Technology Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The one that is not among the 4 Vs is Verification.

Big data is usually described by four Vs: Volume (the sheer quantity of data), Velocity (the speed at which it is generated and processed), Variety (the many forms it takes) and Veracity (its reliability and accuracy).

Verification sounds like veracity but is not one of the four Vs; velocity, volume and variety are.

Some writers add further Vs such as Value and Variability, but verification is not among the defining characteristics of big data.

Answer: D

The term AI dates from 1956.

The phrase 'artificial intelligence' was coined by John McCarthy in the proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, held in 1956, which is regarded as the founding event of the field.

1942, 1964 and 1965 are not the year the field was named.

Earlier work by Alan Turing, including his 1950 paper on computing machinery and intelligence, laid the groundwork, but the name of the field dates from the Dartmouth proposal.

Answer: A

The CSIR products are (i) and (iii) only.

Saheli, the non-steroidal oral contraceptive pill (centchroman), was developed at the CSIR Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow. The indelible ink used to mark voters' fingers was developed by CSIR's National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi.

The Sree Chitra heart valve was developed at the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, which comes under the Department of Science and Technology, not CSIR. No CSIR laboratory is credited with a coconut de-husking device in the sources, so statement (iv) is left out, which excludes option D. Option B names only Saheli and option C only the ink, so each leaves out a CSIR product.

Answer: D

All four statements apply, so the answer is (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv).

Chandrayaan-2 was launched on 22 July 2019. It was aimed at the little-explored region near the Moon's south pole (i), and among its goals was to study further the evidence of water that Chandrayaan-1's instruments had found in 2009 (ii). Its Vikram lander was meant to soft-land and relay data to Earth (iii), but it lost contact and crash-landed on 7 September 2019, while the orbiter continued to work.

The crash site was later identified: in December 2019 NASA confirmed Vikram's impact point and debris from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images, after a lead from an Indian engineer (iv). So options leaving out any statement are incomplete.

Answer: D

Only statement (iv) is correct, so the answer is Only (iv).

Pattern matching is indeed how a computer recognises associations and relationships between objects and events, by comparing inputs with stored patterns (iv). It is the only option that includes (iv).

Statement (iii) is plainly wrong: the training scenarios and the feedback a learning system receives are what determine how well it performs, so option C fails. Statement (i) does not describe a perceptron, which is the simplest artificial neuron, a linear classifier that weighs inputs and fires above a threshold; specifying actions and their order is the job of a planner. Statement (ii) does not describe inductive learning, which generalises a rule from specific examples rather than starting from a conclusion. So options A and B are wrong as well.

Answer: B

Statements (i), (ii) and (iii) are correct, so the answer is (i), (ii) and (iii) only.

ICT gives access to more precise and accurate data of many kinds (i), it helps firms find the areas where they can gain a competitive advantage (ii), and ICT products change the environmental footprint of other products and activities, for example by enabling remote work or smarter energy use (iii).

Statement (iv) describes the opposite of ICT-enabled manufacturing. Energy-intensive, standardised, departmentalised production is the old mass-production model; ICT makes manufacturing more flexible, customised, integrated across departments and generally less energy-intensive. Option B is the only one that leaves out (iv).

Answer: C

Statements (i), (ii) and (iv) are accepted, so the answer is (i), (ii) and (iv) only.

Session hijacking means taking over a user's authenticated session, usually by stealing the session token, to access their data or act in their name (i). The key accepts IP spoofing, where the attacker forges the address of an authenticated host to slip into its connection, as a common method (ii). Defence has to be layered: encryption and secure session handling in the application, and filtering and monitoring at the network level (iv).

Statement (iii) is wrong: packet sniffing and cross-site scripting are ways attackers steal session tokens, not ways to prevent hijacking. That rules out 'all the above' and option B, and option D leaves out the true statement (iv).

Answer: D

The scheme is Jeevan Pramaan.

Jeevan Pramaan, launched in November 2014, is the Aadhaar-based biometric Digital Life Certificate for pensioners. Instead of appearing in person every year at the bank or pension office to prove they are alive, pensioners authenticate with a fingerprint or iris scan, and the certificate is sent electronically to the pension-disbursing agency.

TIDE 2.0 is a Ministry of Electronics and IT scheme supporting technology incubators. MyGov is a citizen-engagement platform, and the Open Government Data Platform (data.gov.in) publishes government datasets. None of them issues life certificates.

Answer: B

It is the Cyber Swachhta Kendra.

The Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre), launched in 2017 and run by CERT-In under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, detects botnet infections in India and notifies users. Its portal offers free tools to detect and remove malicious programs, along with security best practices for citizens and organisations.

The National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre protects critical sectors such as power and banking from cyber attack. The National Cybercrime Threat Analytics Unit and the Platform for Joint Cybercrime Investigation Team are components of the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Home Ministry, aimed at investigation rather than at distributing cleaning tools.

Answer: B

Statements (i) and (iii) are correct, so the answer is (i) and (iii).

The landing site for Vikram was chosen for safety and for the lander's ability to work. It had to be visible from Earth, so the lander could communicate directly with the ground stations (i), and it had to receive sunlight, with no nearby terrain casting long shadows over it, because the lander ran on solar power (iii). Gentle slopes and few boulders and craters were the other criteria.

Statement (ii) is wrong. Water ice survives in permanently shadowed craters near the poles, which are exactly the places a solar-powered lander must avoid, and the chosen site was not one where the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had mapped ice. Any option containing (ii) is therefore wrong.