24 AUGUST 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

1. INDIRA POINT

The Swarnim Vijay Varsh Victory Flame was taken to Indira Point, the southernmost tip of the country on August 22, 2021, as part of its voyage to the Nicobar Group of Islands. 2021 is being celebrated as Swarnim Vijay Varsh to mark the 50th year of India’s historic victory in the 1971 war.

About:

Indira Point, southernmost point of India's territory, is a village in the Nicobar district at Great Nicobar Island of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India. It is located in the Great Nicobar tehsil.
The point was formerly known as Pygmalion Point and Parsons Point.
This village was named Indira Point after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited the local light house on 19 February 1984. The official renaming ceremony happened on 10 October 1985.
Galathea National Park and Lighthouse are the major attractions here.

Source : PIB

2 EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT BUILDINGS

Thermocol could be the material of the future for construction of earthquake-resistant buildings, with thermal insulation and could also save energy required to develop construction materials.

About:

Researchers at IIT Roorkee have found that thermocol or Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) is used as a composite material in core of reinforced concrete sandwich, could resist earthquake forces on up to four-storey buildings.
They have attributed this earthquake resistance capability to the fact that the EPS layer is sandwiched between two layers of concrete having reinforcement in the form of welded wire mesh.
The researchers said that the force being applied on a building during an earthquake arises due to the inertia effect and hence depends on the mass of the building. Thermocol resists earthquakes by reducing the mass of the building.
In this technique, the EPS core and the wire mesh reinforcement is produced in a factory. The building skeleton is first erected from the factory-made core and reinforcement panels, and then concrete is sprayed on the skeleton core.
This technique does not require any shuttering and hence can be constructed very fast.

Source : PIB

3. WOMEN IN ARMED FORCES

A Selection Board of the Indian Army cleared the way for the promotion of five women officers to Colonel (Time Scale) rank, post completion of 26 years of reckonable service.

About:

This is the first time that women officers serving with the Corps of Signals, Corps of Electronic and Mechanical Engineers (EME) and the Corps of Engineers have been approved to the rank of Colonel.
Previously, promotion to the rank of Colonel was only applicable for women officers in the Army Medical Corps (AMC), Judge Advocate General (JAG) and the Army Education Corps (AEC).
The widening of promotion avenues to more branches of the Indian Army is a sign of increasing career opportunities for women officers.
Combined with the decision to grant permanent commission to women officers from a majority of branches of the Indian Army, this step defines the Indian Army’s approach towards a gender-neutral Army.

Source : PIB

4. INS CHILKA

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) visited the prestigious ab-initio sailors training establishment of Indian Navy, INS Chilka on 23 Aug 2021.

About:

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (SCOD) is a Department Related Standing Committee (DRSC) of selected members of parliament for legislative oversight of the defence policies and decision making of the Ministry of Defence (MOD).
INS Chilka is the only ab-initio training establishment of the Indian Navy, which trains more than 6600 raw recruits annually to make them able bodied sailors.
INS Chilka is located in the coastal state of Odisha in the vicinity of Chilka Lake.

Source : PIB

5. SREE NARAYANA GURU

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has paid tributes to Sree Narayana Guru on his Jayanti.

About:

Narayana Guru (1855 – 1928) was a philosopher, spiritual leader and social reformer in India.
He was born into a family that belonged to the Ezhava caste.
He led a reform movement against the injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala in order to promote spiritual enlightenment and social equality.
Shri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (also known as SNDP Yogam) is an Indian spiritual organization that was formally founded by Dr. Padmanabhan Palpu in 1903, with the guidance of Shri Narayana Guru. The main aim of SNDP Yogam was to spiritually uplift the people of the Ezhava/Tiyyar communities.
Vaikom Satyagraha (1924–25) was a social protest in erstwhile Travancore against untouchability and caste discrimination in Hindu society of Kerala. Sree Narayana Guru involved himself with the Vaikom Satyagraha and extended much co-operation.
He published 45 works in Malayalam, Sanskrit and Tamil languages which include Atmopadesa Śatakam, a hundred-verse spiritual poem and Daiva Dasakam, a universal prayer in ten verses.

