• World Metrology Day (WMD) is annually observed across the globe on 20th May to create awareness about the
• Metrology, the science of measurement and its application. The day highlights the use of Metrology in scientific fields, innovation, industries, trading and other fields. The theme for World Metrology Day 2022 is “Metrology in the Digital Era”.

• WARDEC is a prototype name given to the ‘Wargame Research and Development Centre’ to be developed in New Delhi.
• It will be a first-of-its-kind simulation-based training centre in India that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to design virtual reality wargames.
• It will be developed by the Army Training Command and Gandhinagar-based Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU).
• It will be used by the Army to train its soldiers and test their strategies through “metaverse-enabled gameplay”.

• NASA’s  Voyager is continuing its journey beyond our Solar System, 45 years after it was launched. But now the veteran spacecraft is sending back strange data, puzzling its engineers. A glitch is said to be behind this.
• The glitch has to do with Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, which keeps the spacecraft and its antenna in the proper orientation.
• Preliminary analysis suggests that the craft is confused about its location in space.

About Voyager mission:

• Launched in the 1970’s, and the probes sent by NASA were only meant to explore the outer planets – but they just kept on going.
• Voyager 1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977 and Voyager 2 left our solar system in 2013.
• Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and discovered 16 moons, as well as phenomena like Neptune’s mysteriously transient Great Dark Spot, the cracks in Europa’s ice shell, and ring features at every planet.

• Hyperloop is the 5th mode of transportation, a high-speed train that travels in a near vacuum tube. The reduced air resistance allows the capsule inside the tube to reach speeds of more than 1,000 km/h.

Key Points:

1. The collaboration also involves setting up a Centre for Excellence for Hyperloop Technology at IIT-M.
2. At the IIT-M, a team of students, Team Avishkar Hyperloop is working on the emerging domain of Hyperloop-based transportation solutions for a futuristic commuting experience.
3. Team Avishkar aims to build the world’s largest student-developed Hyperloop testing facility at IIT Madras.
4. The model proposed by Team Avishkar can achieve a top speed of over 1,200 kilometres per hour.

• In order to study the changing weather phenomena in the Mount (Mt) Everest, following Expeditions have made –
• The National Geographic Society has installed the World’s highest weather station on Mt Everest.
• China flew an airship at record height over Mt Everest to gather Atmospheric Composition data and Water vapour transporting Phenomenon.

Nat Geo Installed the World’s Highest Weather Station on Mt. Everest

• The National Geographic Society has installed the ‘World’s highest weather station’ on Mount Everest at an altitude of 8,830 metres to automatically measure various meteorological phenomena.
• Under the MoU with Nepal Government, the National Geographic team will fully operate the stations till 2025 following which the technology will be transferred to the Nepal Government in 2026.

• Chinese scientists have proposed a space project to survey the sky through a space-borne telescope to hunt for habitable Earth-like planets outside the solar system, about 32 light-years from Earth.
• The project, named Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES) would be the first space mission specially designed to search for habitable terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars.

• Released by the World Bank. WGI provide a ranking of 215 countries based on six dimensions of governance:

1. ‘Voice and Accountability’.
2. ‘Political Stability and Absence of Violence’.
3. ‘Government Effectiveness’.
4. ‘Regulatory Quality’.
5. ‘Rule of Law’.
6. ‘Control of Corruption.’

Major Incidents Which Hugely Affected India’s WGI Rank:

• Kashmir issue.
• Harassment of Activists.
• Sedition laws.
• Cancellation of NGO licences.

• Mozambique has identified its first case of wild poliovirus  Type 1 this week after a child contracted the disease. It is the country’s first such case since 1992 and the second imported case of wild poliovirus in Southern Africa this year.

When a country is declared polio free ?

• There are three variants of the poliovirus, numbered 1 to 3.For a country to be declared polio-free, the wild transmission of all three kinds has to be stopped. For eradication, cases of both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection have to be reduced to zero.

Efforts by India in this regard:

• India was declared polio-free in January 2014, after three years of zero cases.
• Under  the pulse polio programme, all states and Union Territories have developed Rapid Response Teams (RRT) to respond to any polio outbreak in the country.
• In 2014, the government made the Oral Polio Vaccination (OPV) mandatory for those travelling between India and polio-affected countries, such as Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Syria and Cameroon.

New Development Bank (NDB) is setting up a regional office in Gujarat, India for funding and monitoring infrastructure projects in that country and Bangladesh.

About NDB:

• It is a multilateral development bank operated by the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
• It was agreed to by BRICS leaders at the 5th BRICS summit held in Durban, South Africa in 2013.
• It was launched in 2015, at the 6th BRICS Summit at Fortaleza, Brazil.
• The bank is set up to foster greater financial and development cooperation among the five emerging markets.
• Headquartered in Shanghai, China.

India is closely monitoring the construction of a bridge by China on the Pangong Tso (lake) in eastern Ladakh.

What’s the issue?

• On the north bank, there is a PLA garrison at Kurnak fort and on the south bank at Moldo, and the distance between the two is around 200 km.
• The new bridge between the closest points on two banks, which is around 500 m, will bring down the movement time between the two sectors from around 12 hours to three or four hours.
• This will significantly bring down the time for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to move troops and equipment between the two sectors.
• The bridge is located around 25 km ahead of the Line of Actual Control (LAC).