QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 04 December 2018

Solution: a.

TNM: “Despite India’s fast economic growth and poverty reduction over the past few decades, food insecurity remains very high. This puzzle has been named the “South Asian enigma”. Some indicators of food insecurity, especially child undernourishment rates, are now worse in India than in Ethiopia. This is despite the fact that Ethiopia has only a quarter of India’s per capita income and has suffered many famines in the 20th century.”

IFPRI; WB Blog;

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Solution: b.

Osiris-Rex – NASA and Bennu

Mascot – DLR (German) and Cnes (French Space Agency) and Ryugu

Rosetta – ESA (European) and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

BBC (From October 2018): Japan’s space agency (Jaxa) has put another lander on the surface of asteroid 162173, or Ryugu. The Hayabusa-2 probe ejected the German-French Mascot “rover” on Wednesday for its 20-minute journey down to the space rock. Mascot is designed to move across the surface of Ryugu and analyse its surface properties, including its mineral composition and magnetic field.

September, Jaxa celebrated a first, as the probe successfully put two small (18 cm wide) robot explorers on the surface. Now, the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (Mascot), which has been built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the French Space Agency (Cnes), has repeated the feat.

Improvisation (BBC): NASA’s Osiris-Rex probe has drawn up alongside the Asteroid Bennu after a two-year, two-billion-km journey from Earth. The mission will spend 2.5 years at the 500m-wide rock, mapping its surface and studying its composition. In mid-2020, scientists will direct Osiris-Rex to drop down to the object and grab at least 60g of regolith, or “top soil”. This will be packed away in a sterile capsule to be returned home in 2023.

BBC;

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Solution: d.

In mid-November, more than 280,000 people dressed in high-visibility jackets blocked roads across France in protest at rising taxes on diesel and petrol, which the government says are to fund eco-friendly projects and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A small number of hard-core protesters have continued blocking roads and petrol stations since then. ‘Gilet jaunes’ is french for ‘yellow vests’, and these protesters are referred to as the gilet jaunes.

TH; BBC;

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Solution: c.

Both statements are correct.

TH: Burning plastic for fuel should be the last option. When plastic is burnt, industries must extract fossil fuels again to make new plastics. “By burning it, you are destroying it, which means you mine for new material,” says Ms. Chandran. This increases the carbon footprint of the product. Secondly, burning plastics without emissions is tough. In cement kilns, for example, RDF must be incinerated at more than 1,000°C to prevent the release of pollutants such as dioxins and furans. For this, pollution control boards must monitor cement kilns, and this monitoring is often not stringent. Yet another problem with RDF is the economics. To create the fuel, plants must segregate waste. This adds to the cost of the fuel, making it unattractive compared to coke. These barriers have kept RDF-use from taking off.

164.100.228.143:8080/sbm/content/writereaddata/Guidelines%20on%20RDF%20Usage.pdf

Solution: c.

The Food Sustainability Index (FSI – developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition) ranks 67 countries on food system sustainability. It is a quantitative and

qualitative benchmarking model that measures the sustainability of food systems across three categories: Food Loss and Waste, Sustainable Agriculture and Nutritional Challenges. The index has three key types of
performance indicators—environmental,  societal and economic.

Image Source: The Hindu;