Current General Knowledge

ABBREVIATIONS NAMICA: Nag Missile Carrier. NIT: National Institute of Technology. BOOKS Ignited Minds: Unleashing the power within India RITTEN by Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the book tackles the scientists favourite theme, that of engaging minds of children and building resources for the future. It is a sequel to his India 2020: A vision for the future that offers a blueprint for elevating India. Some of his ideas stress on the necessity for a patriotism that transcends religion and politics, for role models who point out the path to take, and for confidence in oneself and in ones strengths. EDUCATION 10 RECs to be upgraded to NITs HE Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) are to be upgraded to National Institutes of Technology (NITs) with management control passing from hands of State governments to a board of governors comprising professionals. The institutes will be funded entirely by the Centre. The first 10 RECs selected are: Allahabad, Bhopal, Calicut, Hamirpur, Jaipur, Kurukshetra, Nagpur, Rourkela, Surathkal and Silchar. They will also be granted deemed university status. happy with the changes. PERSONS Kalam, A.P.J. Abdul VUL Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, father of Indias missile programme, is the NDAs candidate for the post of President of India. A brilliant and non-controversial person, who has risen to be the greatest in his field through sheer hard work, talent and perseverance, is to many a contemporary here. Born at Dhanushkodi, Tamil Nadu, on October 15, 1931, Mr Kalam did B.Sc from St Josephs College, Tiruchirapalli. He is the first from his family to get a graduation degree. He then studied aeronautical engineering at IIT, Madras.

DEFENCE Anti-tank Nag missiles test-fired WO Nag anti-tank guided missiles were test-fired on June 21, 2002, from the Interim Test Range at Chandipur on Sea. The long awaited Nag (cobra) is a third generation, top-attack, fire and forget missile. Nag is one of the five missile systems being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under its integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). The missiles were test-fired from special containers in clear weather conditions to establish their advanced manoeuvrability and top attack trajectory along with other parameters. Design work on the 6-km range Nag started in 1988, and it was first test-fired in November 1990. The land version will be fired from a tracked vehicle labelled the Nag Missile Carrier (NAMICA), which is a modified BMP-2 infantry combat vehicle. The missile is also being configured to be fired from the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). The helicopter version was testfired from a modified Mi-17 helicopter in March 1998.

US overhauls SAT format HE College Board of USA has formally announced that it was undertaking a major overhaul of the SAT test. The board also revealed new details of its plans to make SAT, the leading college entrance exam in the US, into a three and a half hour test. The revised test, which will not be given until March 2005, will be made up of three sections, each scored on a 200 to 800 scale, and each differing at least somewhat from the current verbal and math sections. The math test will cover an additional year of high school math and the format of the questions will be new. The verbal test, renamed the critical reading test, will also have different kinds of questions, eliminating the verbal analogies and quantitative comparisons that have been mainstays of SAT courses. The most striking change is the new writing test, including both an essay and multiple choice grammar and copyediting questions. Many college admissions officers said they felt this would spur high schools to emphasise good writing skills. The essays, designed to assess basic writing skills, not creativity, will be scored based on criteria like sentence structure and grammar errors. The new test is likely to pose special problems for immigrants and others whose first language is not English, and some advocates for those groups are not
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Under Kalams stewardship, Indias missile development programme took rapid strides, culminating in the successful launches of the Trishul, Prithvi, Agni, Nag and Akash missiles. The crowning glory came with the Pokhran II nuclear tests. He was conferred the nations highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1997. He had been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan in 1990 and the Padma Bhushan in 1981. Kalam quotes with equal ease from the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita, plays the veena, writes poetry in Tamil and admires Subrahmanya Bharati. He never married. Sehgal, Lakshmi N associate of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, she was the nominee of the Left parties for the election to the post of President of India.

