01-12-22 Daily-Tamilnadu-TNPSC Current Affairs

The widening of two-lane into four-lane bypasses at eight different locations on the Salem-Ulundurpet National Highway would be completed by 2023-24, said Union road transport and highways ministerNitin Gadkari.

He said the concessionaire already provided necessary road safety and traffic calming measures like road signs, blinkers, bollards, road markings at divergent/ convergent locations, high mast lightings at major junctions and streetlights at built-up areas as per the concession agreement. He promised that additional requirements would be reviewed through a safety consultant and work would be taken up separately.

In a letter to Gadkari in September,Anbumanipointed out that only 97.37 km of the 136km-stretch of Salem-Ulundurpet NH was four-lane while the rest 38.99km was two-lane. He said speeding commuters fail to negotiate the sudden change in the number of lanes in the highway resulting in frequent fatal accidents. He said 1,036 people were killed in accidents on the highway in the last 11 years, between 2011 and 2022.

The Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill development & , Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar today said that the Centre will take all measures to expand economic opportunities in Goa that will help diversify its economy, and turn it into a start-ups and innovation hub especially in the fields of healthcare, medical electronics and Artificial Intelligence and also ensure its Sustainable Development.

The Minister who is currently on a two-day visit to Goa, also met state IT Minister, Shri Rohan Khaunte and discussed about the Growth of IT opportunities.

He also spoke of expanding skilling opportunities for the young people through Skill hubs and Atal Tinkering labs.

India has invited Egypt President Fattah al-Sisi as the chief guest on 2023 Republic Day. This makes al-Sisi the first Republic Day Chief Guest after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who hails from city of el-Gamaliya and raised in an alleyway close to the Jewish quarter of Cairos old city, is a devout Muslim.

He became the head of Military Intelligence in Egypt. He rose to prominence in 2011 after he was named as the member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took up political control of the country after Arab Spring protests forced the long-time President Hosni Mubarak to resign.

Scientists have a novel artificial Light-capturing system that imitates the process of Photosynthesis to effectively capture light to conserve power. This technology addresses various challenges faced while replicating the complex process of photosynthesis as well as the problems associated with light absorbers and transmitters.

The new artificial photosynthetic system makes use of clusters of silver with a nanometer dimension, which is a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of human hair. These silver nanoclusters have complicated and exotic photophysical properties. The researchers were able to stabilize them with bulky ligands and entrap the entire ensemble inside another larger molecule called cyclodextrin.

Chennai-based space tech startup Agnikul Cosmos recently opened Indias first private launchpad and mission control centre at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. It was inaugurated on November 28 by ISRO chairman S Somanath. The inauguration took place just days after the launch of Indias first privately developed rocket Vikram-S.

The Agnikul launchpad and the Agnikul mission control centre are four kilometres apart. They are connected with each other via various critical systems to ensure 100 per operationality during the countdown.

This facility was designed by the startup Agnikul Cosmos and executed with the support from ISRO and the IN-SPACe.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that mpox is currently the preferred name for monkeypox.

Monkeypox was named in 1970 more than 10 years after the virus that causes the disease was discovered in captive monkeys.

However, monkeypox probably did not originate in monkeys and knowledge related to its origins is still unknown.

The monkeypox virus is currently found several other animals apart from monkeys.

The name for the disease was given before the WHO published the best practices for naming diseases in 2015.

Since the recent outbreak, experts have suggested changing the name of the disease to avoid discrimination and stigma, which discouraged people from testing and vaccination.