GK and Current Affairs Updates

India and South American nation Ecuador today signed an agreement to set up a Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) to strengthen the trade relations between the countries. During the meeting, both the sides also discussed measures to enhance trade and investment relations. During 2014-15, the bilateral trade stood at USD 1.29 billion, the Commerce Ministry said in a statement. 
It said that JETCO was signed with an aim to further improve, deepen and strengthen the existing trade relationship. "The JETCO will function as the primary forum for discussion and other promotional activities on trade and investment issues and will be meeting once in  every two years," it said. The first meeting of the JETCO is proposed to be held early next year in India, it added. 

The world’s highest terrestrial centre labelled as “Extreme Altitude Research Centre” has been inaugurated by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chief S Christopher at its habitat in Chang La near Pengong Lake in Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir.
It has been established by Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR) in Leh, which is one the 52 laboratories of DRDOIt is instituted at 17,600 feet above sea level and is 75 Km away from leh town.

Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich has won the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature.Announcing the prize in Stockholm, the chair of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, called her writing "a monument to courage and suffering in our time".
Alexievich called the award, presented to a living writer and worth 8m kronor (£691,000), "a great personal joy."

The Gunnery Symposium is a prestigious event held once in every three years to provide a platform for experts from the field to present their research on matters related to naval gun and missile systems to an audience, comprising several high ranking officers and 'Gunnery' specialists from the staff and frontline ships of the Indian Navy. 
The event holds a special significance for all Gunnery Officers as it is traditionally held at INS Dronacharya, the primary training base for 'Gunnery .. 
The governing theme of the symposium was 'Emerging Trends in Naval Gunnery'. 

Earth's inner core was formed 1-1.5 billion years ago as it 'froze' from the surrounding molten iron outer core, according to a new study. The inner core is Earth's deepest layer and a relatively recent addition to our planet. Establishing when it was formed is a topic of vigorous scientific debate with estimates ranging from 0.5 billion to 2 billion years ago. 
Researchers from the University of Liverpool, UK, and colleagues analysed magnetic records from ancient igneous rocks.The timing of the first appearance of solid iron or "nucleation" of the inner core is highly controversial but is crucial for determining the properties and history of the Earth's interior and has strong implications for how the Earth's magnetic field - which acts as a shield against harmful radiation from the Sun, as well as a useful navigational aid - is generated. "The results suggest that the Earth's core is cooling down less quickly than previously thought which has implications for the whole of earth sciences.
"It also suggests an average growth rate of the solid inner core of approximately 1mm per year which affects our understanding of the Earth's magnetic field," said Biggin. 
The Earth's magnetic field is generated by the motion of the liquid iron alloy in the outer core, approximately 3,000 km beneath the Earth's crust. 

These motions occur because the core is losing heat to the overlying solid mantle that extends up to the crust on which we live producing the phenomenon of convection.Once the inner core started to freeze, this convection received a strong boost in power because light, non-metallic elements remained molten in the outer core and were buoyant relative to the overlying liquid. The process continues today and is thought to be the main source of "fuel" for generating the Earth's magnetic field. 

The hunt for alien life may get easier; thanks to a ‘habitability index’ created by scientists that can point out which of the thousands of exoplanets discovered so far have a better chance of hosting life.Traditionally, astronomers have focused the search by looking for planets in their star’s “habitable zone” — more informally called the “Goldilocks zone” — which is the swath of space that’s “just right” to allow an orbiting Earth—like planet to have liquid water on its surface, perhaps giving life a chance.But so far that has been just a sort of binary designation, indicating only whether a planet is, or is not, within that area considered right for life.The new metric, called the “habitability index for transiting planets,” is more nuanced, producing a continuum of values that astronomers can punch into a Virtual Planetary Laboratory Web form to arrive at the single—number habitability index, representing the probability that a planet can maintain liquid water at its surface.
Scientists  also accounted for a phenomenon called “eccentricity—albedo degeneracy,” which comments on a sort of balancing act between a planet’s albedo — the energy reflected back to space from its surface — and the circularity of its orbit, which affects how much energy it receives from its host star. The two counteract each other.The higher a planet’s albedo, the more light and energy are reflected off to space, leaving less at the surface to warm the world and aid possible life.
But the more noncircular or eccentric a planet’s orbit, the more intense is the energy it gets when passing close to its star in its elliptic journey.
A life—friendly energy equilibrium for a planet near the inner edge of the habitable zone — in danger of being too hot for life — would be a higher albedo, to cool the world by reflecting some of that heat into space, Barnes said.Conversely, a planet near the cool outer edge of the habitable zone would perhaps need a higher level of orbital eccentricity to provide the energy needed for life.

The Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932.Its first ac flight came into being on 01 Apr 1933.  It possessed a strength of six RAF-trained officers and 19 Havai Sepoys (literally, air soldiers).   Its the World's 4th largest Airforce. Its primary responsibility is to secure Indian airspace and to conduct aerial warfare during a conflict.
Personnels in Air ForceThe rank structure of the Indian Air Force is based on that of the Royal Air Force. The highest rank attainable in the IAF is Marshal of the Indian Air Force, conferred by the President of India after exceptional service during wartime. MIAF Arjan Singh is the only officer to have achieved this rank. The head of the Indian Air Force is the Chief of the Air Staff, who holds the rank of Air Chief Marshal. The current Chief of the Air Staff is Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha with effect from 31 December 2013.

Some Important facts about Indian Air Force 

Aircrafts Fighter aircrafts - Su-30MKI, Mirage 2000, MiG-29, HAL Tejas, MiG-21
Helicopters -     Dhruv, Chetak, Cheetah, Mi-8, Mi-17, Mi-26, Mi-25/35

1. The IAF got its first woman Air Marshal in the form of Padmavathy Bandopadhyay.
2. IAF has a base in Farkhor, Tajikistan. Its only base outside India.
3.At 22,000 ft (or 6,706 m), Siachen Glacier AFS is the highest Air Force Station of the IAF.
4.  The IAF created a world record by performing the highest landing of a C-130J at the Daulat Beg Old airstrip in Ladakh at the height of 16614 feet (5065 meters).
5.  IAF’s first HAL-made fighter was HF-24 Marut.
6. The Tejas is the second supersonic Light Combat Aircraft developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
7. Operation Rahat was the biggest civilian rescue operation in the world carried out by any air force using helicopters.
8. The highest achievable rank in the air force is Marshal of the Indian Air Force. Arjan Singh is the only officer who has achieved this rank. Sachin Tendulkar is the first civilian (without any aviation background) who was awarded the honorary rank of Group Captain by IAF. 

Mr. Lindahl is from the Francis Crick Institute. "He demonstrated that DNA decays at a rate that ought to have made the development of life on Earth impossible. This insight led him to discover a molecular machinery, base excision repair, which constantly counteracts the collapse of our DNA," said the Nobel Institute in a statement. Mr. Lindahl is also the 29th Nobel Laureate born in Sweden.
Mr. Modrich is from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine. "He demonstrated how the cell corrects errors that occur when DNA is replicated during cell division. This mechanism, mismatch repair, reduces the error frequency during DNA replication by about a thousandfold. Congenital defects in mismatch repair are known, for example, to cause a hereditary variant of colon cancer," added the release.

Mr. Sancar is from the University of North Carolina. "He has mapped nucleotide excision repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage to DNA. People born with defects in this repair sstem will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. The cell also utilises nucleotide excision repair to correct defects caused by mutagenic substances, among other things," said the release.
"Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," said the press release.

Two scientists from Canada and Japan have won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 for opening "a new realm in particle physics," the Nobel Prize committee says. Working far apart, both Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald showed how neutrinos shift identities like chameleons in space.The revelation that neutrinos — the subatomic particles that are more numerous than any other in the universe except for particles of light — undergo a metamorphosis led to a second and shocking conclusion: that they have mass.
With that discovery, Kajita and McDonald changed the field of particle physics, which had for years held that neutrinos, which rarely interact with matter, have no mass.
The discoveries about a fundamental and yet mysterious particle were made in two huge physics labs that were built deep underground — one in an old nickel mine in Canada and the other in an abandoned mineral mine in Japan. At depths of a kilometer or more, thousands of sensors at each facility are shielded from cosmic rays, allowing them to focus on detecting neutrinos' behavior.

A disease called Goat Pox is behind the mass deaths of Serows, a wild goat-antelope animal that is Mizoram’s state animal and a Schedule-1 protected species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act, according to veterinary experts who warn “Serows in Mizoram are under threat of extinction” and that the disease is zoonotic, meaning it can also spread to humans. the virus which causes Goat Pox — capripox — was detected in laboratory tests. The college is an affiliate of the Central Agricultural University in Imphal.