BY: D.K Choudhary
INS Vikramaditya Becomes India’s First Warship to Have ATM Onboard
i. INS Vikramaditya, India’s biggest aircraft carrier ship has become the country’s first warship to have an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) onboard the vessel.
ii. The ATM has been installed by the State Bank of India (SBI) and will become INS Vikramaditya Becomes India’s First Warship to Have ATM Onboardoperational from January 21, 2017. It will be operated through satellite link.
iii. It would enable the naval personnel onboard the ship to meet their cash requirement without the need to locate ATMs during the long deployment period of the warship.
iv. INS Vikramaditya is an enhanced Kiev-class aircraft carrier that was commissioned on 16 November 2013 at a ceremony held at Severodvinsk, Russia. It carries around 1500 naval personnel onboard at a time which is often increased to 2000 when the ship sets sail.
v. The ship is 285 metres long and 60 metres wide with 23 decks. The ship represents 19.82 acres of sovereign Indian territory and projects, promotes and protects the country’s maritime interests at sea.
Scientists Explores Wolf 1061c To Be Next Habitable Planet After Earth
i. Scientists have discovered an exoplanet named Wolf 1061 located around 14 light years away from Earth that could be the habitable planet in the future after Earth.
ii. In an effort to find out if life thrives in any planet other than our Earth, the scientists carried out a research with focus on searching “habitable zones” regions where water could exist in a liquid state on the surface of the planet in the presence of sufficient atmospheric pressure.
iii. They discovered that one of the three planets in the Wolf 1061 system named Wolf 1061c, a rocky planet is entirely within the habitable zone, the area where liquid water could exist on the surface of the celestial body.
iv. For being a habitable region, the planet can’t be too close or too far from its parent star. A planet that’s too close would be too hot like Earth’s twin Venus. If it’s too far, it may be too cold and any water would freeze like on Mars.
v. However, the researchers also noticed that like Earth experiences climatic changes such as an ice age because of slow variations in its orbit around the sun, Wolf 1061c’s orbit changes at a much faster rate, leading to a very chaotic climate.
Scientists Develop Robotic Sleeve to Pump Blood in Weak Heart
i. Researchers from Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a customizable soft robotic sleeve to encase a diseased heart and help it beat.
ii. The newly developed device is designed to help people who are experiencing heart failure. The soft, cup-shaped robotic device fits around the heart like a sleeve to give it gentle squeezes to help pump blood in patients with weakened hearts.
iii. The researchers have programmed the robotic sleeve to move in the same pattern as the weakened heart muscle to which it surrounds. It will work towards strengthening and optimizing each heartbeat.
iv. However the device will never come in contact with the blood thus reducing the number of complications it might pose. It is made of elastic silicone that mimics the flexibility of natural heart muscle.
