2K bug
29. Colony Collapse Disorder and its implications.
30. GHB’s function in human brain
31. Date rape drug.
32. Foot and Mouth Diseases (FMDs) Vaccine
33. Markhor
34. Gnathiid isopods and coral bleaching.
35. Transient Elastography
36. Adulterated milk: testing problem
37. NASA’s Kepler Mission
38. Ballast water management convention (BWM convention).
39. What is Dirty fishing?
40. Environmental side effects of the Deep Sea Trawling.
41. Deep sea Trawl: advantages
42. Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)
43. How nitrous fertilizers contributes to the Global Warming?
44. Uncany Valley in the Robotic Science.
45. Greenpeace Report on Bt-Brinjal.
46. Deep sea challenger.
47. Solar Impulse.
48. Flame and Stuxnet.
49. Karspersky Lab.
50. Sector33- an iOS application from NASA.
51. Voager1 and Voager2
52. A*star institute of technology.
53. Google’s X Lab
54. Superblooms/North Atlantic Blooms
55. Ug99
56. N-u star telescope.
57. Coral Bleaching.
58. White Nose Syndrome.
59. RightingBot
60. Human Connectome Project
61. North Atlantic Bloom
62. Foundation B612 (Near earth Objects)
63. Lab on Chip
64. SeaFox-underwater drone.
65. Soyuz Rocket
66. IPv6
67. Aerostat Balloon at Florida Naval Air Station.
68. IRVE-3 by NASA
69. Fire Fly Cubesat satellite by NASA.
70. National Year of Mathematics
71. US Antarctic Blue Ribbon Panel.
72. Spin Organic LED
73. High Resolution Coronal imager (Hi-C) telescope.
74. Cluster beans (Guar) Gum and its industrial applications.
75. AirBus A350
76. Radio Tracking of Animals: 3 types

Modified Embaraer EMB 145I aircraft.

• It is a result of India’s long standing quest to have full functional Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AEWCS).
• Embaraer EMB 145 are the aircrafts provided by Brazil onto which the AEWCS is being fitted.
• AEWCS has been totally designed by DRDO CABS (Center for Airborne System) facilities at Bangalore.
• Its primary missions include airspace management, fighter positioning and intercept control, signals intelligence, and support for maritime, borders, and Exclusive Economic Zones surveillance and security.
• With this, very soon India will be in the group of nations which have their own operational AEWCS.

Accelerated Technology Assessment and Commercialization (ATAC)

Under this program, three organizations have came together

1. Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO),
2. BASIX – a Social Enterprise Group,
3. Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)

to collaborate on long term basis to develop and execute viable and scalable models for commercialization of the technologies developed by DRDO with the specific intent of developing and enhancing livelihoods.

Project Ahaar / BASIX-AAHAR

• Recently they (^FCCI_DRDO) have launched a project called “Aahaar”.
• Aahaar is a hygienic, nutritious and convenient meal that tastes fresh yet has longer shelf life, that is tasty yet quick to serve.
• Roti has a shelf life of 15 days and the two variants of dal have a shelf life of 12 months.

HuGaMMA Report.

Hunger and Malnutrition Report (Refer Economic Survey 2012)

MCA-21

It is e-governance project of Ministry of Corporate affairs through which all corporate related services are being provided on the online platform with a liberal procedures.

London Declaration  on Neglected Tropical Diseases. (NTD)

• The main problem associated with the NTDs is, NTDs are mostly confined to the Asian and African countries out of which most of them are least developed. Health burden because of the NTDs is tremendous.
• WHO has designed a target to eliminate the most of the NTDs by 2020.
• London Declaration of 2012 is a mile stone in this endeavor.
• First time, many big Pharma companies and NGOs have come together and made a commitment to raise the required resources to eradicate at least 10 deadliest diseases by end of the decade.

Sevottam Model.

• This is the initiative of the government towards the Citizen Centric Adminsitration and providing the quality services to the Citizens.
• It includes ISO certification of the service provider, Citizen Charters, E-governance, effective implementation of the RTI to enhance accountability.

