Daily Current Affairs Quiz 18 January 2023

a) Cavity in the interstellar medium

The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way. It contains the closest of celestial neighbours and among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud (which contains the Solar System), the neighbouring G-Cloud, the Ursa Major Moving Group (the closest stellar moving group) and the Hyades (the nearest open cluster). It is thought to have originated from supernovae roughly 14 million years ago.

Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) | Harvard & Smithsonian have generated a 3D magnetic map of the cavity called Local Bubble, according to a preprint study published in the journal Authorea.

c) Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

The Rural Health Statistics report was recently published by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
The report shows that there is a shortfall of more than 80% of the required surgeons and paediatricians in the 6,064 Community Health Centres (CHCs) across the country. CHCs are 30-bed block-level health facilities which are supposed to provide basic care related to surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics and general medicine.

b) Madhya Pradesh

Vidisha, an aspirational district in Madhya Pradesh, is the first district in India to adopt innovative 5G use cases supplied by entrepreneurs on the ground. It is a collaborative effort between the Vidisha District Administration and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). DoT is leading the ‘5G use case promotional pilot’ in Vidisha for deploying 5G/4G/IoT innovative solutions for startups and SMEs.

c) Meteorology

California and other parts of the West Coast have been hit with a series of atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that transport most of the water vapour outside the tropics.
The atmospheric rivers are called ‘Pineapple Express’ when the tail end, where the moisture is pulled into the atmosphere, starts near Hawaii stretching towards the U.S. West Coast. It is a common atmospheric phenomenon that resembles a conveyor belt for moisture.

c) 1 and 2 only

Doppler radars can provide information on both the position of targets as well as their movement. It does this by tracking the ‘phase’ of transmitted radio wave pulses; phase meaning the shape, position, and form of those pulses. As computers measure the shift in phase between the original pulse and the received echo, the movement of raindrops can be calculated. Hence, statement 1 is correct.

Doppler radars help forecasters to observe rainfall, the advance of cloud formations over a region and subsequently monitoring thunderstorms and lightning in real-time. The radar operations are particularly crucial during extreme weather events like heavy rainfall and data from these are used in predicting flash floods in local regions. Hence, statement 2 is correct.

Delhi as well as Chennai have got three Doppler radars. Hence, statement 3 is incorrect.
The Union Minister dedicated 4 Doppler Weather Radar Systems to the Western Himalayan States of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.