Current Affairs 10th October 2017

Current Affairs 10th October 2017 - Important Points

• Anna Politkovskaya Award posthumously award given to - Gauri Lankesh
• Smart bandage for faster healing developed by - Scientists
•  Guidelines for Peer to Peer lending platform issued by - RBI
• 'Intensified Mission Indradhanush'launched by - PM Narendra Modi
• 5th India Water Week 2017 to be inaugurated by - President, Ram Nath Kovind
• 1st state to incorporate skill development program in higher education - Rajasthan
•  Digitalisation of land maps approved by - UP Cabinet
•  Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne awarded with 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics on - 3rd October 2017
• World Mental Health Day 2017 observed globally on - 10th October 20117

Current Affairs 10th October 2017 - Details

Anna Politkovskaya Award posthumously award given to - Gauri Lankesh

Gauri Lankesh, activist-journalist from Karnataka, who was shot dead in September 2017, will be posthumously conferred the Reach All Women in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award 2017.
After this, the journalist becomes the first-ever Indian to receive thhis honour.The award would be shared by her with a Pakistani peace activist, Gulalai Ismail, who has faced death threats for speaking out against the Taliban.
More about Gauri Lankesh

• Gauri Lankesh was the founder-editor of the Gauri Lankesh Patrike.
• She also worked as an editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her father P Lankesh.
• She was also known to be an anti-establishment voice and a strident critic of religious extremism.
• She was fired at outside her home in Bengaluru on the evening of 5 September 2017.
• Her assassination came days after the second anniversary of the Kannada writer killing and rationalist MM Kalburgi, who was similarly shot dead outside his residence only at Dharwad in north Karnataka back in August 2015.

Smart bandage for faster healing developed by - Scientists

American scientists have developed a smart bandage that can precisely control the dose and delivery schedule of the medication tailored for a specific type of wound eventually leading to the faster healing.
Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of  Technology in the US have developed this bandage. This latest research was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Important Features of the Smart Bandage

• It has electrically conductive fibres coated in a gel.
• The gel can be individually loaded with tissue-regenerating growth factors, infection- fighting antibiotics, painkillers or other medications.
• It has a microcontroller which is not even larger than a postage stamp, which could be triggered by a smartphone or other wireless device.
• When it is triggered, it sends small amounts of voltage through a chosen fibre which heats the fibre and its hydrogel hence, releasing whatever medication it contains.
• A single bandage can accommodate multiple medications tailored to a particular type of wound.
• The smart bandage offers the ability to precisely control the medications dose and delivery schedule.
• According to Ali Tamayol, assistant professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the customisation combination and control could substantially improve or accelerate the healing process.
• "This is the first bandage which would be capable of dose- dependent drug release. You can also release multiple drugs with different release profiles, “Tamayo further explained.

 Guidelines for Peer to Peer lending platform issued by - RBI

The RBI issued instructions for NBFC (Non-banking Financial Companies) that operate peer-to-peer lending platforms. According to the new guidelines, no NBFC can start or carry on the business of a P2P lending platform without attaining a Registration Certificate from now onwards. Every company OR firms looking for registration with the bank as an NBFC-P2P need to have a net owned funds of not less than 20 million rupees or such higher amount as the RBI may specify.

The existing NBFC-P2Ps have to apply for registration as NBFC-P2Ps within 3 months as per the RBI guidelines. However, this may also bring good news for these NBFC-P2P as there are only a few players already in the market. These guidelines issued by Reserve Bank of India will be known as the Non-Banking Financial Company - Peer to Peer Lending Platform and will be coming into force with an immediate effect.

NBFC-P2P functions

• An NBFC-P2P undertakes the below mentioned activities inter-alia:
  (i) providing an online platform to members involved in P2P lending.
  (ii) Can't lend on its own.
  (iv) Can't hold its own balance sheet of funds received from lenders or funds given to borrowers
  (v) NBFC-P2P can’t cross-sell products.

P2P lending

• It is a form of crowd-funding used to raise loans which will be paid with interest later on. It is an effort to bring the people together who need to borrow, from the people wating to invest.
• It is defined as the digital platform utilization that matches and brings the lenders with borrowers to provide unsecured loans.
• The borrower could be any individual who needs a loan. The interest rate for the loan may be set by the mutual agreement between the lender and borrower or it may be set by the platform offering services.

