Current affairs- May 29, 2016
Twitter Seva
Micro-blogging platform Twitter is now considering the roll-out of the Twitter Seva service in other countries such as the U.K. and the UAE. This follows the success of the service, developed for the India market to help delivery of e-governance services.
Details:
- Twitter Seva helps process a large volume of tweets and assigns them to the relevant authority for real-time resolution.
- It is currently being used by Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Railways, besides the Bengaluru Police.
The product had been designed and developed in the country, and the processes that Twitter had built into it are ‘absolutely’ India exclusive.
- The objective is to inject this solution as a real-time service delivery and feedback-gathering mechanism...With the help of the Twitter dashboard, queries and complaints can be easily monitored and quick actions can be taken.
- Through the service, the Railway Ministry processes about 5,500 tweets per day
- Similarly, Ministry of External Affairs processes over 6,000 tweets in a month, while the number is over 40,000 per month for Commerce Ministry and over 3,000 in a month for Bengaluru Police.
Clone Trains
Indian
Railways plans to launch ‘clone trains’ on high-demand routes that will be run
within an hour of a scheduled train’s departure to accommodate those on its
waiting list.
Details:
- The idea behind such real-time demand-driven trains is to ensure that they reach their destination around the same time they had originally envisaged. Moreover, they would be informed about their berths in the clone train soon after the reservation charts for the original scheduled train are firmed up four hours before departure.
- These trains could originate from Howrah, Mumbai CST, Chennai, Secunderabad and New Delhi, where the Railways has big coaching yards and rolling stock to put together a clone train in quick time.
- In order to run viable clone trains, the Indian Railways will do away with the waiting list limit on the identified routes — currently, the Railways disables bookings after a waiting list for a train touches 400 in sleeper class, 300 in 3AC or chair car, 30 in first class and 100 in second class.
- The move will help Railways to lock in more potential revenue rather than refund wait listed passengers automatically.
Vikalp
- ‘Vikalp’ to provide seats on alternate trains within twelve hours of the original train.
- However, that’s not enough to tap the huge demand on many popular routes as all trains tend to be booked fully during rush season.
India, Australia sign pact to boost horticulture research
India and
Australia have signed a pact to boost horticultural research in a bid to
develop and deploy modern tools of plant biotechnology to improve crop
productivity with a funding commitment of up to Australian $ 6 million over a
period of three years.
- The pact was signed between the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a public sector enterprise, and Horticulture Innovation Australia (Hort Innovation) for launching a joint funding call to support research and development (R&D) organisations and other eligible entities to undertake novel and cutting-edge strategic translational research in horticulture at affordable costs.
- Considering the gap between demand and supply for crops, it is of paramount importance to stimulate an enabling environment for R&D in both the regions.
- Through the signing of this memorandum of understanding, we along with Hort Innovation aim to create a supportive ‘innovation ecosystem’ for researchers to undertake high-level research and promote horticulture techniques.
Committee report on New Education Policy
A
committee headed by the former Cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramanian for the
evolution of the soon-to-be-announced national education policy has submitted
its report to the Human Resource Development Ministry.
- The Committee has examined a large body of outcome documents, recommendations and suggestions received and also had several meetings with various stakeholders and undertook field visits to educational institutions.
The
HRD Ministry had undertaken a consultation process for framing a New Education
Policy (NEP) and this process included online, grassroots and national level
thematic deliberations on 33 themes.
Important
recommendations:
- ‘No detention policy’ be reviewed and exams be held from Class VI. The Right To Education law prescribes the no detention policy for students till Class VIII.
However, in
case a child does not pass in the first instance, he or she should be given two
more chances to appear in the exam.
- The committee has made specific recommendations from infrastructure to quality of education, which is an issue of concern, from primary to higher levels
- Formation of an Education cadre service which would improve the standards of administration of the education.
- The panel is learnt to have emphasised imbibing values and confidence in the students.
- The panel emphasised on skill development and aspect related to vocational training
- Raise the standard of education which are found wanting in many respects from primary to higher level.
- Foreign institutions be allowed to come to India to improve the quality of higher education
- Focus on “remedial coaching” and “hand-holding” to ensure the learning outcome of children does not suffer.
- The regulatory mechanism comprising UGC, AICTE for technical education be made more equal to contemporary challenges.
- Committee Head : Mr. Subramanian, a former Cabinet Secretary,
Members:
1. Former
Chief Secretary of Delhi government Shailaja Chandra,
2. Former Home
Secretary of Delhi government Sevaram Sharma,
3. Former Chief
Secretary of Gujarat Sudhir Mankad and
4. Former NCERT
Director J. S. Rajput.
DNA Origami
- DNA Origami involves making shapes out of DNA in two and three dimensions. This can however only be done at the nanoscale. Since then, it has gone beyond being a niche hobby art form.
- It has found a number of applications — from drug delivery systems to uses as circuitry in plasmonic devices.
- While it usually has to be built like Lego blocks, researchers now claim to have developed a new algorithm that allows the programmed design of a wide range of DNA structures.
- The development holds important implications for numerous fields, including nanoparticle synthesis and delivery, photonics and memory storage, among others.
Facts
- The Election Commission has scrapped the poll notification for the two seats, citing reports of large-scale distribution of money and gifts by candidates and parties.
Those are- Aravakurichi
and Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu
- Pakistan seems to have failed to seal the $700 million deal for the purchase of eight F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. following a row between the two countries over their financing
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has ruled out any change in timing or the location of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, shunning a call by doctors and scientists to shift the event over the Zika virus. But the WHO said moving the Olympics would not have a major impact on the spread of Zika.
Banking
- India’s Forex reserves went down to $360.90 billion as on May 20, RBI Said.
Appointments
New CM of
Puducherry- Narayanaswamy
Party- Congress
Awards
Springer Theses Award
An Indian-American scientist Arnab
De has received the prestigious Springer
Theses Award in recognition for his outstanding research in
which he developed transgenic mice to study a critical tumor-suppressor called
A20.
Details:
- The thesis prize is awarded by Springer, a leading global publisher of renowned scientific journals and books, to recognize outstanding PhD research.
- Internationally top-ranked research institutes select their best thesis annually for publication in the book series: "Springer Theses: Recognising Outstanding PhD research".
- Additionally, winners also get a cash prize of 500 euros. The research work was highlighted by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Reports.
