DAY – 39 (InstaTest-39): Insta 75 Days Revision Plan-2020: Topic – Science & Technology, Textbook based test 29, July 2019 CA

Solution:  C

The Ulhas River is a west flowing river in Western India in the state of Maharashtra. 1,050 passengers rescued from stranded train near Mumbai as the Ulhas River near Badlapur breached its banks and the train halted.

Solution: C

Agni II missile

• India recently conducted successfully the first night trial of Agni-II, its versatile surface-to-surface medium range nuclear-capable missile.
• The missile has a strike range of 2000 km.
• Agni-II, an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM), has already been inducted into the armed forces.
• The two-stage missile equipped with advanced high accuracy navigation system, was guided by a novel state-of-the-art command and control system and propelled by solid rocket propellant system.
• Agni-II was developed by Advanced Systems Laboratory along with other DRDO laboratories and integrated by the Bharat Dynamics Limited, Hyderabad.
• Agni-II is part of the Agni series of missiles which includes 700-km range Agni-I, 3,000-km range Agni-III, Agni-IV and Agni-V.

Solution: C

Vyom Mitra

It is ISRO’s first woman astronaut.

• It is a female spacefaring humanoid robot developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation to function on-board the Gaganyaan, a crewed orbital spacecraft.
• Vyommitra, equipped with a head, two arms and a torso, is built to mimic crew activity inside the crew module of Gaganyaan.
• Functions: Attaining launch and orbital postures, responding to the environment, generating warnings, replacing carbon dioxide canisters, operating switches, monitoring of the crew module, receiving voice commands, responding via speech (bilingual).

Solution: A

International Whaling Commission

• Recently Japan announced to quit from the International Whaling Commission and resume commercial whaling.
• The International Whaling Commission is an Inter-governmental Organization whose purpose is the conservation of whales and the management of whaling.
• It is an international body set up under International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW).
• The IWC currently has 89 member governments from countries all over the world.
• All members are signatories to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW).
• ICRW governs the commercial, scientific, and aboriginal subsistence whaling practices of fifty-nine member nations.
• In 1986, it adopted a moratorium on commercial whaling. This ban still continues.
• This Convention is the legal framework which established the IWC in 1946.

India joined as a member of International Whaling Commission in 1981.

Solution: A

Project NETRA

• ISRO has initiated ‘Project NETRA’ – an early warning system in space to detect debris and other hazards to Indian satellites.

Significance of the project:

• The project will give India its own capability in space situational awareness (SSA) like the other space powers — which is used to ‘predict’ threats from debris to Indian satellites.
• NETRA’s eventual goal is to capture the GEO, or geostationary orbit, scene at 36,000 km where communication satellites operate.
• The effort would make India a part of international efforts towards tracking, warning about and mitigating space debris.

What is Project NETRA (Network for space object Tracking and Analysis)?

• Under the project, the ISRO plans to put up many observational facilities: connected radars, telescopes; data processing units and a control centre.
• They can, among others, spot, track and catalogue objects as small as 10 cm, up to a range of 3,400 km and equal to a space orbit of around 2,000 km.

Solution: C

Muktoshri- arsenic-resistant rice

West Bengal government’s rice research centre has come up with a new variety of rice called Muktoshri that can be grown in arsenic prone areas.

It was developed jointly by the Rice Research Station at Chinsurah, coming under West Bengal’s Agriculture Department and the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow.

Background:

West Bengal has a high concentration of arsenic in groundwater, with 83 blocks across seven districts having higher arsenic levels than permissible limits.

Arsenic- Key facts:

Arsenic is naturally present at high levels in the groundwater of a number of countries. It is also present in rocks and soils.

Arsenic is highly toxic in its inorganic form.

Permissible limit:

World Health Organization’s provisional guideline value for arsenic in drinking water is 0.01 mg/l (10 μg/l). The permissible limit of arsenic in India in the absence of an alternative source is 0.05 mg/l (50 μg/l).

Harmful effects:

• Contaminated water used for drinking, food preparation and irrigation of food crops poses the greatest threat to public health from arsenic.
• Long-term exposure to arsenic from drinking-water and food can cause cancer and skin lesions.
• It has also been associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
• In utero and early childhood exposure has been linked to negative impacts on cognitive development and increased deaths in young adults.

