INSIGHTS CURRENT AFFAIRS (21 DECEMBER 2019) REVISION THROUGH MCQS

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• NASSCOM Future Skills was launched on 19th February 2018 in the presence of senior industry leaders and government officials.
• The programme aims to reskill 2 million professionals and potential employees & students in the industry over a period of 5 years.
• To do this, FutureSkills portal uses the technology of the future, to create a space where a learner can access content on all the skills of the future.
• A learner can seamlessly access free and paid content, assessments, virtual labs and get certified on the skills of their choice.
• Wipro has partnered with NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) to launch a skilling platform called ‘Future Skills’ for 10,000 students from over 20 engineering colleges in India.
  • This is a part of Wipro’s Corporate Social Responsibility programme, TalentNext.

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/21/future-skills/

Ans: (b)

Explanation: What is the National Population Register (NPR)?

• The NPR is a database containing a list of all usual residents of the country. Its objective is to have a comprehensive identity database of people residing in the country.
• It is generated through house-to-house enumeration during the “house-listing” phase of the census, which is held once in 10 years. The last census was in 2011, and the next will be done in 2021 (and will be conducted through a mobile phone application, according to the Home Minister, Amit Shah).
• A usual resident for the purposes of NPR is a person who has resided in a place for six months or more, and intends to reside there for another six months or more
• What is the legal basis for NPR?
  • While the census is legally backed by the Census Act, 1948, the NPR is a mechanism outlined in a set of rules framed under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
  • Section 14A was inserted in the Citizenship Act, 1955, in 2004, providing for the compulsory registration of every citizen of India and the issue of a “national identity card” to him or her. It also said the Central government may maintain a “National Register of Indian Citizens”.
  • The Registrar General India shall act as the “National Registration Authority” (and will function as the Registrar General of Citizen Registration). Incidentally, the Registrar General is also the country’s Census Commissioner.
  • The NPR is the first step towards establishing the NRIC.

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/21/national-population-register-npr-3/

Ans: (b)

Explanation:

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/21/chabahar-port-2/

Ans: (c)

Explanation:

• Indian Government has launched a network to encourage cross-disciplinary leadership- Called EChO Network.
• Aim: To identify gaps in knowledge regarding environment and then train postdoctoral leaders in research and outreach on these topics, incorporating current public and private efforts.

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/21/echo-network/

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• Land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF), also referred to as Forestry and other land use (FOLU), is defined by the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat as a “greenhouse gas inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use such as settlements and commercial uses, land-use change, and forestry activities

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/21/european-green-deal/

Ans: (d)

Explanation:

• In an extraordinary waste-to-wealth feat, researchers from Assam have used the commonly found invasive plant water hyacinth to produce carbon nanoparticles. These extremely tiny (less than 10 nanometre) particles can be used for detecting a commonly used herbicide — pretilachlor.
• Entropy is the loss of energy available to do work. Another form of the second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a system either increases or remains constant; it never decreases. Entropy is zero in a reversible process; it increases in an irreversible process and it explains why heat flows from a hot body to a cold body and not the other way around.
• Due to the remarkable originality and power of Ramanujan’s genius, the ideas he created a century ago are now finding applications in diverse contexts like signal processing, black hole physics

Refer: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/ramanujans-legacy-used-in-signal-processing-black-hole-physics/article30367891.ece

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• The grievances of the tribal assumed least significance for the Congress that claimed to be an all India party fighting against the British imperialism. As soon as the British took over Eastern India tribal revolts broke out to challenge the alien rule. In the early years of colonization, no other community of India offered such heroic resistance to British rule or faced such tragic consequences as did the numerous tribal communities of now Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Orissa, Bengal and Andhra pradesh.
• The forest laws imposed by the British had infringed the rights of the tribal from time to time and they had to fight their grievances on their own with little or no help from outside. Most of the tribal uprising were armed uprising against the British The Rampa Rebellion(1922-23) under Alluri Sita Rama Raju of Andra pradesh was fought by the tribal as a protest to the oppressive Madras Forest Act of 1882.
• The Act placed restrictions on the free movement of tribal in the forest areas and prevented them from engaging in their traditional lifestyle of Podu (shifting) cultivation, and use of the forest for firewood and toddy Period from 1917-1923 ,there was lot of unrest in the tribal areas spreading from east Godavari to Vizianagaram.
• One of Andras early revolutionaries, Alluri Sita Rama Raj (1897-1923) was able to successfully mobilize the local tribal for an armed rebellion against the British. He made them give up alcohol and gave them military training first with bows and arrows and later with weapons . Inspired by the revolutionaries of Bengal, Raju decided to raided police stations in and around Chintapalli, Krishna-devi-peta and Raja-vommangi, in search of ammunition’s . The repressive measures and the unjust policies of the British, coupled with the misdeeds of British contractors who exploited and oppressed the workers of the hill tribes of the Visakhapatnam and East Godavari district, provoked him.He carried out a campaign in the region which brought him into conflict with the police.

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• Ahoms along with Chutiya, Moran, Motok, and Koch are still regarded as semi-tribal groups who have nominally converted to Ekasarana Dharma even though keeping alive their own tribal traditions and customs.
• Various indigenous Assamese communities in Assam like Chutiya, Koch-Rajbongshi, Moran, Motok, Ahoms etc (all having tribal origin) have slowly been converted into a caste through Sanskritisation.

Refer: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/narendra-modi-assam-elections-tribals-scheduled-tribes-325858-2016-05-27

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

Article 345 of the Constitution deals with Official language or languages of a state. Article 345 empowers state legislature to adopt ‘any one or more of the languages in use in the State or Hindi as the language or languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes’ of the concerned State

Ans: (d)

Explanation:

• Carbon dots are a carbonaceous nanomaterial that were discovered accidentally and are now drawing significant attention as a new quantum-sized fluorescent nanoparticle.
• Carbon dots are biocompatible, non-toxic, photostable, and easily functionalized with good photoluminescence and water solubility.

Due to these unique properties, they are used broadly in live cell imaging, catalysis, electronics, biosensing, power, targeted drug delivery, and other biomedical applications