Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 11

The correct answer is B, 1985. The Universal Immunization Programme was launched in 1985 and remains the backbone of child immunisation in India, covering tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, measles, rubella and hepatitis B, with further vaccines in selected states. Option A is wrong but names the right predecessor, since the Expanded Programme on Immunization began in 1978 and was replaced by the universal programme seven years later. Option C is wrong because 1995 is the year the Pulse Polio Programme began, with its national immunisation days and the familiar drop of oral vaccine. Option D is wrong; 2005 is the year India achieved the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem, and it is also the year the National Rural Health Mission was launched. Learn the four years as a sequence and the question answers itself.

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 B, the Integral Coach Factory at Chennai, which designed the train set under the project name Train 18 and rolled out the first rake. Option A, the Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala in Punjab, builds LHB coaches and other passenger stock but did not design this train set. Option C, Chittaranjan Locomotive Works in West Bengal, builds electric locomotives, and a Vande Bharat rake does not use a locomotive at all, since its propulsion equipment is distributed under the coaches. Option D, the Modern Coach Factory at Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh, is the newest of the coach factories and also builds LHB stock. All four are production units of Indian Railways, so the question is really asking which unit does which job, and coach design of this kind belongs to Chennai.

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 B, 25 December 2014. Mission Indradhanush was launched on 25 December 2014 to reach children who had received no vaccine or only some of the prescribed doses, and its name refers to the rainbow of vaccines then in the programme. Option A is wrong; 2 October 2014 is the launch date of the Swachh Bharat Mission, a sanitation programme that supports disease control indirectly but is not an immunisation drive. Option C is wrong because no immunisation mission of this name was launched on Independence Day 2015. Option D is wrong, though the year matters, since Intensified Mission Indradhanush followed in 2017 with a district by district and city by city push in the areas of lowest coverage. Remember the pair of Mission Indradhanush in 2014 and its intensified phase in 2017.

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, 2019. The first Vande Bharat Express was flagged off on 15 February 2019, after the train set had been built at the Integral Coach Factory under the name Train 18 and tested on Indian track. Option A, 2016, is the year in which Gatimaan Express began running at 160 kilometres an hour and became India's first semi-high-speed train, and a candidate who mixes the two milestones will pick it. Option C, 2021, saw further trials and orders but no first service. Option D, 2023, is the year in which the number of Vande Bharat services grew quickly across the country, which is why many candidates associate the train with that year; the expansion, however, came four years after the first run. Pairing 2016 with Gatimaan and 2019 with Vande Bharat keeps the two apart.

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 C, 2014. The World Health Organization certified the South East Asia Region, India included, as free of wild poliovirus in March 2014, three years after the last case in the country, because certification requires three consecutive years without a case. Option A is wrong but names the other date worth knowing, since India recorded its last case of wild poliovirus in January 2011, in West Bengal. Option B is wrong; by 2012 India had been removed from the list of polio endemic countries, but formal certification of the region had not yet come. Option D is wrong because 2016 belongs to a different achievement, the declaration that India was free of yaws. Keep the two polio dates as a pair, 2011 for the last case and 2014 for certification, and remember that the Pulse Polio Programme of 1995 made both possible.

The correct answer is C, a mixture of water and steam. In a boiling water reactor, the design used at Tarapur, ordinary water is allowed to boil inside the reactor vessel itself, so the coolant leaving the core is a mixture of water and steam; the steam is separated at the top and driven straight to the turbine, without the separate steam generator that other designs need. Option A is wrong because carbon dioxide cools gas cooled reactors, not water reactors. Option B is wrong because pressurised water is the coolant of the pressurised water reactor, where the pressure is kept high precisely so that the water does not boil, which is the difference between the two designs. Option D is wrong because liquid metal, usually sodium, cools a fast breeder reactor. The single fact to carry into the hall is that boiling water reactors boil the water in the core and pressurised reactors do not.

The correct answer is B. A Vande Bharat rake is a self-propelled electric multiple unit: the traction motors and control equipment are slung under the coaches themselves, so power is spread along the length of the train instead of being concentrated in one vehicle. The result is quicker acceleration and braking, which saves more time on a network with frequent stops than a higher top speed would, and there is no locomotive to detach and turn at the end of a run. Option A is wrong because the train draws power from the overhead line and carries no diesel engine. Option C is wrong because it runs on broad gauge like the rest of the main network. Option D describes push and pull working, in which two locomotives are used at the ends of an ordinary rake, a different arrangement that is also in use on Indian Railways but is not what makes a train set.

The correct answer is A, Kary Mullis. He devised the polymerase chain reaction, which copies a selected stretch of DNA millions of times through repeated cycles of heating and cooling, using the heat resistant Taq polymerase, and he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it. Option B is wrong because Alec Jeffreys developed DNA fingerprinting, which identifies individuals from repeating sequences in their DNA. Option C is wrong because Herbert Boyer, with Stanley Cohen, constructed the first recombinant DNA molecule, which is a different landmark. Option D is wrong because Ian Wilmut led the team at the Roslin Institute that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1996 by somatic cell nuclear transfer. Examiners place all four names together, so link each to one technique and keep them apart.

The correct answer is B, the tetanus vaccine. A toxoid vaccine uses the toxin of a microbe rather than the microbe itself, treated so that it can no longer harm the body but still provokes antibodies; the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines are the two standard examples, and they work because in those diseases it is the toxin that does the damage. Option A is wrong because the oral polio vaccine is a live attenuated vaccine, containing weakened poliovirus. Option C is wrong; BCG is also live attenuated, made from a weakened bovine tuberculosis bacterium. Option D is wrong because the hepatitis B vaccine is a recombinant subunit vaccine, carrying a single surface protein of the virus produced in yeast. Group the vaccines by type once and every question of this shape becomes a recall exercise rather than a guess.

The correct answer is D, Ability. Bias in an artificial intelligence system is traced to three sources, the data it learns from, the algorithm that learns, and the people who build and use it; ability is not one of them, because the skill of a model is a measure of how well it performs, not a place where unfairness enters. Data bias appears when the training set leaves out or under-represents a group, as with a face recognition system trained mostly on one kind of face. Algorithmic bias comes from the choices made in designing a model, such as the features it is allowed to use. Human bias enters through labelling, sampling and the assumptions of the team. Options A, B and C are therefore wrong answers to this question because each one is a genuine source of bias. Exam tip: remember data, algorithm and people as the three sources of AI bias.

The correct answer is C, Japan. The corridor uses the Shinkansen system, the high-speed technology Japan has run since 1964, and the project is financed largely by a soft loan from Japan carrying a long repayment period and a low rate of interest. Option A, France, operates the TGV and is a genuine high-speed exporter, which is why it appears as a distractor. Option B, Germany, runs the InterCity Express, and German technology is present on Indian Railways in another form, the LHB coach design, which is a further reason the option looks plausible. Option D, South Korea, runs the KTX network, itself derived from French technology. The corridor runs about 508 kilometres, has a design speed of 320 kilometres an hour and includes a tunnel of about 21 kilometres of which roughly 7 kilometres pass under Thane creek.

The correct answer is B, 1958. DRDO was formed in that year by bringing together the Technical Development Establishment of the Indian Army, the Directorate of Technical Development and Production and the Defence Science Organisation, so that defence research would be done under one roof. It began with a handful of laboratories and now runs more than fifty, arranged in clusters such as missiles, aeronautics, armaments, naval systems, electronics and life sciences.

Option A, 1947, is the year of independence but not of this organisation. Option C, 1969, is the year ISRO was formed, which is the commonest confusion in this question. Option D, 1983, is the year the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was approved, twenty-five years after DRDO itself came into being. The order to remember is DRDO 1958, ISRO 1969 and IGMDP 1983.

The correct answer is B, Pune. The National Institute of Virology is at Pune in Maharashtra and works under the Indian Council of Medical Research; it began in 1952 as the Virus Research Centre and it isolated the virus strain used in developing the indigenous whole virion inactivated vaccine Covaxin. Option A is wrong; New Delhi houses the National Institute of Immunology and the headquarters of the Indian Council of Medical Research, but not this institute. Option C is wrong because Hyderabad is the home of major vaccine manufacturers, Bharat Biotech among them, rather than of the National Institute of Virology. Option D is wrong although Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh holds the Central Research Institute, a vaccine laboratory dating from 1905, and the national laboratory that tests vaccine batches. Note also that the Serum Institute of India, among the largest vaccine makers in the world, is at Pune as well.

The correct answer is B, the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited, a company set up specifically to build and later operate high-speed rail in India, with the Union Government and the Governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra as shareholders. Option A, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India, was created for a different purpose, namely the Eastern and Western freight corridors that take goods traffic off passenger routes. Option C, Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, executes conventional railway projects such as doubling, electrification and new lines. Option D, formerly known as IRCON International, is a construction company of the Railways that builds projects in India and abroad and has worked on difficult Himalayan alignments. All four belong to the railway family, and the question tests which of them owns the bullet train project.

The correct answer is A, Gatimaan Express, which began running in 2016 between Delhi and Agra and became India's first semi-high-speed train at 160 kilometres an hour, a speed the Agra route could take because of its straight alignment and fenced sections. Option B, the Shatabdi Express, was introduced in 1988 as a fast day train and normally runs up to 130 kilometres an hour, so it is fast but not semi-high-speed by this definition. Option C, Tejas Express, is remembered for a different first, being the train type handed over to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation to operate, and for modern on-board features. Option D, the Rajdhani Express, was introduced in 1969 as the premier overnight train linking Delhi with State capitals, again at conventional speed. Vande Bharat later made 160 kilometres an hour the normal design speed.

The correct answer is A, the Udhampur, Srinagar and Baramulla rail link, the line built to connect the Kashmir valley to the rest of the Indian network. The Chenab bridge on that link stands about 359 metres above the bed of the river, higher than the Eiffel Tower, and is built as a steel arch to span the deep gorge in an earthquake prone and wind swept setting. Option B, the Konkan Railway, along the west coast is famous for its own engineering, with long tunnels and tall viaducts and the anti-collision device developed there, but not for this bridge. Option C, the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, runs across the plains of northern India where no such gorge exists. Option D, the Rishikesh to Karnaprayag line in Uttarakhand, is another Himalayan project with heavy tunnelling, and it is offered here precisely because it sounds equally mountainous.