Science and Technology News Questions and Answers

Answer: D

A is false, but R is true.

BharatGen, launched in September 2024, is India's government-funded initiative to build generative AI models for Indian languages. It was launched by the Department of Science and Technology (Ministry of Science and Technology) under its National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems, with IIT Bombay leading the consortium, not by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. So the Assertion is wrong on the ministry.

The Reason correctly states BharatGen's aims: home-grown foundation models that reduce dependence on foreign technology and serve India's many languages.

Answer: B

PSLV-C37 carried 103 co-passenger satellites.

On 15 February 2017 ISRO's PSLV-C37 placed 104 satellites in orbit in one launch, a world record at the time. One was the main payload, the 714 kg Cartosat-2 series satellite, and the other 103 were co-passengers: two Indian nano-satellites and 101 from abroad, most of them from the USA.

\[ 104 - 1 = 103 \]

104 is the trap, the total including Cartosat-2. 102 and 112 match neither count.

Answer: A

The incorrectly explained term is Dragonfly.

NASA's Dragonfly is a rotorcraft lander being sent to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, to study its organic chemistry and possible habitability. It has nothing to do with solar flares or the Martian regolith.

The others are correctly described. 'Grey goo' is the hypothetical scenario of self-replicating nanomachines consuming the biosphere, the Hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transport in low-pressure tubes, and INS Tabar is a Talwar-class stealth frigate of the Indian Navy.

Answer: A

Param-Ishan is a super computer.

PARAM-Ishan was installed at IIT Guwahati in 2016, built with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) as part of the PARAM series of Indian supercomputers. It has a peak performance of about 250 teraflops and is used for research such as weather and climate modelling.

Mini, micro and mainframe computers are smaller classes of machine; the PARAM name belongs to C-DAC's supercomputer line, beginning with PARAM 8000 in 1991.

Answer: D

The matches are SLP with Statistical Language Processing (3), GAI with Generative Artificial Intelligence (4), DL with Deep Learning (1) and NCAI with National Centre on AI (2), the code 3 4 1 2.

The other codes mismatch at least two abbreviations.

SLP is Statistical Language Processing in natural language work, GAI is Generative AI, DL is Deep Learning and NCAI is the National Centre on Artificial Intelligence. The code 3 4 1 2 gives each abbreviation its own meaning, and the other codes cross the first and last items.

Answer: C

Kessler syndrome is the cascade of collisions in low Earth orbit in which satellite fragments, spent rocket stages and other discarded materials strike one another and create more debris, so option C is right.

It has nothing to do with radio frequency interference, with light pollution, or with the formation of clouds.

The idea was put forward by the NASA scientist Donald Kessler in 1978 and warns that crowded orbits may become unusable for future satellites.

Answer: B

The first country was Singapore.

In December 2020 the Singapore Food Agency approved the sale of cultured (lab-grown) chicken produced by the US firm Eat Just, making Singapore the first country to allow meat grown from animal cells to be produced, sold and eaten.

The USA gave its regulatory approvals for cultivated chicken only in 2022-23, after Singapore. Finland and Canada had not approved cultured meat at the time of the exam.

Answer: B

The institute is Punjab Agricultural University.

Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, developed Bt cotton varieties carrying the insect-resistance gene, such as PAU Bt 1, among the first genetically modified cotton varieties bred by a public-sector institution in India, where Bt cotton had until then come almost entirely as private-sector hybrids.

G.B. Pant University, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and IARI work on cotton and on biotechnology, but the genetically modified cotton varieties the question refers to are PAU's.

Answer: A

The Defence Ministry adopted Maya OS.

In 2023 the Ministry of Defence decided to replace Microsoft Windows on its computers connected to the internet with Maya OS, an operating system developed in India on the open-source Ubuntu base, together with an endpoint protection system called Chakravyuh, to reduce exposure to malware and cyber attacks.

Mac OS is Apple's system, Haiku is a small open-source operating system, and 'Kuku OS' is not a real operating system.

Answer: C

Chandrayaan-3 explored the South Pole region of the Moon.

Its lander Vikram touched down on 23 August 2023 near the lunar south pole, making India the first country to land in that region. The area interests scientists because permanently shadowed craters there may hold water ice. The landing point was named Shiv Shakti point.

Earlier landings by other countries were mostly near the equator, and the far side (often called the dark side) was first reached by China's Chang'e 4.