General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - October 2018

Oct 2018

Jun 04, 2022

Indian-origin Engineer's UK Team Creates E-skin that Can Feel 'Pain'

A team of researchers led by an Indian-origin engineer in the UK has created an electronic skin capable of feeling "pain" and according to them it could help create a new generation of smart robots with human-like sensitivity. The discovery marks a real step forward in work towards creating large-scale neuromorphic printed e-skin capable of responding appropriately to stimuli. The development of the electronic skin is described as the latest breakthrough in flexible, stretchable printed surfaces from the University of Glasgow's Bendable Electronics and Sensing Technologies (BEST) Group.
Scientists were working for decades to build artificial skin with touch sensitivity. One widely-explored method is spreading an array of contact or pressure sensors across the electronic skin's surface to allow it detect when it comes into contact with an object.

Instagram's New Feature to Help Find Missing Children

Instagram launched an 'alert' feature to help find missing children. The photo-sharing app has partnered with various organisations globally to set up the feature. The feature will display details about missing children on users' Instagram feed if they are in a specific area where an active search is taking place. The alerts on the Meta-owned platform will include details such as a child's photo, description, and location of the abduction. Instagram will show users alerts based on information like their IP address and location services (if it is turned on).
In addition to the photo and video sharing platform, Amber Alerts are available on Facebook since 2015. Instagram has started rolling out the alerts feature, and it will be available in 25 countries in the coming weeks, it said, adding that it is working to bring them to more countries.

Jun 03, 2022

The First Liquid Mirror Telescope in the Country and the Largest in Asia - Commissioned Atop Deva...

India commissioned a unique liquid-mirror telescope atop a mountain in the Himalayan region that will keep a watch on the skies to identify transient or variable objects such as space debris, asteroids, supernovae and gravitational lenses. It is the country's first and Asia's largest liquid-mirror telescope. The telescope, built by astronomers from India, Belgium and Canada, is located at an altitude of 2,450 metres at the Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital district, Uttarakhand.
The telescope will help in surveying the sky, making it possible to observe several galaxies and other astronomical sources just by staring at the strip of sky that passes overhead.

ISRO Chairman Inaugurates New Spacecraft Manufacturing Facility

Dr. S. Somanath, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), inaugurated ANANTH Technologies' spacecraft manufacturing unit at Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) Aerospace Park. The new state-of-the-art spacecraft manufacturing facility can conduct assembly integration and testing of four large spacecraft simultaneously.
This is a first of its kind facility in India, adding that since its establishment in 1992, Ananth Technologies has contributed to the manufacturing of 89 satellites and 69 launch vehicles built/launched by ISRO.

Jun 01, 2022

Super Hygroscopic Polymer Film Can Harvest Water from Arid Air

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin developed a low-cost polymer film made of renewable biomass and hygroscopic salt that can extract atmospheric water in arid environments; these materials cost a mere $2 per kilogram, and a single kilogram can produce more than 6 liters of water per day in areas with less than 15% relative humidity and 13 liters in areas with up to 30% relative humidity.
This new work is about practical solutions that people can use to get water in the hottest, driest places on Earth. This could allow millions of people without consistent access to drinking water to have simple, water generating devices at home that they can easily operate.

May 31, 2022

US-built 'Frontier' Now World's Fastest Supercomputer

US-built supercomputer titled 'Frontier' dethroned Japan's 'Fugaku' (developed by the Riken Institute and Fujitsu), as the world's fastest machine with 1.1 exaflops of performance on the 59th TOP500 list published by an international conference of computer experts. The Frontier supercomputer at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the first to achieve an unprecedented level of computing performance known as exascale, a threshold of a quintillion calculations per second. Frontier features a theoretical peak performance of 2 exaflops, or two quintillion calculations per second, making it 10 times more powerful than ORNL's Summit system.
More than 100 members of a public-private team worked around the clock, from sourcing millions of components to ensuring deliveries of system parts on deadline to carefully installing and testing 74 HPE Cray EX supercomputer cabinets, which include more than 9,400 AMD-powered nodes and 90 miles of networking cables.

May 29, 2022

Two Indian Satellites to be Part of BRICS 'Virtual Constellation'

India and China are a step closer to working together in space after a joint commission on space cooperation for the BRICS bloc was established at a meeting of the top space agencies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Two orbiting Indian satellites Resourcesat-2 and 2A will be part of the "virtual constellation of remote sensing satellites", a data sharing mechanism among the BRICS countries.
The BRICS remote sensing constellation will be made up of six existing satellites contributed by the space agencies of BRICS countries including the CBERS-4, jointly developed by Brazil and China, Russia's Kanopus-V-type and China's Gaofen-6 and Ziyuan III 02.

Share on

TCY Analytics (View Subscription Plans)

Subscribe to GK Updates

I want to receive

GK Tags

August GK, July GK, June GK, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ENVIRONMENT, BUSINESS AND ECONOMY, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, SPORTS, NATIONAL AFFAIRS, DEFENCE, PERSONS IN NEWS, DAYS AND EVENTS, AWARDS AND HONOURS, GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND SCHEMES, GENDER/ HEALTH/ EDUCATION, ART AND CULTURE, BOOKS AND AUTHORS, TOURISM AND HOTEL INDUSTRY AWARENESS, ART AND CULTURE, LAW AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

Start Discussion

On any topic

Take Tests

Compiled from GK updates

Login

Sign Up

Forgot Password

Download TCY App

Unlock All Services And Enjoy The Premium Benefits

US$ 10

US$ 13

US$ 15

US$ 17

US$ 19

US$ 20

US$ 21

US$ 22

US$ 23

US$ 24

US$ 25

US$ 26