DAY – 18 ( INSTA REVISION TEST – 18)INSTA REVISION PLAN 2.0, 2021

Solution: C

Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) is an action-oriented global partnership committed in achieving zero turtle extinctions in the 21st century.

It was formed in 2001 as “an IUCN partnership for sustainable captive management of freshwater turtles and tortoises”.

The TSA arose in response to the rampant and unsustainable harvest of Asian turtle populations to supply Chinese markets, a situation known as the Asian Turtle Crisis.

It is involved in turtle and tortoise conservation projects all over the world not under UN system

Solution: C

SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications)

1. SWIFT is a cooperative society under Belgian law owned by its member financial institutions with offices around the world.
2. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) messaging system is a messaging network that financial institutions use to securely transmit information and instructions through a standardized system of codes. Under SWIFT, each financial organization has a unique code which is used to send and receive payments.
3. SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer: rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other.
4. The SWIFT is a secure financial message carrier — in other words, it transports messages from one bank to its intended bank recipient.
5. SWIFT India is a joint venture of top Indian public and private sector banks and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication). The company was created to deliver high quality domestic financial messaging services to the Indian financial community.

Solution: A

Context: A public interest litigation petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Centre and State government to constitute a permanent body for taking serious steps to safeguard the flora, fauna and other natural resources in the Eastern and Western Ghat areas in Tamil Nadu. The petition is on the basis of the recommendations made by the Madhav Gadgil and Kasturi Rangan committees.

Importance of Western Ghats:

• The Western Ghats is an extensive region spanning over six States. It is the home of many endangered plants and animals. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
• It is one of the eight “hottest hot-spots” of biological diversity in the world.
• According to UNESCO, the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas. They influence Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer.

Gadgil Committee:

• It defined the boundaries of the Western Ghats for the purposes of ecological management.
• It proposed that this entire area be designated as ecologically sensitive area (ESA).
• Within this area, smaller regions were to be identified as ecologically sensitive zones (ESZ) I, II or III based on their existing condition and nature of threat.
• It proposed to divide the area into about 2,200 grids, of which 75 per cent would fall under ESZ I or II or under already existing protected areas such as wildlife sanctuaries or natural parks.
• The committee proposed a Western Ghats Ecology Authority to regulate these activities in the area.

Solution: B

The Indian Factory Act, 1881 dealt primarily with the problem of child labour (between 7 and 12 years of age).

Its significant provisions were:

• employment of children under 7 years of age prohibited,
• working hours restricted to 9 hours per day for children,
• children to get four holidays in a month,
• hazardous machinery to be properly fenced off.

The Indian Factory Act, 1891

• increased the minimum age (from 7 to 9 years) and the maximum (from 12 to 14 years) for children,
• reduced maximum working hours for children to 7 hours a day,
• fixed maximum working hours for women at 11 hours per day with an one-and-a-half hour interval (working hours for men were left unregulated),
• provided weekly holiday for all.

Solution: A

Union Environment Ministry released a report on Status of Tiger Habitats in high altitude ecosystems.

The study is led by the Global Tiger Forum (GTF), with range country governments of Bhutan, India and Nepal, along with WWF. It has been supported by the Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme (ITHPC) of the IUCN.

Initiated in 2014, the Integrated Tiger Habitat Conservation Programme (ITHCP) or ‘Tiger Programme‘ is a grant-making initiative which contributes to the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP), a global effort to double tiger numbers in the wild by 2022. The programme consists of a portfolio of 12 large-scale projects in key Tiger Conservation Landscapes across Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Nepal and Myanmar.

The Tiger Programme is based on three pillars:

• Protecting tiger species and their prey from the threat of poaching;
• Preserving tiger habitats, including core habitats, buffer zones and corridors;
• Supporting human populations living in tiger landscapes.

Solution: B

The government has said it is pushing Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to make progress on the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project.

What’s the issue?

The ₹18,000-crore project has been mired in several hurdles. The most recent one is a disagreement between the States on the share of water. There are outstanding environmental obstructions too. It involves deforesting a portion of the Panna Tiger Reserve.

Solution: C

Cheetah are large cat that occurs in Southern, North, East Africa and some localities in Iran.