OVR SagarNidhi

• Sagar Nidhi a state of art ice-class research vessel can accommodate 30 scientists with endurance of 45 days.
• This is an Ice-class research vessel adopted with Dynamic Positioning System will keep its position stable, which is required for oceanographic research.
• It has a huge deck area for deploying ROV/Manned submersibles/ Tsunami monitoring system

Mobile Based Crime and incident reporting platform (MCIRP)

• MCIRP is funded by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) and is exclusive to NIA for tackling crimes and prevent acts of terrorism.
• This is a step towards the utilization of mobile technology to curb the criminal activities. This has been launched in July 2012.

Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD)

• Developed by National institute of Ocean Technology.
• One of the key research area of this institute is the conversion of the sea water into regular domestic usable water.
• There are variety of desalination process, one of them is a specific process called LTTD. The concept of the variation in the ocean water temperature with an increase in depth is used in the Low Temperature Thermal Desalination (LTTD) to flash evaporate the warm water at low pressure and condense the resulting vapour with the deep sea cold water. Starting from a small laboratory based 5m3/day capacity scale model, the group has successfully commissioned one 100m3/day capacity land based plant at Kavaratti and one 1000m3/day capacity floating barge based desalination plant off the coast of Chennai.

ASTROSAT and its instrumentation.

• ASTROSAT will be a multi-wavelength astronomy mission on an IRS-class satellite in a 650-km, near-equatorial orbit.
• It is currently scheduled to be launched by the Indian launch vehicle PSLV from the Sriharikota launch centre in 2012.
• The expected operating life time of the satellite will be five years. There were five payloads on the launching vehicle.

Bio Toilet

• Designed by DRDO and especially bacteria used.
• It is invisible to the naked eye and originated in the uninhabitable climes of Antarctica. This humble bacteria — known as Psychrophile — holds the potential to solve India’s sanitation problem in the years to come.
• The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is using these bacteria for the bio-digester technology it developed for disposal of human waste in an eco-friendly manner.
• DRDO has already tied up with the Indian Railways for bio-toilets on trains.

The Defense Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR)

• It aims to invent new varieties of vegetables and fruits that can be grown in high altitudes and in cold deserts such as Ladakh.
• Year 2012 is mile stone in their endeavor. DIHAR has entered the Limca Book of Records for making possible the production of 78 varieties of vegetables at the frigid heights of Ladakh.

Reservetrol

Reservetrol is a natural compound found in many of the food articles like red grapes and red wine. Recent studies have proved that it is very helpful to prevent cancer cell growth, the CVDs and diabetes. It has also proved as life span enhancer for some of the organisms.

In Vitro meat.

• It is lab grown meat with the help of tissue.
• A particular part of the animal is being developed in the lab and then it can be used for human consumption.
• This invention holds a key for future food security. Apart from this, during long voyages in the space as well.

Difference between 3G and LTE mobile technology.

• 3G and LTE are the mobile network technology characterized by their speed and method of data transfer. As per UN Telecom Union the data transfer rate for 3G is 2Mbps in stationary and 384 kbps in mobility.
• Similarly for LTE (4G) is 1Gbps and 100Mbps respectively.
• However, the stark difference between two is, 3G uses the switching between data and calling functions whereas LTE/4G is totally based on Data i.e even calling is also performed over data transfer. Therefore mobile handset requirements are totally different for both.

Generation	Definition	Speed	Technologies
1G	Analog	14.4 Kbps	AMPs, WMT,TACS
2G	Digital Cellular	14.4 Kbps	TDMA, GSM, CDMA
2.5G	Packet data on 2G	20-40 Kbps	GPRS
3G	Digital Broadband packet data	Max 3.1 Mbps, 500-700 Kbps (avg)	CDMA EVDO, UMTS, EDGE
3.5G	High Speed Packet Access	Max 14.4 Mbps, 1.3 Mbps (avg)	HSPA
4G	Digital Broadband (All IP)	100-300 Mbps (Max), 3.6 Mbps (Avg)	WiMax, LTE, WiFi

Difference between the CMOS and CCD image sensors.

