Test: Current Affairs December- 2020 - UPSC MCQ

• Kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a tropical disease characterised by irregular fever, weight loss, anaemia and swelling of the spleen and liver. It is caused by a protozoan Leishmania parasite and is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected female sandflies. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), globally, about 7 to 10 lakh new cases occur annually.

• India accounts for about two-thirds of the total global cases, and the disease is endemic to Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. An initiative was launched by WHO to eliminate VL as a public health problem from the South East Asia region by 2020. The deadline has now been extended to 2023.

At any time after the expiration of three years from the date of the grant of a patent, any person interested may make an application to the Controller for grant of a compulsory licence on patent on any of the following grounds, namely:—

• that the reasonable requirements of the public with respect to the patented invention have not been satisfied, or

• that the patented invention is not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price, or

• that the patented invention is not worked in the territory of India.

Hayabusa2 project: It is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese space agency, JAXA.

Memory Capacity Conversion Chart

As the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices expands, and the need to process IoT data quickly increases, many IT leaders are considering or beginning to employ edge computing options.

What is edge computing?

Edge computing enables data to be analysed, processed and transferred at the edge of a

network. Meaning, the data is analysed locally, closer to where it is stored, in real-time without latency, rather

than send it far away to a centralised data centre.

It allows for quicker data processing and content delivery.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications form the basis for automated information exchange between machines. It can impact various industries like smart cities and grids, transportation systems and healthcare, among others.

About TMT:

• It is an astronomical observatory with a huge telescope (ELT).

• It is an international project funded by scientific organisations of Canada, China, India, Japan and the USA.

• Planned location: Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii in the US state of Hawaii.

• Purpose: The TMT is designed for near-ultraviolet to mid-infrared observations, featuring adaptive optics to correct image blur.

Significance:

• TMT will enable scientists to study fainter objects far away from us in the Universe, which gives information about early stages of evolution of the Universe.

• It will give us finer details of not-so-far-away objects like undiscovered planets and other objects in the Solar System and planets around other stars.

ASKAP surveys are designed to map the structure and evolution of the Universe, which it does by observing galaxies and the hydrogen gas that they contain.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the investigation found that the honey sold by 10 out of 13 brands in Indian markets are adulterated with sugar syrup. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) tests managed to expose the adulteration.

A desalination plant turns salt water into water that is fit to drink. The most commonly used techniques used for the process are reverse osmosis. External pressure is applied to push solvents from an area of high solute concentration to an area of low-solute concentration through a membrane. The membranes' microscopic pores allow water molecules through but leave salt and most other impurities behind, releasing clean water from the other side. These plants are mostly set up in areas that have access to seawater.

Desalination has largely been limited to affluent countries in the Middle East and has recently started making inroads in parts of the United States and Australia. In India, Tamil Nadu has been the pioneer in using this technology, setting up two desalination plants near Chennai in 2010 and then 2013.

having optical and electronic properties that differ from larger particles due to quantum mechanics.

When the quantum dots are illuminated by UV light, an electron in the quantum dot can be excited to a state of higher energy.

Potential quantum dots' applications include single-electron transistors, solar cells, LEDs, lasers, single-photon sources, second-harmonic generation, quantum computing, cell biology research, and medical imaging. Their small size allows for some QDs to be suspended in solution, leading to inkjet printing and spin-coating. They have been used in Langmuir-Blodgett thin-films. These processing techniques result in less expensive and less time-consuming methods of semiconductor fabrication.

• Nearly four years after a mysterious neurological illness, referred to as "Havana syndrome", started to afflict American diplomats and intelligence operatives in Cuba, China, and other countries, a report by the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) has found "directed" microwave radiation to be its "plausible" cause.

• In late 2016, US diplomats and other employees stationed in Havana reported feeling ill after hearing strange sounds and experiencing odd physical sensations in their hotel rooms or homes. The symptoms included nausea, severe headaches, fatigue, dizziness, sleep problems, and hearing loss, which have since come to be known as "Havana Syndrome".

• Black carbon (BC) is a component of fine particulate matter. Black carbon consists of pure carbon in several linked forms. It is formed through the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuel, and biomass, and is emitted in anthropogenic and naturally occurring soot. Black carbon causes human morbidity and premature mortality.

• In climatology, black carbon is a climate forcing agent. Black carbon warms the Earth by absorbing sunlight and heating the atmosphere and reducing albedo when deposited on snow and ice.

• Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only several days to weeks, whereas carbon dioxide (CO 2) has an atmospheric lifetime of more than 100 years.

• The term black carbon is also used in soil sciences and geology. Especially in the tropics, black carbon in soils significantly contributes to fertility as it can absorb important plant nutrients.

Near-field communication is a set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices, one of which is usually a portable device such as a smartphone, to establish communication by bringing them within 4 cm of each other.

It is "Acquired Immunity" that is disease-specific, not innate immunity which is general in nature. This means that our body when it encounters a pathogen for the first time produces a response called primary response which is of low intensity.

Subsequent encounter with the same pathogen elicits a highly intensified secondary or anamnestic response. This is ascribed to the fact that our body appears to have a memory of the first encounter.

• Herd immunity is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune.

• It is the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease within a population.

• It occurs when a high proportion of individuals are resistant to the disease.

• It may occur due to immunisation or naturally.

• Herd immunity depends on the contagiousness of the disease. Diseases that spread easily, such as measles, require a higher number of immune individuals in a community to reach herd immunity.

Diseases like dysentery and malaria are caused by protozoans, whereas typhoid and tuberculosis (TB) are bacterial diseases.

• Pratyush and Mihir are the supercomputers established at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF), Noida respectively.

• Being a High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility, Pratyush and Mihir consist of several computers that can deliver a peak power of 6.8 PetaFlops. It is the first multi-PetaFlops supercomputer ever built in India.

• Pratyush and Mihir are used in the fields of weather forecasting and climate monitoring in India. It helps the

• country to make better forecasts in terms of Monsoon, fishing, air quality, extreme events

• like Tsunami, cyclones, earthquakes, lightning and other natural calamities such as floods, droughts etc.

• India is the fourth country to have a High-Performance Computing facility dedicated to weather and climate research after Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Weedicide Consumption in India (in tonnes)

•Includes imported and others chemicals

These GNPs can be used as a composite therapeutic agent clinical trials, especially in anti-cancer, anti-viral, antidiabetic, and cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Nanoparticles (NPs) have a wide variety of potential applications in biomedical, optical and electronics research. Metallic NPs have been efficiently exploited for biomedical applications, and among them, GNPs are found to be effective in biomedical research.

GNPs also have unique physicochemical properties. Their biocompatibility, high surface area, stability, and nontoxicity, make them suitable for various therapeutic use applications, including detection and diagnosis of diseases, bio-labelling, and targeted drug delivery. As nano-carriers, GNPs can transfer various drugs made out of peptides, proteins, plasmid DNAs, small interfering RNAs, and chemotherapeutic agents to target diseased cells of the human body.

GNPs are also found to be useful in the electronics industry. Scientists have constructed a transistor known as NOMFET (Nanoparticle Organic Memory Field-Effect Transistor) by embedding GNPs in a porous manganese oxide as a room temperature catalyst down volatile organic compound in air and combining GNPs with organic molecules.

All messaging services like WhatsApp, Viber, Google Chat, Yahoo messenger use encrypted services. Banks (payment gateways) and e-commerce sites also use encryption to protect financial and private data, including passwords.

Encryption is also used to protect data in transit, such as data being transferred via networks (e.g. the Internet, e-commerce), mobile telephones, wireless microphones, wireless intercom systems, and Bluetooth devices and bank automatic teller machines.

This extreme cold makes the solid dangerous to handle without protection due to burns caused by freezing (frostbite). While generally not very toxic, the outgassing from it can cause hypercapnia (abnormally elevated carbon dioxide levels in the blood) due to buildup in confined locations.

Dry ice can be used to arrest and prevent insect activity in closed containers of grains and grain products, as it displaces oxygen, but does not alter the taste or quality of foods. For the same reason, it can prevent or retard food oils and fats from becoming rancid.

When dry ice is placed in water, sublimation is accelerated, and low-sinking, dense clouds of smoke-like fog are created. This is used in fog machines, at theatres, haunted house attractions, and nightclubs for dramatic effects.

One of the largest mechanical uses of dry ice is blast cleaning.

Cross pathy is a practice in which homoeopathic and ayurvedic drugs are prescribed along with allopathic medicines.

Just because a planet or moon is in the Goldilocks Zone of a star, doesn't mean it will have life or even liquid water.

After all, Earth isn't the only planet in the Sun's Goldilocks Zone - Venus and Mars are also in this habitable zone, but aren't currently habitable.

The vaccine targets the pneumococcal bacterium, which causes pneumonia and other serious life-threatening diseases such as meningitis and sepsis. It is estimated to cause nearly four lakh deaths in children under five years of age each year worldwide.

Pneumococcal disease is a significant contributor to under-five mortality rate worldwide.

The World Health Organization in 2018 recommended the inclusion of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) in routine childhood immunisation programmes in all countries because of its widespread fatality.

Pneumococcal bacteria spread from person-to-person by direct contact with respiratory secretions, like saliva or mucus. Many people, especially children, have the bacteria in their nose or throat at one time or another without being ill.