Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 22

The correct answer is B, Cochin Shipyard, Kochi. 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. Option A, Mazagon Dock in Mumbai, builds destroyers of the Project 15 series and the Kalvari class submarines, but not carriers. Option C, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers in Kolkata, builds frigates and anti-submarine corvettes. Option D, Hindustan Shipyard at Visakhapatnam, works on submarine refits and merchant and support vessels. Note that the name Vikrant was carried earlier by the carrier bought from Britain that served from 1961 and took part in the war of 1971, so the two ships must not be confused.

The correct answer is B, Karel Capek. The Czech writer Karel Capek used the word in his play R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots, written in 1920, taking it from the Czech word robota, which means forced labour. Option A is wrong, though it is the favourite trap: Isaac Asimov coined the word robotics and framed the three laws of robotics, but not the word robot itself. Option C is wrong because George Devol invented the first industrial robot arm, the Unimate, which went to work in a factory, a matter of engineering and not of naming. Option D is wrong because Alan Turing is remembered for the theory of computing and for the test of machine intelligence. Keep Capek for the word robot and Asimov for robotics and the three laws.

The correct answer is A, the Information Technology Act, 2000. It gives legal recognition to electronic records and digital signatures, creates the offences of computer-related crime, and was amended substantially in 2008 to add provisions on cyber terrorism, interception and data protection by body corporates. Option B is wrong; the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 governs telegraph and telephone services and the licensing of telecommunications, not computer offences. Option C is wrong because the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 deals with evidence generally, although the IT Act amended it so that electronic records could be admitted as evidence. Option D is wrong since the Companies Act of 2013 regulates companies and their governance. The IT Act was drafted on the model of the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce.

The correct answer is C, the Prime Minister of India. 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. Option A is wrong because the President of India is not part of the CSIR structure; the office is ceremonial in a different sphere and does not extend to a registered society of this kind. Option B is wrong but is the common trap: the Union Minister of Science and Technology is the Vice-President of CSIR, one step below. Option D is wrong because the Principal Scientific Adviser, an office created only in 1999, advises the government and chairs the Executive Council of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, but has no presiding role in CSIR. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar was the first Director General of CSIR.

The correct answer is A, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited. 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. Option B, Bharat Electronics Limited, makes radars, communication sets and electronic warfare equipment, not airframes. Option C, Bharat Dynamics Limited, makes missiles and torpedoes such as the Akash and the Nag. Option D, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, builds warships and submarines. The Indian attempt at a fighter engine for Tejas, the Kaveri, belongs to the Gas Turbine Research Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, while the engine flown on the aircraft today is imported. Learn the trio together: the agency designs, HAL builds and the DRDO laboratories supply the systems.

The correct answer is A, 12. Buckminsterfullerene, discovered in 1985, has sixty carbon atoms arranged in a closed cage of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, exactly the pattern of a stitched football, and the twelve pentagons are what allow a flat hexagonal sheet to curve into a closed ball. Option B is wrong because twenty is the number of hexagonal faces, which the question itself supplies, and swapping the two counts is the standard trap in this item. Option C is wrong because thirty two is the total number of faces of the molecule, twenty plus twelve, not the number of pentagons alone. Option D is wrong because sixty is the number of carbon atoms, that is the vertices of the cage, and the molecule was named after the architect Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes it resembles.

The correct answer is B, Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. These are the three goals of information security: only authorised persons should read the data, the data must not be altered without authority, and the system must work when it is needed. Option A is wrong; control and access are mechanisms rather than the named goals of the triad. Option C is wrong because cryptography, identity and authentication are tools used to achieve the three goals, not the goals themselves, and this option is attractive to anyone who remembers the technical vocabulary instead of the framework. Option D is wrong since compliance, inspection and audit belong to governance and assurance work. A denial of service attack is a good illustration, because it attacks availability alone while leaving confidentiality and integrity untouched.

The correct answer is B, 1984. Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard proposed the protocol in that year, and the name BB84 combines their initials with the year. It describes how two parties can build a shared secret key by sending single photons in randomly chosen polarisation bases and then publicly comparing which bases they used, discarding the rest. Option A is wrong because 1974 is remembered in a different context, as the year the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was formed, and has no bearing here. Option C is wrong because 1994 is the year Peter Shor published his factoring algorithm, which is a threat to classical cryptography rather than a protocol for securing it. Option D is wrong because 2004 is too late; by then quantum key distribution had already been demonstrated over fibre.

The correct answer is C, the French Scorpene design. 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. Option A, the Russian Kilo design, is the basis of the Sindhughosh class, whose names begin with Sindhu. Option B, the German design, is the basis of the Shishumar class built earlier with help from Germany. Option D, the Swedish Gotland design, is not used by the Indian Navy, although Sweden pioneered air-independent propulsion, the technology that lets a conventional submarine stay submerged much longer. The nuclear-powered boats are separate: the Arihant class, built under the Advanced Technology Vessel programme.

The correct answer is B, MeitY and the Department of Science and Technology. The National Supercomputing Mission, launched in 2015, is run jointly by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Science and Technology, and the work on the ground is carried out by C-DAC Pune along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The aim is a grid of supercomputers in academic and research institutions, connected over the National Knowledge Network, with the Indian content of the hardware rising from phase to phase.

Option A names education bodies, which host several of the machines but do not steer the mission. Option C names ISRO and the Department of Atomic Energy, which run their own systems such as SAGA-220 and the Anupam series but are not the mission authorities. Option D names NITI Aayog, a policy body, and the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which owns the separate weather machines Pratyush and Mihir.

The correct answer is B, Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. In 2015 the Supreme Court held section 66A, which punished the sending of offensive messages through a communication service, to be unconstitutional because it was vague and overbroad and violated the freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a). Option A is wrong, although it is the closest in subject matter: the Puttaswamy judgment of 2017 held the right to privacy to be a fundamental right under Article 21, and it led to the data protection law rather than to the striking down of 66A. Option C is wrong; Anuradha Bhasin in 2020 concerned internet shutdowns in Jammu and Kashmir. Option D is wrong because Maneka Gandhi in 1978 expanded the meaning of personal liberty under Article 21 long before the internet.

The correct answer is A, the SSLV, or Small Satellite Launch Vehicle. It has three solid stages and a small liquid velocity trimming module, carries up to about 500 kg to a 500 km low earth orbit, and is designed to be assembled and launched by a small team within days so that a customer with one satellite need not wait for a shared ride.

Option B, PSLV-CA, is the core-alone version of the PSLV flown without strap-on motors; it is a lighter configuration of a large rocket, not a small vehicle in its own right. Option C, ASLV, was an experimental vehicle of the 1980s and 1990s with a capacity of about 150 kg and is no longer in service, so it cannot be the answer to a question about a current vehicle. Option D, LVM3, is at the opposite end of the family as India's heaviest operational rocket.

The correct answer is B, India's first indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. 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. Option A is wrong because the first indigenous aircraft carrier is the new INS Vikrant of 2022. Option C is wrong because the Navy's first submarine was the original INS Kalvari of 1967, of Soviet Foxtrot design. Option D is wrong because India's first guided missile destroyers belong to the Rajput and later the Delhi class. A nuclear submarine that hunts other ships is an attack submarine, which is a different role from Arihant's.

The correct answer is C, the European Ariane rocket. The full name of the satellite, Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment, contains the answer, since it flew as a passenger on an Ariane launch in 1981 to test the building of a geostationary communication satellite in India. India then had no vehicle able to reach a geostationary transfer orbit.

Option A, SLV-3, could place only about 40 kg in a low earth orbit and could never have carried APPLE to the height a communication satellite needs. Option B, a Soviet vehicle, had launched Aryabhata in 1975 and Bhaskara in 1979, so it is a reasonable guess but the wrong one here. Option D, the Space Shuttle, carried the later INSAT-1B in 1983, which is a separate fact often asked alongside. The bullock cart photograph of APPLE at the test site is from this programme.

The correct answer is C, Section 70B. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and is designated by section 70B as the national agency for collecting and analysing information on cyber incidents, issuing advisories and coordinating responses. Option A is wrong; section 69 gives the power to intercept, monitor or decrypt information in specified circumstances. Option B is the hardest distractor because section 70A designates the nodal agency for critical information infrastructure, which is the NCIIPC, a different body working under the National Technical Research Organisation. Option D is wrong since section 79 is the safe harbour provision that limits an intermediary's liability for content uploaded by third parties. Keep 70A with NCIIPC and 70B with CERT-In.

The correct answer is B, Shiv Shakti Point. The spot where the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan 3 touched down on 23 August 2023, in the high latitude region near the lunar south pole, was given this name shortly after the landing. The day of the landing was also declared National Space Day.

Option A, Tiranga Point, is the name given to the place where the Chandrayaan 2 lander came down in 2019, so it is a real lunar name and the sharpest distractor here. Option C, Jawahar Point, is the name of the place where the Moon Impact Probe of Chandrayaan 1 struck the surface on 14 November 2008. Option D, Sarabhai Point, is not a site name, although a lunar crater is named after Vikram Sarabhai. Three of these four names are genuine, which is what makes the question worth a careful reading.

The correct answer is A, Dassault Aviation of France. 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. Option B, Boeing of the United States, supplies India the Apache attack helicopter, the Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, the C-17 Globemaster III transport and the P-8I maritime patrol aircraft. Option C, Sukhoi of Russia, designed the Su-30MKI, which Hindustan Aeronautics Limited assembles at Nashik. Option D, Saab of Sweden, makes the Gripen, which India does not operate. Keeping the country with the maker, France for Dassault, the United States for Boeing and Russia for Sukhoi and Mikoyan, answers most questions of this family, because papers ask for the country as often as for the company.

The correct answer is B, the National Technical Research Organisation. The NCIIPC was designated under section 70A of the IT Act to protect critical information infrastructure, meaning computer resources whose incapacitation would have a debilitating effect on national security, the economy, public health or safety, and it works as a unit of the NTRO. Option A is wrong; the Reserve Bank regulates the financial sector's own cyber resilience but does not house the NCIIPC. Option C is wrong, although the Ministry of Home Affairs runs the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre and the national cybercrime reporting portal, which is why it is a tempting choice. Option D is wrong because the National Informatics Centre provides information technology services to government departments rather than protecting critical infrastructure.

The correct answer is A, a light combat helicopter. 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. Option B, a basic trainer, is the role of the HAL HTT-40, while the HJT-16 Kiran served as an intermediate jet trainer. Option C, an unmanned aerial vehicle, describes Nishant and the TAPAS or Rustom series of Indian designs. Option D, a maritime patrol aircraft, describes the P-8I flown by the Navy for surveillance and anti-submarine work. HAL's other helicopters worth remembering are Dhruv, the advanced light helicopter, and Rudra, its armed version, while the Apache attack helicopter and the Chinook heavy-lift helicopter are imported from Boeing of the United States.

The correct answer is B, the National Payments Corporation of India. The NPCI, set up in 2008 under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of 2007 by the Reserve Bank and the Indian Banks' Association, launched UPI in 2016; it also runs RuPay, IMPS, the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System, NACH and FASTag. Option A is wrong but is the commonest mistake, because the Reserve Bank promoted the NPCI and regulates payment systems, yet UPI is an NPCI product. Option C is wrong; the State Bank of India is one of the banks that participate in UPI, not its owner. Option D is wrong because the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology runs DigiLocker and the Digital India programme, not the payments layer. UPI forms the payments layer of what is called India Stack.