1 May 2013 Current Affairs
Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi among 500 powerful people on the planet
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are among 16 Indians who have found a place in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine’s list of the 500 most powerful people on the planet. Apart from them, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony , External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid ,Indian spiritual leaders Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravishankar ,BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, two Indian industrialists Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance Group and Lakshmi Mittal of ArcelorMittal and the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit are also in the list.
Stephen Hawking space flight next year
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking(71) said his aim is to go join British tycoon Richard Branson on a space flight in 2014.Six years ago he got a taste of weightlessness during a zero gravity flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, but he still wants to feel the real deal aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. If this happens he is the world's second-old astronaut. Previously, John Glenn went into space at the age of 77.
Plan B can be sold to 15-year-olds without prescription
On 30 April 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has approved the sale of the emergency contraceptive pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription for females ages 15 and older. Previously it was 17 years. This decision was taken in order to prevent the growing number of unwanted pregnancies in America.
One step closer to a quantum computer
Professor Weimin Chen and his colleagues at Linköping University, in cooperation with German and American researchers, have succeeded in both initializing and reading nuclear spins, relevant to qubits for quantum computers, at room temperature.A quantum computer is controlled by the laws of quantum physics; it promises to perform complicated calculations, or search large amounts of data, at a speed that exceeds by far those that today’s fastest supercomputers are capable of.A traditional computer stores, processes and sends all information in the form of bits, which can have a value of 1 or 0. But in the world of quantum physics, at the nano- and atomic level, other rules prevail and a bit in a quantum computer – a qubit – can have any value between 1 and 0.
The new glass fiber-optic cables
Heriyat Watt University in Scotland and the Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute (CGCRI) in Kolkata jointly launched glass fiber-optic cables. The thicknesses of these cables are same as the thickness of the human hair. The capacities of these cables are more when compared to present fiber optic cables.
Earthquake in North India
On 1 May 2013, an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale shook Jammu & Kashmir and many other parts of north India, including the national capital. Two persons was killed and over 69 persons were injured in the Doda and Kishtwar districts in J&K. The epicentre was somewhere around the Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh border.
Nutralite Omega-3 wins 'Product of the Year 2013'
Nutralite Omega-3, premium table spread product of Zydus Wellness Ltd, had been awarded the ‘Product of the Year 2013’. Ganesh Nayak, COO &am Executive Director received the award on behalf of the entire Zydus team at a special award ceremony held in Mumbai