Test: September 2022 Weekly Current Affair - 3 - UPSC MCQ

The Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary is a high-altitude wildlife sanctuary located in the Ladakhi adjunct of the Changthang plateau in the Leh District of the union territory of Ladakh. It is important as one of the few places in India with a population of the Tibetan Wild Ass, as well as the rare Black-necked Crane.

This is the genus of large wild cats that can roar, but can’t purr. Among them, the lion, the leopard, and the jaguar are more closely related, while the other strand has the tiger and the snow leopard. The snow leopard is an exception to the rest of the group in that it can’t roar.
Jim Corbett’s “large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage”, the solitary and strongly territorial tiger is the largest of all wild cats and also the earliest Panthera member to exist. Primarily a forest animal, they range from the Siberian taiga to the Sunderban delta. The national animal of India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and South Korea, the tiger was voted the world’s favourite animal ahead of the dog in a 2004 Animal Planet global online poll.

Leopard (Panthera Pardus):
The most adaptable of all big cats, they occupy diverse habitats at all altitudes across Africa and Asia. Like black jaguars, melanistic leopards are called black panthers.
Snow leopard (Panthera Uncia):
The ghost of the mountains, this smokey-grey cat lives above the snow line in Central and South Asia. The most elusive of all big cats, it cannot roar, and has the longest tail of them all — which comes in handy for balance while hunting along the cliffs, and also gives warmth when wrapped around the body. The snow leopard is the state animal of Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh.

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 compulsory licence on patent on any of the following grounds, namely:—
(a) that the reasonable requirements of the public with respect to the patented invention have not been satisfied, or
(b) that the patented invention is not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price, or
(c) that the patented invention is not worked in the territory of India.

Colour revolutions refer to a series of uprisings that first began in former communist nations in Eastern Europe in the early 2000s, but are also used in reference to popular movements in the Middle East and Asia. Most have involved large-scale mobilisation on the streets, with demands for free elections or regime change, and calls for removal of authoritarian leaders.
Protesters often wear a specific colour, such as in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, but the term has also been used to describe movements named after flowers like the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. In 2019, Beijing had said the protests in Hong Kong had taken on “colour revolution characteristics”.

This is the first time in the world that a large carnivore was relocated from one continent to another.
The conservation of the cheetah will revive grassland-forests and its biome and habitat, much like Project Tiger has done for forests and all the species found in these forests. Project Tiger has also resulted in the conservation of 250 water bodies found in India’s 52 Tiger Reserves. The Cheetah Project is likely to have a similar impact.
Shergarh Wildlife Sanctuary is located in Rajasthan.

• CRISPR is short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which is a reference to the clustered and repetitive sequences of DNA found in bacteria, whose natural mechanism to fight some viral diseases is replicated in this gene-editing tool.
• It is simple, and still far more accurate — and it does not involve the introduction of any new gene from the outside. A bad stretch in the DNA sequence, which is the cause of disease or disorder, is located, cut, and removed — and then replaced with a ‘correct’ sequence. And the tools used to achieve this are not mechanical, but biochemical — specific protein and RNA molecules.
• The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that uses a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks.
• The first task is to identify the particular sequence of genes that is the cause of the trouble. Once that is done, an RNA molecule is programmed to locate this sequence on the DNA strand, just like the ‘find’ or ‘search’ function on a computer. After this, a special protein called Cas9, which is often described as ‘genetic scissors’, is used to break the DNA strand at specific points, and remove the bad sequence.
• A DNA strand, when broken, has a natural tendency to re-attach and heal itself. But if the auto-repair mechanism is allowed to continue, the bad sequence can regrow. So, scientists intervene during the auto-repair process by supplying the correct sequence of genetic codes, which attaches to the broken DNA strand.

• In 1997, wolves from northwestern Montana were relocated to Yellowstone National Park, where they went extinct by the 1970s.
• In 1984, rhinos were shifted from Assam’s Pobitora to Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh. More recently, Kaziranga rhinos have been translocated to Manas within the state to build a new population. In 2011, bisons were shifted from Kanha to Bandhavgarh where they went locally extinct.
• The success stories that made bigger headlines involved tigers. Two new populations were built through translocation in Sariska (Rajasthan) and Panna (Madhya Pradesh) where the big cat went locally extinct due to poaching.
• In 2011, bisons were shifted from Kanha to Bandhavgarh where they went locally extinct.