Solution: C

Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES):

• It is India’s only research facility engaged in conservation and preservation of wildlife and its resources. It was established in 1998 with the help of Central Zoo Authority of India, CSIR and the government of Andhra Pradesh.
• LaCONES has helped the Mouse Deer Conservation Breeding Centre at Nehru Zoological Park to increase the population of mouse deer in Telangana forests. Amrabad forest, for instance, ran out of mouse deer and through the efforts of LaCONES, the animal is now reintroduced in Amrabad Tiger Reserve.
• Earlier, LaCONES has developed universal DNA based marker for identification of wild animals from parts and remains. It has a DNA banking of more than 250 species of mammals, birds and reptiles.
• It is a part of CCMB (centre for cellular and molecular biology).
• It supports both in-situ habitat preservation and Ex-situ conservation through captive breeding in controlled environment to restock original wild populations.
• It is the only laboratory in India that has developed methods for collection and cryopreservation of semen and oocytes from wildlife and successfully reproducing endangered blackbuck, spotted deer and Nicobar pigeons.

Solution: D

India’s First e-waste Clinic

• India’s first e-waste clinic for segregating, processing and disposal of waste from household and commercial units will be set-up in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
• The clinic is being conceived in compliance with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.
• The e-waste clinic would enable segregation, processing and disposal of waste from both household and commercial units.

Solution: B

MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative

• Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has launched MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative, towards improving knowledge on human physiology.

What is MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative?

• It is a project funded by DBT.
• Aims at creating a database network of all tissues in the human body from the available scientific literature.
• It is a project that involves scientific skill development for annotation, science outreach along with handling big data.
• The programme will involve gaining better biological insights through physiological and molecular mapping, develop disease models through predictive computing and have a wholistic analysis and finally drug discovery.

Who can participate in this project?

• The project can be signed up by students who are in their final year graduation and above. Students from the fields of biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology, botany, zoology, bioinformatics, health sciences, systems biologists, pharmacologists and data sciences can associate with this project.
• Even participants having a science background but not necessarily involved in active scientific research can be part of this network.

What are the applications of information generated through MANAV?

• The aim of the project remains to understand and capture the human physiology in two stages – in a normal stage and while in a disease stage. Such a database on individual tissues, once ready, can come handy in tracing the causes of a disease, understanding specific pathways and ultimately decode the body’s disease stage linked to tissues and cells. The teams will also study any potent elements or molecules that have never been used in the form of drugs, to target the specific cells or tissues.

Solution: D

Project Elephant:

• It is a centrally sponsored scheme, launched in 1992 by Ministry of Environment and Forests.
• It provides financial and technical support to major elephant bearing states in the country for protection of elephants, their habitats and corridors.
• It also seeks to address the issues of human-elephant conflict and welfare of domesticated elephants.

Objectives:

• To protect elephants, their habitat & corridors
• To address issues of man-animal conflict
• Welfare of captive elephants

Major activities:

• Ecological restoration of existing natural habitats and migratory routes of elephants;
• Development of scientific and planned management for conservation of elephant habitats and viable population of Wild Asiatic elephants in India;
• Promotion of measures for mitigation of man elephant conflict in crucial habitats and moderating pressures of human and domestic stock activities in crucial elephant habitats;
• Strengthening of measures for protection of Wild elephants form poachers and unnatural causes of death;
• Eco-development and Veterinary care.

Solution: A

StrandHogg

It is a Malware which allows real-time malware applications to pose as genuine applications and access user data of all kinds.

Threats: It can listen to the conversations, access photo album, read/send messages, make calls, record conversations, get login credentials to various accounts, access private images, files, contact details, call logs and location information without being apparent to the affected users.

Why in News? The Union Home Ministry has alerted States, warning them about the vulnerability of the Android operating system to a bug called ‘StrandHogg’.

Solution: B

Ekuverin – It is a joint military exercise between Indian and Maldives.

Nomadic Elephant – It is Indo – Mongolian joint military training.

Maitree – 2019 – It is the joint military exercise between India and Thailand.

Dharma Guardian – 2019 – It is a joint military exercise between India and Japan.

Shakti-2019 – Exercise Shakti is a series of joint military exercise between India and France.

Dustlik-2019 – It is the first ever India-Uzbekistan joint military exercise.

Kazind – It is an annual military exercise between India and Kazakhstan.

Solution: A

The Golden Crescent is the name given to one of Asia’s two principal areas of illicit opium production (with the other being the Golden Triangle). The Golden Crescent is located in Southwest Asia and consists of three contiguous countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran from East to West.

Afghanistan, the only land locked country in this region, has the least area of 6,47,497 sq. km. Iran having the largest coastline of 2440 km in this region is marked by )Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman in the South. Pakistan shares the maximum land boundaries with a total boundary area of 6,774 km.

Iran is not an opium producing country in this region but is more that of a trans-shipment country.

The second map will be helpful for GS Paper III: Security related questions.

Solution: C

Paramarsh scheme

Context: The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development has launched ‘Paramarsh’ – a University Grants Commission (UGC) scheme.

About Paramarsh:

The scheme is for Mentoring National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) Accreditation Aspirant Institutions to promote Quality Assurance in Higher Education.

The scheme will be a paradigm shift in the concept of mentoring of institution by another well performing institution to upgrade their academic performance and enable them to get accredited by focusing in the area of curricular aspects, teaching-learning & evaluation, research, innovation, institutional values & practices etc.

Implementation:

The Scheme will be operationalized through a “Hub & Spoke” model wherein the Mentor Institution, called the “Hub” is centralized and will have the responsibility of guiding the Mentee institution through the secondary branches the “Spoke” through the services provided to the mentee for self-improvement.

Significance and impact of the scheme:

1. The scheme is expected to have a major impact in addressing a national challenge of improving the quality of Higher Education in India.
2. This allows a centralized control over operational efficiency, resource utilization to attain overall development of the mentee institution.
3. The scheme will lead to enhancement of overall quality of the Mentee Institutions and enhance its profile as a result of improved quality of research, teaching and learning methodologies.
4. Mentee Institution will also have increased exposure and speedier adaptation to best practices.
5. The scheme will also facilitate sharing of knowledge, information and opportunities for research collaboration and faculty development in Mentee Institutions.
6. Mentor-Mentee relationship will not only benefit both the institutions but also provide quality education to the 3.6 crore students who are enrolling to Indian Higher Education system at present.

Solution: A

About Seva Bhoj Yojana:

Union Ministry of Culture has launched- ‘Seva Bhoj Yojna’– a scheme to reimburse central share of CGST and IGST on food, prasad, langar or bhandara offered by religious and charitable institutions.

The scheme seeks to reimburse the central government’s share of Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) and Integrated Goods and Service Tax (IGST) on purchase of raw items such as ghee, edible oil, atta, maida, rava, flour, rice pulses, sugar and jaggery, which go into preparation of food/prasad/langar/bhandara offered free of cost by religious institutions.

The main objective of the scheme is to lessen the financial burden of such charitable religious institutions, which provide free of cost without any discrimination to the general public and devotees.

Eligibility:

The charitable religious institutions including temples, gurudwara, mosque, church, dharmik ashram, dargah, monasteries, which fulfill the following criteria are eligible for the grant:

1. The institutions that have been in existence for at least five years before applying for financial assistance/grant.
2. The institutions that serve free food to at least 5000 people in a month.
3. The institutions covered under Section 10(23BBA) of the Income Tax Act or those registered as Society under Societies Registration Act (XXI of 1860) or as a Public Trust under any law for the time being in force of statuary religious bodies constituted under any Act or institutions registered under Section 12AA of Income Tax Act.

Solution: D

The IAEA LEU Bank will be located at the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Oskemen, Kazakhstan and will be under the responsibility of the appropriate authorities for safety, security and safeguards in Kazakhstan.

The IAEA Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) Bank is an assurance of supply mechanism of last resort, and will be a physical reserve of LEU available for eligible IAEA Member States.

The IAEA LEU Bank will be a reserve of LEU owned and controlled by the IAEA, and a mechanism of last resort for Member States in case the supply of LEU to a nuclear power plant is disrupted due to exceptional circumstances and the Member State is unable to secure LEU from the commercial market or by any other means.

https://www.iaea.org/topics/iaea-low-enriched-uranium-bank

Solution: B

Indian Science Congress

Context: 107th Indian Science Congress is being held at the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Theme: “Science & Technology: Rural Development”.

Background:

Indian Science Congress is organised by the Indian Science Congress Association every year in the first week of January.

About Indian Science Congress Association:

The Indian Science Congress Association was started in the year 1914 in Kolkata and has a membership of more than 30,000 scientists.

