New Scientific Developments and Inventions

Humans have always been greatly affected with the developments in new technology. It is a prevailing fact that new information technology not only benefits programmers, database managers, hardware engineers and network analysts but it also benefits the common user. Also, the new developments in science is never stopped and it continuously evolves as per the need and the betterment of the human being.

New Scientific Developments and Inventions

New Definition of Kilogram

• The 26th General Conference on Weights & Measures (GCWM), which is comprised of 60 member countries, voted for the redefinition of Kilogram. It will be adopted on May 2019, which is World Metrology Day.
• Now it will be affixed to the Planck constant. It is defined by taking the numerical value of the planck’s constant to be 6.62607015 × 10^–34 kg/s.
• The existing definition of the kg is over 130 years old and defined as the mass of a hunk of platinum-iridium alloy that’s been housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, France since 1889. It’s called the International Prototype Kilogram (a.k.a. Big K, or Le Grand K), and it has many copies around the world.
• One important reason for the change is that Big K is not constant. It has lost around 50 micrograms (about the mass of an eyelash) since it was created. But, frustratingly, when Big K loses mass, it’s still exactly one kilogram, per the current definition.

World’s First CRISPR Gene Edited Children

• Lulu and Nana are twin girls - the world’s first CRISPR gene edited children - created by Chinese clinician Dr He Jiankui.
• This is the first public face of genome editing or, as it is sometimes called, gene editing: a technology capable of creating “superbabies” with optimised DNA, free from disease and tweaked for perfection.
• The precision offered by tools such as CRISPR-CAS9 is revolutionising diagnostics, drug discovery and the treatment of single-gene diseases.
• CRISPR-CAS9, often shortened to CRISPR, is the best-known gene-editing technology. It is a chunk of bacterial genetic code that behaves like a sat-nav, homing in on a specific location in a genome; Cas9 is a cutting enzyme that works like molecular scissors, snipping out portions of DNA. Cellular repair mechanisms then kick in, which can disable, mutate or fix the gene.

HADES

• It is a new tool developed by scientists from USA to stop hacking. Named the “High-fidelity Adaptive Deception & Emulation System” (HADES),
• This tool rather than blocking an intruder, deploys an alternative reality — feeding hacker with false data.

‘Walopi’ and ‘Chemvist’

• ‘Walopi’ (Warning Loco Pilots) and ‘Chemvist’ (Check My Vigilance State) are two special software developed by researchers from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur to help solve a problem of Indian Railways – sleepy drivers.
• “Chemvist” uses Electrooculography (EOG) signals, which essentially give the voltage difference between the cornea and retina of the eye.
• “Walopi”, on the other hand, checks the on-board level of alertness. It uses a camera with face-detection technology, which assesses if the driver is falling asleep.

Transgenic Rice

• Researchers at Lucknow-based CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute have developed transgenic rice by “Modulating the expression of a arsenic metabolism-related genes”, inserting a novel fungal gene, which results in reduced arsenic accumulation in rice grain.
• Researchers have cloned Arsenic methyltransferase (WaarsM) gene from a soil fungus, Westerdykellaaurantiaca, and inserted the same into the rice genome with the help of Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a soil bacterium which has natural ability to alter the plant’s genetic makeup.

Poly-Oxime

• It is a gel prepared by researchers at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (InStem), Bengaluru from a nucleophilic polymer.
• The gel does not act like a physical barrier, but it acts like a catalyst to deactivate organophosphate.
• It can be applied on skin and can break down toxic chemicals in pesticides, insecticides and fungicides including the most hazardous and widely used organo-phosphorous compounds.
• The gel deactivates these chemicals, preventing them from going deep into the skin and organs like the brain and the lungs.

Green Crackers

• CSIR-CECRI has developed flower pots by using “eco-friendly materials” that can potentially reduce particulate matter by 40%.
• CSIR-NEERI is testing the efficacy of bijli crackers by “eliminating the use of ash as desiccants”.
• Scientists have also developed potential sound-emitting functional prototypes that do not emit sulphur dioxide, and are testing a prototype of flower pots substituting barium nitrate with an eco-friendly version.
• Scientists have given these crackers names: Safe Water Releaser (SWAS), Safe Thermite Cracker (STAR) and Safe Minimal Aluminium (SAFAL). It has the unique property of releasing water vapour and/or air as dust suppressant and diluent for gaseous emissions and matching performance in sound with conventional crackers.
• Note: There is a need for approval from Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), which is the nodal agency for safety requirements in manufacture, storage, transport and use of all types of explosives and petroleum.