Both are used in cameras.

CMOS	CCD
Complemenary metal oxide semiconductor	Charge Couple Devic
compact in size, require less power and find application in many compact digital cameras and mobile phones. It captures the image in the form of pixels of different colors. Therefore, pixel size is important for image quality	While capturing the image it converts the data into analog electrical charges therefore the quality of the image is preserved.

Nowadays combination of both the technologies is used in professional cameras.

Tandem Solar Cell and its advantages.

• The basic problem with Solar cells is, they have very less energy conversion efficiency (less than 10%). This is because; solar cell responses to a particular band of the wavelength in the Solar radiation.
• Tandem solar cell uses a different combination of solar cells to capture all radiation within the solar radiation. As a result it gives higher conversion efficiency.
• At present Tandem solar cell has achieved 10.6% of efficiency which has been certified by US dept of National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (I don’t know the year)

Gratzel Solar cell and its characteristics.

• Again the same problem of efficiency has been addressed here.
• This invention has got Millenium Technology Prize in 2010 for achieving highest efficiency ever of above 10%.
• This has been invented by a Chinese scientist MickelGratzel. Speaking of about its characteristics.
• It harvests the solar energy by virtue of color.It is called as die sensitized solar cells.
• The concept was inspired from the wings of the butterfly.

Nuclear Powered Crops.

These are genetically modified crops. The only difference is that the genetic modification is performed by the Particle Accelerometer like CERN. ( I don’t remember the news that came in somewhere in April/June)

Hydroponics and its potential advantages.

• This is modern agricultural practice in which instead of soil, water with all required nutrients is used to grow plants. This can be termed as a clean practice.
• The potential advantages can be find in the urban areas where there is scarcity of land.
• There people can grow fruits and vegetables in the buildings. (There was a big article in one of the YOJANA)

Curiosity rover

Much touted news of recent time. Everybody knows.

TARA’s expedition

TARA was the group of scientist, an NGO, based in France, later absorbed in UN.

This group of scientists voyage across all seas around the globe and study about the planktons.

They have enumerated various types of phytoplankton and studied their role in the marine ecology.

(There was a good coverage in National Geo Magazine in March/April. The question in the prelims on plankton was inspired from this.)

Saturated Fats

Saturated fats are of concern because it responsible for Cardiovascular Diseases in Humans. Therefore, the edible oil should have relatively less content of saturated fat. For example. Ground Nut Oil (18%), Safflor Oil (Safola-10%), Coconut Oil (90%), Butter (60%). So butter is ok but don’t even touch the Coconut oil.

Pebble Reactor.

• It is nuclear reactor of the 4^th generation in which nuclear fuel is embedded in the metal pebbles of tennis ball size.
• And the balls/pebbles are feed in the reactor through funnel shape channel.
• This methodology has many advantages such as easy loading and replacing of the pebbles, easy maintenance, easy removal of the all nuclear material which takes time in the reactors where nuclear rods are uses.
• Presently the test reactors are operational in Germany, China, S Korea.

Generations of the Nuclear Reactors.

Please refer this image.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/GenIVRoadmap.jpg

Trophy Molecules

• It is a big breakthrough in nuclear technology.
• It is a step towards the design of safer 4^th generation nuclear reactors.
• Trophy molecule is referred to Uranium Nitrate which is used as nuclear fuel as it has higher fissionable density and it is more stable.
• The only problem is storage. Previously it required about -250^oC to store it.
• The recent breakthrough by the scientists of Nottingham University has solved the problem.
• They have invented a formulation of chemical such that now Uranium Nitrate can be stored at room temperate.

Leap second and Y2K bug

• Leap second is a one second adjustment that occasionally needs to be done to be synchronous with the mean solar time.
• The recent adjustment has been done on June 30, 2012.  As a result, in many software programs there was an occurrence of the error. The error is called as Year 2000 problem /Y2K Bug in the IT parlance.

