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.