• The National Health Accounts (NHA) Estimates describe the country’s total expenditure on healthcare — whether by the government, the private sector, individuals, or NGOs — and the flow of these funds. It answers questions such as what are the sources of healthcare spending, who manages this spending, who provides healthcare services, and which services are utilised.
• One of the most important findings of the 2018-19 report is that government spending as proportion of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) went down to 1.28% from 1.35% in the previous year’s(2017-18) report. The total health spending — which includes spending by both government and non-government agents — declined from 3.9% of the GDP to 3.2% in the five years up to 2018-19.
  

• An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog, mist, dust, forest exudates and geyser steam. Examples of anthropogenic aerosols are particulate air pollutants and smoke.
• Aerosols influence climate in two primary ways: by changing the amount of heat that gets in or out of the atmosphere, or by affecting the way clouds form.
• Some aerosols, like many kinds of dust from ground-up rocks, are light-colored and even a little bit reflective. When the sun’s rays beam down on them, they bounce the rays back out of the atmosphere, preventing that heat from ever reaching Earth’s surface.

• In India, the native cheetah species was the Asiatic cheetah, which went extinct in 1952. Currently, only Iran has Asiatic cheetahs in the wild, numbering around 12, and the majority of the remaining 7,000-strong population of the big cats around the world is of African cheetahs – the ones that have now come to India.
• According to the journal National Geographic, a popular theory on cheetahs’ evolution says they descended from the same ancestor as the American puma, another big cat. This implies cheetahs were not limited to two continents at that point. “About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, around the end of the last ice age, an extinction event took place that wiped out many large mammal species around the world, including the wild cheetahs of North America and Europe. The extinction of these early cheetah species left only the Asian and African populations of cheetahs”, it says.

• The first experimental mission of ISRO’s Scramjet Engine towards the realization of an Air Breathing Propulsion System was successfully conducted on August 28, 2016 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota.
• The Scramjet engine designed by ISRO uses Hydrogen as fuel and the Oxygen from the atmospheric air as the oxidizer. 

Coalbed methane (CBM):

• CBM, like shale gas, is extracted from what are known as unconventional gas reservoirs — where gas is extracted directly from the rock that is the source of the gas (shale in case of shale gas and coal in case of CBM).
• The methane is held underground within the coal and is extracted by drilling into the coal seam and removing the groundwater. The resulting drop in pressure causes the methane to be released from the coal.
• According to the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI), CBM can be used for power generation, as compressed natural gas (CNG) auto fuel, as feedstock for fertilisers, industrial uses such as in cement production, rolling mills, steel plants, and for methanol production.

• El Niño years in India have witnessed extreme heat and below normal rainfall levels during monsoon, even though El Niño might not be the only factor or even have direct links to them. In 2014, a El Niño year, India received 12 per cent deficient rainfall from June to September.
• On the other hand, La Nina years are known to favour the Indian summer monsoon.
• El Niño has been associated with rising heatwaves and extreme temperatures, such as in parts of the US, Europe and China recently.
• India’s Northeast monsoon rainfall remained subdued during past La Niña events, but the 2021 monsoon remains an exception in recent years.
• Intense hurricanes and cyclones have frequently occurred in the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Bengal during La Nina years.

• To fight high levels of inflation, RBI increases reverse Repo rate. It makes it attractive for the bank to park funds with the RBI (More certainty of return + more interest rate) rather than to lend to the private sector. It thus reduces the liquidity in the market and increases the interest rate on borrowing. Private players will find it costly to borrow and thus investment decreases. It helps to contain inflation. 
• When inflation is high, the government reduces public expenditure. Decline in public expenditure affects private investment and results in decline of aggregate demand.
• In case of high inflation, government may resort to increasing personal or corporate taxes to reduce household expenditure/ private investment. Rise in taxation leaves lesser money with the people for consumption (and private players for investment). This would lead to decline in aggregate demand and help in containing rising inflation.

• Rabies is a zoonotic disease (a disease that is transmitted from animals to humans), caused by the rabies virus, of the Lyssavirus genus, within the family Rhabdoviridae. Domestic dogs are the most common reservoir of the virus, with more than 99% of human deaths caused by dog-mediated rabies.
• Rabies is a 100% vaccine-preventable disease. Countries embarking on rabies elimination programmes have successfully experienced marked reductions, often progressing to the elimination of rabies. Elimination programs often revolve around mass dog vaccination campaigns, where at least 70% of the dog population should be covered in order to break the cycle of transmission in dogs, and to humans.
• With the exception of Antarctica, rabies is endemic on all continents. Of the tens of thousands of deaths occurring annually due to rabies, 95% of cases are reported in Asia and Africa.