'Intensified Mission Indradhanush'launched by - PM Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an intensive immunisation drive at Vadnagar in Gujarat on 8th October 2017. and call this capaign as the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI), aiming to reach every child below the age of two years and pregnant women still uncovered under the routine immunisation program.
The main objective behind this mission is to ensure that no child suffers from any vaccine- preventable disease.

Action Plan

• Under the mission, a 7-day immunisation drive will be conducted each month starting immediately in 173 districts and 17 cities till January 2018.
• These districts include 52 in eight north-eastern states and 121 in sixteen other states.
• The program will be covering low performing areas in the selected districts and cities.
• It will be focussed on improving immunisation coverage in the districts and cities to ensure 90 percent coverage for full immunisation by December 2018 instead of 2020.
• 12 ministries and departments would be supporting the program and the Cabinet Secretary would be monitoring it at the national level.

5th India Water Week 2017 to be inaugurated by - President, Ram Nath Kovind

Indian President Ram Nath Kovind would be inaugurating the India Water Week - 2017 on 10th October 2017 with the theme of the event is ‘Water and Energy for Inclusive Growth’ in New Delhi.
The 5-day international event would be attended by more than 1500 delegates from India and 13 other countries.
Important Highlights

• This year would be India Water Week’s 5th edition.
• It will be celebrated with a multi disciplinary conference and a running exhibition parralely.
• The exhibition, while enriching the theme would be showcasing the technologies and solutions available for the areas under deliberation of the meet.

1st state to incorporate skill development program in higher education - Rajasthan

Rajasthan has become the first state to incorporate skill development program in the higher education,
launched by the state’s Higher Education Minister Kiran Maheshwari and Vice Chancellor of IGNOU Prof Ravindra Kumar on 10 October 2017 in Jaipur.

Important Details

• The state’s Department of College Education has prepared 16 courses for entrepreneurship and skill development for colleges in the state in collaboration with IGNOU.
• Under the project, 12 certificates and 4 diploma courses will be run and each college will be needed to choose five courses.
• The project is already joined by 94 colleges and 5656 students have registered themselves in it.
• The practical training of the students pursuing the skill development courses will be done in different government departments.
• While speaking on the occasion, the state’s Higher Education Minister Kiran Maheshwari expressed hope that above 10 thousand students will be enrolled in the programs in the next session.

 Digitalisation of land maps approved by - UP Cabinet

The state cabinet of Uttar Pradesh approved digitalisation of land maps in 70 districts of the state on 9th October 2017. The information was shared by the state’s Power Minister Shrikant Sharma who said that this move was necessary as the land maps were in a very sad plight and needed proper preservation.
The State’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath chaired the cabinet meeting.
Speaking on the occasion, Sharma said that an amount worth Rs 5.21 Crore is made available for the digitisation work.  The maps will be made available online on completion of work.

The main aim of the move is to help checking malpractices in a big way. This development will going to be a great help to the farmers and others in the state.
Other than this, Uttar Pradesh cabinet has also decided on one-time settlement of farmer's non-performing loans with cooperative banks.

 Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne awarded with 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics on - 3rd October 2017

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 on 3rd October 2017
with one half to Rainer Weiss of LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration and the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne of LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration.

They were awarded for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of the gravitational waves.

The universe's gravitational waves were first observed on 14th September 2015. These waves were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago. These waves came due to a collision between two black holes. It took 1.3 billion years for the waves to reach at the LIGO detector in the USA.

Gravitational waves are an entirely new way of observing the most violent events in testing and space the limits of our knowledge.
These Gravitational waves spread at the speed of light, filling the universe, the same way as Albert Einstein described in his general theory of relativity.

World Mental Health Day 2017 observed globally on - 10th October 20117

World Mental Health Day 2017 observed globally on - 10th October 20117

The World Mental Health Day was observed by the World Health Organisation on 10th October 2017 with the theme 'Mental health in the workplace'.

The Day is observed with an aim to raise awareness of mental health issues across the globe and mobilizing efforts in support of mental health. The Day also provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk more about their work.

As per the latest study, above 300 million people suffer from depression globally and more than 260 million are living with anxiety disorders. A recent WHO-led study estimates that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy USD 1 trillion per year in lost productivity.