Science & Technology GK Questions with Answers – Page 17

The Union Cabinet approved this amount on 19 April 2023 for the period 2023-24 to 2030-31, that is an eight year span, and the Department of Science and Technology implements the mission within it.

The no cloning theorem forbids an exact copy of an unknown state, and any measurement changes the state, so an eavesdropper on the channel inevitably leaves statistical traces that the two legitimate parties detect when they compare a sample of their key.

Peter Shor published the algorithm in 1994, and it would let a sufficiently large quantum computer break the large number factorisation on which public key encryption such as the RSA system depends.

A classical bit must be either zero or one, but a qubit can occupy a combination of both states until it is measured, and this is what allows a register of n qubits to represent two raised to the power n states together.

The mission divides the field among four thematic hubs, and quantum computing was assigned to the Indian Institute of Science.

This is the headline target stated when the Cabinet approved the mission, and it is to be achieved on more than one hardware platform, including superconducting and photonic technology, rather than on a single design.

The Union Cabinet approved the mission on 19 April 2023 and placed its implementation with that department, which runs it through four thematic hubs at leading academic institutions.

After the oil shock of 1973 Brazil launched the Proalcool or National Alcohol Programme in 1975, requiring ethanol made from its abundant sugarcane to be blended with petrol and later building cars that could run on pure ethanol; it is the oldest and best known national biofuel programme.

GOBARdhan, which expands to Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan, was launched in 2018 by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation in the Ministry of Jal Shakti as a part of the rural sanitation mission, because turning dung and farm waste into biogas is both a waste management and a…

The Global Biofuels Alliance was launched in September 2023 during the G20 summit held in New Delhi under India’s presidency, with India, the United States and Brazil among its founding members, the three being the largest producers and users of ethanol.

The Pradhan Mantri JI-VAN Yojana was approved in 2019 to give viability gap funding to commercial and demonstration projects that make ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass such as paddy straw and bagasse, since such advanced plants cost far more than ordinary molasses distilleries.

The National Policy on Biofuels of 2018 had set 2030 as the year for twenty per cent ethanol in petrol; the 2022 amendment brought that forward to the ethanol supply year 2025-26, and also widened the permitted feedstock and allowed the production of biofuels in special economic zones for export.

In this notation the letter E stands for ethanol and the number gives its percentage by volume in the blend, so E20 is one fifth ethanol and four fifths petrol, while E10 is a tenth ethanol and E85 is a high blend meant for flex fuel vehicles.

Jatropha curcas yields a non-edible oil seed, and because India cannot spare edible oil for fuel, the National Policy on Biofuels looks to non-edible oils such as Jatropha and Pongamia pinnata, or karanja, along with used cooking oil and animal tallow, as feedstock for biodiesel.

In transesterification a vegetable oil or animal fat is made to react with methanol or ethanol in the presence of an alkaline catalyst such as potassium hydroxide, giving fatty acid methyl esters, which are biodiesel, and glycerol as the by-product.

Biogas is produced by the anaerobic digestion of organic matter, and methane is its largest component, roughly half to three quarters of the gas by volume; this is what makes biogas combustible.

SATAT stands for Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation and was launched in October 2018 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas; under it the oil marketing companies invite entrepreneurs to set up compressed bio-gas plants from agricultural residue, cattle dung and municipal waste and offer to buy the gas…

Second generation biofuels are made from lignocellulosic biomass that is not food, such as paddy straw, wheat straw, bagasse, cotton stalk and municipal solid waste; the cellulose must first be broken down into fermentable sugars, which makes the process costlier and earns these fuels the name advanced biofuels.

Ethanol is the two carbon alcohol obtained by the fermentation of sugars by yeast, and it is the alcohol blended into petrol under the Ethanol Blended Petrol programme.

It is trained for a single defined task and cannot transfer that skill to another; every system working today, from spam filters and voice assistants to chess engines and face recognition, is narrow AI.