DRDO’s Rail Track Rocket Sled

2. DRDO’s Rail Track Rocket Sled

3. comprises five precision-aligned rails, each four-km long; specially designed rocket motors; aerodynamic sleds; and advanced instrumentation.  • allows the simulation of interception of a missile coming in at a supersonic speed. •  simulating the velocities encountered during the re-entry of crew capsules to be used in India’s manned missions to space and the parachutes that will be deployed to bring back the Indian astronauts safely to earth

4. System of Rice Intensification(SRI)

5. requires less water and seeds, and increases yield on any type of land. • farmers can get five times more paddy production • rice seedlings, less than 15 days old with just two leaves, are planted singly and spaced optimally to permit more growth of roots and canopy. • Seedlings are removed and relocated when young to avoid trauma to roots and minimise transplant shock.

6. Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)

8. Sweden on 23rd May 2014 said it would sue the European Commission over a delay in identifying harmful chemicals in everyday products, which it blamed on chemical industry lobbying.

9. Shale Gas • Shale gas is natural gas that is found trapped within Sedimentary Rocks (shaleformations) (shale gas is typically a dry gas primarily composed of methane.) • Shales are fine-grained sedimentary rocks that can be rich resources of petroleum and natural gas. • Sedimentary rocks are rocks formed by the accumulation of sediments at the Earth's surface and within bodies of water. Common sedimentary rocks include sandstone, limestone, and shale. • Shale gas belongs to the category of unconventional reservoirs which includes coal bed methane, gas from tight sandstones and gas hydrates. • It is expected that shale gas will greatly expand worldwide energy supply.

12. Induced hydraulic fracturing/hydrofracturing/ fracking / fraccing -mining technique in which a liquid (in most cases water) is mixed with sand and chemicals and the resultant mixture is injected at high pressure into a wellbore. - This creates small fractures in the deep rock formations

13. Harmful effect • CONTAMINATION - During this process, methane gas and toxic chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater. - Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells near fracturing sites than in normal wells.

14. documented cases of water contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage due to ingested contaminated water have been reported.

15. Only 30-50% of the fracturing fluid is recovered, the rest of the toxic fluid is left in the ground and is not biodegradable.

16. Air Pollution Waste fluid is left in open air pits to evaporate, releasing harmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere, creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone. (Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at ordinary room temperature. Their high vapor pressure results from a low boiling point, which causes large numbers of molecules to evaporate or sublimate from the liquid or solid form of the compound and enter the surrounding air. For example, formaldehyde, which evaporates from paint, )

17. Earthquakes Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping massive amounts of water into the earth's crust to break apart rock, Many scientist found it to be assosiated with earthquake.

19. India and Shale Gas -India has very little domestic gas production. - 6 basins have been identified - EIA (Energy Information Administration)—US federal authority on energy statistics and analysis..estimated Indian shale gas reserve to be 96trillion cubic feet (TCF). - This (96 TCF) is enough to take care of India’s gas demand for 26 years(ONGC)

21.  New Shale Gas Policy announced by the Centre in October 2013 • Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. (ONGC) will explore 30 additional shale gas wells in India over the next two years…. first such well in inaugrated in Ankleshwar, Gujarat. (November 2013 ) • ONGC had signed a memorandum of understanding with the ConocoPhillips, US. The two undertook joint studies of the four basins: Cambay, Krishna Godavari, Cauvery and Damodar. • Based on the studies, a shale gas pilot drilling programme was firmed up Cambay Basin in technical collaboration with Conoco.

22. Green Tobacco Sickness

23. Green Tobacco Sickness • acute nicotine poisoning. • occupational poisoning that can affect workers who cultivate and harvest tobacco. It occurs when workers absorb nicotine through the skinas they come into contact with leaves of the mature tobacco plant. • Children and young age group most vulnerable

24. Some occupational diseases • An occupational disease is a disease or disorder that is caused by the work or working conditions… • Bagassosis – Sugar cane fibre • Pneumoconiosis – Coal mining • Farmer’s lung - moldy hay • Asbestosis – asbestosis mining • Byssinosis – Cotton textile industry • Computer vision syndromme - software professionals

25. Maglev train

26. Maglev is short for magnetic levitation, which means that these trains will float over a guideway using the basic principles of magnets to replace the old steel wheel and track trains. • The magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway walls and the track combine to propel the train.

31.  Bt var. kurstakiwettable powder • powder containing Bt bacteria is one of the ways of using this microbe's pest-controlling attributes (without actually putting their specific genes, such as Cry1Ac, into the plants.) • developed by the Rajendranagar (Hyderabad)-based Directorate of Oilseed Research and licensed for commercial production to some 40 medium scale enterprises engaged in bio-pesticides business. 

32. Advantage - it automatically degrades after being applied on the crops without leaving any toxic residue and, thus, is safe for human beings and livestock. - it kills only the harmful insects and spares crop-friendly ones, including predators of harmful insects.

33. Probiotics

34. The World Health Organization's definition of probiotics is "live micro-organisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host"

38. Pre Biotics

40. Carbon Dating • Why in News ? (5th May Indian Express ) - THE Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), which started excavations in Sarnathin feb-march 2014 to ascertain the famous Buddhist site’s true age, has reportedly found C14 carbon samples dating back to 395 BC. The ASI has now sent the samples to the United States for analysis. - ASI achieved the objective to know what happened at Sarnath between the time of Lord Buddha and emperor Ashoka. The monastery existed there as per literary evidence and that has now been proved,

43. Radiocarbon dating (or simply carbon dating) is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 (14C) to estimate the age of organic materials, such as wood and other fossils..

44. The Earth's atmosphere contains various isotopes of carbon, roughly in constant proportions. These include the main stable isotope (12C) and an unstable isotope (14C). Through photosynthesis, plants absorb both forms from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When an organism dies, it contains the standard ratio of 14C to 12C, but as the 14C decays with no possibility of replenishment, the proportion of carbon 14 decreases at a known constant rate. The time taken for it to reduce by half is known as the half-life of 14C. The measurement of the remaining proportion of 14C in organic matter thus gives an estimate of its age

45. The half-life of 14C(the time it takes for half of a given amount of 14C to decay) is about 5,730 years,

46. Project Persephone • Building self-sustainable spacecraft that can survive at interstellar space. • the research is looking at how a long-duration manned mission out of the solar system could feasibly survive. • any future ‘generation ship’ we build will need to be entirely self-sustainable in terms of not only food and water, but cultural advances as well. • In essence, any manned vehicle we one day send into interstellar space will need a 'flourishing ecosystem'.So these mission needs to be self sustainaible • These ships could then be used to rescue and house the human population in the event of a global catastrophe

47. The project is part of a study being funded by both National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 

48. Google Glass

49. Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD).