Current General Knowledge - February 2010

AWARDS
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, 2009
Entrepreneur of the year: Anand G. Mahindra, Vice Chairman and MD of Mahindra Group.
Lifetime Achievement award: N. Vaghul, Ex-Chairman of ICICI Bank Ltd.
Entrepreneur of the year (Start-up): Amit Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director of A2Z Maintenance & Engineering Services Pvt. Ltd.
Entrepreneur of the year (Business transformation): Dr Vikram Akula, Chairperson & founder SKS Microfinance Ltd.
Entrepreneur of the year (Manager): O.P. Bhatt, Chairman, State Bank of India.
Entrepreneur of the year (Manufacturing): Harsh C. Mariwala, Chairman and Managing Director, Marico Ltd.
Entrepreneur of the year (Healthcare and Life Sciences): Pankaj R. Patal, Chairman and Managing Director, Zydus Cadila Healthcare Ltd.
Entrepreneur of the year (Services): Shashi Kiran Shetty, Chairman and Managing Director, Allcargo Global Logistics Ltd.

Sasawaka Prize of UNEP, 2010
A portable light that can be recharged by pedalling for 20 minutes and was developed for use in areas not wired for electricity, has won a Canadian of Indian origin, Sameer Hajee, the prestigious Sasakawa Prize of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The device has been developed by Nuru Design (Nuru means light in Swahili). A pilot project is already in place in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa. The device, called the Nuru light, is essentially a lighting system that can be recharged by a pedal generator—the Nuru POWERCycle.

Nuru Light’s objective is to replace the use of expensive, polluting, unhealthy, and dangerous kerosene as a source of lighting for the two billion people without access to electricity. Of those, nearly 580 million are in India.

Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards
Punjab has for the first time bagged the highest number of awards in the performing arts category for 2009, since the inception of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1952.
The winners of the coveted honour include Ustad Lachhman Singh Seen (classical music tabla), Ustad Vilayat Khan, Goslan Khanna (ragi/dhadi) and Neeta Mahindra (theatre). Besides Kamal Arora (theatre make-up) from Chandigarh is another recipient.

The award carries a citation, a shawl, a memento and a cash prize of Rs 1,00,000.

Grammy Awards, 2010
Life Time award: Michael Jackson, posthumously.
Album of the Year: Taylor Swift, Fearless.
Song Written for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media: Jai Ho, written by Gulzar, A. R. Rahman and Tanvi Shah, from “Slumdog Millionaire”.
Record of the Year: Use Somebody, Kings of Leon.
New Artist: Zac Brown Band.
Song of the Year: Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), written by Thaddis Harrell, Beyoncé Knowles, Terius Nash and Christopher Stewart (Beyoncé).
Female Pop Vocal Performance: Halo, Beyoncé.
Male Pop Vocal Performance: Make it mine, Jason Mraz.
Pop Performance, Duo Or Group: I Gotta Feeling, the Black Eyed Peas.
Pop Collaboration: Lucky, Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat.
Pop Instrumental Performance: Throw Down Your Heart, Béla Fleck.
Pop Instrumental Album: Potato Hole, Booker T. Jones.
Pop Vocal Album: The E.N.D., the Black Eyed Peas.
Solo Rock Vocal Performance: Working on a Dream, Bruce Springsteen.
Hard Rock Performance: War Machine, AC/DC.
Metal Performance: Dissident Aggressor, Judas Priest.
Rock Song: Use Somebody, written by Caleb Followill, Jared Followill, Matthew Followill and Nathan Followill.
Rock Album: 21st Century Breakdown, Green Day.
Alternative Music Album: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix.
Female R&B Vocal Performance: Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), Beyoncé.
Male R&B Vocal Performance: Pretty Wings, Maxwell.
Female Country Vocal Performance: White Horse, Taylor Swift.
Male Country Vocal Performance: Sweet Thing, Keith Urban.
Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media: Up.

CYBER SPACE
Google plunges into social networking with Buzz
On February 9, 2010, Google introduced a new service called Google Buzz, a way for users of its Gmail service to share updates, photos and videos. Buzz is Google’s boldest attempt to build a social network that can compete with Facebook and Twitter. The service is built into Gmail. And Buzz comes with a built-in circle of friends, a group that is automatically selected by Google based on the people that a user communicates with most frequently in Gmail and on Google’s chat service.

Like other social services, Buzz allows users to post status updates that include text; photos from services like Google’s Picasa and Yahoo!’s Flicker; videos from YouTube; and messages from Twitter. Analysts say many of its features mimic those of Facebook.

Google executives say that Buzz would help tackle the problem of information overload, as Google would apply its algorithms to help people find the information most relevant to them.

EDUCATION
SEBI takes investor education to schools
Class 8 and 9 students at 26 schools all over the country are taking lessons in investor education these days, courtesy the capital market regulator SEBI. The optional three-month course teaches these students the importance of money, how to manage it and concepts of budgeting and saving.

The initiative follows the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) decision to facilitate financial literacy to children before they complete their secondary education. The regulator feels catching them young is the only way of increasing the number of households investing in the equity market. The number is paltry, even after decades of a free capital market. Consumer Pyramid, a survey of 120,000 households done by the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), showed only 6.5 per cent of Indian households invest in shares and only 1.12 per cent of the total savings flow into listed shares and mutual funds.

SEBI is implementing the financial literacy programme through the National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), set up by the regulator to improve the quality of the market through educational initiatives. A pilot project, called the School Financial Literacy Programme, is being supervised by the National Progressive Schools Conference. Of the 26 schools, 13 are from north India, 11 from the south and two from the east.

N-ENERGY
India’s 18th nuclear plant
India’s 18th nuclear power plant at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan (RAPS-5) began production on February 6, 2010. The plant has been set-up by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India. The indigenously built 220 MW unit uses fuel imported from Russia which has been acquired after India got waiver from Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines in September 2008. The operationalisation of RAPS-5 has increased the capacity of Rawatbhata plant to 96 MW. The project, set-up in September 2002, took six years to complete. It had remained idle for some months because of lack of fuel.

With the commissioning of RAPS-5 the total installed nuclear power capacity of India has risen to 4,340 MW.

RESEARCH
Path-breaking energy source unveiled
Indian American Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former NASA scientist, K.R. Sridhar, has unveiled his "Bloom Box," which can generate energy by combining air and a range of fuels without going through the dirty process of combustion—all in its owner's back yard. He describes it as "the plug-and-play future of electricity."

The Bloom Energy Server, a patented solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, provides a cleaner and more reliable alternative to both today’s electric grid as well as traditional renewable energy sources. Sridhar says each Bloom Box can power up to six homes in India.

Bloom's fuel cell works in this way: Oxygen is pumped in on one side and natural gas on the other. The two combine inside the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity, without any combustion or power lines. A Bloom Energy Server consists of thousands of Bloom's fuel cells—flat, solid ceramic squares made from a common sand-like “powder”. Each server provides 100 kilowatts of power in roughly the area of a parking space. Unlike traditional renewable energy technologies, like solar and wind, which are intermittent, Bloom’s technology can provide renewable power 24/7.

World’s most precise clock
Scientists claim to have created the world's most precise clock based on the oscillation of a trapped aluminium-27 atom. According to the New Scientist, the new record-holder for the most precise timekeeper, built at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, USA, could tick off the 13.7-billion-year age of universe to within 4 seconds. The optical clock monitors the oscillation of a trapped atom of aluminium-27 and is more than twice as precise as the earlier version, reported in 2008.

MISCELANEOUS
Panel to study merits of another time zone for India
India may be looking at another time zone in the near future, a move that could fulfill a long-standing demand. A committee, chaired by the director-general of Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), is trying to examine the implications of another time zone in India.

The committee will report on the energy savings that would result because of a number of interventions, of which another time zone for the country is a possibility.

While another time zone is desirable, a lot of problems can crop up that have to be carefully examined. The magnitude of the task of setting up another time zone is enormous.

A separate time zone for the north-eastern and eastern parts has been a longstanding demand. The east-west spread of India extends for about 28 longitudinal degrees, accounting for about 2 hours as a result of which the sun rises two hours earlier in the eastern part of the country.

MPs can now wear tricolour to Lok Sabha
On February 18, 2010, Lok Sabha decided to allow Members of Parliament to wear the Tricolour to the House. Amending the long-standing rules of procedure of the Lower House that prohibited the members from wearing badges of any kind to the House, the Rules Committee of the Lok Sabha made a vital exception to the norm to honour the National Flag.

The altered rule number 349 reads, “MPs shall not wear any badges to the Lok Sabha, except in the form of the Tricolour as a lapel pin”. The change comes courtesy Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal, who made a proposal to this effect to the committee.