Optical Tweezers

• Optical Tweezers use light to manipulate microscopic objects as small as a single atom. The radiation pressure from a focused laser beam is able to trap small particles. In the biological sciences, these instruments have been used to apply forces and to measure displacements of objects.
• Optical tweezers have been used to study not only the intracellular organelles, single cell molecules, and motor proteins, but also cell functions such as cell division, motility and elasticity.
• Arthur Ashkin won half of the prize for his invention of optical tweezers. Sharing the other half of the prize are Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland, who developed techniques for generating high-intensity laser pulses that can stimulate a target on femtosecond (10−15-second) timescales.

Bhabha Kavach

• The Bhabha Atomic Reseach Centre (BARC) has developed a next-generation bulletproof jacket for the Indian armed forces, which is not only cheaper but also much lighter.
• The jacket weighs just 6.6 kg in comparison to the 17-kg jackets in use, and has passed over 30 tests carried out by certified agencies.
• The jacket is made using extremely hard boron carbide ceramics that is hot-pressed with carbon nano-tubes and composite polymer.

New Akash Missiles

• The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) developed Akash Missile’s upgraded version will include the seeker technology and possess a 360-degree coverage, and will be of compact configuration.
• It is made by Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) and can target aircraft up to 30 km away, at altitudes up to 18,000 m and can engage multiple targets at a time in all-weather conditions.

MPATGM

• Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) conducted the first successful test firing of a new indigenously designed and developed Man Portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile (MPATGM).
• Fitted with a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead, the MPATGM has a top attack capability and has a maximum engagement range of about 2.5 kilometers.
• It is capable of being fired from shoulder and can be used during day and night. It has minimum lateral center and gravity offset.

Cyclone-30

• It is India’s largest Cyclotron - a type of particle accelerator that produces radioisotopes, for medical applications.
• It has been installed in Kolkata at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC). This project is under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).

SAAW

• The Smart Anti Airfield Weapon (SAAW) guided bomb is being developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO).
• The SAAW is a long-range precision-guided anti-airfield weapon, designed to be capable of engaging ground targets with high precision out to a range of 100 km.
• The SAAW glide bomb is guided by an onboard navigation system.

Dataset Search

• Google has launched a new search engine called Dataset Search for the scientific community that will help them make sense of millions of datasets present online.
• This new Dataset Search is launched, so that scientists, data journalists, data geeks, or anyone else can find the data required for their work and their stories, or simply to satisfy their intellectual curiosity.

Hydrail: Hydrogen-Powered Train

• Germany has rolled out the world's first hydrogen-powered train built by French company Alstom.
• Hydrogen trains are equipped with fuel cells that produce electricity by combining hydrogen with oxygen, a process that leaves steam and water as the only emissions.
• This makes the cells a promising energy source that produces zero emissions and very little noise. Excess energy is stored in ion-lithium batteries on board the train.
• The locomotives are also eco-friendly. The only disadvantage is that they are more expensive than the fossil fuel-based trains, but are cheaper to run.

Superionic Water Ice

• Scientists have created a new form of water—called superionic ice—that acts like a cross between a solid and a liquid.
• The substance, which consists of a fluid of hydrogen ions running through a lattice of oxygen, was formed by compressing water between two diamonds and then zapping it with a laser. That caused pressures to spike to more than a million times those of Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures to rise to thousands of degrees, conditions scientists had predicted may lead to the formation of superionic ice.
• This kind of water doesn’t exist naturally on Earth, but it may be present in the mantles of icy planets like Neptune and Uranus.

Excitonium

• Theorized 50 years ago, scientists have finally discovered a new form of matter called excitonium. This condensate is made up of excitons.
• Excitons are a type of boson formed in a semiconductor. When an electron on the edge of a semiconductor's valence band gets excited, it can cross the band gap into the conduction band, which is empty. When it does, it leaves a "hole" in the valence band, which itself becomes a quasiparticle with a positive charge. The positively-charged hole and the negatively-charged electron are attracted to each other and together form a kind of boson known as an exciton.
• Excitonium can be used as a super conductor and superfluid in real-world applications.

Photons Entangled to Make New Form of Light

• Scientists have developed a way to make photons of light interact with each other, which could have applications in quantum computing.
• Photons, the elementary particles that make up light, are known to be fast, weightless and to not interact with each other.
• So, groups of photons can be made to interact with each other, slow down and gain mass.

ICE-VII

• Scientists detected the first ever samples of naturally occurring ICE-VII on Earth inside Diamonds.
• The common ice is called Ice-I, which has hexagonal crystal arrangement that causes it to have lower density than water. Compressing ice can change the shape of the crystals, TURNING ICE-I into ICE-II (rhombus-shaped crystals), ICE-III (tetragonal crystals), and so on.
• ICE-VII has cubic crystal arrangement with 1.5 times denser than ICE-I.
• It requires both low temperature and high pressure exceeding 30,000 atmospheres (3 gigapascals) for ICE-VII to form. The only place such pressure can be achieved is deep in the Earth’s mantle, but the temperature is very high for ice to form there.
• Diamonds often pick up molecules during their formation deep in the Earth. The trapped water inside can become super-rare ice-VII in such high pressure.

Summit Supercomputer

• Summit or OLCF-4 is a supercomputer developed by IBM for use at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA which as of November 2018 is the fastest supercomputer in the world, capable of 200 petaflops.
• Sierra (USA) from IBM is second and Sunway TaihuLight is third according to TOP500 rankings.
• Pratiyush(39) and Mihir(66) from India also present in the top list.

Twelve New Moons of Jupiter

• In 2018, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced the discovery of 10 new moons orbiting Jupiter. Along with two found through the same research project but announced in June 2017, this brings the roster of Jupiter’s known natural satellites to 79.
• One of these new moons has an odd orbit, which may give astronomers crucial insights to understanding how the moons of Jupiter came to be.

Hydrogen Wall

• In August, 2018 nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft has confirmed evidences of the mysterious 'Hydrogen Wall' that surrounds all the planets and objects in our solar system.
• This mysterious bubble marks the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space and provides a marker for the edge of the sun's influence.
• According to the latest findings, the barrier is actually a vast amount of trapped hydrogen atoms caught up in the solar wind of our star.
• These produce waves of ultraviolet light in a very distinctive way, which have been detected by the sensors aboard the New Horizons interplanetary space probe.

Wheat Genome Fully Sequenced

• The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) has sequenced the bread wheat genome, the world's most widely cultivated crop.
• Their work paves the way for the production of new wheat varieties that are better adapted to climate change, with higher yields, enhanced nutritional quality and improved sustainability.
• In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is the genetic material of an organism. It consists of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses).
• The genome includes both the genes (the coding regions) and the noncoding DNA, as well as mitochondrial DNA and chloroplast DNA. The study of the genome is called genomics.

M3 of Chandrayaan-1 gives evidence of Water Ice on Moon

• A team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) found the first direct evidence for the surface exposed water ice in permanently shaded regions (PSRs) of the Moon.
• The team analyzed data acquired by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) onboard India's Chandrayaan-1 mission launched in October 2008.

Higgs Boson’s Elusive Decay

• Six years after discovering the Higgs boson in 2012, which was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics, physicists have observed how the particle decays into fundamental particles called bottom quarks (b quarks) at CERN.
• The finding provides major support for the Standard Model, which has many implications for how we understand the world and the universe.
• But, although the Standard Model predicts what happens to the Higgs boson when it dies, until now, researchers hadn’t observed the particle decay into bottom quarks.

Shakti: India's First Microprocessor

• Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) have designed and booted up India's first microprocessor, Shakti, which could be used in mobile computing and other devices.
• Shakti microprocessor can be used in low-power wireless systems and networking systems besides reducing reliance on imported microprocessors in communication and defence sectors.

Galactic Panspermia

• Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics recently released a study claiming that panspermia, an astronomical theory that life is exchanged between planets within solar systems, can be expanded to support exchanging life within the Milky Way galaxy.
• Despite the findings in the study, the researchers said the panspermia phenomenon is still difficult to prove.

‘Make in India’ Kamikaze Drones

• Kamikaze drone is a remote controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle jointly developed by the International Vortex UAS and NSG.
• These drones have been added to the inventory of Black Cat commandos.
• Built indigenously by an Indian company Vortex UAS as a set of two drones; the first drone carries explosives to break the window while the second drone carries a detonator which could explode and neutralize the terrorists. This suicide drone self-explodes and it is customizable to perform various tasks.

Quick Reaction Surface to Air (QRSAM) Missile

• India’s state-owned Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) successfully flight-tested the indigenously designed Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile (QRSAM).
• The QRSAM missile uses solid fuel propellant and it is a highly mobile air defence system which can destroy multiple targets at a distance of 25 to 30 km.
• It is a canister based all-weather and all-terrain missile having electronic counter measures against all known aircraft jammers.
• It can also deceive enemy radars making it difficult to be detected, and is capable of destroying aerial targets, tanks, bunkers and short range missiles.

