Other Technological developments

Both statements are correct.
ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is a large-scale scientific experiment that intends to prove the viability of fusion as an energy source.
ITER is currently under construction in the south of France. Seven partners—China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States—have pooled their financial and scientific resources to build this fusion reactor.

ITER will not produce electricity, but it will resolve critical scientific and technical issues in order to take fusion to the point where industrial applications can be designed. By producing 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of power injected in the systems that heat the plasma—a “gain factor” of 10—ITER will open the way to the next step: a demonstration fusion power plant.
A fusion reactor would produce virtually no CO2 or atmospheric pollutants, and its radioactive waste products would mostly be very short-lived compared to those produced by conventional nuclear fission reactors.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has recently announced that it has started operations in the first of four reactors at the Barakah nuclear power station – the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world.
Nuclear fission has begun in one of four reactors at the Barakah plant, which uses South Korean technology. The plant was due to open in 2017 but start-up was delayed for safety requirements.

Statement 1 is incorrect. IIT Kanpur has developed seed balls named BEEG (Bio -compost Enriched Eco-friendly Globule) which will help people and farmers in plantation with safety in pandemic. It has been developed in collaboration with Agnys Waste Management Private Limited (start-up at IIT Kanpur).
Statement 2 is correct. Seed Balls are comprised of variety of seeds, compost, and clay. There is no need for digging pits for planting saplings. These seed balls germinate on coming in contact with water.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have granted an Emergency Use Authorization for SalivaDirect, a saliva-based test for COVID-19.
Statement 1 is incorrect. It has been developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health in collaboration with the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Statement 2 is correct. It is an RT-PCR based test. Collecting and testing saliva samples involves three steps: collecting saliva without preservative buffers, proteinase K treatment and heat inactivation, and duplex RT-qPCR virus detection.

Both statements are correct.

LIDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to the Earth. These light pulses—combined with other data recorded by the airborne system — generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the Earth and its surface characteristics.

When an airborne laser is pointed at a targeted area on the ground, the beam of light is reflected by the surface it encounters. A sensor records this reflected light to measure a range.

Statement 1 is correct. A Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan is an
imaging test that helps reveal how the tissues and organs in the body are functioning.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Positron emission tomography (PET) uses small amounts of
radioactive materials called radiotracers or radiopharmaceuticals, a special camera and a
computer to evaluate organ and tissue functions. By identifying changes at the cellular
level, PET may detect the early onset of disease before other imaging tests can.
# Scientists in the Netherlands have discovered a potential new organ in the human throat,
they have identified a set of salivary glands deep in the upper part of the throat and have
named them “tubarial salivary glands”.
The new organ was discovered while scientists were studying prostate cancer cells using
PSMA PET-CT technology — a combination of CT scans and positron emission tomography
(PET) — which is good in detecting salivary gland tissues.

Massachusetts startup Alaka’i has designed a flying car – Skai – that the company touts as the “first air mobility vehicle powered by hydrogen fuel cells”.
• The hydrogen fuel cells give the five-passenger Skai a maximum range of 400 miles (640 km) with a flight time of up to four hours.
• Like a drone, the Skai takes off and lands vertically. It’s one of many similar electric flying crafts in production, including prototypes from Boeing and Airbus that made successful test flights this year, according to Vertical Flight Society, an industry group.
• Most are powered by batteries, which can add a lot of weight. The Skai instead uses very light hydrogen fuel cells to run its rotors, giving it a range of 644 km and the capacity to carry 454 kilograms in people or freight, the company says
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A novel electronic tattoo made from stretchy, lightweight material could make heart health monitoring easier and more accurate than existing electrocardiograph machines.
• This is the latest advance in the team’s electronic tattoo technology, a graphene-based wearable device that can be placed on the skin to measure a variety of body responses, from electrical to biomechanical signals.
• The latest e-tattoo developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin in the U.S. is so light and stretchable that it can be placed over the heart for extended periods with little or no discomfort.
• It also measures cardiac health in two ways, taking electrocardiograph and seismo-cardiograph readings simultaneously.
• The electrocardiogram (ECG) method records the rates of electrical activity produced each time the heart beats.
• Seismocardiography (SCG) is a measurement technique using chest vibrations associated with heartbeats.
• Powered remotely by a smartphone, the e-tattoo is the first ultrathin and stretchable technology to measure both ECG and SCG.
• e-tattoo is made of a piezoelectric polymer called polyvinylidene fluoride, capable of generating its own electric charge in response to mechanical stress.
• The device also includes 3D digital image correlation technology that is used to map chest vibrations in order to identify the best location on the chest to place the e-tattoo.

