Questions

Peggy Whitson on 24 April 2017 broke the record for most days spent in space (cumulatively) by a US astronaut. She broke the previous record set by Jeff Williams who had spent a total of 534 days in space.

– Whitson has been currently living and working aboard the International Space Station (ISS), for which she was launched in November 2016 using a Russian Soyuz capsule. At the time of her launch, she had already accumulated 377 total days in space.

– Her mission was recently extended for an additional three months. Now when she will return from ISS in September 2017, she would have accumulated more than 600 days in space.

Surekha Marandi has been appointed as the new Executive Director (ED) of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). She succeeded U S Paliwal, who retired on December 31, 2016.

In flowering plants one sperm nucleus fertilizes the egg and the other sperm nucleus fuses with two other nuclei found within the ovule, thus forming triploid endosperm.

Hence, double fertilization is unique to flowering plants.

Ganeshan Neelakanta Iyer has become the first Indian to be nominated as a member of the ITTF Umpires and Referees Committee (URC). His term will be for two years and is extendable. Iyer is the only assigned competition manager of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) in India. Beside this, Ganeshan has also been recommended as the Technical Commissioner from the Asian Continent to ITTF and his term will be for a period of four years. He is also the chairman of the South Asian Federation technical committee and a member of the Technical Committee of the Commonwealth Table Tennis Federation (CTTF).