UPSC GK Questions 2026

Sugar is actively loaded into the sieve tubes at the source, water follows from the xylem by osmosis and raises the pressure there, and the resulting gradient pushes the whole solution to the sink, where sugar is unloaded and water returns to the xylem.

In yeast the pyruvic acid formed by glycolysis is decarboxylated and then reduced to ethyl alcohol, a process called alcoholic fermentation, which is the basis of brewing and of the rising of dough.

The respiratory quotient is the volume of carbon dioxide released divided by the volume of oxygen used. When glucose is oxidised completely, six molecules of oxygen are used and six of carbon dioxide are released, so the ratio is one.

Pyruvic acid formed in glycolysis enters the mitochondrion, is converted to acetyl coenzyme A and is oxidised completely in the matrix through the cycle named after Hans Krebs, who received the Nobel Prize for the discovery; the cycle releases carbon dioxide and reduced coenzymes.

Glycolysis, also called the Embden Meyerhof Parnas pathway, splits one molecule of glucose into two molecules of pyruvic acid in the cytoplasm, needs no oxygen and gives a net gain of two ATP along with two molecules of reduced NAD.

Ganong's potometer and the simpler bubble potometer measure the water absorbed by a cut shoot in a given time, and since almost all of that water is lost as vapour, the reading is taken as the rate of transpiration.

In light, potassium ions are actively pumped into the guard cells, their solute concentration rises, water enters by osmosis, the cells swell and because their inner walls are thicker they bend apart, opening the pore; when potassium leaves, the cells lose water and the pore closes.

Its sieve tubes, helped by companion cells, carry sucrose and other soluble food from a source such as a mature leaf to a sink such as a root, fruit or bud, and the movement can be upward or downward.

It occurs through pores called hydathodes at the leaf margin or tip, usually in the early morning when the soil is moist, the air is humid and transpiration is low, so root pressure forces out drops of water with dissolved salts; Colocasia, grasses and tomato show it well.

Dixon and Joly explained that water molecules cling to one another by cohesion and to the xylem walls by adhesion, forming an unbroken column; evaporation from the leaf surface creates a suction at the top that pulls this column upward.

A price floor is a lowest price fixed by the government, and the MSP guarantees farmers that price for crops such as jowar.

In the Hadley cell, air rises near the equator and sinks at about 30 degrees latitude, in the subtropical high-pressure belts.

Belarus is a landlocked country in eastern Europe, far south of the Arctic, so it has no tundra. Tundra vegetation grows beyond the tree line, mainly north of the Arctic Circle, where summers are short and cool and the subsoil stays frozen as permafrost.

India's standard meridian is 82°30' East, and Indian Standard Time is set by the local time along this line. India stretches from about 68°7' E to 97°25' E, a spread of nearly 30 degrees of longitude, which makes a time difference of about two hours between Gujarat and Arunachal Pradesh.

The Extended Fund Facility is a lending arrangement of the International Monetary Fund for countries with serious balance of payments problems.

PMSSY was set up to correct regional imbalances in tertiary health care and to improve medical education; universal immunisation is not its aim.

Egg white is mostly water and protein, and heat denatures these proteins so that they set into an opaque white solid.

Both statements are true, and UPSC's official key also gives C. Water vapour is a variable gas, from almost nil in cold deserts to about 4 percent of the air by volume in the warm, humid tropics.

Both statements are correct: a ground inversion is formed by radiation cooling, and it is the same as a negative lapse rate near the surface.

SGML was designed to be independent of both hardware and software, so saying it depends on a computer's hardware is false.