Test: October 2023 Weekly Current Affair - 1 - UPSC MCQ

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• The Ministry of Education is urging states to establish Vidya Samiksha Kendras (VSKs), which are data repositories under the National Digital Education Architecture.
• These centres will collect data from various educational schemes run by the Ministry of Education, including mid-day meal programs, teacher training, textbook content, school attendance, students’ learning outcomes, and performance grading.
• Currently, a central VSK centre is managed by Ernst and Young, and it operates on open-source C-Qube software. Data is manually input and accessible in downloadable Excel format, but the plan is to shift to automatic data integration using Application Programming Interface (API) integration. This aligns with the National Education Policy of 2020, aiming to make data open source.
• VSKs are also intended to map school locations and population data to assess the Gross Access Ratio, aiding in the planning of new schools, industry clusters, skilling requirements, and higher education institutions based on demand and future scenarios.

About the Paris Agreement:

It is a legally binding international treaty on climate change that was adopted by 196 countries. Its primary goal is to limit the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It includes a mechanism known as the Global Stocktake (GST), which aims to assess the global response to the climate crisis every five years.

The Financial Stability Board (founded in 2009; HQ: Basel, Switzerland) is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. It was established after the G20 London summit (2009) as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum.

Statement 1 is incorrect.

• Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the behaviour of antibodies produced by the immune system to protect against diseases and foreign substances.
• An antibody attaches itself to an antigen – a foreign substance, usually a disease-causing molecule – and helps the immune system eliminate it from the body.
• Monoclonal antibodies are specifically designed to target certain antigens.
• Glycoproteins are one of the major components of viruses that cause diseases in humans. 

• Indian scientists are gearing up for an ambitious project called Samudrayaan, which involves sending three people 6,000 meters underwater in a domestically developed submersible named Matsya 6000.
• This mission aims to explore the ocean depths of precious metals and minerals such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese.

• The earthquake in Morocco resulted from a geological phenomenon known as a “reverse fault.”
• Tectonic Plate Interaction: Morocco is situated in an area where the Eurasian and African tectonic plates converge.
• Plate Boundary Activity: The Atlas Mountains, where the earthquake occurred, are actively rising due to the convergence of these two large tectonic plates
• Seismic Stress Accumulation: Although the region had not experienced major recorded earthquakes before, stress had been accumulating underground for an extended period due to the slow movement of tectonic plates.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• LGDs have basic properties similar to natural diamonds, including their optical dispersion, which provide them the signature diamond sheen. However, since they are created in controlled environments, many of their properties can be enhanced for various purposes.
• For instance, LGDs are most often used for industrial purposes, in machines and tools. Their hardness and extra strength make them ideal for use as cutters. Furthermore, pure synthetic diamonds have high thermal conductivity, but negligible electrical conductivity. This combination is invaluable for electronics where such diamonds can be used as a heat spreader for high-power laser diodes, laser arrays and high-power transistors.
• Lastly, as the Earth’s reserves of natural diamonds are depleted, LGDs are slowly replacing the prized gemstone in the jewelry industry. Crucially, like natural diamonds, LGDs undergo similar processes of polishing and cutting that are required to provide diamonds their characteristic lustre.

Gresham’s Law, named after Thomas Gresham, states that “bad money drives out good” when the government fixes the exchange rate between two currencies at a level different from the market rate.

Impact:

• This leads to the undervalued currency going out of circulation, while the overvalued currency remains but lacks buyers.
• The law can result in a currency shortage when demand exceeds supply due to the fixed price.
• Gresham’s law applies not only to paper currencies but also to commodities. It can cause goods to disappear from the formal market when their prices are forcibly undervalued by governments.
• Thers’ law, on the other hand, states that “good money drives out bad” when people have the freedom to choose between currencies, and they prefer higher-quality currencies.

• Article 21A of the Constitution and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 outline the fundamental right to education and the right to have free and compulsory education for children aged 6-14 years.
• The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which adopted a ‘zero rejection policy’, emphasises that “every child with special needs, irrespective of the kind, category and degree of disability, is provided meaningful and quality education”.
• India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Aligning with this commitment, the government launched the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) in 2015. An important pillar of this campaign is accessibility to built environment. The government has also been supportive of the principle of Leave No One Behind (LNOB), which is the central, transformative promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

• According to Dr. Ambedkar “Fraternity means a sense of common brotherhood of all Indians — of Indians being one people. It is the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life,”.
• Fraternity is deeply embedded in political philosophy, emphasizing empowerment and emancipation in politics. It’s a fundamental element of liberal political thought, alongside liberty and equality.
• It became an official demand of the Indian National Congress in 1935 and was officially adopted in the Lucknow session in April 1936 presided by Jawaharlal Nehru, who also drafted the Objectives Resolution.
• The Preamble of the Indian Constitution mentions fraternity as one of its objectives. It ends with “…and to promote among them all fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.”

Re-globalization vs. de-globalisation:

The Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA) and UNICEF jointly organized a workshop on Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) in collaboration with the National Stock Exchange (NSE).

What is BRSR?

Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting is a framework introduced by SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) in 2021. It mandates the top 1000 listed companies in India to report their performance on various environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects. This framework is based on the nine principles of the National Guidelines for Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC).

Only statement 2 is correct.

• An oblique-reverse fault is a geological fault characterized by both horizontal and vertical movements along the fault plane. This type of faulting is common in areas of compression along the convergent plate boundaries. The stress along these fault lines can induce earthquakes as rocks abruptly shift to release accumulated stress.

In contrast to humans and other animals, plants can produce glucose through a process known as photosynthesis. The green parts of plants use sunlight, water, and the gas carbon dioxide from the air to produce glucose and oxygen.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• 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 both 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 by reducing albedo when deposited on snow and ice.
• In the tropics, black carbon in soils significantly contributes to fertility as it is able to absorb important plant nutrients.

Bioremediation refers to the use of specific microorganisms or plants to metabolize and remove harmful substances. These organisms are known for their biochemical and physical affinity to hydrocarbons among other pollutants. Various types of bacteria, archaea, algae, fungi, and some species of plants are all able to break down specific toxic waste products into safer constituents.

Only statement 3 is correct.

• Phytoplankton float on top surface of water bodies and require sunlight to thrive. Ice cover will reduce their breeding grounds and population.
• The snow cover blocks exchange of nutrients and oxygen from the atmosphere, however the same may continue within the water stream. But it is worse than before.
• Snow cover of ice on water body can effectively cut off light, plunging the waters into darkness.
• Hence photosynthesis stops but respiration continues. Thus, in shallow lakes, oxygen gets depleted, and due to lack of oxygen there is large scale death of fishes and other organisms. This condition is known as winterkill.

• Corals that inhabit the colder deep waters of continental shelves and offshore canyons, ranging from 50 to over 1000m depths lack zooxanthellae and may build reef-like structures or occur solitarily.
• Cold-water corals are different from their warm-water counterparts because they do not contain symbiotic algae for photosynthesis and grow more slowly. Cold-water corals obtain all their energy from organic matter and zooplankton, which they catch from the currents drifting past.
• Cold-water corals can be found over a wide range of latitudes, from tropical to Polar Regions, and from the shallow to the deep seas.

Only statement 1 is correct.

• Nipah is a zoonotic disease, primarily transmitted to humans through infected animals particularly bats or contaminated food,and it can also spread from person to person through close contact.
• Symptoms include fever, headache, cough, sore throat, difficulty in breathing, and vomiting, with severe cases potentially leading to encephalitis, coma, and death.
• The virus is primarily transmitted through consumption of contaminated food or direct contact with infected animals, particularly fruit bats.
• It is highly lethal, with mortality rates ranging from 40% to 75%.

• Muons are subatomic particles raining from space. They are created when the particles in Earth’s atmosphere collide with cosmic rays — clusters of high-energy particles that move through space at just below the speed of light. According to Scientific American magazine, “about 10,000 muons reach every square metre of the Earth’s surface a minute”.
• These particles resemble electrons but are 207 times as massive. Therefore, they are sometimes called “fat electrons”. Because muons are so heavy, they can travel through hundreds of metres of rock or other matter before getting absorbed or decaying into electrons and neutrinos. In comparison, electrons can penetrate through only a few centimetres. Muons are highly unstable and exist for just 2.2 microseconds.

• Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered methane and carbon dioxide on the exoplanet K2-18 b.
• K2-18 b is located in the “Goldilocks zone” around the cool dwarf star K2-18, where it receives just enough starlight to maintain liquid water.
• It’s considered a “Hycean planet,” a hypothetical type of water-covered planet with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere that some scientists believe is a good candidate for the search for signs of life.
• A habitable zone, also called the “Goldilocks zone”, is the area around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets.
• Obviously, our Earth is in the Sun’s Goldilocks zone. If Earth were where the dwarf planet Pluto is, all its water would freeze; on the other hand, if Earth were where Mercury is, all its water would boil off.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

• PDS is operated under the joint responsibility of the Central and State Governments. The Central Government takes the responsibility for procurement, storage, transportation and bulk allocation of foodgrains, at subsidised prices. The responsibility of distribution to consumers including target groups through a network of various fair price shops (FPSs) rests with the State Governments.
• The buffer stock provides the basic and most flexible instrument for moderating short-term effects of supply or production shortfalls. The concept of a buffer stock was first introduced during the 4th Five Year Plan (1969-74) and a buffer stock of 5 million tonnes of foodgrains was envisaged. The buffer stock figures are normally reviewed after every 5 years.

Statement 3 is incorrect.

NASA recently shared a captivating image of Mercury, the solar system’s smallest planet.

• Mercury’s unique characteristics, such as its thin exosphere consisting of elements like oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium.
• Due to its lack of atmosphere and proximity to the Sun, the planet experiences extreme temperature fluctuations, ranging from a scorching 800ºF (430ºC) during the day to a frigid -290 ºF (-180 ºC) at night.
• Additionally, Mercury possesses a relatively weak magnetic field, only 1% as strong as Earth’s, which interacts with solar winds to create magnetic tornados across the planet’s surface.

Technically, the Lieutenant Governor has executive control over only the three reserved subjects of police, public order and land; all other subjects (transferred subjects) lie with the elected government.

Libya is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest.