QUIZ – 2020: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 13 June 2020

Solution: c)

Recently Maharashtra launched an Integrated Flood Warning System called ‘IFLOWS-Mumbai’. A joint initiative between the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the warning system will be able to relay alerts of possible flood-prone areas anywhere between six to 72 hours in advance. Mumbai is only the second city in the country after Chennai to get this system. Similar systems are being developed for Bengaluru and Kolkata.

The system can provide all information regarding possible flood-prone areas, likely height the floodwater could attain, location-wise problem areas across all 24 wards and calculate the vulnerability and risk of elements exposed to flood.

The primary source for the system is the amount of rainfall, but with Mumbai being a coastal city, the system also factors in tidal waves and storm tides for its flood assessments. The system has provisions to capture the urban drainage within the city and predict the areas of flooding.

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Solution: a)

Recently WHO claimed that asymptomatic transmission of the disease is “extremely rare.”

Asymptomatic transmission is when a person who has no symptoms of Covid-19 — such as fever, body ache, cough etc — transmits the novel coronavirus to another person.

How far does asymptomatic transmission occur?

Estimates vary but, by all accounts, it does take place. A study from China published in Nature Medicine on April 15 estimated that 44% cases who had contracted the disease had caught the disease from a person who was not showing symptoms.

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Solution: b)

Recently the Gujarat Forest Department announced the population of Asiatic lions in the state — 674, up from 523 in a Lion Census five years ago. Unlike in previous years, this count was estimated not from a Census, but from a population “observation” exercise called Poonam Avlokan.

Why was the Lion Census not conducted this year?

Conducted once every five years, the Lion Census was due on June 5-6 this year, but was postponed after the lockdown was announced on March 24.

Through Poonam Avlokan, which is a monthly in-house exercise carried out every full moon. Field staff and officers spend 24 hours assessing the number of lions and their locations in their respective jurisdictions. It was a mechanism developed by the Forest Department in 2014 as part of preparations for the 2015 Lion Census.

The first Lion Census was conducted by the Nawab of Junagadh in 1936; since 1965, the Forest Department has been regularly conducting the Lion Census every five years. The 6th, 8th and 11th Censuses were each delayed by a year, for various reasons.

The 2020 count is particularly important. The 2015 Census had counted 523 lions, up from 411 in 2010. But 12 lions were killed in a flash flood in Amreli just a month after the 2015 cenus, followed by deaths of more than two dozen lions in an outbreak of canine distemper virus (CDV) and babesiosis in 2018. A babesiosis outbreak was reported in Gir (east) this summer too, and around two dozen lions are reported killed.

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Solution: c)

What are genetically modified seeds?

Conventional plant breeding involves crossing species of the same genus to provide the offspring with the desired traits of both parents. Genetic engineering aims to transcend the genus barrier by introducing an alien gene in the seeds to get the desired effects. The alien gene could be from a plant, an animal or even a soil bacterium.

Bt cotton, the only GM crop that is allowed in India, has two alien genes from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that allows the crop to develop a protein toxic to the common pest pink bollworm. Ht Bt, on the other, cotton is derived with the insertion of an additional gene, from another soil bacterium, which allows the plant to resist the common herbicide glyphosate.

In Bt brinjal, a gene allows the plant to resist attacks of fruit and shoot borer.

In India, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) is the apex body that allows for commercial release of GM crops. In 2002, the GEAC had allowed the commercial release of Bt cotton. More than 95 per cent of the country’s cotton area has since then come under Bt cotton. Use of the unapproved GM variant can attract a jail term of 5 years and fine of Rs 1 lakh under the Environmental Protection Act ,1986.

Solution: c)

According to CDC, “Polio is a crippling and potentially deadly disease that affects the nervous system. Because the virus lives in the faeces (poop) of an infected person, people infected with the disease can spread it to others when they do not wash their hands well after defecating (pooping). People can also be infected if they drink water or eat food contaminated with infected feces. Most people with polio do not feel sick. Some people have only minor symptoms, such as fever, tiredness, nausea, headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, cough, stiffness in the neck and back, and pain in the arms and legs. In rare cases, polio infection causes permanent loss of muscle function (paralysis). Polio can be fatal if the muscles used for breathing are paralyzed or if there is an infection of the brain.”

The virus multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Once that happens, the patient is crippled for life because there is no treatment for the affliction. That is why polio is so dreaded. Polio infection, however, is easily preventable by a vaccine.

In January 2014, India was declared polio-free after three years on zero cases, an achievement that is widely believed to have been spurred by the successful pulse polio campaign in which all children were administered polio drops.

Some years ago, India introduced the injectable polio vaccine in the Universal Immunisation Programme. This was to reduce chances of vaccine-derived polio infection, which continues to happen in the country. If both wild and vaccine-derived polio infection are reduced to zero, it would mean there is no trace left of the virus anywhere in the world, except in controlled situations in laboratories for future contingencies.

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