20 SEPTEMBER 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

1. HUMBOLDTS

Last week, Mumbai’s Byculla Zoo announced the addition of two new Humboldt penguin chicks this year. The two join seven adult Humboldt penguins at Byculla Zoo — Popeye, Flipper, Bubble, and the new parents.

About:

Humboldt penguins are a medium-sized species among at least 17 species.
The largest, the Emperor penguin, stands at over 4 ft tall while the Little penguin has a maximum height of 1 ft. Humboldt penguins have an average height of just over 2 ft.
Penguins are divided into six genera (see table). The Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus humboldti) belongs to a genus that is commonly known as the ‘banded’ group. Humboldt penguins are endemic to the Pacific coasts of Chile and Peru.
They are so named because their habitat is located near the Humboldt Current, a large oceanic upwelling characterised by cold waters.
Humboldt penguins have large, bare skin patches around their eyes, an adaptation to help keep them cool.
The Humboldt is one of the most popular zoo penguins due to its ability to withstand warmer climates.

Source : Indian Express

2. GORDIAN KNOT

A couple of hours before Capt Amarinder Singh tendered his resignation as chief minister of Punjab, former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar made a tweet: “Kudos to Shri Rahul Gandhi for adopting Alexandrian solution to this Punjabi version of Gordian knot".

About:

Often used as a metaphor, a ‘Gordian knot’ refers to a very complex problem, which is apparently nearly impossible to resolve.
The origin of the phrase is traced to the ancient Greece, 333 BC, and is ascribed to Midas, the son of King Gordius of Phrygia, a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia — the present day Asian Turkey — and to the south of Black Sea.
Phrygia was centred on the Sangarios River.

Source : Indian Express

3. DELHI-MUMBAI EXPRESSWAY

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Friday concluded the two-day review of the work progress on the 1380-km eight-lane Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, which will reduce travel time between certain cities to 12-12.5 hours from 24 hours.

About:

Cost: Rs 98,000 crore.
Length: 1,380 km.
Completion schedule: The first phase from Delhi-Jaipur (Dausa)-Lalsot and Vadodara-Ankleshwar is expected to be open to traffic by March 2022. The expressway is expected to be completed by March 2023.
The project was kickstarted in 2018 with the foundation stone being laid on March 9, 2019.
The expressway will feature a spur to Jewar Airport and Jawaharlal Nehru Port to Mumbai through a spur in Mumbai.
The expressway will improve connectivity to economic hubs like Jaipur, Kishangarh, Ajmer, Kota, Chittorgarh, Udaipur, Bhopal, Ujjain, Indore, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat.
The eight-lane access-controlled expressway can be expanded to a 12-lane expressway depending on the volume of traffic.
The expressway is the first in Asia and only the second in the world to feature animal overpasses to facilitate unrestricted movement of wildlife.

Source : Indian Express

4. LOW-C BRICKS

Researchers have developed a technology to produce energy-efficient walling materials using construction and demolition waste and alkali-activated binders.

About:

Called as low-C bricks, they do not require high-temperature firing and avoid the use of high-energy material such as Portland cement. The technology will also solve the disposal problems associated with construction and demolition waste mitigation.
Scientists of the Indian Institute of Science developed a technology for producing alkali-activated bricks/blocks by utilizing fly ash and furnace slag.
The researchers developed low embodied carbon bricks from construction and demolition waste through an alkali activation process using fly ash and ground slag and characterizing the thermal, structural, and durability characteristics of Low-C bricks and their masonry. Conventionally, building envelopes consist of masonry walls built with burnt clay bricks, concrete blocks, hollow clay blocks, fly ash bricks and lightweight blocks.

Source : All India Radio

5. ADAPTIVE REFRESH RATE

The recent iPhone 13 Pro range is offering a 120Hz high-refresh-rate display which Apple is calling ProMotion.

Refresh Rate:

Whether it is a TV, a PC monitor, or a smartphone, all devices constantly change the pixels they display to project the appearance of motion.
Simply put, refresh rate means how many times the image on a screen can be updated or “refreshed” every second – much faster than your eye can detect.
A 60Hz TV can refresh the screen 60 times per second, while a 120Hz on the iPhone 13 Pro can refresh the screen 120 times per second. The higher the refresh rate, the more times per second the screen is refreshing its pixels.

Adaptive Refresh Rate:

When a display has an adaptive refresh rate the refresh rate changes from 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the content being played — some Samsung phones offer between 48Hz and 120Hz.
So, a static website will be played at a 10Hz refresh rate and a game at a 120Hz refresh rate. This means there is little chance of under delivering or over delivering refresh rate.

Source : Indian Express

6. PLANET NINE

In the continued search for the hypothetical ninth planet in our Solar System, Michael Brown, the CalTech astronomer who led the demotion of Pluto to a dwarf planet in 2006, has co-written a new study that claims to have narrowed the region the potential new planet could be located.

About:

The study proposes "Planet Nine" exists beyond Neptune and is six times the mass of Earth, according to reports.
The scientists first proposed Pluto had a replacement in a controversial study that came out in 2016 that said the clustering of asteroids and comets and other objects that orbit the sun in the Kuiper Belt suggests the existence of a large planet.
The new study also includes a "treasure map" of the planet’s likely orbit that the scientists said lasts around 7,400 Earth years and is closer to the Sun than the 2016 study found.
A closer orbit to the Sun would make the planet brighter and easier to see.
Planet Nine would probably be cold gas giant like Neptune, the farthest known planet in a Solar System from the Sun. Neptune has a nonsolid surface made up mostly of hydrogen, helium, and methane, according to NASA.

Source : Indian Express

7. SEA CUCUMBERS

In a swift operation, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) team at Mandapam, Tamil Nadu seized two tonnes of sea cucumber, a banned marine species.

About:

Sea cucumbers are in high demand in China and Southeast Asia.
Sea cucumber in India is treated as an endangered species listed under schedule I of Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.
It is primarily smuggled from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka in fishing vessels from Ramanathapuram and Tuticorin districts.

Source : PIB

8. CHARANJIT SINGH CHANNI

The faction-ridden Punjab Congress delivered a huge surprise when it chose Charanjit Singh Channi, 58, the minister of technical educational and industrial training, to be the next chief minister of Punjab.

About:

Channi will also be the first Dalit CM of a state where this post had become the monopoly of Jat Sikhs. Channi is not only a Dalit but also a Sikh.
At 32 percent, Punjab has one of the highest populations of Dalits in the country. Some researchers say this number is likely to go up to 38 percent once the results of the latest census are out.
Although Jat Sikhs constitute only 25 per cent of the population, they have traditionally monopolised political power in the state.
With a Jat Sikh as the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief in Navjot Singh Sidhu and Dalit as the CM, the Congress party has made a long overdue reform, and has sought to distribute power more equitably.

Source : Indian Express

9. NUCLEAR-POWERED SUBMARINES

The US and UK are set to provide Australia with the technology to deploy nuclear-powered submarines, as part of the first initiative under the new trilateral security partnership AUKUS.

About:

A nuclear-powered submarine, as the name suggests, is powered by a nuclear reactor but it is not a nuclear weapon.
Every nuclear-powered submarine draws from its own miniature nuclear reactor onboard, which is typically fuelled with uranium.
For such a reactor to work, uranium has to be ‘enriched’ to contain 50 per cent of a key isotope, uranium-235.
Natural uranium consists of approximately 99.3 per cent of the isotope uranium-238 and only 0.7 per cent of uranium-235. The process of enrichment can be carried out through gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuges or laser isotope separation.
Nuclear-powered submarines do not have the same limitations that face conventional submarines on weapons storage, speed and endurance. They can stay completely submerged for many months, limiting the opportunities for detection by adversaries.
Only six nations own and operate these submarines currently: China, France, India, Russia, the UK and the US.

Source : The Print

10. INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suspended North Korea until the end of 2022 after it failed to send a team to the Tokyo Games.

About:

The suspension means the country will miss out on the Beijing Winter Games.
North Korea did not send a delegation to the Tokyo Games, saying it wanted to protect its athletes from Covid-19.
IOC President Thomas Bach said the IOC reserves the right to make decisions on any individual North Korean athletes who qualify for Beijing 2022 and to reconsider the duration of the country’s suspension.
At Rio Olympics 2016, North Korea had won two Golds, three Silvers and two Bronzes.

Source : All India Radio

20 SEPTEMBER 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

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19 SEPTEMBER 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

21 SEPTEMBER 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

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