Colony Collapse Disorder and its implications.

• In many parts of the Globe it has been observed that the hives of the honey bees are disappears suddenly.
• This is called as Colony Collapse Disorder.
• There is suspicion that the global climate change is responsible for this disorder.  Recently under ministry of the Agriculture, the scientist has proved by field trials that the electromagnetic waves emanating from the mobile towers are responsible for this. It is serious phenomenon because it isdirectly affecting the agricultural production and ultimately the food security in many parts of the world.

GHB’s function in human brain

• GHB -full form is complicated-forget it!
• It is a substance found in Human nervous system, also in beef, wine, and some alcohols and in small quantities in almost all animals.
• The salt of this substance is used as illegal steroid.
• It is almost tasteless and odorless and can be easily mixed in drinks. In many countries it is illegal.
• In many cases of Rapes and sexual assaults in US recently, the extensive use of GHB has been observed.
• Moreover, when consumed, traces of the GHB cannot be found after few hours. Therefore it is difficult to detect as well. In common parlance in US, it is called as Date Rape Drug. This is also on the radar of WADA.

Date rape drug.

Refer GHB note given above.

Foot and Mouth Diseases (FMDs) Vaccine

• One of the most economically devastating diseases in the world for those who raise cows, sheep, pigs, goats, deer and other cloven-hoofed animals is foot and mouth Disease (FMD).This incredibly contagious and fast-spreading disease causes fever, blisters on the feet and mouth (hence the name), loss of appetite, drooling, and lameness.
• There are three problems associated the traditional vaccine on FMD.
• One- There are many strains of FMD and because of this there is no unique vaccine applicable.
• Second- Vaccine itself contains the FMD virus and it cannot be produce everywhere in the world.
• Third- even after giving vaccine confusion occurs that weather it is infection or administered by vaccine.

Markhor

• Markhor is a goat species mainly found in the Central Asia, Palistan, Afghanistan region. It is national animal of Pakistan.
• The number of this goat was significantly low during 1990s. There were around only 2500 as reported by IUCN.
• It has been labeled as Endangered. Recently the number has increased as a result of the efforts of WCS ( The Wildlife Conservation Society). It includes the creation of the Community based conservation committees.
• These committees have worked together to enforce local and global laws which has reduced the illegal hunting. At present there are 53 such committees are working in Pakistan.

Gnathiid isopods and coral bleaching.

• There have been reports of continuous deterioration of the health of coral reefs in the many seas around the world.
• Because of pollution and climate change, appearance of the coral reefs is changing to complete white and it ultimately reducing their photosynthesis capacity.
• This is affecting the ecosystem of the seas. It is called as coral bleaching.
• The scientist of NSF has found out one of the reasons behind this phenomenon in the Caribbean Sea. They have found new parasitic species which they have named as “Gnathid isopods”.
• These are blood sucking species are primarily responsible for the coral bleaching.

Transient Elastography

• It is non-invasive method to test the human organs like liver, kidneys. In this method, vibrations are applied to the body directed toward the target organ.
• The response of the returning vibration gives the details of the organ such as its stiffness. This can be compared with the healthy response.

Adulterated milk: testing problem

• Technically protein is defined as 60% of nitrogen. Accordingly all milk-tests have been evolved to detect the protein content in the given samples.
• However, the protein may be derived from animal or synthetic bases. Example 400 gms water with 600 gms of urea, technically the mixture can be termed as 1 kg of protein.
• Therefore there are some manual testing methods are required to detect the adulterated milk.

NASA’s Kepler Mission

Kepler mission is designed to find the earth like objects in the universe which are revolving around the sun like star. Recently Kepler has confirmed earth like object which it has named Kepler 22b.

Ballast water management convention (BWM convention).

