QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 10 September 2018

Solution: a.

TH: The arrival of the Karens to the Andamans was serendipitous. A British priest in Myanmar was sailing back from the U.S. in the 1920s when he decided to stop in Port Blair to meet a cousin, who was then the chief commissioner here. On his return to Myanmar, he published a short note about a British scheme to sponsor a year’s rations for anyone willing to move to the isolated islands to work in the massive timber trade that had been started there.

It was in April 1925 that the first batch of the Karens landed on these shores. A year later, another 50 families came. Webi, surrounded by forests and rivers, was chosen for its isolation: the community wanted to shield itself from ‘old enemies’ and potential new ones.

Their isolation and reticence (Karens believe their name derives from the Burmese words for ‘shyness’ and ‘politeness’) have helped them preserve their culture through the tumultuous turns of history that shaped the islands: they have stayed untouched by the brutal, three-year Japanese regime (one elderly Karen said that it could be because “we looked like them, and so they trusted us”), by the skirmishes between the new mainland settlers and indigenous tribes (whose populations dwindled dramatically), by the exit of the British, and by the rapid building of settlements after Independence.

Solution: b.

WHO: Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection in rodents and other wild and domesticated species, and humans. Rodents are implicated most often in human cases. Humans become infected through direct contact with the urine of infected animals or with a urine-contaminated environment. The bacteria enter the body through cuts or abrasions on the skin, or through the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and eyes. Person-to-person transmission is rare.

In the news:  TH;

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Solution: d.

Right to

1. Information
2. Records and reports
3. Emergency medical care
4. Informed consent
5. Confidentiality, human dignity and privacy
6. Non-discrimination
7. Safety and quality care according to standards
8. Choose alternative treatment options if available
9. A second opinion
10. Transparency in rates, and care according to prescribed rates wherever relevant
11. Choose the source for obtaining medicines or tests
12. Proper referral and transfer
13. Protection for patients involved in clinical trials
14. Protection of participants involved in biomedical and health research
15. Discharged, right to receive the body of a deceased person from the hospital
16. Patient education
17. Be heard and seek redressal.

TBi;

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Solution: b.

TBI: Though the Damascus swords made from the steel are famous around the world, few seem to realise that the swords were made from ingots forged in India. Way back in the 6th century BC, this finest of alloys being made was in the Chera Kingdom of Tamil Nadu, from where it spread far and wide.

Developed by the Tamils themselves, the alloy is made by hammering porous iron while it is hot. Then, the metal is sealed in a clay container with wood chips. When heated, the wood turns to carbon, which bonds with the iron to make steel. At least that is how we speculate that they did it. The real technique has been lost to history.

NCERT (Class 8 Our Pasts III Part 2): Wootz steel when made into swords produced a very sharp edge with a flowing water pattern. This pattern came from very small carbon crystals embedded in the iron. Francis Buchanan who toured through Mysore in 1800, a year after Tipu Sultan’s death, has left us an account of the technique by which Wootz  steel was produced in many hundreds of smelting furnaces in Mysore. In these furnaces, iron was mixed with charcoal and put inside small clay pots. Through an intricate control of temperatures the smelters produced steel ingots that were used for sword making not just in India but in West and Central Asia too. Wootz is an anglicised version of the Kannada word ukku, Telugu hukku and Tamil and Malayalam urukku – meaning steel.

Solution: d.

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization, developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic.

Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean. A significant percentage of this plastic drifts into large systems of circulating ocean currents, also known as gyres. Once trapped in a gyre, the plastic will break down into microplastics and become increasingly easier to mistake for food by sea life.

Going after it with vessels and nets would be costly, time-consuming, labor-intensive and lead to vast amounts of carbon emission and by-catch. That is why The Ocean Cleanup is developing a passive system, moving with the currents – just like the plastic – to catch it. The system consists of a 600-meter-long floater that sits at the surface of the water and a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below. The floater provides buoyancy to the system and prevents plastic from flowing over it, while the skirt stops debris from escaping underneath. As the system moves through the water, the plastic continues to collect within the boundaries of the U-shaped system. (Image: On the left is the cross-section of the 600-m long floater; The floater is shown on the right)

https://www.theoceancleanup.com;

In the news: BBC;