Current General Knowledge: April 2011

AWARDS Dada Saheb Phalke Award, 2010 K. Balachander, popularly known as “KB Sir”, has become the first Tamil Director to receive Dadasaheb Phalke Award. He directed films in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Kannada. He started with dialogue writing for the legendary M.G. Ramachandran’s (MGR) film “Dheiva Thaai”. Apart from Rajnikanth and Kamal Hasan, actresses Sujatha, Jaya Prada and Sarita were all his discoveries. Later, they became big names in Indian cinema. His bilingual, “Maro Charitra”, starring Kamal Hasan and Rati Agnihotri, was a big hit of the times that was made in Hindi as “Ek Duje Ke Liye”. Balachander’s early films had an element of the stage but gradually he successfully began exuding greater cinematic techniques and storytelling, besides effectively using outdoor locales and bringing in political issues. Pulitzer Prizes, 2011 Public Service: Los Angeles Times Investigative Reporting: Paige St. John of Sarasota Herald-Tribune Explanatory Reporting: Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar and Alison Sherwood of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Local Reporting: Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim of Chicago Sun-Times National Reporting: Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica International Reporting: Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times Feature Writing: Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ Commentary: David Leonhardt of The New York Times Criticism: Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe Editorial Writing: Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Cartooning: Mike Keefe of The Denver Post Breaking News Photography: Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti of The Washington Post Feature Photography: Barbara Davidson of Los Angeles Times Fiction: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf) Drama: Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris History: The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (W.W. Norton & Company) General Non-fiction: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner) Music: Madame White Snake by Zhou Long (Oxford University Press) BOOKS Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, The Written by Indian-American Siddhartha Mukherjee, this book has won the author Pulitzer Prize, 2011, in Non-fiction category. The book has been described as "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science". EXPEDITIONS IAF women team embarks on Mission Everest On April 13, 2011, an Indian Air Force (IAF) mountaineering team, comprising 11 women officers, embarked on a mission to scale Mount Everest. It was the first time in the history of the IAF that its women officers embarked on an expedition to scale the highest peak on earth. The idea to undertake such a mission was conceived in 2009. HEALTH New guidelines for Alzheimer’s The first new US diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer's disease to be released in 27 years paint the disorder as a disease that occurs gradually over many years, starting with changes in the brain, then mild memory problems and finally progressing to full-blown dementia. Released by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association, the guidelines officially recognise mild cognitive impairment or MCI as a precursor to the disease. And they add a new research category known as preclinical Alzheimer's, the earliest stage of the disease when clumps of a protein called amyloid are just beginning to form in the brains of people who are otherwise healthy. This preclinical stage lasts about 10 years before dementia sets in is seen as the best place to intervene in the disease. The notion of different stages of the disease marks a stark contrast from the last set of guidelines published by government researchers in 1984, which only recognised the dementia phase of Alzheimer's—in which people lose their memories and the ability to care for themselves. PERSONS Hazare, Kisan Baburao Septuagenarian Kisan Baburao Hazare—affectionately called Anna—who claims to tread on the path of Satyagraha, undertook a fast unto death in New Delhi in the month of April 2011, to force the establishment to enact a stringent law to tackle corruption. In his public life, Hazare has resorted to hunger strike eight times and has also observed silence as a part of agitations. Through the Bhrashtachar Virodhi Jan Andolan, an organisation to fight corruption founded in 1991, Hazare went on a hunger strike demanding action against 42 forest officials involved in duping the government through corruption in confederacy. The State government succumbed and acted against the “corrupt” officials. Hazare’s biggest success was when the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combine was forced to constitute a commission under retired justice P.B. Sawant to probe corruption charges against four ministers—Padamsinh Patil (accused of diverting funds meant for Kargil martyrs), Suresh Jain (facing charges of malpractices at Jalgaon District Cooperative Bank), Nawab Malik (involved in a land scam) and Vijay Kumar Gavit. The action came after Hazare went on a 10-day hunger strike. Born in an agrarian family on June 15, 1938, at Ralegan Siddhi in Ahmednagar district of western Maharashtra, Kisan Baburao Hazare joined the army after the Indo-China war in 1962. During his 15-year stint, He served as a truck driver. Having survived an air attack from Pakistan in 1965, Hazare decided to dedicate his life to serving humanity after reading books by Swami Vivekananda. He quit his army job and returned to his native place in 1977. It was Hazare’s efforts that turned Ralegan Siddhi from drought-prone to a water surplus village. PROJECTS India’s first eco-city to come up at Manesar Manesar will soon be home to the country's first eco-city pilot initiative. Toshiba team undertaking study for this initiative has submitted its pre-feasibility report to Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC). The Eco-city project was conceived during the visit of Indian Prime Minister to Japan as a part of the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor initiative. An MoU was signed between HSIIDC, DMICDC and a consortium of Japanese's companies led by Toshiba, including NEC,Tokyo Gas, Energy Advanced Companies Limited. A Smart Community or Eco-City is defined as a City in which citizens, business and government work, live and interact through delivery of integrated, low carbon products and services. The objective of this project is to build a new Industrial Community to maximise welfare of the people and minimise carbon emission. RESEARCH Fourth variety of life found by US scientist A US scientist has claimed to have discovered a whole new branch of the tree of life. Living things are currently split into three domains—eukaryotes or complex-celled organisms like animals, plants and humans; bacteria; and archaea, the last two being simple-celled micro-organisms. Now, Professor Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, claims he may have discovered a fourth. He has used complicated gene sequencing techniques to look at DNA collected by maverick researcher Dr Craig Venter on a round the world yachting trip. He found that some of the genes did not fit into the three domains and that he could possibly have stumbled on a whole new domain. Trying to classify the new DNA has proved impossible and so Prof Eisen has published his findings in the Public Library of Science journal in the hope that others can help. “The question is, what are they from? They could represent an unusual virus, which is interesting enough. More interestingly still, they could represent a totally new branch in the tree of life. One of the difficulties of trying to study novel genes is that it is hard to culture them to such a quantity to make them easily readable. But Prof Eisen used methods honed by Dr Venter in his successful attempt to read human genetic code. They have dubbed the technique as “metagenomics” and it involves breaking down the DNA to sizeable chunks, decoding them and then re-assembling in the correct order. SPACE RESEARCH PSLV successfully places three satellites in orbit In a morale-boosting success for its space programme after two consecutive GSLV setbacks, ISRO’s reliable workhorse, the PSLV, precisely placed three satellites into orbit on April 20, 2011, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre Sriharikota. The eighteenth mission of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C16) placed the indigenously built 1,206-kg Resourcesat-2 into orbit. After 40 seconds, it also put the other two satellites—Youthsat and X-sat—into their orbit. The 92-kg joint India-Russian Youthsat is for stellar and atmospheric studies while the 106-kg X-sat, built by the Singapore-based Nanyang Technological University, is for imaging applications. The Rs 140 crore Resourcesat-2, will last five years and will augment ISRO’s remote sensing data services. It will replace Resourcesat-1 sent in 2003. Apart from carrying three sophisticated cameras, the satellite also carries additional equipment called AIS (Automatic Information System) from COMDEV, Canada, for surveillance of ships in the VHF band to derive their position and speed, among other things.