Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 21

The correct answer is A, a pilotless target aircraft. Lakshya was developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the DRDO to be flown as a target so that gun crews and missile units can practise against a realistic moving aircraft, and it is recovered by parachute. Option B is wrong because India's passenger aircraft programmes are of a different line altogether, such as the Saras light transport aircraft. Option C is wrong because the armed helicopters in Indian service are the Rudra and the Light Combat Helicopter, which carry crew. Option D is wrong because the reusable launch vehicle is an ISRO programme for space access. Along with Lakshya, remember Nishant, Netra and TAPAS BH, which was earlier called Rustom II. Note also that the Ghatak is the stealth combat drone of the same organisation, still under development.

The correct answer is D, automation. Automation is the technology in which mechanical parts, electronics and computer based control are put together so that a process is controlled and operated with little human help, which is exactly the description in the question. Option A is wrong because a PLC, the programmable logic controller, is only one device used in automation, the controller that reads inputs and switches outputs; it is a part and not the technology as a whole. Option B is wrong because a sequential controller is a still narrower idea, a controller that steps through operations in a fixed order. Option C is wrong because microprocessor based systems name the computing hardware, which may be used in automation or in any other electronic product. Remember that the broad term is automation and the devices inside it are the PLC, SCADA and CNC.

The correct answer is B, the Indian Research Fund Association. 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. It works under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with its headquarters in New Delhi. Option A is the classic trap, because the Indian Council of Agricultural Research really did begin in 1929 as the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research; the medical body carried a different name. Option C is an invented name and belongs to no Indian institution. Option D is wrong because the All India Institute of Medical Sciences is a teaching hospital and institute of national importance created by an Act of 1956, not the research council in question.

The correct answer is B, the Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958. 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. It declared that the state would foster, sustain and cultivate science and scientific research in all its aspects, and it tied national development to a scientific temper. Option A, the Technology Policy Statement, came twenty-five years later in 1983 and dealt with technological self-reliance and indigenous technology rather than with science as a whole. Option C, the Science and Technology Policy of 2003, was the first to join the two words in one document and set the target of two per cent of GDP for research spending, but it was the third such document. Option D, the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of 2013, added innovation as a third element and came last of the four.

The correct answer is B, a half humanoid robot. Vyommitra has a head, a face, arms and a torso but no legs, which is why it is called half humanoid, and it has been built to ride an uncrewed flight of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, operate switches, watch the panels and report conditions as a crew member would. Option A is wrong because the Indian weather satellites are the INSAT series and the Oceansat and Scatsat spacecraft. Option C is wrong because the Indian space observatory is AstroSat, and Aditya L1 studies the Sun. Option D is wrong because the launch pads are at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. Hold Vyommitra with Gaganyaan, and remember that its name joins the words for sky and friend.

The correct answer is A, Richard Feynman. The American physicist Richard Feynman delivered the talk There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom to the American Physical Society at Caltech in December 1959, in which he argued that there is no law of physics forbidding the manipulation of individual atoms, and the lecture is treated as the conceptual birth of nanotechnology. Option B is wrong because Albert Einstein, who died in 1955, worked on relativity, the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion, and had no part in this lecture. Option C is wrong because Gerd Binnig built the Scanning Tunnelling Microscope at IBM Zurich in 1981 with Heinrich Rohrer, giving the field its eyes rather than its founding idea. Option D is wrong because Harold Kroto shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of fullerenes in 1985.

The correct answer is A, the Department of Science and Technology. 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. Its parts run from the INSPIRE Award-MANAK for school children, through the Scholarship for Higher Education for toppers who choose science at the undergraduate level, to doctoral and faculty fellowships. Option B is wrong but plausible, because the Ministry of Education runs other student schemes, including the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship begun in 2018. Option C is wrong because the Department of Biotechnology runs its own fellowships, such as the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship, and not INSPIRE. Option D is wrong because CSIR awards research fellowships through its own examination and runs laboratories, but INSPIRE is not its programme.

The correct answer is B, rupees 6,003.65 crore. 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. Option A is wrong because a thousand crore is far below the sanctioned figure and would not cover four thematic hubs and their hardware programmes. Option C is wrong because ten thousand crore is a round number candidates often guess but is not the approved outlay. Option D is wrong because twenty five thousand crore is of the order of much larger industrial programmes rather than this mission. The three numbers to carry into the examination hall together are the date 19 April 2023, the outlay of 6,003.65 crore rupees and the period up to 2030-31.

The correct answer is B, programmable logic controller. A PLC is a rugged industrial computer that reads the state of switches and sensors as inputs, runs a stored programme of logic, and switches motors, valves and lamps as outputs, so that a machine or a whole line runs by itself. Option A is wrong because power line carrier is a method of sending signals over electric power lines, used in communication, not a controller. Option C is wrong because process level computer is not a standard term in automation. Option D is wrong because programmed linear circuit is not a recognised class of device either. Note that SCADA sits above the PLC, watching and recording a whole plant from a control room, while the PLC does the switching.

The correct answer is B, 1988. C-DAC was set up at Pune in 1988 as a scientific society of the central government, with the specific task of designing an Indian supercomputer after the United States declined to supply the Cray machine India had sought for weather forecasting. The organisation works today under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and is also the implementing agency of the National Supercomputing Mission.

Option A, 1984, is the year associated with the beginning of the national computer policy and with C-DOT, the telecom body, so it is a natural trap. Option C, 1991, is the year PARAM 8000 was delivered, three years after the institution was founded; candidates who remember only one date often merge the two. Option D, 1995, is later than both and marks nothing in this story. The safe way to hold the facts is as a pair: C-DAC in 1988 and PARAM 8000 in 1991.

The correct answer is D, the Technology Development Board Act, 1995. 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. Option A is wrong because the Patents Act of 1970 governs the grant of patents and fixes a twenty-year term; it creates no funding body. Option B is wrong but is a real trap, because CSIR is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act of 1860, so the Act does appear in this topic, only elsewhere. Option C is wrong as the creating statute, though the Research and Development Cess Act of 1986 is connected: the cess it levied was a source of the fund the board draws upon. The question asks which Act constituted the board.

The correct answer is A, the collector current divided by the base current. Beta is the current gain of a bipolar junction transistor in the common emitter configuration: a very small change in the base current produces a much larger change in the collector current, and the ratio of the two is beta, which commonly lies between about twenty and several hundred. This is why a transistor can act as an amplifier. Option B is wrong because the base current divided by the emitter current is a small fraction with no standard symbol. Option C is wrong because it inverts the alpha ratio. Option D is wrong because the collector current divided by the emitter current is alpha, which is slightly less than one. The two quantities are linked, since beta equals alpha divided by one minus alpha.

The correct answer is A, supervisory control and data acquisition. A SCADA system gathers readings from sensors and controllers spread over a plant, a grid or a water network, shows them on screens in a control room, records them, and lets an operator send commands back, which is why it is described as supervisory control together with data acquisition. Option B is wrong because system control and digital automation is not the expansion of the term, though it sounds plausible. Option C is wrong because sequential control and data analysis describes two different ideas and is not the full form. Option D is wrong because safety control and device assembly is not a term used in this field. Remember the pair, PLC on the machine and SCADA in the control room.

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 B, 11 May. 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. Option A, 28 February, is National Science Day, which marks the day in 1928 on which C. V. Raman announced the discovery of the effect that carries his name and for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1930. Option C, 23 August, is National Space Day, declared to mark the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 near the lunar south pole in 2023. Option D, 5 June, is World Environment Day and has nothing to do with technology. Candidates lose marks by swapping the science day and the technology day, so fix the pair firmly.

The correct answer is A, 20 per cent ethanol. 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. Option B is wrong because biodiesel blends are written with the letter B, as in B5 and B100, and are blended with diesel rather than petrol. Option C is wrong because methanol blends are written with the letter M, as in M15, and form a separate programme. Option D is wrong because compressed bio-gas is a gaseous fuel used in place of compressed natural gas and is not blended into petrol at all.

The correct answer is B, surveying inhabited village land for property cards. 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. Option A is wrong because spraying is the work of kisan drones under agriculture programmes, which is a separate use. Option C is wrong because vaccine and medicine delivery was tested under the i-Drone effort and the Medicine from the Sky trials. Option D is wrong because border patrolling is done by the armed forces and the border guarding forces with their own systems. Fix SVAMITVA with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and property cards.

The correct answer is C, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. 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. The office advises the Cabinet on matters of science and technology and now chairs the Executive Council of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation. Option A is wrong because Homi Bhabha, who shaped the Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958, headed the atomic energy programme and died in 1966, long before the office existed. Option B is wrong because Vikram Sarabhai founded the Indian space programme and chaired the Atomic Energy Commission, but held no such post. Option D is wrong because C. N. R. Rao, a chemist and Bharat Ratna, chaired the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, which is a different body.

The correct answer is B, it feeds the measured output back to the controller. 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. Option A is wrong because a closed loop system must have a controller; it is the feedback path, not the controller, that distinguishes it. Option C is wrong because the type of electric supply has nothing to do with the loop, and such systems run on direct current and on compressed air as well. Option D is wrong because closed loop systems are very often programmable, a PLC being the usual example. An open loop system, by contrast, never checks its own result.

The correct answer is B, two per cent. 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. In practice India's research spending has stayed below one per cent of GDP, and the government rather than business has been both the largest funder and the largest performer of research, which is the reverse of the pattern in advanced economies. Option A, one per cent, is wrong as the target, although it is close to the level actually reached, which is why it is offered. Option C, three per cent, and option D, five per cent, are higher than any Indian policy has set; three per cent is nearer the level of a few research-intensive economies and no Indian document commits to five.