DAY – 14(InstaTest-14): Insta 70 Days Revision Plan-2021: Topic – SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, Subject-wise Test 16 & Test 27 Revision , Textbook-wise Tests 26 , September 2020 CA

Solution: C

In order to commercially exploit the products and services emanating from the Indian Space Programme, the “NewSpace India Limited (NSIL)” has been incorporated in March 2019, as a wholly-owned Government of India Company, under the administrative control of Department of Space (DOS). NSIL currently has an authorized share capital of ₹ 100 crore and paid-up capital of ₹ 10 crore. NSIL is the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) Production

NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) will be nodal agency for carrying out PSLV production through Indian Industry under consortium route. The industry consortium will be responsible for producing, assembling and integrating the launch vehicle, by making use of the existing ISRO facilities under GOCO model.

Solution: A

Solution: D

Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as “thermal treatment”. Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat.

Gasification is a process that converts organic or fossil fuel based carbonaceous materials into carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This is achieved by reacting the material at high temperatures (>700’C), without combustion, with a controlled amount of oxygen and/or steam(The syngas produced by gasification can be turned into higher value commercial products)

Pyrolysis involves application of heat with no added oxygen in order to generate oils and/or syngas (as well as solid waste outputs) and requires more homogenous waste streams.

Biomethanation is a process by which organic material is microbiologically converted under anaerobic conditions to biogas. It involves fermenting bacteria, organic acid oxidizing bacteria, and methanogenic archaea

Solution: B

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern. Graphene is considered to be the world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material – to both electricity and heat. All this properties are exciting researchers and businesses around the world – as graphene has the potential the revolutionize entire industries – in the fields of electricity, conductivity, energy generation, batteries, sensors and more.

Graphene is the world’s strongest material, and so can be used to enhance the strength of other materials. Dozens of researches have demonstrated that adding even a trade amount of graphene to plastics, metals or other materials can make these materials much stronger

Graphene is the world’s most conductive material to heat. As graphene is also strong and light, it means that it is a great material to make heat-spreading solutions, such as heat sinks. This could be useful in both microelectronics (for example to make LED lighting more efficient and longer lasting) and also in larger applications – for example thermal foils for mobile devices.

Because graphene is the world’s thinnest material, it is also the material with the highest surface-area to volume ratio. This makes graphene a very promising material to be used in batteries and supercapacitors. Graphene may enable devices that can store more energy – and charge faster, too. Graphene can also be used to enhance fuel-cells.

Graphene has a lot of other promising applications: anti-corrosion coatings and paints, efficient and precise sensors, faster and efficient electronics, flexible displays, efficient solar panels, faster DNA sequencing, drug delivery, and more.

Solution: B

Coal Bed Methane (CBM) is an unconventional form of natural gas found in coal deposits or coal seams. CMB is formed during the process of coalification, the transformation of plant material into coal.

It is considered a valuable energy resource with reserves and production having grown nearly every year since 1989. Varied methods of recovery make CBM a stable source of energy.

CBM can be recovered from underground coal before, during, or after mining operations. It can also be extracted from “unminable” coal seams that are relatively deep, thin or of poor or inconsistent quality. Vertical and horizontal wells are used to develop CBM resources.

Extraction requires drilling wells into the coal seams and removing water contained in the seam to reduce hydrostatic pressure and release absorbed (and free) gas out of the coal.

CBM can be used for:

• Power generation
• As compressed natural gas (CNG) auto fuel
• As feedstock for fertilizers
• Industrial uses such as in cement production
• Methanol production.

Solution: A

Akash Missile:

Context: Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has successfully test fired AKASH-MK-1S missile.

Key facts:

• This is surface to air anti-aircraft missile with a strike range of 25 km and capability to carry warhead of 60 kilogram.
• It can reach an altitude of 18 km and can be fired from both tracked and wheeled platforms.
• The missile is guided by a phased array fire control radar called ‘Rajendra’ which is termed as Battery Level Radar (BLR) with a tracking range of about 60 km.
• The Akash-MK-1S is capable of striking down enemy fighter jets and drones very effectively and accurately.
• The Akash surface-to-air missile was designed to intercept enemy aircraft and missiles from a distance of 18 to 30 km.

Solution: A

Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in the fabric of space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe like colliding black holes, the collapse of stellar cores (supernovae), coalescing neutron stars or white dwarf stars, remnants of gravitational radiation created by the birth of the Universe itself.

Sources of G waves

Any object with mass that accelerates (which in science means changes position at a variable rate, and includes spinning and orbiting objects) produces gravitational waves, including humans and cars and airplanes etc.

But the gravitational waves made by us here on Earth are much too small to detect.

In fact, it isn’t even remotely possible to build a machine that can spin an object fast enough to produce a detectible gravitational wave – even the world’s strongest materials would fly apart at the rotation speeds such a machine would require.

Since we can’t generate detectable gravitational waves on Earth, the only way to study them is to look to the places in the Universe where they are generated by nature.

Gravitational waves interact very weakly with matter (unlike electromagnetic radiation), they travel through the Universe virtually unimpeded giving us a clear view of the gravitational-wave Universe.

Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity.

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/what-are-gw

Solution: B

Avangard system:

Context: Starting from next year, in 2019, a new intercontinental strategic system Avangard will enter service in the Russian army and the first regiment in the Strategic Missile Troops will be deployed.

About Avangard system:

• Avangard, also known as “Objekt 4202,” is a hypersonic boost-glide missile system that is supposed to combine a high-performance ballistic missile with an unmanned glider vehicle for significant improvements in maneuverability and sustained top speed.

It is Russian military’s first Avangard hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

It can fly 27 times the speed of sound.

The missile system is a reentry body carried atop an existing ballistic missile, which has the capability to manoeuvre. It’s manoeuvring capability makes it difficult to predict its trajectory and gives it the ability to protect itself from the air and ballistic missile defences by delivering nuclear warheads to targets

The Avangard missiles have a range of over 6,000 km, weigh approximately 2,000 kg and can withstand temperatures of over 2000-degree celsius.

Solution: A

SSLV is a new mini-rocket launcher designed and built by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for launching small satellites. SSLV rockets are capable of putting a payload of 500 kg to mid-inclination Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and 300 kg to Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO), making it ideal for launching small satellites.

SSLV is perfectly suited for launching multiple micro-satellites at a time and supports multiple orbital drop-offs. Unlike the PSLV and GSLV, the SSLV can be assembled both vertically and horizontally. It will be used exclusively for small satellites such as nanosats and cubesats.

Solution: D

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is a not-for-profit Section 8, Schedule B, Public Sector Enterprise, set up by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India as an Interface Agency to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech enterprise to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally relevant product development needs.

BIRAC is a industry-academia interface and implements its mandate through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. In its Eight years of existence, BIRAC has initiated several schemes, networks and platforms that help to bridge the existing gaps in the industry-academia Innovation research and facilitate novel, high quality affordable products development through cutting edge technologies. BIRAC has initiated partnerships with several national and global partners to collaborate and deliver the salient features of its mandate.

BIRAC’s aim is to play a transformative and catalytic role in building a US$ 100 billion Indian bioeconomy. We believe that the agents of change for building the Indian bioeconomy would be biotech start-ups & SMEs & hence our focus is on raising their capabilities

Solution: D

The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities. These supercomputers will also be networked on the National Supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN is another programme of the government which connects academic institutions and R&D labs over a high speed network. Academic and R&D institutions as well as key user departments/ministries would participate by using these facilities and develop applications of national relevance. The Mission also includes development of highly professional High Performance Computing (HPC) aware human resource for meeting challenges of development of these applications. The Mission implementation would bring supercomputing within the reach of the large Scientific & Technology community in the country and enable the country with a capacity of solving multi-disciplinary grand challenge problems.

The Mission would be implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) at an estimated cost of Rs.4500 crore over a period of seven years.

Objective:

• To make India one of the world leaders in Supercomputing and to enhance India’s capability in solving grand challenge problems of national and global relevance
• To empower our scientists and researchers with state-of-the-art supercomputing facilities and enable them to carry out cutting-edge research in their respective domains
• To minimize redundancies and duplication of efforts, and optimize investments in supercomputing
• To attain global competitiveness and ensure self-reliance in the strategic area of supercomputing technology

Application areas:

• Climate Modelling
• Weather Prediction
• Aerospace Engineering including CFD, CSM, CEM
• Computational Biology
• Molecular Dynamics
• Atomic Energy Simulations
• National Security/ Defence Applications
• Seismic Analysis
• Disaster Simulations and Management
• Computational Chemistry
• Computational Material Science and Nanomaterials
• Discoveries beyond Earth (Astrophysics)
• Large Complex Systems Simulations and Cyber Physical Systems
• Big Data Analytics
• Finance
• Information repositories/ Government Information Systems

https://nsmindia.in/about

Solution: D

The Brahmaputra, one of the largest rivers of the world, has its origin in the Chemayungdung glacier of the Kailash range near the Mansarovar lake. From here, it traverses eastward longitudinally for a distance of nearly 1,200 km in a dry and flat region of southern Tibet, where it is known as the Tsangpo, which means ‘the purifier.’ The Rango Tsangpo is the major right bank tributary of this river in Tibet. It emerges as a turbulent and dynamic river after carving out a deep gorge in the Central Himalayas near Namcha Barwa (7,755 m).The river emerges from the foothills under the name of Siang or Dihang. It enters Indiawest of Sadiya town in Arunachal Pradesh. Flowing southwest, it receives its main left bank tributaries, viz., Dibang or Sikang and Lohit; thereafter, it is known as the Brahmaputra.

The Brahmaputra receives numerous tributaries in its 750 km long journey through the Assam valley. Its major left bank tributaries are the Burhi Dihing and Dhansari(South) whereas the important right bank tributaries are the Subansiri, Kameng, Manasand Sankosh

Solution: C

Solution: C

Bhoj Wetland located in Madhya Pradesh.  Two contiguous human-made reservoirs – the “Upper Lake” was created in the 11th century by construction of an earthen dam across the Kolans River, and the lower was constructed nearly 200 years ago, largely from leakage from the Upper, and is surrounded by the city of Bhopal.

Nalbana Bird Sanctuary or Nalbana Island is the core area of the Ramsar designated wetlands of Chilika Lake, Odisha. It was declared a bird sanctuary under the Wildlife Protection Act in 1972.

Ropar Wetland, also named Ropar Lake, is a man-made freshwater riverine and lacustrine wetland located in the state of Punjab.

Solution: C

Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a rare but severe, often fatal illness in humans. It was first identified in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The host of natural Ebola virus belongs to Pteropodidae family which is a fruit bat. In to the human population it enters by close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other fluids of infected animals like fruit bats, chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, forest antelope found ill or dead in the rain forest.

It spreads through blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with or has died from Ebola. Objects that have been contaminated with body fluids (like blood, feces, vomit) from a person sick with Ebola or the body of a person who died from Ebola. It also spreads through sexual transmission.

The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is from 2 to 21 days. A person infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they develop symptoms.

Solution: B

Solution: B

Keeping in mind the need for having a dedicated national fund with the primary objective of dealing with any kind of emergency or distress situation, like posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to provide relief to the affected, a public charitable trust under the name of ‘Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund)’ has been set up.

Objectives :

• To undertake and support relief or assistance of any kind relating to a public health emergency or any other kind of emergency, calamity or distress, either man-made or natural, including the creation or upgradation of healthcare or pharmaceutical facilities, other necessary infrastructure, funding relevant research or any other type of support.
• To render financial assistance, provide grants of payments of money or take such other steps as may be deemed necessary by the Board of Trustees to the affected population.
• To undertake any other activity, which is not inconsistent with the above Objects.

