Current Affairs 27th August 2017

Current Affairs 27th August 2017 - Important  Points

• Who has been appointed as Chairman of Infosys Board? - Nandan Nilekani
• Potential new way to treat HIV identified by - Researchers
• E-waste disposal in state schools has been launched by - Kerala Government
• Canada to allow gender-neutral passports to promote equality on - 24th August 2017
• Project Brainwave for real-time artificial intelligence launched by - Microsoft
• 'Business Week' in India to be led by - Australian Trade Minister

Current Affairs 27th August 2017 - Details

Who has been appointed as Chairman of Infosys Board? - Nandan Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairman of Infosys Board, returning to the company ten years after he stepped down as its Chief Executive Officer on 24th August 2017.

The decision in this regard was taken in the Board of Directors meeting of Infosys. Meanwhile, UB Pravin Rao will be continuing to serve as the interim MD and CEO at Infosys. Nilekani's appointment came amid high-level exits from the company as CEO Vishal Sikka who was the Chairman of the board R Seshasayee and Co-Chair Ravi Venkatesan resigned from the Infosys board. Moreover, Directors John Etchemendy and Jeffery S Lehman also resigned with an immediate effect.

The reconstituted board also signed a mutual release agreement and separation with Vishal Sikka including a Non-Disparagement Obligation that bonds him not to defame the company as well as defend the company against any disparaging remarks made by a third party during his period. 

More about Nandan Nilekani

• Nilenaki co-founded the company with six others around 36 years ago.
• In 1978, while working at Patni Computer Systems, Nilenaki met NR Narayana Murthy.
• Murthy, Nilekani and five others left Patni to found Infosys, which later rose to become a tech-giant in 1981.
• After Narayana Murthy, Nilekani was the second CEO of the company, assuming the role in 2002 which he served till 2007, after that Kris Gopalakrishnan assumed the top role.
• He had resigned from Infosys in 2009 and joined UPA government led by former PM Manmohan Singh.
• Later, he was appointed as the Chairman of the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) and became the architect of the Aadhaar.

Potential new way to treat HIV identified by - Researchers

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have identified a novel variant within the previously identified family of proteins in HIV, called “Delta 20,” which is an immune system protein that suppresses the most damaging HIV strains, X4 and preventing the virus from the infecting cells.
The research is a first step towards enabling doctors to direct the body’s own immune system in order to eliminate the disease. This new method differs from the more traditional methods of targeting viruses that may eventually become resistant to specific medical therapies. The National Academy of Sciences published the study in the journal proceedings.
Important highlights

• The researchers have discovered that  a family of proteins can also restrict specific highly contagious virus from getting reproduced by themselves during early stages of infection.
•  These viruses include SARS, dengue, influenza and West Nile.
• However, the study focused on HIV-1 which is the most widespread type of HIV worldwide.
• HIV is classified into R5 and X4 virus strains. R5 viruses are exclusively associated with primary infection, while X4 viruses come out in later stages of HIV disease among half of HIV carriers.
• When doctors have detected the X4 strain in a patient, it’s a sign that the patient’s HIV infection has progressed to a serious stage.
• The new study has shown a way to suppress X4 strain.
• Within the family of virus-stunting proteins they previously identified, the researchers have found that one particular protein can prevent the virus from infecting cells.
• Delta 20 is the nickname given to it.

E-waste disposal in state schools has been launched by - Kerala Government

Kerala government has started e-waste disposal in its state schools with about 12500 kg being disposed state wide in a single day under a program aiming to clear the accumulated junk. The program is a joint initiative of KITE (Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education), former IT at School project and Clean Kerala Company.

Important Highlights

• The initiative is mainly focusing to dispose off e-waste like desktop computers, CRT monitors, laptops, UPS, camera, printers, network components and generators etc. from 10,000 odd schools
  and educational offices in the state.
• The accumulated junk is reported to be more than 1 Crore kg.
• The first vehicle carrying the e-waste from a school was flagged off on 24th August 2017.
• Similar vehicles were flagged off through video conferencing from other constituencies also including Kozhikode North, Alappuzha,Thaliparamaba and Puthukkad.
• Schools reportedly have more than 1 Crore kilo gram of e-Waste accumulated since past two decades. Besides obstructing the lab activities, the e-waste eats up a huge space of IT labs.