• Ballast water is the water pumped from the sea in the ship for the balancing purpose. Along with the water many local species pumped into the ship .e.g. small fishes, planktons, shrimps, crabs.
• These species are getting introduced to new habitat when such the ballast water is released. In the new habitats such species are evasive and causes the biodiversity loss.
• To address this issue IMO (International Maritime Organization) enacted BMW convention in 2004.
• According to the convention a ship has to release the Ballast water above 200 miles from the maritime boundary of the destination.

What is Dirty fishing?

• Deep sea trawls have been used for mass scale fishing.
• Along with it many unwanted species come in. Such unwanted species are again thrown into sea. Sometimes, the scale such species are very high and thrown after long time after catching.
• This practice causes the biodiversity loss, therefore it is called as “Dirty Fishing”

Environmental side effects of the Deep Sea Trawling.

• Deep sea trawls uses a big net which it dropped into deep sea for fish catching. Heavy steel gates attached to such nets.
• Each gate weighs about 500kgs. When a ship pulls such heavy nets, it rubs the ground of sea which unearths coral reefs and many deep sea plants which are important for ecology of deep sea.
• In this way deep sea fishing is causing environmental hazard.

Deep sea Trawl: advantages

• It was developed by the Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (CIFT)
• As Indian fishing industry is shrimp centered Indian trawls does not need the bottom trawls.
• Bottom trawls unearths the coral reefs and causes harm to environment.
• The trawl developed by CIFT is semi-palagic (confined to upper levels in the sea).
• This trawl is not causing harm to the coral reefs with lower levels of unwanted catch.

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)

• Year 2012 witnessed numerous high intensity CMEs. CMEs are the massive bursts occurring onto the surface of the Sun.
• It causes the Magnetic solar winds ejections in the space. It also reached to the earth causes the disturbances in the magnetosphere. It also affects various communication satellites in the orbits of the earth.

How nitrous fertilizers contributes to the Global Warming?

• Nitrous oxide is one of the major gases contributing to human-induced climate change; it has a lifetime in the atmosphere of more than 100 years.
• In addition, a molecule of nitrous oxide has more than 300 times the heat-trapping effect in the atmosphere as a molecule of carbon dioxide.

Uncany Valley in the Robotic Science.

It is hypothesis which concludes that human acceptance towards the humanoid robots as they becomes more intelligent will drop significantly at particular point when human will become intolerant to the excessive intelligence possess by robots.

Greenpeace Report on Bt-Brinjal.

• This news came on 30 April. The question of prelims could have been inspired by this news. It has concluded that spread of the GE Bt gene would have considerable ecological implications, as well as implications for future crop contamination and farmers’ rights.
• Importantly, the spread of the GE Bt gene could result in the brinjal becoming an aggressive and problematic weed.
• This may affect the non target organisms and butterflies.

Deep sea challenger.

• Is a 7.3 metres (24 ft) deep-diving submersible designed to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on Earth.
• On March 26, 2012 (11 kms in Marina trench) , Canadian film director James Cameron piloted the craft to accomplish this goal, becoming the first person to reach Challenger Deep in a one-man craft.
• Built in Australia by the research and design company Acheron Project Pty Ltd, the Deepsea Challenger includes scientific sampling equipment and high-definition 3-D cameras, and reached the ocean’s deepest point after roughly two hours of descent from the surface.

Solar Impulse.

Solar powered aircraft designed in Switzerland. On 5^th June 2012 it has made a history by completing the first ever successful transcontinental flight from Madrid (Spain) to Rabat (Morocco) through straight of Gibraltar. It was a 19 hrs journey.

Flame and Stuxnet.

These are male ware programs designed for the cyber espionage purposes which are being detected by the Russian Antivirus Software company (Kaspersky lab). It is believed that the two maleware programs had been developed to spy the data of the centrifuges which are operational in the Nuclear research facilities in Iran.

Karspersky Lab.

Refer Flame and Stuxnet.

Sector33- an iOS application from NASA.

This is an Apple application developed by NASA which is intended to teach aircraft flying skills to students including the signaling and other necessary skills.

