Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2nd September 2017

India's largest autonomous public research and development organisation Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been ranked ninth in the world. The ranking is based on a composite indicator that combines research performance, innovation outputs and societal impact measured by their web visibility, so as to reflect scientific, economic and social characteristics of institutions. CSIR got the position amongst a total of 1,207 government institutions, according to the Scimago Institutions ranking World Report 2017.

Smt Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Union Minister for Food Processing Industries launched Common Food Processing Incubation Center for Shallots (Small Onions) in Chettikulam village in Perambalur District of Tamil Nadu through video conferencing. Perambalur district is the hub for small onions (Shallots) cultivation in over 8000 hectares producing around 65,000 to 70,000 tonnes every year. Farmers reported massive losses due to conventional methods of handling and storage. Stakeholders from this region expressed their need to provide technological solutions to minimize wastage, particularly during seasons with surplus production. The farmer producers union which will be involved in this initiative was also launched recently.

Samsung Electronics has joined the self-driving car race in California with a permit from the state to test the technology on the home turf of Tesla, Google, and Apple. Samsung Electronics last year announced a deal to buy US auto parts maker Harman International Industries for $8 billion in a bid to enter the growing market for automotive technology to produce “connected” cars.

Senior bureaucrat Rajiv Kumar was on Thursday appointed as the new Secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS). Kumar will take charge as the DFS Secretary following the superannuation of Anjuly Chib Duggal. An IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre from the 1984 batch, Kumar has many accolades to his kitty, and has introduced several crucial reforms into Indian bureaucracy.

The Union ministry for road transport, highways and shipping Nitin Gadkari finally given a green signal for the construction of 13 new Railway Over Bridges (ROB) in Pune district. The ROBs will come up at Khadki, Pimpri, and Talegaon along the old Mumbai-Pune highway. The estimated cost is about 6000 crores for the project.

Former bureaucrat Sunil Arora has been appointed as the new Election Commissioner. After Nasim Zaidi retired as the Chief Election Commissioner in July.

The objective of the Conference is to enable a two-way communication between the policy-makers and the senior officers in the field offices with a view to increase revenue collection and facilitate effective implementation of law and policies in key result areas. The Conference have been jointly organised by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).

India and Switzerland have signed two Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) for exchanging technical cooperation in the field of Railways. They were signed after delegation level talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and visiting President of Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard in New Delhi.

The world’s most powerful X-ray laser has begun operating at a facility where scientists will attempt to recreate the conditions deep inside the sun and produce film-like sequences of viruses and cells. The machine, called the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), acts as a high-speed camera that can capture images of individual atoms in a few millionths of a billionth of a second. Unlike a conventional camera, though, everything imaged by the X-ray laser is obliterated – its beam is 100 times more intense than if all the sunlight hitting the Earth’s surface were focused onto a single thumbnail.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a historic action today making the first gene therapy available in the United States, ushering in a new approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases.