INSIGHTS CURRENT AFFAIRS ( 21 April 2021) REVISION THROUGH MCQS

Ans: (b)

Explanation: Contesting Claims Over Islands:

• The Paracel Islands are claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam.
• The Spratly Islands are claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei and Philippines.
• The Scarborough Shoal is claimed by Philippines, China and Taiwan.
• Since 2010, China has been converting uninhabited islets into artificial islets to bring it under UNCLOS (For example, Haven Reef, Johnson South Reef and Fiery Cross Reef).

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2021/04/21/south-china-sea-dispute-2/

Ans: (b)

Explanation: About the Bao Forum:

• S1: The Boao Forum for Asia was initiated in 2001 by 25 Asian countries and Australia (increased to 28 in 2006). It is a non-profit organisation.
• It has provided a high-end platform for political, business and academic leaders in Asia and the world.
• S2: It is modelled on the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, Switzerland.
• S3: The Forum is committed to promoting regional economic integration and bringing Asian countries even closer to their development goals.
• It has made positive contributions to the promotion of regional economic integration, common development and the building of a more prosperous and harmonious Asia.

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2021/04/21/boao-forum/

Ans: (b)

Explanation: Global Youth Mobilization Local Solutions campaign

• United Nations agencies and youth organisations have come together to launch a campaign unique campaign to involve the youth of the world in building their lives impacted by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
• It is mandated to fund youth in communities impacted by the pandemic to take up innovative programmes to rebuild lives.
• It is being supported by six of the world’s largest youth organisations:
  • World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations
  • World Young Women’s Christian Association
  • World Organization of the Scout Movement
  • World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts
  • The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
  • The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2021/04/21/global-youth-mobilization-local-solutions-campaign/

Ans: (c)

Explanation: About the International Space Station:

• Launched in 1998 and involving Russia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency, the ISS is one of the most ambitious international collaborations in human history.
• ISS is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit.
• The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific experiments are conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields.
• The ISS circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits per day.
• ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations as well as Skylab from the US.

Refer: https://www.insightsonindia.com/2021/04/21/russia-to-launch-its-own-space-station-in-2025/

Ans: (c)

Explanation:

• The Indus dolphin, Platanista gangetica minor, is one of two subspecies of freshwater dolphins found in the Indian subcontinent. The other, the Gangetic dolphin, Platanista gangetica gangetica, is found in the Ganga-Brahmaputra river basin. The Indus River dolphins, that had “gone extinct in India in the 1930s”, had been “discovered” again in the Beas in 2007.
• WWF: WWF-India, in partnership with the Department of Forests and Wildlife Preservation, Punjab conducted the first ever organized Indus River Dolphin Survey in May 2018 across a 185km stretch of the river Beas (Beas Conservation Reserve).
• Based on the direct counts, after correcting for dolphins that were missed by the survey, the final estimate of the population of Indus River Dolphins in the Beas River stands at 5 – 11 individuals. Although the population of the species is small, its presence in the Beas River above the Harike barrage for 70 years, indicates no decline in population of the species. The presence of a young calf is also a positive sign and indicates a population that is large enough to be viable.

Refer: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/less-than-a-dozen-indus-dolphins-remain-in-the-beas/article24531893.ece

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• “Wilderness” areas are regions minimally impacted by human activities such as fishing, pollution and shipping. Most such areas are presently found in international waters, away from human populations. It’s a place where the environment and ecosystem is acting in basically an undisturbed way that’s free from human activity.
• Most of the areas the researchers defined as wilderness fell within the Arctic, Antarctic and around Pacific Island nations, or in the open ocean, where human activity is more limited. Despite their conservation status, MPAs appear to host just 4.9% of global marine wilderness.
• Although fishing is one of the most significant direct impacts that humans can have on ocean ecosystems, many of the problems being caused originate on land. Runoff of nutrients from farming fertilisers, chemicals from poorly controlled industrial production, and the influx of plastic pollution from rivers are all disrupting ocean life.

Refer: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/untouched-ocean-habitats-rapidly-shrinking-says-study/article24542162.ece

Ans: (c)

Explanation:

• Geologists have classified the last 4,200 years as being a distinct age in the story of our planet. They are calling i t the Meghalayan Age, the onset of which was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilisations worldwide.
• We currently live in what is called the Holocene Epoch, which reflects everything that has happened over the past 11,700 years – since a dramatic warming kicked us out of the last ice age. But the Holocene itself can be subdivided, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It is the official keeper of geologic time and it proposed three stages be introduced to denote the epoch’s upper, middle and lower phases.
• These all record major climate events. The Meghalayan, the youngest stage, runs from 4,200 years ago to the present. It began with a destructive drought, whose effects lasted two centuries, and severely disrupted civilisations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley. It was likely triggered by shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation.
• The middle phase of the Holocene will be referred to as the Northgrippian, and runs from 8,300 years ago up to the start of the Meghalayan. The onset for this age was an abrupt cooling, attributed to vast volumes of freshwater from melting glaciers in Canada running into the North Atlantic and disrupting ocean currents. The oldest phase of the Holocene – the exit from the ice age – will be known as the Greenlandian.

Refer: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44868527

Ans: (a)

Explanation:

• Trees do this using a network of fungi that grow around inside their roots. The fungi provide the tree with nutrients and in return they receive sugars. Scientists have found that this connection runs far deeper than first thought. By plugging into the fungal network, trees can share resourced with each other. The system has been nicknamed the Wood Wide Web.
• The relationship between these mycorrhizal fungi and the plants they connect is now known to be ancient (around four hundred and fifty million years old) and largely one of mutualism—a subset of symbiosis in which both organisms benefit from their association.

Refer: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-secrets-of-the-wood-wide-web

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-44643177/how-trees-secretly-talk-to-each-other

Ans: (d)

Explanation:

• The Goldilocks zone is the region around a star where liquid water can exist at a planet’s surface.
• BBC: Most moons are thought to form from the leftover ingredients of their parent planet. In our Solar System, Jupiter’s large family of moons likely formed from the accumulation of this material when the planet was young.
• Moons can also start out as dwarf planets or asteroids orbiting their star, only later to be captured by planets with a much stronger gravitational pull. This is thought to be the case for Triton, which orbits backwards around its host planet Neptune, and may previously have lived in the Kuiper Belt – a distant zone of the Solar System beyond Neptune’s orbit.
• Our own Moon formed via a giant impact. When another large body collided with the early Earth, the resulting debris collected to create the Moon.
• BBC: A team of astronomers has potentially discovered the first known moon beyond the Solar System. The signal was detected by Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope; astronomers now plan to carry out follow-up observations with Hubble in October.

Refer: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40741545

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44605761

Ans: (c)

Explanation:

• Lake Titicaca is the largest freshwater lake in South America and the highest of the world’s large lakes. Titicaca is one of less than twenty ancient lakes on earth, and is thought to be there million years old. Lake Titicaca sits 3 810 m above sea level and is situated between Peru to the west and Bolivia to the east.