Questions

The Von Hippel Award, the Materials Research Society's highest honor, recognizes those qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers—brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines. The Von Hippel Award is named after Arthur von Hippel (1898-2003), who was a pioneer in the study of dielectrics, semiconductors, ferromagnetics and ferroelectrics.

Eminent Scientist and Bharat Ratna Prof C.N.R. Rao was awarded 2017 Von Hippel Award. He is first Indian and first Asian to win this honour. The award will be presented to Prof Rao for his interdisciplinary contributions to development of novel functional materials, including nanomaterials, graphene, superconductivity, 2D materials and colossal magnetoresistance at Boston in November 2017.

The 112-feet tall bust of ‘Adiyogi’ Lord Shiva at the Isha Yoga Foundation has been declared the world’s largest bust by the Guinness Book of World Records. The Guinness had announced this on its website. The bust at the Isha Yoga Foundation on the outskirts of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu was unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 24 February.

The coding or scrambling of data so that humans cannot read them is known as encryption.

Ramdev promoted Patanjali Ayurveda and Reliance Jio have featured among the top 10 most influential brand in India, according to a study by the global research firm Ipsos.

Home grown Patanjali and Mukesh Ambani’s controlled Reliance Jio have bagged the fourth and ninth position, respectively. Interestingly, Patanjali and Reliance Jio made an impressive entry as they did not figure in the previous edition of the study.

Besides, Google has been ranked at the top slot while Microsoft and Facebook were ranked at number two and three, respectively. State Bank of India (SBI) being the only financial institution that made to the list, moved up four ranks to take the fifth position. E-commerce player Flipkart dropped three spots to take the tenth place while Amazon climbed couple of steps to take the sixth place. Other companies that made to the list include Samsung (7th) and Airtel (8th).

India has been placed in the second spot in the renewable energy country attractiveness index by EY. The UK accountancy firm noted the fast pace of growth in Indian renewable energy in the past three years. Over 10 gigawatt (Gw) of solar power was added between 2015 and 2017 and wind energy capacity grew to 5.4 Gw in 2017-18. This growth is in the context of the government’s ambitious targets — 175 Gw of renewables by 2022, with 40 per cent installed capacity from renewables by 2030 — and the dramatic price falls in photovoltaic technology.

Surekha Marandi has been appointed as the new Executive Director (ED) of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). She succeeded U S Paliwal, who retired on December 31, 2016.