Source : PIB

6. AHMAD MASSOUD

Who is Ahmad Massoud, the man building an anti-Taliban resistance?

About:

Ahmad Massoud is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was one of the main leaders of Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s and was assassinated on September 9, 2001, at the behest of the Taliban and al-Qaeda
Ahmad Massoud has been leading the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan and is gathering mujahideen fighters in the Panjshir Valley who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban.

Source : Indian Express

7. YUKTDHARA

Union Minister Jitendra Singh said that the new portal under Bhuvan “Yuktdhara”, which has been released recently, will facilitate planning of new MGNREGA assets using Remote Sensing and GIS based information.

About:

The “Yuktdhara” Geospatial Planning Portal will serve as a repository of assets (Geotags) created under various national rural development programmes i.e. MGNREGA, Integrated Watershed Management Programme, Per Drop More Crop and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana etc., along with field photographs.
This portal integrates wide variety of thematic layers, multi-temporal high resolution earth observation data with analysis tools.
Planners will analyse previous assets under various schemes and facilitates identification of new works using online tools. Plans prepared will be evaluated by appropriate authorities under State Departments.
Thus, Yuktdhara based plans will be prepared by grassroot functionary and verified by appropriate authorities for relevance and resource allocation. This would ensure quality of plan and enable a long term monitoring of the assets created over the years.

Source : PIB

8. SMOG TOWER

Ahead of its infamous smog season, Delhi got a ‘smog tower’, a technological aid to help combat air pollution.

Components of smog tower

The structure is 24 m high, about as much as an 8-storey building — an 18-metre concrete tower, topped by a 6-metre-high canopy. At its base are 40 fans, 10 on each side.
Each fan can discharge 25 cubic metres per second of air, adding up to 1,000 cubic metres per second for the tower as a whole. Inside the tower in two layers are 5,000 filters. The filters and fans have been imported from the United States.

Important Info :

How it works?

The tower uses a ‘downdraft air cleaning system’.
Polluted air is sucked in at a height of 24 m, and filtered air is released at the bottom of the tower, at a height of about 10 m from the ground.
When the fans at the bottom of the tower operate, the negative pressure created sucks in air from the top. The ‘macro’ layer in the filter traps particles of 10 microns and larger, while the ‘micro’ layer filters smaller particles of around 0.3 microns.
The downdraft method is different from the system used in China, where a 60-metre smog tower in Xian city uses an ‘updraft’ system — air is sucked in from near the ground, and is propelled upwards by heating and convection. Filtered air is released at the top of the tower.

Source : Indian Express

9. NEW INCOME TAX PORTAL

After over two-and-a-half months of continuing glitches in the revamped e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department, and its unavailability over the last two days, Finance Ministry officials held two meetings with Infosys MD & CEO Salil Parekh.

About:

The Income Tax Department in May announced the launch of its new e-filing portal http://www.incometax.gov.in on June 7.
It said the “new taxpayer-friendly portal” would be integrated with immediate processing of Income Tax Returns to issue quick refunds to taxpayers, with all interactions and uploads or pending actions to be displayed on a single dashboard.
The portal was to also have free ITR preparation software available with interactive questions to help taxpayers for some categories, along with a new call centre for prompt response to queries.
Infosys was in 2019 awarded the contract to develop the new system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.

Source : Indian Express

10. KRIVAK CLASS STEALTH FRIGATES

The first of two additional Krivak class stealth frigates being built by Russia is expected to be delivered to India in the middle of 2023, Alexey Rakhmanov, chief executive officer of United Shipbuilding Corporation, said.

About:

In October 2016, India and Russia signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) for four Krivak or Talwar class stealth frigates — two to be procured directly from Russia and two to be built by Goa Shipyard Ltd. (GSL) — after which a $1 billion deal was signed for the direct purchase.
The keel for the first ship to be built at GSL was laid in January and for the second ship in June this year. Keel laying is a major milestone in shipbuilding symbolises the formal commencement of the construction process.
The Navy currently operates six Krivak class frigates procured in two different batches.

Source : The Hindu

24 AUGUST 2021 DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS | UPSC CDS CAPF AFCAT NDA SSB

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