Origin: It owes its origin to the foresight and initiative of two British chemists, namely, Professor J. L. Simonsen and Professor P. S. MacMahon. It occurred to them that scientific research in India might be stimulated if an annual meeting of research workers somewhat on the lines of the British Association for the Advancement of Science could be arranged.

Objectives:

1. To advance and promote the cause of science in India.
2. To hold an annual congress at a suitable place in India.
3. To publish such proceedings, journals, transactions and other publications as may be considered desirable.
4. To secure and manage funds and endowments for the promotion of Science including the rights of disposing of or selling all or any portion of the properties of the Association.
5. To do and perform any or all other acts, matters and things as are conductive to, or incidental to, or necessary for, the above objects.

Solution: B

Geographical indicators (GI)

• A name or sign used on goods that have a specific geographical origin and posses qualities or a reputation due to that place of origin.
• Its purpose is to create unique identification to customers and thereby creating more demand for products.
• It is given to both man-made and natural products.
• However it is a community right rather than individual or company.
• It is protected under Geographical indications of goods (registration and protection) act, 1999.
• It is managed by Cell for IPR promotion and Management (CIPAM) under the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• At the International level, GI is governed by World Trade Organisation‘s (WTO‘s) Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).
• TIME PERIOD – 10 years + renewed for any time
• The first product in India to be accorded with GI tag was Darjeeling tea in the year 2004-05.
• Once the GI protection is granted, no other producer can misuse the name to market similar products. It also provides comfort to customers about the authenticity of that product.
• Provisions in this regard: GI is covered as element of intellectual property rights (IPRs) under Paris Convention for Protection of Industrial Property.
• At international level, GI is governed by WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In India, Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection Act), 1999 governs it.

Solution: D

Data is information processed or stored by a computer. This information may be in the form of text documents, images, audio clips, software programs, or other types of data.

Big Data is also a data but with a huge size, such a data is so large and complex that none of the traditional data management tools are able to store it or process it efficiently.

Applications of Big Data

Solution: A

e-Cigarettes

• The Central government has directed all states and Union Territories to not allow the manufacture, sale and advertisement of e-cigarettes and other Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS).
• Electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes, are devices that do not burn or use tobacco leaves but instead vaporise a solution, which a user then inhales.
• The main constituents of the solution, in addition to nicotine, are propylene glycol (with or without glycerol and flavouring agents).
• ENDS are devices that heat a solution to create an aerosol, which also frequently contains flavours, usually dissolved into propylene glycolor and glycerin.
• A number of metals, including lead, chromium and nickel, and chemicals like formaldehyde have been found in aerosols of some ENDS.
• ENDS are not approved as NRTs (nicotine-replacement therapies) under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and rules made thereunder.
• According to Global Tobacco Epidemic 2017 report by the WHO, the governemnts of 30 countries like Mauritius, Australia, Singapore etc have already banned ENDS.

Solution: B

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency or virtual currency created and held electronically.

It is not regulated by any central bank or government. They aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems.

It is also called a “cryptocurrency” since it is decentralized and uses cryptography to prevent double-spending, a significant challenge inherent to digital currencies.

Bitcoin is a distributed peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the inter-mediation of any central authority.

It can also be traded on an open market and its exchange rate fluctuates much like a stock market i.e. based on the demand.

Solution: D

Tamil yeoman:

Context: Tamil yeoman (Cirrochroa thais) butterfly species endemic to Western Ghats has been declared the state butterfly of Tamil Nadu.
Key facts:

Uniformly orange in colour with a dark brown outer ring, Tamil Yeoman is among the 32 butterfly species found in the Western Ghats.

This butterfly species moves in groups in large numbers, but only in a few places. Also known as Tamil Maravan, which means warrior, these butterflies are found mainly in the hilly areas.

For the first time Tamil Nadu has declared its state butterfly and only fifth in the country to do so. Maharashtra was the first to declare Blue Mormon as its state butterfly, followed by Uttarakhand (Common peacock), Karnataka (Southern bird wings) and Kerala (Malabar banded peacock or Budha Mayoori).

Solution: C

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry.

Its members come from all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel fabrication, plant manufacture, transport, and the disposition of used nuclear fuel as well as electricity generation itself.

Together, WNA members are responsible for 70% of the world’s nuclear power as well as the vast majority of world uranium, conversion and enrichment production.

The WNA says it aims to fulfill a dual role for its members: Facilitating their interaction on technical, commercial and policy matters and promoting wider public understanding of nuclear technology. It has a secretariat of around 35 staff. The WNA was founded in 2001 on the basis of the Uranium Institute, itself founded in 1975.

Chandipura virus:

Context: Chandipura virus detected in Gujarat.

What is it?

Named after the Maharashtra village where the virus was first discovered, the likely vector (carrier) of the virus is the female phlebotomine sandfly. It has been detected in sand flies in Senegal and Nigeria, apart from India. The virus is known to cause inflammation of the brain, and progresses rapidly from an influenza-like illness to coma and death.

Chandipura virus (CHPV) belongs to the Rhabdoviridae family in the order Mononegavirales of the genus Vesiculovirus. Interestingly, its continuing mutating trend has enhanced its lethality to cause human infections, unlike its genetic cousin, the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV).

Symptoms:

• Sudden high fever accompanied by headaches and altered consciousness.
• Convulsions.
• Vomiting and nausea.
• Unconsciousness

Key facts:

The virus predominantly infects children between the ages of 2-16, spreading through the bite of a sandfly, and in some cases, even the mosquito during the monsoon and pre-monsoon season.
It is distantly related to the virus that causes rabies and is known to have a case fatality between 55-75 per cent.

Solution: B

Three Phases of Indian nuclear power programme

• Homi Bhabha envisioned India’s nuclear power programme in three stages to suit country’s low uranium resource profile.

Phase I – Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor:

• In the first stage of the programme natural uranium fuelled Pressurized Heavy water reactors produces electricity while generating plutonium-239 as by-product.

Phase II – Fast Breeder Reactor:

• In the second stage, fast breeder reactors (FBRs) [moderators not required] would use plutonium239, recovered by reprocessing spent fuel from the first stage, and natural uranium.
• In FBRs, plutonium-239 undergoes fission to produce energy, while the uranium-238 present in the fuel transmutes to additional plutonium-239.

Phase III – Thorium based Reactors:

• A Stage III reactor or an advanced nuclear power system involves a self-sustaining series of thorium-232-uranium-233 fuelled reactors.
• This would be a thermal breeder reactor, which in principle can be refueled – after its initial fuel charge – using only naturally occurring thorium.
• As there is a long delay before direct thorium utilization in the three-stage programme, the country is now looking at reactor designs that allow more direct use of thorium in parallel with the sequential three-stage programme
• Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is such an option under consideration.

Solution: B

Let the sum be Rs X

Rate of interest = R%
Simple Interest for 2 yr =Rs( 625 – 575 ) = Rs 50
Simple interest for one year = Rs 25

Therefore, Simple interest for 3 years = 75

If certain amount becomes Rs 575 after paying simple interest for three years, then Principal Amount = Rs 575- Rs75 = Rs 500
SI = PTR/100

75 = 500 * 3 * R/100

Or R = 25 * 100/500

Or R = 5

Solution: C

Let Principal Amount = Rs . P

Simple interest paid at 13 % is SI1

Simple interest paid at 12.5 % is SI2
Then, SI₁ – SI₂ = Rs 104.
=> (P x 13 x 1)/100 – (P x 25/2 x 1) /100 = 104

13P/100 – P/8 = 104
(26P -25P)/200 = 104
Thus Principal amount=  P = Rs 20800
∴ Capital = Rs. 20800

Solution: D

Let P be the Principal amount.

T be Time period

Compound interest = CI = (1 + R/100)^T

Therefore,

P x (1 + 20/100)^T > 2P
⇒ (6/5)^T > 2
Now, (6/5) x (6/5) x (6/5) x (6/5) > 2
⇒ 1296/615 > 2
Therefore, T =4 years

Solution: D

Yearly interest = 10%
Half yearly = 5%

Therefore, Time 1.5 years = 3 Half yearly

CI = (1+R/100)^T
Total Amount = 8000(1 + 5/100)³
= 8000 x (21/20)³
= 8000 x 21/20 x 21/20 x 21/20
= Rs. 9261

Therefore, total compound interest = Rs 9261 – Rs 8000 = Rs 1261

Answer. C.

The focus of the passage is on bringing out how disasters unevenly impact the rich and poor. Hence C is the correct answer.