Voager1 and Voager2

These are the oldest unmanned space crafts launched by NASA under aegis of Voager Mission in 1970. In 2012 these space craft have moved out of our own galaxy (Milky way) and still communicating with the earth.

A*star institute of technology.

It is the leading institute for electronics research situated in Singapore. Inventions such are AMOLED, SPIN LEDs, hardware related researched had emanated from this institute.

Google’s X Lab

• It is a research organization, one of the units run by Google. It is associated with the landmark innovative projects such as Self driving cars technology, augmented reality glasses.
• Recently it was in news because of the new successful neural network project. There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the Internet to learn on its own.

Superblooms/North Atlantic Blooms

• It is also known as North Atlantic Blooms.It is an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first “greening,” then “whitening” the sea as one or more species take the place of others.
• There have been various predictions for its triggering. Previously it was concluded that intense sunlight is causing the burst of the bloom. Recently it has been revealed that the whirls of oceans are responsible for its triggering.
• Springtime blooms of microscopic plants in the ocean absorb enormous quantities of carbon dioxide.
• Therefore the study of the phenomenon has become important to understand global carbon cycle.

Ug99

• The stem, black or cereal rusts are caused by the fungus and are a significant disease affecting cereal crops. Crop species which are affected by the disease include bread wheat, durum wheat, barley and triticale
• An epidemic of stem rust on wheat caused by race Ug99 is currently spreading across Africa, Asia and the Middle East and is causing major concern due to the large numbers of people dependent on wheat for sustenance.
• The strain was named after the country where it was identified (Uganda) and the year of its discovery (1999
• Scientists are working on breeding strains of wheat that are resistant to UG99. However, wheat is grown in a broad range of environments.
• This means that breeding programs would have extensive work

N-u star telescope.

• NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is a space-based X-ray telescope that uses a Wolter telescope to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources, especially for nuclear spectroscopy, and operates in the range of 5 to 80 keV.
• This is the first space-based direct-imaging X-ray telescope at energies beyond those of the Chandra X-ray Observatory and XMM-Newton.
• The launch was successfully conducted in June 2012.

Coral Bleaching.

Refer Gnathid isopod.

White Nose Syndrome.

• White-nose syndrome (WNS) is a poorly understood disease associated with the deaths of at least 5.7 million to 6.7 million North American bats.
• The condition, named for a distinctive fungal growth around the muzzles and on the wings of hibernating bats, was first identified in a cave in Schoharie County, New York, USA, in February 2006.

RightingBot

A lizard-inspired robot, called ‘RightingBot’, replicates the feat and its motion. If I remember correctly it called as “Zoobotics”.

Human Connectome Project

• The research effort called the Human Connectome Project is seeking to explore, define, and map the functional connections of the human brain.
• The Human Connectome Project seeks to map “the complete, point-to-point spatial connectivity of neural pathways in the brain.

North Atlantic Bloom

Refer Superblooms

Foundation B612 (Near earth Objects)

• It is a well known fact that there are asteroids in the space which are threat to life onto the earth. NASA itself has identified such 1500 dangerous asteroids which it termed as NEO (Near Earth Object).
• Therefore, it has become important to keep eye on such dangerous NEOs. Interestingly, the US based NGO has come up with the mission that it is wanted to launch its own satellite for the same purpose.
• The NGO name is Foundation B612.

Lab on Chip

• A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) is a device that integrates one or several laboratory functions on a single chip of only millimeters to a few square centimeters in size.
• LOCs deal with the handling of extremely small fluid volumes down to less than pico liters. The target is to analyze the blood samples so that quick diagnosis can be done. The target cost of the credit card size analyzer is 1 USD.

SeaFox-underwater drone.

These are the underwater drone designed by the US on the similar lines of Predator Drones. It is believed that it is part of the future possible war strategies against Iran.

Soyuz Rocket

Russian made Soyuz Rocket launched in July 2012 from Kazakhstan which carried three men into the space. This was targeted to dock at International Space Station.

IPv6

• This is new Internet Protocol number system which is in the process of the implementation as the present IP numbers available are running short. Present number system is IPv4.
• As the number of computers, smartphones and tablets etc are increasing, IPv6 can cater the need. The IP numbers can go up to 340 million million million with IPv6 which are practically impossible to be consumed.
• please see this comic to understand more: CLICK ME

Aerostat Balloon at Florida Naval Air Station.

It is a white 117-foot-long surveillance balloon called an aerostat by the military of America. It is specially designed for surveillance in Afghanistan region.

IRVE-3 by NASA

• Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) team that is working to develop an inflatable heat shield.
• The technology could be used to protect spacecraft when entering a planet’s atmosphere or returning here to Earth.

Fire Fly Cubesat satellite by NASA.

• It is a small satellite designed by NASA aimed to capture the details of the lightening that happens in deep space.
• The satellite is also called as Firefly which will be launched in the year of 2013. Firefly is designed to help solve the mystery of a phenomenon that’s linked with lightning: terrestrial gamma rays, or TGFs.
• Bursts of gamma rays usually occur far out in space, near black holes and other high-energy cosmic phenomena.
• Scientists were surprised when, in the mid-1990s, they found powerful gamma-ray flashes happening in the skies over Earth.

National Year of Mathematics

India has declared 2012 as “National Year of Mathematics” as tribute to Srinivasa Ramanujan, an enigmatic maths maverick who despite dying aged just 32 had already achieved enough to still be spoken of alongside Isaac Newton, Euclid and Archemedes.

US Antarctic Blue Ribbon Panel.

• The Antarctica Blue Ribbon Panel encourages us to take a hard look at how we support Antarctic science.
• Recently it has made numerous recommendations to the US government that will augment the research activities in Antactica.

Spin Organic LED

• The new LED, known as spin-polarized organic LED or spin OLED, stores information in the electron’s spin and the electrical charges.
• Apart from it as it is organic based it is eco friendly. In future it will reduce the burden of e-waste.

High Resolution Coronal imager (Hi-C) telescope.

• This is the telescope launched by NASA in June 2012 which will take sharper image of the Sun’s corona. In recent times, the CMEs have been intensified and scientists are looking forward the detail images of the sun’s surface for analysis.
• The telescope focused on a large active region on the sun with some images revealing the dynamic structure of the solar atmosphere in fine detail. These images were taken in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength.
• This higher energy wavelength of light is optimal for viewing the hot solar corona.

Cluster beans (Guar) Gum and its industrial applications.

• Recently, the commodity trading of the Guar is being aborted. (July-Aug2012). India is largest producer of the Guar and exported as well.
• The powdered Guar is used to create Gels which are useful in Ice-cream making. Another one, the oil of the Cluster bean is useful for bearing lubrication.
• It has special characteristics which automatically heals the corrosion in the bearings.

AirBus A350

This is the aircraft designed by the Airbus which has carbon fiber wings. The first test flight was conducted in April 2012 and soon in coming years it will commercially launched.

Radio Tracking of Animals: 3 types

(This one contributed by Shobhit Awasthi)

VHF radio tracking (Very High Frequency Tracking )	Usually Radio transmitter are placed in the collar of animal and then scientists collect information about their health. Conventional VHF tracking system consists of Transmiter, Receiving system and Antenna.
Satellite Tracking	Satellite tracking is similar to VHF radio tracking, but instead of a radio signal being sent to a radio receiver, a signal is sent to a satellite. Scientists track their animal from computer. It is a lot easier than VHF because scientists don’t have to be near the animal. Satellite Tracking is far less accurate than either conventional VHF radio tracking or GPS radio-tracking. But Statellite Tracking is more useful over Antarctica and Arctic region since there were no flights.
GPS Tracking	GPS tracking is the newest technology, The radio receiver picks up signals from special satellites. The receiver has a computer that then calculates the location and movement of the animal. The data gathered by the receiver is then sent to another set of satellites. The second set of satellites then sends the data to the scientists.