QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz,16 July 2018

Solution: b.

Artist Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag in 1978. Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).

The first versions of the rainbow flag were flown on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade. Baker and a team of volunteers had made them by hand, and now he wanted to mass-produce the flag for consumption by all. However, because of production issues, the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by basic blue, which resulted in the contemporary six-striped flag (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet). Today this is the most common variant of the rainbow flag, with the red stripe on top, as in a natural rainbow. The various colors came to reflect both the immense diversity and the unity of the LGBT community.

Britannica;

Improvisation: Th; In the news: Section 377 IPC;

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Solution: a.

The given extract refers to the Irishman James Augustus Hicky’s Bengal Gazette.

To read in slight detail about him and India’s first printed newspaper, refer: TH;

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Solution: c.

Picture shows a 3D image of a left view of an ankle. The bones are in white and soft tissue in red.

Scientists in New Zealand scientists have performed the first-ever 3-D, colour X-ray on a human, using a technique that promises to improve the field of medical diagnostics, according to Europe’s CERN physics lab which contributed the imaging technology. CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. The new device, based on the traditional black-and-white X-ray, incorporates particle-tracking technology developed for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which in 2012 discovered the elusive Higgs Boson particle. “This colour X-ray imaging technique could produce clearer and more accurate pictures and help doctors give their patients more accurate diagnoses,” said a CERN statement. The CERN technology, dubbed Medipix, works like a camera detecting and counting individual sub-atomic particles as they collide with pixels while its shutter is open. This allows for high-resolution, high-contrast pictures. According to the CERN, the images very clearly show the difference between bone, muscle and cartilage, but also the position and size of cancerous tumours, for example.

TH;

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Solution: c.

TH: Smallpox, a contagious and sometimes fatal infectious disease, was declared eradicated in 1980 by the World Health Organization. However, there have been longstanding concerns about smallpox. “To address the risk of bioterrorism, Congress has taken steps to enable the development and approval of countermeasures to thwart pathogens that could be employed as weapons. This approval provides an important milestone in these efforts. This new treatment affords us an additional option should smallpox ever be used as a bioweapon,” said the FDA Commissioner.

TPOXX (tecovirimat) is a small-molecule antiviral treatment for smallpox, the first therapy specifically approved for this indication.

Solution: d.

S-400 Triumf is one of the world’s most advanced air defence systems that can simultaneously track numerous incoming objects — all kinds of aircraft, missiles and UAVs — in a radius of a few hundred kilometres and launch appropriate missiles to neutralise them. It is now bang in the middle of the ongoing stand-off between Russia and Western nations. Among the countries under pressure from the U.S. not to buy this weapon is India.

The development of S-400 (NATO name SA-21 Growler) was started towards the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and was disrupted by the collapse of the Communist bloc in 1991. The system is specifically designed to detect and destroy an array of targets — strategic bombers; aircraft used for electronic warfare, early warning, and reconnaissance; fighter jets such as F-16 and F-22; and incoming missiles such as Tomahawk. Russian forces have deployed at least half-a-dozen S-400 regiments, at least two of them are for the protection of Moscow. Russia has also deployed at least two S-400 systems in Syria, much to the concern of observers who fear the system could contribute to a global conflict breaking out in Syria. A single unit, consisting of eight launchers, 112 missiles and command and support vehicles, costs at least $400 million (Rs. 2,500 crore).

TH;

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