It inhabits different habitats like dry forests, scrub forests, and savannahs

There are five subspecies of this big cat. It is slim and has muscular, long legs—in relation to its body size when compared to other cats—a small, rounded head that is set on a long neck, a flexible spine, a deep chest, special pads on its feet for traction, and a long tail for balance. It is also the only cat that cannot retract its claws, an adaptation to help maintain traction like a soccer player’s cleats. It also bears distinctive black “tear tracks” running from the inside corner of each eye to the mouth that may serve as an anti-glare mechanism for daytime hunting.

National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has reported to the Supreme Court that African cheetahs, to be translocated in India from Namibia, will be kept at Nauradehi wildlife sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh.

Project Cheetah was launched in 2009 and expert committee short listed some sites where Cheetah could be reintroduced. These were Kuno-Palpur and Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, Velavadar National Park in Gujarat and the Shahgarh bulge in Rajasthan.

https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation/cheetah

Solution: A

The World Population Prospects 2019 is published by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, provides a comprehensive overview of global demographic patterns and prospects. The study concluded that the world’s population could reach its peak around the end of the current century, at a level of nearly 11 billion.

The world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion currently to 9.7 billion in 2050

https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-2019-highlights.html

Solution: C

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is the process established in 2003 to prevent “conflict diamonds” from entering the mainstream rough diamond market by United Nations General Assembly Resolution.

https://www.thehindu.com/business/india-to-actively-curb-conflict-diamonds/article28022481.ece

Solution: C

The black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros is a species of rhinoceros, native to eastern and southern Africa including Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although the rhinoceros is referred to as black, its colors vary from brown to grey.

The northern white rhinoceros, or northern square-lipped rhinoceros is one of two subspecies of the white rhinoceros (the other being the southern white rhinoceros).

Formerly found in several countries in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara, this subspecies is a grazer in grasslands and savanna woodlands. As of March 19, 2018, there were only two known rhinos of this subspecies left, both of which are female; barring the existence of unknown or misclassified male northern white rhinos elsewhere in Africa, this makes the subspecies functionally extinct. They are not naturally found in India.

Kaziranga National Park is a national park in the Golaghat and Nagaon districts of the state of Assam, India. The sanctuary, which hosts two-thirds of the world’s great one-horned rhinoceroses, is a World Heritage Site.

According to the census held in March 2018 which was jointly conducted by the Forest Department of the Government of Assam and some recognized wildlife NGOs, the rhino population in Kaziranga National Park is 2,413.

Solution: B

Solution: D

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: D

Solution: C

Gram Sabha

1. The term Gram Sabha is defined in the Constitution of India under Article 243(b).
2. Gram Sabha is the primary body of the Panchayati Raj system and by far the largest.
3. It is a permanent body.
4. The power to annul a decision of the Gram Sabha rests with the Gram Sabha only.

Composition:

1. Persons, those who are above 18 years of age.
2. Living in the village.
3. Whose names are included in the electoral rolls for the Panchayat at the village level.

Powers and functions:

• Constitution mentions that Gram Sabha exercises such powers and performs such functions at the village level as the Legislature of a State may, by law, provide.

Solution: D

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules inhibit gene expression or translation, by neutralizing targeted mRNA molecules.

Applications of RNAi:

The use of the artificial Double-strand RNA (dsRNA) molecules induces RNA interference response of a cell and results in the regulation of the gene expression.

Thus the Artificially induced RNAi has several tremendous applications in the clinical, therapeutic and other research fields.

It is widely used now in gene knockout studies.

Also, it is implemented in functional genomics research and studies.

Therapeutically, it is now used against viral infections, cancer and neurological diseases, researchers aiming to use it as a safer therapy to cure diseases.

RNAi therapies can also be used in personalized medicines and targeted-gene therapy.

In recent years, RNAi technology has greatly emerged in plant research and crop improvements.

Scientists are now using the RNAi and antisense RNA technology in crop improvement.

Novel plant traits and disease-resistant species of plants are being developed using the present technology.

Moreover, it is also used in pest control and yield improvement.

Flvr Savr tomato, decaffeinated coffee and nicotine-free tobacco are some of the best examples of plant species developed using RNAi technology.

The RNAi is also used for disease and pathogen resistance, development of male sterility and functional genomic studies in plants.

Virus resistance plant species against Banana Bract Mosaic Virus, Rice Tungro Bacilliform Virus, Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Cucumber Mosaic Virus are developed by using the antiviral RNA silencing through RNAi.

Artificially engineered dsRNA complementary to the viral RNA is introduced into the plant genome which mimics like the natural si/miRNA and destroys viral dsRNA every time it attacks.