Science & Technology Current Affairs April 2016

Science & Technology Current Affairs

• Drishti’ to Provide Real Time Visibility Information to Pilots As on March 15, 2016, Drishti, an instrument indigenously developed by the surface instruments division of India Meteorology Department (IMD), Pune, has enabled in transferring the crucial visibility updates to the pilots, who can now use this real time information that will be updated every minute.

• It is a transmission meter that takes in account the real time weather parameters like wind speed, humidity, temperature conditions, etc., along the runway in order to calculate the visibility distance offered at that particular runway.

• After getting introduced first at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) in New Delhi in 2015 on a trial basis, the instrument was, in a phased manner, installed at locations that often experience fog. At present, there are 10 instruments at Delhi, three each at Jaipur, Varanasi, Lucknow; one each at Amritsar and Kolkata.

Ecology & Environment Current Affairs

Sand-eating Tadpoles Found in Western Ghats

• The researchers have discovered a sand-eating tadpole that lives in total darkness, until it fully develops into a young frog. These tadpoles probably remained unnoticed all these years because of their underground nature, which in itself is a rare occurrence in the amphibian, world.

• The tadpole belongs to the so-called Indian Dancing Frog family, Micrixalidae. They get that name from their habit of waving their legs as a sign of territorial and sexual display while sitting on boulders in streams.

• The group of scientists from the University of Delhi, the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and Gettysburg College, California, discovered and documented the tadpole in the peer-reviewed PLOS One, an open-access journal in the month of March, 2016.

Centre Introduced New Norms for Plastic Waste Disposal

• In an effort to curb excessive plastic wastes and ensure proper management of the same, the Union government has notified the,Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016 on March 20, 2016.

• Of the slew of measures under this law, the government has increased the minimum thickness of plastic bags, expanded the area of applicability of these rules to rural areas and introduced polluter pays principle.

• The earlier Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, will not be applicable now. The production of non-recyclable, multi-layered plastic will be phased out in two years.

India’s ABR Found among 20 UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves

• The Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve (ABR) was included at the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme of UNESCO that concluded in Peru on March 19, 2016.

• India has been campaigning for the inclusion of the reserve in the network for the past few years. With the addition of the ABR, 10 of the 18 biosphere reserves in the country have made it to the list.