Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 10

The correct answer is C, Russia. Kudankulam in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu uses pressurised water reactors of the Russian VVER type, supplied under an agreement signed with the Soviet Union in 1988 and carried forward by Russia. Option A is wrong because the United States supplied the boiling water reactors of the first station at Tarapur in the nineteen sixties. Option B is wrong because France has been discussed as a partner for a station in Maharashtra but did not build Kudankulam. Option D is wrong because Canada supplied the reactor at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan and the CIRUS research reactor, and that cooperation ended after the test of 1974. The three foreign links worth remembering are the United States with Tarapur, Canada with Rawatbhata and Russia with Kudankulam.

The correct answer is C, August 2021. The Prime Minister announced the National Hydrogen Mission in his Independence Day speech from the Red Fort on 15 August 2021, with the aim of making India a hub for producing and exporting green hydrogen. Green hydrogen is made by splitting water through electrolysis using electricity from solar, wind or other renewable sources, so it releases no carbon dioxide, unlike the grey hydrogen made from natural gas. The Union Cabinet later approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission in January 2023 with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore. Option A is wrong because May 2021 saw no such announcement. Option B is wrong because November 2021 is when the Prime Minister gave the Panchamrit climate pledges at the Glasgow COP26 summit. Option D is wrong because January 2021 belongs to the vaccination drive against Covid-19, not to hydrogen. Exam tip: announced 15 August 2021; the mission was approved by the Cabinet in January 2023.

The correct answer is B, human insulin produced in bacteria. The two polypeptide chains of the hormone are made in genetically engineered bacteria and then joined by disulphide bonds, giving insulin identical to the human hormone, which ended the dependence on insulin extracted from the pancreas of cattle and pigs and the allergy that sometimes followed. Option A is wrong because the hepatitis B vaccine is also a recombinant product, made from a viral surface protein grown in yeast, but it is a vaccine and not Humulin. Option C is wrong because growth hormone for therapy is also made by recombinant means today, not taken from sheep. Option D is wrong because antibiotics such as penicillin come from fungal fermentation, an older form of biotechnology. Insulin is the standard example of red biotechnology.

The correct answer is C, Bt cotton. Approved in 2002, it is the only genetically modified crop cleared for commercial cultivation by Indian farmers, and it is grown for fibre rather than as food. Option A is wrong because Bt brinjal, though developed and field tested, was placed under a moratorium in 2010 and has not been released. Option B is wrong because golden rice, engineered to make beta carotene in the grain, has never been approved for cultivation in India. Option D is wrong because genetically modified soybean is not approved for cultivation here, although imported soybean oil has been permitted at times. Statement based questions often claim that India grows several GM food crops, which is false; keep Bt cotton as the single approved crop and note the brinjal moratorium.

The correct answer is B, bacteria. Typhoid is caused by the bacterium Salmonella Typhi, which spreads through food and water contaminated with human waste, and it is prevented both by sanitation and by the typhoid conjugate vaccine. Option A is wrong; the viral diseases of this group are polio, measles, hepatitis, dengue and influenza, not typhoid, and candidates choose it because typhoid produces a long fever much like a viral one. Option C is wrong because fungi cause surface infections such as ringworm and athlete foot rather than a systemic fever of this kind. Option D is wrong; the protozoan diseases are malaria, kala azar and amoebic dysentery. The safest way to hold this group is to memorise the bacterial list as typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera, tetanus, diphtheria, leprosy and plague, since that list answers several questions at once.

The correct answer is D, 1.6 W/kg. The Specific Absorption Rate measures how much radio energy from a handset the body takes in, in watts per kilogram of tissue. From 1 September 2012 the Department of Telecommunications made 1.6 W/kg, averaged over one gram of human tissue, the limit for every new mobile handset design sold in India. Before that India followed the older figure of 2.0 W/kg averaged over ten grams. The rules also require the SAR value to be printed on the handset and its box, and a buyer can check it by dialling a code given by the maker. India's limit matches the standard used in the United States. Option A is wrong because 1.8 W/kg is not a prescribed limit anywhere. Option B is wrong because 2.1 W/kg is not a SAR standard. Option C is wrong because 2.2 W/kg is only a distractor. Exam tip: India's SAR limit is 1.6 W/kg over 1 gram of tissue, in force from 1 September 2012.

The correct answer is A, an Automatic Train Protection system. Kavach is an electronic safety system that acts on a moving train when its driver does not: it applies the brakes if a signal at danger is being approached without braking, holds a train back from passing a red signal, and keeps two locomotives fitted with the system from closing on each other. Option B describes services run by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, which is a separate arm of the Railways altogether. Option C is wrong because a gauge is the distance between the rails, and Indian Railways uses broad gauge of 1,676 millimetres on its main network; Kavach is fitted on existing track and changes nothing about the gauge. Option D is wrong because freight tracking is done through the Freight Operations Information System, a data application, and not by a safety system fitted to locomotives and stations.

The correct answer is A, heavy water. The CANDU design, from which India's pressurised heavy water reactors descend, burns natural uranium, and natural uranium contains only about seven parts in a thousand of the fissile isotope uranium 235. Such a lean fuel can sustain a chain reaction only if very few neutrons are wasted, and heavy water absorbs far fewer neutrons than ordinary water while still slowing them down, so it serves as both moderator and coolant. Option B is wrong because light water absorbs too many neutrons, which is why reactors that use it must be fuelled with enriched uranium. Option C is wrong because carbon dioxide is used as a coolant in gas cooled reactors, where graphite is the moderator. Option D is wrong because liquid sodium is the coolant of a fast breeder reactor, which deliberately has no moderator at all.

The correct answer is B, 1986. The Department of Biotechnology was created in 1986 under the Ministry of Science and Technology to give the subject a separate home, and it supports institutions, fellowships and national facilities; the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation also works under it. Option A is wrong because 1974 is the year of the first Indian nuclear test and belongs to atomic energy, not biotechnology. Option C is wrong because 1999 is the year of the Geographical Indications Act and has no connection with this department. Option D is wrong because 2012 is the year the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council was created to support industry and start ups, which candidates often confuse with the parent department. Note that the Environment (Protection) Act is also of 1986, and the biosafety rules under it came in 1989.

The correct answer is B, John McCarthy. The American computer scientist John McCarthy is called the father of artificial intelligence because he coined the term itself in his proposal for the Dartmouth summer research project of 1956, the meeting at which the field was born. He also created LISP in 1958, the language in which most early artificial intelligence work was written, argued for time sharing on computers, and received the Turing Award in 1971. Option A is wrong because Alan Turing is honoured as the father of computer science and of the Turing test, which asks whether a machine can be told apart from a person in conversation, but he did not name the subject. Option C is wrong because Blaise Pascal built the Pascaline, a mechanical adding machine, in the seventeenth century. Option D is wrong because Dartmouth is the college where the 1956 conference was held, not a person. Exam tip: McCarthy named artificial intelligence in 1956 and wrote LISP.

The correct answer is C, protozoa. Malaria is caused by the protozoan Plasmodium and carried by the female Anopheles mosquito, and kala azar, also called visceral leishmaniasis, is caused by the protozoan Leishmania donovani and carried by the sandfly. Both are handled by the national centre for vector borne diseases, which is why they appear together in papers. Option A is wrong because the bacterial group holds typhoid, tuberculosis, cholera and plague. Option B is wrong; fungal infections are of the skin, hair and nails and none of them is spread by a mosquito or a sandfly. Option D is wrong although it is the commonest error, since dengue, chikungunya and Japanese encephalitis are indeed viral and are also spread by insects, so candidates assume every insect borne disease is a virus. Fix malaria and kala azar firmly on the protozoan side.

The correct answer is A, the Brahmaputra and the Moskva. BrahMos is built by BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture formed in 1998 between DRDO and the Russian firm NPO Mashinostroyeniya, and the name joins a great river of each country. It is a supersonic cruise missile flying at nearly three times the speed of sound, and versions have been made for ships, submarines, land launchers and aircraft.

Option B names the Volga, the longest river of Russia, but the Moskva is the river of the Russian capital and is the one used. Option C replaces the Brahmaputra with the Beas, a Punjab river of the Indus system. Option D names the Brahmani, a river of Odisha whose name sounds close to Brahmaputra and so makes a good distractor. The pair to remember is Brahmaputra and Moskva.

The correct answer is A, the Research Designs and Standards Organisation, usually written as RDSO. It is the research, design and standards wing of Indian Railways, has its headquarters at Lucknow, and developed Kavach in partnership with Indian manufacturers, first under the name Train Collision Avoidance System. Option B, the Centre for Railway Information Systems, builds and runs the computer systems of the Railways, such as passenger reservation and freight information, and does not design signalling hardware. Option C, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, handles catering, online ticketing and tourist trains. Option D, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India, was set up to build and manage the Eastern and Western freight corridors. All four are genuine railway bodies, which is why the question is a test of what each one actually does.

The correct answer is B, PSLV-C57. Aditya-L1 was launched on 2 September 2023 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota by the PSLV-C57 flight, which used the most powerful version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The spacecraft was first placed in an orbit around the Earth, raised that orbit in steps, and then left for the Lagrange point L1, where it was inserted into a halo orbit in January 2024.

Option A, the GSLV Mk II, is used mainly for communication satellites going to geostationary transfer orbit. Option C, LVM3-M4, is the vehicle that launched Chandrayaan-3 in July 2023, and candidates often mix the two missions of the same year. Option D, the SSLV, is the small satellite launch vehicle meant for light payloads into low orbits. Tie the pair firmly in memory: LVM3 for Chandrayaan-3, PSLV for Aditya-L1.

The correct answer is B, swine flu. Swine flu is an influenza infection of the type first recognised in pigs, and the name itself records the animal in which the virus circulates before it passes to people; once it is in a human population it spreads from person to person by droplets. Option A is wrong because Nipah virus infection is linked to fruit bats, which contaminate date palm sap and fruit, although pigs did act as intermediate hosts in an early outbreak in South East Asia. Option C is wrong; Zika is a virus carried by Aedes mosquitoes, the same group that carries dengue and chikungunya. Option D is wrong because plague is a bacterial disease carried by the flea of the rat. Learn the animal attached to each name, since the paper may ask for the animal, the vector or the kind of germ.

The correct answer is C, Aryabhata. India's first satellite was named after the ancient astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata and was launched on 19 April 1975 from a Soviet site, since India did not yet have a launch vehicle of its own. It carried instruments for experiments in astronomy and solar physics, and although its power system failed after a few days, it proved that India could build a satellite.

Option A, Rohini, was the first satellite placed in orbit by an Indian launch vehicle, the SLV-3, in July 1980, which is the next milestone and the usual trap. Option B, Bhaskara, was an early earth observation satellite launched in 1979. Option D, INSAT-1A, was the first of the Indian National Satellite System for communication, launched in 1982. The order Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Rohini, INSAT is worth remembering.

The correct answer is D, SIL-4. Safety Integrity Level is a scale of four grades used for safety related electronic systems, and level four is the most demanding, meaning the probability of a dangerous undetected failure is designed to be the lowest of all. Signalling and train protection systems on main line railways are built to this level because a single failure can cost many lives, and Kavach was certified accordingly before being adopted as the national Automatic Train Protection standard. Options A, B and C, the lower levels, are used for systems whose failure carries a smaller consequence, such as some industrial process controls and auxiliary equipment; accepting a lower level for train protection would defeat its purpose. A candidate who remembers only the phrase highest level will still get this question right, because SIL-4 is the highest of the four.

The correct answer is B, Edward Jenner, against smallpox. In 1796 Jenner used material from cowpox, a mild disease of cattle, to protect a boy against smallpox, and the word vaccine itself comes from vacca, the Latin for cow. Option A is wrong in its order rather than in its facts: Louis Pasteur did make a rabies vaccine, but in 1885, almost ninety years later, and he named the method vaccination in honour of Jenner. Option C is wrong because Robert Koch identified the tuberculosis bacterium in 1882 and did not make its vaccine; the BCG vaccine was developed later by Calmette and Guerin, whose names it carries. Option D is wrong; Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, an antibiotic and not a vaccine, in 1928. Keep the triple of Jenner with 1796, Pasteur with 1885 and Fleming with 1928.

The correct answer is C, a derailment caused by a fractured rail. Kavach works on the movement of trains: it reads the position and speed of a locomotive from trackside tags, compares that with the signal and the permitted speed, and brakes the train when the driver does not. It therefore covers options A, B and D, which are all failures of driving or of spacing between trains. It has no way of knowing that a rail has cracked, that a landslide has covered the track or that a coach axle is defective, because it does not inspect the track structure or the rolling stock. Those hazards are addressed by separate measures such as ultrasonic flaw detection of rails, track recording cars and coach maintenance schedules. Examiners set this distinction precisely because Kavach is often described loosely as an anti-accident system.

The correct answer is A, tuberculosis. BCG stands for Bacillus Calmette Guerin, a live attenuated strain of a bovine tuberculosis bacterium, and it is given at or soon after birth under the Universal Immunization Programme to guard against severe forms of childhood tuberculosis. Option B is wrong because tetanus is prevented by a toxoid, a toxin made harmless, given in the childhood series and again after a wound. Option C is wrong; hepatitis B is prevented by a recombinant subunit vaccine that carries only one surface protein of the virus, and a birth dose of it is also part of the programme, which is why it is a strong distractor. Option D is wrong because measles is prevented by a live attenuated viral vaccine given later in infancy, usually combined with rubella. Learn each vaccine with its type as well as its disease.