Canada to allow gender-neutral passports to promote equality on - 24th August 2017

The Canadian government announced on 24th August 2017 that citizens, who do not identify with a particular gender, whether male or female, would soon be able to get gender neutral passports.
The citizens would be able to mark "X" in space of gender on their passports and other identity documents. The decision would be effective from 31st August 2017.
According to the government’s statement, from 31st August, citizens will be able to add an observation" to their passports stating their sex should be "identified as 'X', presenting it is unspecified.
The interim measures taken will going to be in force shortly until authorities are able to print an "X" on passports and other documents.

The move is aimed to help Canadians to have documents reflecting their gender identity better.
Elaborating more on the development, Ahmed Hussen, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister of Canada said, “By introducing an 'X' gender designation in our government-issued documents, we are taking an important step towards advanced equality for all Canadians regardless of gender identity or expression.”

Project Brainwave for real-time artificial intelligence launched by - Microsoft

Software giant Microsoft launched its Project Brainwave in August 2017, which is deep learning acceleration platform for real-time AI (Artificial Intelligence). Microsoft has launched the project during the time when real-time artificial intelligence is becoming
increasingly important as cloud infrastructures process live data streams, whether its search queries, videos, interactions with users and sensor streams.
Important highlights

• The Project Brainwave uses the massive FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) infrastructure that Microsoft has been deploying over the past couple of years.
• By attaching high-performance FPGAs directly to the data center network, DNNs can be served as hardware microservices, where a DNN can be mapped to a pool of remote FPGAs and called by a server with no software in that loop.
• The system architecture minimizes latency, since the CPU does not need to process incoming requests allowing very high throughput,  with the FPGA processing requests the time network streams them.
• The system has been architectured to give high actual performance across a wide range of complex models, with batch-free execution.
• The system can handle memory-intensive and complex models such as LSTM (Long Short Term Memories), without using batching to juice throughput.
• Project Brainwave has achieved unparraleled levels of demonstrated real-time AI performance even in extremely challenging models.

'Business Week' in India to be led by - Australian Trade Minister

Australia's Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Steven Ciobo will be leading a major mission named to India - the second Australia Business Week in India (ABWI) – to India.
The mission scheduled to be held from 28th August to 1st September 2017 will aim to deepen the collaboration between the two nations in different fields.
Fields that will be covered during the visit inckuding agri-business and food, higher education and research and smart cities and infrastructure, Australia's Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment.
According to a statement, 2nd ABWI arranged by the Australian Trade and Investment Commission will be attracting many business leaders. 

Important Highlights

• Leonie Muldoon who is a Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner - South Asia, said at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission that the ABWI is a significant platform which can be leveraged by Australian businesses to take a closer look at what India has to offer and to engage with potential partners and customers in specific areas of mutual business opportunity.
• He also said that the ABWI 2017 will help Australia to further enhance trade, investment and education relationship with India.
• Australia’s ongoing efforts to enhance trade relations with India will be helped by the size and breadth of the delegation across multiple industry sectors.
• A statement said, “ABWI 2017 builds on the success of the inaugural event in 2015, which has created lasting relationships and generated business worth millions of dollars.” It also said, “India is Australia's ninth largest partner with two-way trade and services of Australian dollars 20.7
  billion and its fifth largest export market, with total exports of Australian dollars of 11.1 billion.”
• The statement also added, "Total Indian investment in Australia is near Australian dollars 13.5 billion (up from Australian dollars 600 million in 2006), while in India total investment is more than Australian dollars 10.3 billion.”
• The statement says that over 50 business events and activities with Indian business and government, will take place across the six cities of New Delhi, Mumbai,  Kolkata, Bhopal, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.