UPSC Current Affairs Quiz : 08 January 2024

Solution: b)

Statement 2 is incorrect.

A tiger has been spotted at a record-high elevation of 3,640 meters in the Pangolakha Wildlife Sanctuary in Sikkim. This marks the highest elevation in India where tigers have been observed, surpassing the previous record of 3,630 meters in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Pangalokha Wildlife Sanctuary is situated at the tri-junction of Sikkim, Bengal, and Bhutan. The Pangolakha range in the east separates Sikkim from Bhutan

It is the largest wildlife sanctuary in Sikkim.

It is home to various species, including red pandas, snow leopards, Himalayan musk deer, goral, and black bears.

Source

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Solution: a)

The government’s technical committees, including the Central Motor Vehicle Rules-Technical Standing Committee (CMVR-TSC) and the Automotive Industry Standards Committee (AISC), are working on formulating standards for Moving Off Information Systems (MOIS) in vehicles.

What is MOIS?

• Moving Off Information Systems (MOIS) is an advanced driver assistance systemdesigned to aid drivers during low-speed moving-off manoeuvres, particularly in situations involving vehicles carrying passengers or goods.
• The system detects and informs the driver of the presence of pedestrians and cyclistsin the close-proximity forward blind spot of the vehicle, aiming to enhance road safety.
• Additionally, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI)has developed a Computer Aided Dispatch System and NHAI ERS Mobile Application to expedite emergency response calls, aligning with the broader focus on improving traffic safety as per the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.

Source

Solution: c)

The Tendulkar Committee for the first time recommended use of implicit prices derived from quantity and value data collected in household consumer expenditure surveys for computing and updating the poverty lines. Tendulkar Committee developed a methodology using implicit prices for estimating state wise poverty lines for the year 2004-05. Using these poverty lines and distribution of monthly per capita consumption expenditure based on mixed reference period (MRP), the Tendulkar Committee estimated poverty ratios for the year 2004-05

Solution: b)

Statement 2 is incorrect.

The annual mean temperature of the world is known to have increased by 1.1 degree Celsius from the average of the 1850-1900 period. But this increase, as can be expected, is not uniform. It varies in different regions and also at different times of the year.

Temperature rise over land is much higher than over oceans. The increase in temperatures is known to be more prominent in the higher altitudes, near the polar regions, than near the equator. This is attributable to a complex set of atmospheric phenomena, including heat transfers from the tropics to the poles through prevailing systems of air circulation. India happens to be in the tropical region, quite close to the equator.

The polar regions, particularly the Arctic, have seen significantly greater warming. The IPCC report says the Arctic region has warmed at least twice as much as the world average. Its current annual mean temperatures are about 2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial times. Some other studies suggest the Arctic could be warming even faster.

Another prominent cause is what is known as the albedo effect, or how much sunlight a surface reflects. The ice cover in the Arctic is melting, because of which more land or water is getting exposed to the Sun. Ice traps the least amount of heat and reflects most of the solar radiation when compared with land or water.

The warming trends over the Indian region are very different. An assessment of climate change over the Indian subcontinent, published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences in 2020, said annual mean temperatures had risen by 0.7 degree Celsius from 1900. This is significantly lower than the 1.59 degree Celsius rise for land temperatures across the world.