Kordylewski Dust Clouds (KDC)

• A recent National Geographic Article published on November 2018 gave reference to a fact that Earth has two extra, hidden “moons”.
• The ‘dusty moons’ National Geographic alludes to are in fact the Kordylewski Dust Clouds.
• A group of Hungarian astronomers recently confirmed the presence of these clouds, located in two different directions at about the same distance Moon is from Earth.
• Kordylewski Clouds are located at two Lagrange Points- places in space where the gravitational fields of the Sun, Moon and Earth tug at each other such that an object at that point will be in an Earth-Synchronous Orbit around the Sun.
• The Kordylewski clouds are located at the points labelled as L4 and L5 respectively.

Tybar-TCV

• The World Health Organization (WHO) announced the prequalification of the first conjugate vaccine for typhoid for children over 6 months of age in endemic countries. The existing typhoid vaccines are not approved for children younger than 2 years of age.
• Immunization with the typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) or Typbar-TCV is safe, well tolerated and will have a significant impact on disease incidence in endemic areas that introduce it.
• Prequalified by WHO means that the Tybar-TCV vaccine met quality, safety and efficacy standards, and is eligible for procurement by various UN agencies. Prequalification is a crucial next step to enable vaccines to become available in low-income countries, where the need is the greatest.
• Typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) are innovative products that have longer-lasting immunity than older vaccines, require fewer doses, and can be given to young children through routine childhood immunization programs.

Leptospirosis

• Leptospirosis is an infectious disease caused by pathogenic organisms belonging to the genus Leptospira, that are transmitted directly or indirectly from animals to humans. Leptospirosis is a major direct zoonosis.Human-to-human transmission occurs only very rarely.
• Leptospires are bacteria which can be either pathogenic (i.e. having the potential to cause disease in animals and humans) or saprophytic (i.e. free living and generally considered not to cause disease).
• Pathogenic leptospires are maintained in nature in the renal tubules and genital tracts of certain animals.
• Leptospirosis occurs worldwide, but it most common in tropical and subtropical areas with high rainfall. The disease is found mainly wherever humans come into contact with the urine of infected animals or a urinepolluted environment.

IMPPAT

• A team led by the Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc), Chennai, has developed an online data base named “Indian Medicinal Plants, Phytochemistry and Therapeutics (IMPPAT)”.
• IMPPAT, is a database of 1742 Indian Medicinal Plants, 9596 Phytochemicals, And 1124 Therapeutic uses spanning 27074 plant-phytochemical associations and 11514 plant-therapeutic associations.
• Within IMPPAT, the researchers have also filtered a subset of 960 potential druggable phytochemicals, of which majority have no significant similarity to existing FDA approved drugs, and thus, rendering them as good candidates for prospective drugs.

BepiColombo Mission

• BepiColombo is Europe’s first mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored terrestrial planet in our Solar System.
• It is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, and consists of two scientific orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
• The mission is named after the Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo (1920–84).

Osiris-Rex

• Nasa’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft has achieved orbit around asteroid Bennu.
• Its mission is to survey the small asteroid and then collect a sample of the surface material on 2020 to send back to Earth for analysis in 2023.
• Bennu, is a small, spheroidal near-Earth asteroid. Its surface is composed of carbonaceous compounds whose composition reflects the earliest stages of the solar system’s development, while the Earth and the other planets were forming.
• Osiris-Rex stands for origins, spectral interpretation, resource identification, security, regolith explorer.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)

• The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be NASA’s first-ever mission that will deflect a near-Earth asteroid, and help test the systems that will allow mankind to protect the planet from potential cosmic body impacts in the future.
• The target for DART is an asteroid named Didymos that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024.
• The asteroid is called Didymos (Greek for “twin”) -because it is an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about 780 metres in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 160 metres in size.

Voyager 2

• The Voyager 2 spacecraft is now in interstellar space, a region beyond the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun – where the only other human-made object is its twin, Voyager 1.
• Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets.
• Voyager 2 is the second artificial object to leave the Solar System after Voyager 1.

Pinaka Mark-II Rocket

• It is an advanced version of the indigenously developed Pinaka rockets.
• It is jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Army.
• Pinaka-I has already been inducted into the Army. Its quick reaction time and high rate of fire gives an edge to the Army during low-intensity warlike situation.
• Pinaka Mark-II rocket with a range of more than 60-km is capable of acting as a force-multiplier and was developed to supplement artillery guns and is currently passing through a phase of testing.