• In India, the PIL is a product of the judicial activism role of the Supreme Court. It was introduced in the early 1980s. Before 1980s the judiciary entertained litigation only from parties affected directly or indirectly by the defendant.
• A Public Interest Litigation can be filed before the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution or before the High Court of a State under Article 226 of the Constitution under their respective Writ Jurisdictions. It is the court’s privilege to entertain the application for the PIL.

• Banks Board Bureau (BBB) was set up in February 2016 as an autonomous body– based on the recommendations of the RBI-appointed PJ Nayak Committee to improve governance of Public Sector Banks (PSBs).
• It was the part of Indradhanush Plan of government.
• It had replaced Appointments Board of Government.
• Its broad agenda is to improve governance at state-owned lenders. Its mandate also involved advising the government on top-level bank appointments and assisting banks with capital-raising plans as well as strategies to deal with bad
• It guides banks on mergers and consolidations and governance issues to address bad loans problem among other issues.

• Sovereign equality is juridical in nature, i.e., all states are equal under international law in spite of inequalities between them in areas such as military power, geographical and population size, levels of industrialisation and economic development. Sovereign equality, along with collective security, is a fundamental principle of the UN. The UN Charter states that the primary objective of the UN is to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
• The UN Charter contains the doctrine of collective security in Article 39: “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

Green Revolution was not confined to only HYV seeds and fertilizers, but also encompassed every technique to boost agricultural productivity in the nation.
Briefly, some of the important components of the green revolution in India are as follows:

1. High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of seeds;
2. Irrigation (a) surface and (b) ground;
3. Use of fertilizers (chemical);
4. Use of Insecticides and Pesticides.
5. Command Area Development (CAD);
6. Consolidation of holdings;
7. Land reforms.
8. Supply of agricultural credit;
9. Rural electrification;
10. Rural Roads and Marketing;
11. Farm Mechanisation;
12. Agricultural Universities.

National Savings Certificates, popularly known as NSC, is an Indian Government Savings Bond, primarily used for small savings and income tax saving investments in India. It is part of the postal savings system of Indian Postal Service (India Post).
Public Account of India accounts for flows for those transactions where the government is merely acting as a banker.

• Black carbon (BC) is the result of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuel, and biomass. It consists of elemental carbon in several forms. Black carbon warms the atmosphere due to its absorption and by reducing albedo when deposited on snow and ice.
• It is directly emitted in the atmosphere as fine particles PM5. It is highly effective in absorbing solar energy and can absorb million times more energy than Carbon Dioxide.
• Life time of black carbon in the atmosphere is only a few days to weeks, compared to CO2 which has an atmospheric lifetime of more than 100 years.

Nanobiotechnology for Agriculture: Nanotechnology has huge potential in agricultural practices. Major areas identified in agriculture sector includes Food preservation and toxicity, Nanopesticides and Nanofertilizers, nano-biostimulant along with soil enhancers through nano-enabled technologies and abiotic stress management. Department of Biotechnology is also engaged in providing continuous support for development of nanobiotechnology based solutions for Crop improvements, Energy in agriculture, diagnostics and sensing.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed its judgement in the Menaka case in the subsequent cases. It has declared the following rights as part of Article 21:
(1) Right to live with human dignity.
(2) Right to decent environment including pollution free water and air and protection against hazardous industries.
(3) Right to livelihood.
(4) Right to privacy.
(5) Right to shelter.
(6) Right to health.
(7) Right to free education up to 14 years of age.
(8) Right to free legal aid.
(9) Right against solitary confinement.
(10) Right to speedy trial.
(11) Right against handcuffing.
(12) Right against inhuman treatment.
(13) Right against delayed execution.
(14) Right to travel abroad.
(15) Right against bonded labour.
(16) Right against custodial harassment.
(17) Right to emergency medical aid.
(18) Right to timely medical treatment in government hospital.
(19) Right not to be driven out of a state.
(20) Right to fair trial.
(21) Right of prisoner to have necessities of life.
(22) Right of women to be treated with decency and dignity.
(23) Right against public hanging.
(24) Right to hearing.
(25) Right to information.
(26) Right to reputation.
(27) Right of appeal from a judgement of conviction
(28) Right to social security and protection of the family
(29) Right to social and economic justice and empowerment
(30) Right against bar fetters
(31) Right to appropriate life insurance policy
(32) Right to sleep
(33) Right to freedom from noise pollution
(34) Right to electricity

• Article 355 imposes two duties on the Centre: (a) to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance; and (b) to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.
• It is this duty in the performance of which the Centre takes over the government of a state under Article 356 in case of failure of constitutional machinery in state.