A Padma Vibhushan awardee, she is the first woman to contest for the top political post of India. As a young girl she had participated in the nationalist movement and led the Rani Jhansi regiment of Netaji. She became active in Left politics after the 1971 war. PLACES Tehzeeb Mahal T is a first of its kind in Asia. The Rs 3.63 crore modern heritage emporium, being built in Srinagar, is a double storeyed air-conditioned complex spread over 15,000 sq feet area. The complex will house an art gallery, an art museum, an auditorium, a show room and sundry facilities that will widen the scope of cultural and craft exchanges in Srinagar. Tehzeeb Mahal is being designed as part of countrywide chain of 22 Kashmir arts emporia, run by J & K Handicrafts (Sales and Exports) Corporation.

expected when they left Earth in Decemberthe American milestone for space flight endurance. Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch passed the 188-day mark in space during their overnight sleep period, pushing them ahead of astronaut Shannon Lucid, who stayed six months on the Russian space station Mir in 1996. Robot spacecraft to probe comets ASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft whose mission is to make the closest observations ever of the frozen cores of comets and to stand ready to be diverted if a newly discovered comet passes near the Earth. The robot spacecraft, called Contour, for Comet Nucleus Tour, is part of an armada of international probes being sent forth to solve some of the mysteries of these icy bodies that traverse the solar system and may have played a major role in the evolution of Earth. If successful, Contour will make the most detailed observations ever of the nuclei of two very different types of comets as they make their closest approaches to the Sun and are most active. On November 12, 2003, the spacecraft is to fly by an older, less active comet called Encke, which was first spotted in 1786. Then, on June 19, 2006, Contour will visit the more active and younger Schwassman-Wachmann 3, a comet discovered in 1930, that broke into several pieces in 1995, perhaps exposing pristine inner material.

RESEARCH Get ready for laser travel N a breakthrough out of the realms of Star Trek, scientists in Australia have successfully teleported a laser beam of light from one spot to another in a split second. A team of physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) successfully disembodied a laser beam at one location and rebuilt it at a different spot about one metre away, at the blink of an eye. Project leader Ping Koy Lam said there was a close resemblance between what his team had achieved and the movement of people in the science fiction series Star Trek, but reality was still light years awaybeaming human beings between locations. However, the breakthrough opens up enormous possibilities for future super fast and super secure communications systems, such as quantum computers. Physicists believe quantum com-puters could outperform classical computers with enormous memory and the ability to solve problems million times faster. SPACE RESEARCH Stuck in space, US astronauts set record WO US astronauts woke up on June 13, 2002, with a record they never

MISCELLANEOUS How is the Indian President elected? HE President is elected by an electoral college consisting of the elected members of both Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States. Only elected members from part of the electoral college, not those nominated to any of the relevant legislative bodies. For the forthcoming presidential elections, there are a total of 4,896 electors, consisting of 543 Lok Sabha members, 233 Rajya Sabha members and 4,120

MLAs. A formula laid down in the Constitution determines the number of votes each elector commands. The basic principle governing the formula is of proportional representation. In other words, the attempt is to ensure that each legislators votes reflect the population he actually represents. The formula attempts to achieve this as follows: The population of each State is divided by 1,000 and then by the number of elected MLAs in the State assembly. The number thus derived is the value of each MLAs votes from that State. The system also tries to ensure a balance between the value of votes of parliamentarians and State legislators. Hence, the next part of the formula takes this number549,474and divides it by the total number of elected MPs, which is 776, to work out the value of each MPs votes. This, after rounding off, yields a figure of 708 votes per MP. Hence, the total value of all MPs votes equals 708 multiplied by 776, which is 549,408. The grand total of votes in the electoral college thus adds up to 1,098,882 a little over a million. The population figure to be considered is the relevant census tally under the Constitution. However, since the 1974 presidential elections, the 1971 census has formed the basis for the calculation. Each elector marks his ordered preference for the candidates in the fray. At the first count, only the first preference votes are tallied. If any of the candidates at this stage secures more than the required quota of votes, he or she wins. The quota is simply one more than half the total valid votes polled by all the candidates put together, that is a majority of votes. If no candidate reaches the quota after the first round of counting, the candidate with the least votes at that stage is eliminated and the second preference marked by those voting for him are added on to the votes of the relevant candidates. This process is continued with each subsequent round till one of the candidates reaches the quota and is declared the winner.

110 ! AUGUST 2002 ! THE COMPETITION MASTER