Constitution of the Trust :

• Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairman of the PM CARES Fund and Minister of Defence, Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Finance, Government of India are ex-officio Trustees of the Fund.
• The Chairperson of the Board of Trustees (Prime Minister) shall have the power to nominate three trustees to the Board of Trustees who shall be eminent persons in the field of research, health, science, social work, law, public administration and philanthropy.
• Any person appointed a Trustee shall act in a pro bono capacity.

Other details :

• The fund consists entirely of voluntary contributions from individuals/organizations and does not get any budgetary support. The fund will be utilised in meeting the objectives as stated above.
• Donations to PM CARES Fund would qualify for 80G benefits for 100% exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961. Donations to PM CARES Fund will also qualify to be counted as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure under the Companies Act, 2013
• PM CARES Fund has also got exemption under the FCRA and a separate account for receiving foreign donations has been opened. This enables PM CARES Fund to accept donations and contributions from individuals and organizations based in foreign countries. This is consistent with respect to Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF). PMNRF has also received foreign contributions as a public trust since 2011.

https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/web/page/faq

https://www.pmcares.gov.in/en/web/page/about_us

Solution: B

Aarogya Setu ( lit. ‘Health Bridge’) is a COVID-19 tracking mobile application developed by the National Informatics Centre that comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

The Government of India  launched a mobile app ArogyaSetu developed in public-private partnership to bring the people of India together in a resolute fight against COVID-19.
The App, called ‘AarogyaSetu’ joins Digital India for the health and well-being of every Indian. It will enable people to assess themselves the risk of their catching the Corona Virus infection. It will calculate this based on their interaction with others, using cutting edge Bluetooth technology, algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Once installed in a smart phone through an easy and user-friendly process, the app detects other devices with AarogyaSetu installed that come in the proximity of that phone. The app can then calculate the risk of infection based on sophisticated parameters if any of these contacts has tested positive.

The personal data collected by the App is encrypted using state-of-the-art technology and stays secure on the phone till it is needed for facilitating medical intervention.

https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1610326

Solution: A

Nirbhaya fund:

• The Rs 1,000 crore Nirbhaya Fund was announced in Union Budget 2013.
• The corpus was to be utilised for upholding safety and dignity of women.
• It is a non-lapsable corpus fund.
• Ministry of Women and Child Development is the nodal Ministry to appraise schemes under Nirbhaya Fund and also to review and monitor the progress of sanctioned Schemes in conjunction with the line Ministries/Departments.
• The Fund is administered by Department of Economic Affairs of the finance ministry.

Solution: B

Finance Commission:

• The Finance Commission is a constitutionally mandated body that is at the centre of fiscal federalism.
• Finance Commission is a statuary, independent, non-political body set up by President of India every five years (or earlier) under Article 280 of the Constitution.
• Two distinctive features of the Commission’s work involve redressing the vertical imbalances between the taxation powers and expenditure responsibilities of the centre and the States respectively and equalization of all public services across the States.

What are the functions of the Finance Commission?

It is the duty of the Commission to make recommendations to the President as to:

• the distribution between the Union and the States of the net proceeds of taxes which are to be, or may be, divided between them and the allocation between the States of the respective shares of such proceeds;
• the principles which should govern the grants-in-aid of the revenues of the States out of the Consolidated Fund of India;
• the measures needed to augment the Consolidated Fund of a State to supplement the resources of the Panchayats and Municipalities in the State on the basis of the recommendations made by the Finance Commission of the State;
• any other matter referred to the Commission by the President in the interests of sound finance.

The Commission determines its procedure and have such powers in the performance of their functions as Parliament may by law confer on them.