BRAHMOS-II

• BrahMos-II is a hypersonic cruise missile which is being developed under joint development of India and Russia, which have together formed BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited.
• It is the second of the BrahMos series of cruise missiles with a scramjet engine in place of a ramjet. The BrahMos-II is expected to have a range of 450 kilometres and a speed above Mach 4.

Sach Gaurav: India's First Cloned Assamese
Buffalo

• The Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes (CIRB) has cloned an Assamese buffalo male calf for the first time.

• The calf was born to a Murrah buffalo. It was also the first to be born in the field, 100 kms from the cloning laboratory at Hi Tech Sach Dairy Farm in Hisar.
• It was the second cloned male produced by ICAR-CIRB after Hisar-Gaurav, born December 11, 2015.
• The ovaries of Murrah buffaloes were used as a source of recipient oocytes. Small tissue of Assamese buffalo was airlifted from Veterinary College, Khannapara, Guwhati, 2000 km away from the cloning laboratory to culture establish the donor cells.
• Indian Council of Agricultural Research-CIRB is a central institute and it has a mandate to conserve superior animals of all buffalo breeds.

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

• This Mission has been launched by NASA to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life.
• It has a transit method of detecting exoplanets and looks for dips in the visible light of stars, and requires that planets cross in front of stars along our line of sight to them.

CHESS Mission

• CHESS (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) is a mission of NASA to study matter between stars.
• The space between distant stars is not empty. It contains drifts of vast clouds of neutral atoms and molecules, as well as charged plasma particles called the interstellar medium, which may, over millions of years, evolve into new stars and even planets.
• The mission will study the interaction of the stellar wind with the surrounding interstellar medium to study the excitation of atoms and molecules in the interface region.

Oumuamua

• It is considered as the 1^st object from interstellar space passing through the Solar System.
• It is considered as a mildly active comet, and not an asteroid, as previously thought.

InSight Mission

• NASA’s InSight Mission, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago.
• It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the "inner space" of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.

ICESat-2

• The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, is NASA's most technologically advanced ice-monitoring spacecraft to date.
• It is capable of measuring changes in ice thickness, forest growth and cloud height down to 0.02 inches (0.4 millimeters) every year.
• ICESat-2 offers scientists an unprecedented view of Earth's changing systems, especially at its poles.
• This information will sharpen environmental-prediction models and help scientists better forecast rising sea levels and climate shifts because of melting ice.

GOLD & ICON Mission

• NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) and Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission will provide unprecedented global-scale imaging of the temperature and composition at the dynamic boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.While GOLD has been launched, ICON is in the process of launch.
• GOLD and ICON will team up to explore the ionosphere, a boundary area between Earth and the space where particles have been cooked into a sea of electrically-charged electrons and ions by the Sun’s radiation.
• These layers of near-Earth space are increasingly becoming a part of human domain as it is home to radio signals used to guide airplanes, ships and Global Positioning System satellites.

Green Fuel-HAN

• The Indian space agency, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), has been developing an environment-friendly propellant to power Indian satellites and spacecrafts.
• This ‘green fuel’ is meant to replace the usual hydrazine fuel mixture, which is known to be toxic and containing carcinogenic chemicals.
• Scientists from ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Center (LPSC) Thiruvananthapuram have been experimenting with this new propellant blend that’s based on hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN).

Hayabusa2 Deploys Landers at Ryugu

• The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has successfully landed two landers on the Ryugu asteroid through its Hayabusa2 probe.
• The landers are intended to study the composition of Ryugu, a primitive carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, with the ultimate purpose of gathering more information about the development of the inner planets of the solar system.

Stalagmite

• It is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings.
• Scientists have recently calculated a new- Meghalayan Age i.e. last 4,200 years and in which we are living.

O-SMART

• This Umbrella scheme encompasses a total of 16 sub-projects addressing ocean development activities such as Services, Technology, Resources, Observations and Science.
• Implementation of this scheme will help in addressing issues relating to Sustainable Development Goal-14 and also assist Blue Economy.

Biospeleology

• It is the branch of biology dedicated to the scientific study of cave organisms and ecosystems.
• Indian Biospeleologist Shabuddin Shaik has to his credit the discovery of 40 new cave fauna species, including five new genera.
• One micro-crustacean discovered by him even has his name — Andhracoides shabuddin.