Taking a cue from European languages, several of which have the same (Roman letter–based) script, Srinivasa Chakravathy’s team at IIT Madras has, over the last decade, developed a unified script for nine Indian languages, named the Bharati script.
• The team has now gone a step further since developing the script: it has developed a method for reading documents in Bharati script using a multi-lingual optical character recognition (OCR) scheme.
• The team has also created a finger-spelling method that can be used to generate a sign language for hearing-impaired persons.
• In collaboration with TCS Mumbai, the researchers have found a way for persons with hearing disability to generate signatures using this finger-spelling technique.

•The scripts that have been integrated include Devnagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. English and Urdu have not been integrated so far.
• In general, optical character recognition schemes involve first separating (or segmenting) the document into text and non-text.
• The text is then segmented into paragraphs, sentences words and letters.
• Each letter has to be recognised as a character in some recognisable format such as ASCII or Unicode.
• The letter has various components such as the basic consonant, consonant modifiers, vowels etc

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.

The South Central Railway (SCR) announced the introduction of a new technology – Head On Generation (HOG) system – in Telangana Express where power from the engine would be supplied to the entire train for lighting and air-conditioning.

 The trains like these have two power cars known as End On Generators (EOG) on either end to provide electricity to all the coaches.

 These power cars produce electricity by the diesel generators with each using 40 litres of fuel per hour for a non-AC coach and 65-70 litres of diesel per hour per coach in case of an AC coach.

 The new HOG technology obviates the need for using diesel as power is tapped from the overhead electric traction lines through a pantograph to the train engine and the same is distributed to the trailing coaches.

 Earlier, the power supply from the overhead electric traction was being used to only run the engine and haul the coaches.

 “The new system does not require any diesel and hence, will reduce air and noise pollution, besides providing uninterrupted illumination in all the coaches.

 On an average, it will reduce carbon emission by 700 metric tonnes per year per train”.

The microbot technology involves spraying of thousands of nano dots carrying registration information on vehicles.

 These nano-size metal particles carry information like the registration number and chassis number of the vehicle.

 The dots are sprayed at many different spots on the vehicle, so that even if the vehicle is stolen and sold for parts, it can be traced.

 The microdots are adhesive and will become permanent fixtures/affixation which cannot be removed without damaging the asset, which is the vehicle itself.

Introducing its 2020 refrigerator line-up, Samsung unveiled its Curd Maestro refrigerator, which is the world’s first that prepares curd.

 Samsung says Curd Maestro enables curd preparation in five to six hours — five hours for soft curd, six hours for thick curd.

 One needs to boil and cool the milk and mix the curd culture manually while Curd Maestro does the most crucial part of the job — fermentation.

 It will not only ferment the curd but will store it too.

 According to the company, National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) has tested and recommended the process of curd making in Samsung’s Curd Maestro.

 Samsung says Curd Maestro makes curd with the same consistency each time and eliminates all the hassle of curd-making in different weather conditions.

Proton, neutron, and electron are tiny particles that make up atoms.

• The neutrino is also a tiny elementary particle, but it is not part of the atom.

Such particles are also found to exist in nature.

• Neutrino has a very tiny mass and no charge. It interacts very weakly with other

matter particles.

• So weakly that every second trillions of neutrinos fall on us and pass through our

bodies unnoticed.

• Neutrinos come from the sun (solar neutrinos) and other stars, cosmic rays that

come from beyond the solar system, and from the Big Bang from which our Universe

originated.

• They can also be produced in the lab.

Indian Oil (IOCL) has come up with an innovative solution to this problem by introducing a special winter-grade diesel with a low pour-point of -33 degree Celsius, which does not lose its fluidity function even in extreme winter conditions.

This winter-grade diesel also meets BIS specification of BS-VI grade and was successfully produced and certified for the first time by the Panipat Refinery.

West Bengal government’s rice research centre has come up with a new

variety of rice called Muktoshri that can be grown in arsenic prone areas. It was

developed jointly by the Rice Research Station at Chinsurah, coming under West Bengal’s

Agriculture Department and the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow.