General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

Jul 17, 2021

2 Million Indian Accounts Banned during May-June: WhatsApp

WhatsApp banned 2 million Indian accounts to prevent harmful behaviour and spam on its platform between May 15 and June 15, according to the company's first monthly transparency report released.
The company identifies an Indian account via +91 phone number.
Stating that more than 95% of such bans are due to the unauthorised use of automated or bulk messaging, the company added that these numbers have increased significantly since 2019 because its systems have increased in sophistication, and hence are detecting more accounts even as it believes there are more attempts to send bulk or automated messages.

Jul 15, 2021

India sent most number of requests seeking account info: Twitter report

India has surpassed the United States as the country that sent the most number of legal requests seeking information about accounts from Twitter, the social media company's latest transparency report covering the period from July to December 2020 said.
The number of legal information requests sent from India accounted for 25% of the global volume and 15% of the global accounts specified, up from 21% and 25% respectively in the January-June, 2020 period.

Elon Musk Congratulates ISRO on 3rd test of Vikas Engine for Gaganyaan

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has congratulated the Indian Space Research Organisation for successfully conducting the third long-duration hot test of the Vikas Engine, as part of the Gaganyaan programme. His one-word tweet also has an Indian flag.
The engine was fired for a duration of 240 seconds at the ISRO facility in Tamil Nadu's Mahendragiri. "The performance of the engine met the test objectives and the engine parameters were closely matching with the predictions during the entire duration of the test," ISRO said.
This was the final testing of one of the three stages of the launch vehicle which will be used in the mission to carry humans to space.
Gaganyaan is ISRO's major project of sending humans to space, to a low earth orbit, onboard an Indian vehicle. The first unmanned mission is planned for December 2021 and the second one is scheduled in 2022-23.

Jul 14, 2021

China Harvests 1st Batch of Seeds that Travelled Around Moon

China has harvested the first batch of Space rice from seeds that went to a 23-day lunar voyage with China's Chang'e-5 in November.
After being exposed to cosmic radiation and zero gravity, these seeds weighing around 40 gram returned and were harvested at the space breeding research centre of the South China Agricultural University in Guangdong province.
The seeds are now 1 centimeter long, reports said. Guo Tao, the deputy director of the research centre, has said that the best seeds will be bred in laboratories and then will be planted in fields.

Jul 13, 2021

WHO calls for all Studies involving Human Genome Editing to be made Public

The World Health Organization issued new recommendations on human genome editing, calling for a global registry to track "any form of genetic manipulation" and proposing a whistle-blowing mechanism to raise concerns about unethical or unsafe research.
The UN health agency commissioned an expert group in late 2018 following a dramatic announcement from Chinese scientist He Jiankui that he had created the world's first gene-edited babies.
In two reports, WHO's expert group said all studies involving human genome editing should be made public, although the committee noted that wouldn't necessarily stop unprincipled scientists.
"In the field of stem cell research, unscrupulous entrepreneurs and clinics have deliberately misused clinical trial registries by registering procedures they plan to undertake as if they were properly sanctioned clinical trials," the group said, calling for WHO to ensure that all genetic editing research registered in their database are reviewed and approved by an ethics committee.

Jul 12, 2021

New Era of Space Tourism Begins

A billionaire, philanthropist, business tycoon, who is friends with former US President Barack Obama, has close ties to the British royal family, Sir Richard Branson has everything that one could imagine and 17 years ago he dreamed of becoming a space traveller. On July 11, 2021, Branson became an astronaut, ushering in a new era of private space tourism.
Branson boarded his company Virgin Galactic's Unity 22 flight from the Mojave Desert in New Mexico and propelled into suborbital space, where he enjoyed over three minutes of weightlessness in microgravity. He was accompanied by India-born Sirisha Bandla and four other passengers.

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