Prabhani Shakti

• India’s first biofortified sorghum (jowar), with significantly higher iron and zinc than regular sorghum, was formally launched on 05th July, 2018.
• It was developed by the International Resarch Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and it was released for cultivation by VNMKV, Maharashtra.
• The improved variety ICSR 14001, released as ‘Parbhani Shakti’, offers a cost-effective and sustainable solution to address micronutrient deficiency.

SENSAGRI: SENsor based Smart AGRIculture

• It is a Drone based agricultural technology research project formulated by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) through the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). Its objective is to develop indigenous prototype for drone based crop and soil health monitoring system using hyperspectral remote sensing (HRS) sensors.

Chang'e-4 Mission

• The un-crewed Chang'e-4 probe of China landed in the South Pole of the Moon.
• Previous Moon missions have landed on the Earth-facing side, but this is the first time any craft has landed successfully on the unexplored and rugged far side.
• It is carrying instruments to analyse the unexplored region's geology, as well to conduct biological experiments.
• The far side is not visible from the Earth due to "tidal locking". It is the name given to the situation when an object’s orbital period matches its rotational period.

Copernicus Programme

• It is an Earth observation programme headed by the European Commission (EC) in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).
• India will get free, full and open access to the data from this programme’s family of six satellites and will provide free, full and open access to the data from ISRO’s land, ocean and atmospheric series of civilian satellites.

Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics (GAIA)

• Recently, the GAIA observatory took a galactic census of nearly 1.7 billion stars in a 3D map which offers the best-ever look at the Milky Way (in color) and promises to unleash hundreds of scientific discoveries about our galactic home and beyond.
• GAIA is a space observatory developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) specially designed for Astrometry. It measures the position and distances of stars with unprecedented precision.

Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH-India)

• It is the telescope located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Hanle in Ladakh which is the country’s first robotic telescope and the first one designed to observe dynamic or transient events in the universe.

Hope Mars Mission

• This will be the first mission to Mars by any Arab country (planned by UAE).
• Its main objective is to study the Martian Atmosphere. It will have an Imager, an Infrared Spectrometer and an Ultraviolet Spectrometer.

Gravitational Lensing

• Recently, Hubble Telescope spots massive lensing galaxy cluster named SDSS J0928+2031, a huge group of galaxies in the constellation of Leo, which is so massive that its strong gravity bends light like a giant lens.
• When light passes through massive objects, such as a huge group of galaxies, its path is changed slightly. This effect, called gravitational lensing, it is only visible in rare cases.

Parker Solar Probe

• NASA on 12th August, 2018 launched the Parker Solar Probe (1st mission to the Sun) which will explore the Sun’s atmosphere and its outermost atmosphere, the corona.
• The spacecraft is named after 91-year old solar physicist Eugene Parker, 91, who was the first scientist to describe solar wind in 1958.
• This mission will accumulate a gamut of data about Suns structure and magnetic and electric fields, as well as the energetic particles cruising near and away from it.

Oort Cloud

• It lies far beyond Pluto and the most distant edges of the Kuiper Belt. While the planets of our solar system orbit in a flat plane, it is believed to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the Sun, planets, and Kuiper Belt Objects.

Interstitium

• It is the 80th organ and it is also the biggest organ in human body as it is a network of interconnected, fluid-filled spaces all over the body.
• It lies beneath the top layer of the skin, but is also present in tissue layers lining gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles.
• The organs interstitial spaces are organized by collagen mesh which acts like a shock absorber and also a fluid highway (carries lymph).
• This organ is important in cancer metastasis, and paves way for new ways to detect and treat carcinoma.

"Horizon 2020"

• It is a research program for which India and the European Union (EU) have joined hands and it aims at developing a next generation vaccine for Influenza.

Gaming Disorder

• This is defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities.

Rabies: Most Lethal Communicable Disease

• According to the 13^th National Health Profile 2018, released by Central Bureau of Health Intelligence (CBHI), Rabies was the most lethal communicable disease that claimed highest figure of deaths.

ROTAVAC Typbar-TCV

• ROTAVAC vaccines for rotavirus (included in National Immunisation Programme) and Typbar-TCV for typhoid have been prequalified by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
• This paves the way for supplies of the vaccine to UNICEF, Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and Gavi supported countries.
• Bharat Biotech, a Hyderabad based firm is the manufacturer of these vaccines.

Innovate in India (i3)

• This programme has been launched by the Union Ministry of Science & Technology in collaboration with the World Bank under National Biopharma Mission. This programme aims to create an enabling ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship and indigenous manufacturing in the Biopharmaceutical sector.