The Recommendations made by the Finance commission are only advisory in nature and hence, not binding on the government

Solution: D

Foreign Exchange Reserves:

Foreign exchange reserves are assets held on reserve by a central bank in foreign currencies, which can include bonds, treasury bills and other government securities. These assets serve many purposes but are most significantly held to ensure that the central bank has backup funds if the national currency rapidly devalues or becomes altogether insolvent.

India has large foreign-exchange reserves; holdings of cash, bank deposits, bonds, and other financial assets denominated in currencies other than India’s national currency, the Indian rupee. The reserves are managed by the Reserve Bank of India for the Indian government and the main component is foreign currency assets.

The Foreign exchange reserves of India consists of below four categories:

• Foreign Currency Assets
• Gold
• Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)
• Reserve Tranche Position

Solution: A

Official Secrets Act:

The law meant for ensuring secrecy and confidentiality in governance, mostly on national security and espionage issues.

• The Indian Official Secrets Act, 1904 was enacted during the time of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905.
• One of the main purposes of the Act was to muzzle the voice of nationalist publications.
• The Indian Official Secrets Act (Act No XIX of 1923) replaced the earlier Act, and was extended to all matters of secrecy and confidentiality in governance in the country.

Ambit of the Act:

The secrecy law broadly deals with two aspects — spying or espionage, which is dealt with in Section 3 of the Act, and disclosure of other secret information of the government, which is dealt with in Section 5. The secret information can be any official code, password, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information. However, the OSA does not define the secret information, the government follows the Manual of Departmental Security Instructions, 1994 for classifying a document as secret.

Solution: B

Zero Hour:

• Zero Hour is an Indian parliamentary innovation. It is not mentioned in the parliamentary rules book.
• Under this, MPs can raise matters without any prior notice.
• The zero hour starts immediately after the question hour and lasts until the agenda for the day (i.e., regular business of the House) is taken up.
• In other words, the time gap between the question hour and the agenda is known as zero hour.

Solution: D

Recently, the Global Innovation Index 2020 was released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). India is at the 48th position in the list of top 50 innovative countries.

Solution: D

Djibouti Code of Conduct:

• India joins the Djibouti Code of Conduct as Observer
• DCOC/JA is a grouping on maritime matters comprising 18 member states adjoining the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, the East coast of Africa and Island countries in the IOR.
• India joins Japan, Norway, the UK and the US as Observers to the DCOC/JA.
• The DCOC, established in January 2009, is aimed at repression of piracy and armed robbery against ships in the Western Indian Ocean Region, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
• It was established under the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
• Under the code, the signatories agreed to co-operate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy and armed robbery against ships.

Solution: A

Let the present ages of Sameer and Anand be 5x years and 4x years respectively.
Then (5x +3)/(4x+3)= 11/9

By solving the equation, we get x=6.

Therefore, Anand’s present age= 4x= 24.

Hence, option(a) is correct.

Solution: B

Seats in executive class = 50
Seats for chair car = 450
Booked seats in total = 425
Booked in executive class = 48
Therefore, seats booked in chair class = (425 – 48) = 377
Empty seats for chair class = 450 – 377 = 73

Hence, option(b) is correct.

Solution: A

Let total distance to office = x km, while the uniform Speed = 4 kmph.
Time to cover first 0.7x distance is 30 min or 1/2 hour more than time to cover the rest of the distance,
i.e. 0.3x.
Time = distance / speed
Or 0.7x/4 = 0.3x/4 + ½
Or 0.4x/4= ½
Or x= 5 km

Hence, option(a) is correct.

Solution: A

(A + B) – (B + C) = 12 ==> A – C = 12.
C is 12 year younger than A.

Hence, option (a) is correct.

Ans. D.

A is wrong as the passage never states that it is good for neighbours to feel threatened by us. B is wrong as the implication is similar to a. C is wrong as Chinese threat is beyond the discussion of the passage. D is correct as the passage does suggest that despite neighbours not feeling threatened by us, we are still a regional power, which implies that hard power is not enough.