Science & Technology GK Questions with Answers – Page 13

Prachand is the Light Combat Helicopter developed and built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, designed to operate from high-altitude bases, which makes it suited to the Siachen and Ladakh sectors where few attack helicopters can carry a useful load.

Rafale is a twin-engine multirole fighter made by Dassault Aviation, the same French company that made the Mirage 2000 flown by India since the 1980s, and the first Indian Rafale squadron was raised at Ambala.

INS Arihant was built under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme and commissioned in 2016; because it carries ballistic missiles, the K-15 Sagarika among them, it completed India's nuclear triad, that is the ability to launch a nuclear weapon from land, from the air and from the sea.

The Kalvari class are conventional diesel-electric attack submarines built at Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders in Mumbai to the Scorpene design under a transfer of technology, and the class includes INS Kalvari, Khanderi, Karanj, Vela, Vagir and Vagsheer.

Tejas is a single-engine multirole fighter designed by the Aeronautical Development Agency and manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the public sector company that also builds the Dhruv helicopter, the Prachand light combat helicopter and the Su-30MKI under licence at Nashik.

The indigenous aircraft carrier, commissioned in September 2022 as INS Vikrant, was designed by the Navy's own design organisation and built at Cochin Shipyard in Kerala, which made India one of the few countries able to build a carrier.

The Science and Technology Policy of 2003 set the goal of raising gross expenditure on research and development to two per cent of gross domestic product, and the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of 2013 repeated the same figure.

The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India was created in 1999 and Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam was its first holder, before he became President of India in 2002.

National Technology Day marks 11 May 1998, the day of the first of the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, on which day India also test-flew the Trishul missile and completed the first flight of the indigenous Hansa-3 aircraft.

The board was constituted in 1996 as a statutory body under that Act and works under the Department of Science and Technology, providing loans and equity to Indian companies that take home-grown technology to the market.

INSPIRE stands for Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research and was launched by the Department of Science and Technology in 2008 to draw young people to science.

The body was founded in 1911 as the Indian Research Fund Association to sponsor and coordinate medical research in the country, and it was renamed the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1949 after independence.

The Department of Space, created in 1972, and the Department of Atomic Energy, created in 1954, are not placed under the Ministry of Science and Technology; both report directly to the Prime Minister, which is why ISRO and the atomic energy establishment are described as working under the Prime Minister's…

The Department of Science and Technology was created in 1971 as the nodal department for the promotion of new areas of science and technology and for the coordination of scientific work across ministries; it now runs the INSPIRE programme, the fellowships and the Vigyan Dhara scheme.

The Science and Engineering Research Board Act was passed in 2008 and the board was constituted as a statutory body under the Department of Science and Technology to fund basic research in the sciences and engineering through competitive grants to individual scientists.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act was passed by Parliament in 2023 to create a single apex body for funding research across the sciences, including in state universities and colleges, which earlier received very little central research money.

CSIR was set up in 1942 and is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, and by its rules the Prime Minister holds the office of President of the society by virtue of the post.

It was the first policy statement on science adopted by independent India, placed before Parliament during the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru and shaped in large part by Homi Bhabha.

In a closed loop system a sensor measures what the process is actually doing, that measurement is compared with the desired value, and the controller acts on the difference, which is what a thermostat, a cruise control or a water level controller does.

SVAMITVA, launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, flies drones over the abadi or inhabited area of villages to make accurate maps, from which residents are given property cards that record their ownership and can be used to raise loans.