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Prelim Bits 25-06-2017

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June 25, 2017

KalamSat

  • KalamSat, named after former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam, is the world’s smallest and lightest satellite built by students from Tamil Nadu.
  • This is the first time that an Indian student's experiment has been carried out by NASA.
  • It weighs about 64 grams which is lighter than a smart phone and made of reinforced carbon fibre polymer.
  • It is 3D printed satellite and it is for the first time that 3-D printing technology is being used in space.
  • The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre.

VAJRA scheme

  • Recently, Department of Science and Technology (DST) launched a scheme named 'Visiting Advanced Joint Research Faculty' (VAJRA).
  • Under this scheme, scientists or senior researchers abroad of Indian origin or otherwise can collaborate with Indian faculties for conducting joint researches in India.
  • The foreign researchers would receive endowments at par with those in their own countries.
  • The broad areas of research like energy, health, advance material and others would be promoted under the scheme.

India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS)

  • India BPO promotion scheme (IBPS) aims at setting up business process outsourcing (BPO) units in rural areas to secure balanced regional growth of the industry.
  • The scheme is under the Digital India Programme to create 150,000 employment opportunities and promotion of BPO operations.
  • The scheme provides capital support along with special incentives up to Rs 1 lakh in the form of viability gap funding (VGF) to companies to create BPO units.
  • The target under the scheme is to create 48,300 BPO seats across states and Union territories (UTs) based on population percentage according to Census 2011.
  • Metro cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, National Capital Region (NCR), and Pune, along with their urban agglomeration were excluded.
  • Recently, Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the first state in the country to exhaust all the seats allocated to it under the India BPO promotion scheme (IBPS).

Bright nights

  • It is a phenomenon in which the night sky is bright enough to read a book even in the absence of moon light.
  • A new theory says it is due to slow moving, high altitude atmospheric waves merging together and amplifying the light from the naturally occurring airglow.
  • The theory says that, for every seven nights out of 100 there is a bright night somewhere on the earth.
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