Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Science & Technology) – August 27, 2020

The world’s largest aircraft took off over the Mojave Desert in California, the first flight for the carbon-composite plane built by Stratolaunch Systems Corp, started by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, as the company enters the lucrative private space market.

The white airplane called Roc, which has a wingspan the length of an American football field and is powered by six engines on a twin fuselage, took to the air shortly before 7 a.m. Pacific time (1400 GMT) and stayed aloft for more than two hours before landing safely back at the Mojave Air and Space Port as a crowd of hundreds of people cheered.

Scientists in Israel unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels, calling it a first and a “major medical breakthrough” that advances possibilities for transplants.

• The heart marked “the first time anyone has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers,” said Tel Aviv University’s Tal Dvir, who led the project.
• People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels.

Cyber security experts have found zero-day vulnerability in Windows, allowing attackers to gain higher privileges on the target machine and dodging protection mechanisms in the Google Chrome browser.

• The newly discovered exploit was used in the malicious WizardOpium operation.
• A zero day exploit is a cyber attack that occurs on the same day a weakness is discovered in software.
• At that point, it is exploited before a fix becomes available from its creator.
• Zero-day vulnerabilities are basically bugs in software, which leaves the doors open for cyber criminals to break into the system.

The Maharashtra Cyber Department has issued advisory warning users of ASUS, a reputed computer manufacturer that came under attack.

• The Cyber police officers said the attack, named Operation Shadow Hammer, affected the ASUS Live Update Utility, which automatically downloads updates for its systems and applications.
• Officials said the attack created back doors in the computers using a MAC address.

Black holes are not radiant and will not be visible through any telescope.

• However, as first suggested by Albert Einstein, if by chance, a tiny primordial black hole eclipses a distant star, light rays of the star will bend around the black hole due to gravitational effect, resulting in the star appearing to be brighter than it originally is for a short while. Called `gravitational lensing’, this rare phenomena can occur only when the star, the black hole and the observer on the Earth are aligned in a straight line.
• When the black hole is in alignment with a distant star, due to gravitational attraction, light rays are bent inwards like a lens, making the star appear brighter.

Transition to Triumph book is the history of the Indian navy covers the period from 1965 to 1975.

• Indian Naval history (Transition to Triumph) also records that “by themselves the ships of the Eastern Fleet were too few and too slow to enforce contraband control and help would be needed from Vikrant’s aircraft.
• But the extraordinary extent to which Vikrant’s aircraft actually succeeded in assisting ships in contraband control and apprehending merchant ships, over and above their air strikes against East Pakistan, came to be fully realised only after the war.”

INS Vikrant – Initially laid down as HMS Hercules for the British Navy, but construction was put on hold. India purchased the incomplete carrier in 1957, and construction was completed in 1961 and inducted as first aircraft carrier of India.

It was decommissioned in 1997, scrapped in 2014.

*NOTE: INS Vikrant (2013) – First domestically built aircraft carrier expected to join service by 2020.

INS Viraat – A Centaur-class aircraft carrier commissioned in 1959 as the British Navy’s HMS Hermes and later sold to India in 1987 and it was decommissioned in 2017.

INS Vikramaditya – Originally built as Baku for Soviet Navy and it was entered into Indian Navy in 2013.

Northrop Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS) provides real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) over vast ocean and coastal regions.

• Based on the proven Global Hawk UAS, Triton’s autonomous operations are supported by land-based command and control mission planners and sensor operators.
• Triton will be equipped with a unique and robust mission sensor suite that provides 360-degree coverage on all sensors, providing unprecedented maritime domain awareness for the U.S. Navy.
• Triton also incorporates a reinforced airframe, for increased internal payload, and wing for hail, bird strike, and gust load protection, along with de-icing and lightning protection systems.
• These features allow the aircraft to descend and ascend through harsh maritime weather environments to gain a closer view of ships and other targets at sea when needed.
• Built for the U.S. Navy, Triton will support a wide range of missions including maritime ISR patrol, signals intelligence, search and rescue and communications relay.
• The aircraft can fly over 24 hours at a time, at altitudes higher than 10 miles, with an operational range of 8,200 nautical miles.

Secretary Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), launched the website and mobile application [Learn to Protect, Secure and Maximize Your Innovation] on Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) today in New Delhi.

• The website and app has been developed by Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM)-DPIIT in collaboration with Qualcomm and National Law University (NLU), Delhi.
• The modules of this e-learning platform [L2Pro India IP e-learning Platform and the L2Pro India Mobile App] will aid and enable youth, innovators, entrepreneurs and small and medium industries (SMEs) in understanding IPRs for their ownership and protection, integrate IP into business models and obtain value for their R&D efforts.
• The L2Pro has been successfully implemented in Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and France, benefiting immensely from close collaboration with respective IP organizations and public research institutions.
• The learning app has been customized for India in order to ensure that innovation which is fundamental to startups are protected, managed and commercialised.

The Mission, launched in 2015, envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high performance computing facilities.

• The mission would be implemented jointly by Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) through two organizations the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
• The Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities.