Daily Current Affairs - 7th October 2014

1) Norwegian couple May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser and Anglo-American John O’Keefe were announced as the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Medicine on 6 October 2014. The three are being rewarded for which of their pioneering work associated with the human mind? –They solved the mystery – How does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?

Explanation: The discovery of the trio pertains to the discovery that helped in solving a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries of “How does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?” Their research helped in giving clues to how strokes and Alzheimer’s affect the brain. O’Keefe (University College London) discovered the first component of the brain’s internal positioning system in 1971 when he found that a type of nerve cell in a brain region called the hippocampus was always activated when a rat was in a certain place in a room. Later May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser (Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim) worked with O’Keefe to learn how to record the activity of cells in the hippocampus.

2) Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) on 6 October 2014 announced plans to split the company into two listed companies by separating its computer and printer businesses from its faster-growing corporate hardware and services operations. What would be the names of the two new companies to be established with this split? – Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

Explanation: Hewlett-Packard Enterprise would include company’s corporate hardware and services operations business whereas HP Inc. would include computer and printer business. Meg Whitman, the present CEO of HP, will lead the new Hewlett-Packard Enterprise while Dion Weisler will lead HP Inc. It is worth mentioning that many investors and analysts had called for a break-up of the company, or a sale of the PC business, so that HP could focus on the more profitable operations that sell computer servers and networking gear and data storage to businesses. Founded by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in a Palo Alto, California garage in 1939, HP was one of the companies that shaped Silicon Valley and the PC revolution.

3) India is among the 5 group of countries will start work on the world’s biggest telescope in the United States. This will enable to identify an object as small as coin from a distance of 500 km. The other four countries involved in this project include the U.S., Japan, China and Canada. Where this telescope will be established? – Mauna Kea volcano in on Hawaii Island in U.S.

Explanation: The diameter of this telescope will be a mammoth 30 meter. It will cost around $1.4 billion and the construction is expected to be completed by March 2022. Japan is expected to cover about a quarter of the construction costs. The telescope will be larger than Japan’s Subaru Telescope, one of the world’s biggest, which was also built on the summit of Mauna Kea and started observation in 1999. To mark the start of construction, 100 astronomers and officials from the five countries are scheduled to attend a ceremony on 7 October 2014  at a location 4,012 meters high on Mount Mauna Kea.

4) What is the name of the phone application (app), the services of which were asked to be blocked by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in a recent request made to the Department of Telecom (DoT)? – ‘We Phone’

Explanation: ‘We Phone’ is a phone and messaging application like Skype and Whatsapp and is freely available on Android Play Store and Apple’s application store. The IB claimed that the ‘We Phone’ app facilitates spoofing of caller id and is difficult to identify to locate or identify actual caller. The application after verifying user’s phone number at the time of installation gives an option to disable the number to hide it. IB has told DoT that in free version of this application caller id on receiver screen starts with +1777 whereas in paid version any number can be set to display as caller id.

5) Which Indian online retail company organised the “Big Billion Day” sale on 6 October 2014 with a target of $100 million sale in gross merchandise value (GMV)? – Flipkart

Explanation: India’s largest online retail company conducted its highly ambitious “Big Billion Day” sale on the day by offering a wide range of products at unprecedented discounted rates. The sale was on the day the company was founded in 2007. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, the founders of Flipkart claimed that the sale achieved its target within 10 hours. On the other hand Flipkart site crashed on numerous occasions and was not able to process some transactions. Some buyers claimed that the discount were less than those offered by Flipkart’s rivals.

6) What is the name of the new mid-sized sedan car launched by Maruti Suzuki on 6 October 2014? – Ciaz

Explanation: Ciaz was introduced by the company on 3 September 2014 and is company’s third foray in the mid-size segment after Baleno and SX4. The petrol variants of the sedan are priced between Rs.6,99,000 and Rs.9,34,000 while the diesel variants are priced between Rs.804,000 and Rs.980,000 (ex-showroom Delhi).