10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: August 22, 2020

Statement 1 is correct. Thumbimahotsavam 2020 is a Dragonfly Festival being held in Kerala.

A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera. Dragonflies are a group of roughly 3,000 species of aerial predatory insects most commonly found near freshwater habitats throughout most of the world. Large bodies, massive eyes and four long wings are the common characteristics of Dragonflies.

Statement 2 is incorrect. This festival is part of a national dragonfly festival being organised by the WWF India, Bombay Natural History Society & Indian Dragonfly Society in association with the National Biodiversity Board, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Development Programme and IUCN – Centre for Environment Conservation.

‘Pantalu’ is the official mascot of the festival.

Option 1 is correctly matched. The Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora is a medieval Byzantine Greek Orthodox church preserved as the Kariye/Chora Museum in Istanbul.

After Hagia Sophia Museum, the Kariye Museum has been opened as Mosque by Turkish Government.

Option 2 is correctly matched. The Albert Hall Museum in Jaipur is the oldest museum of the state and functions as the state museum of Rajasthan, India. An Egyptian mummy is the main attraction of this museum.

It is named after King Edward VII (Albert Edward), during whose visit to the city as the Prince of Wales, its foundation stone was laid in February 1876.

Option 3 is incorrectly matched. The Iga-ryu Ninja Museum, located in Iga city, Japan, is dedicated to the history and practices of ninja.

Statement 1 is correct. Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beautification & Maintenance) Policy, 2015 of the Ministry Road Transport & Highways and Shipping promotes greening and development eco-friendly National Highway corridors across the country with participation of farmers, private sector and government institutions including Forest Department.

Statement 2 is correct. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, has developed a mobile App called ‘Harit Path’ to monitor location, growth, species details, maintenance activities, targets and achievements of each of its field units for each and every plant under all plantation projects.

In order to track the growth and health of the plants, photographs along with data of the plants captured using Harit Path shall be uploaded every 3 months on NHAI’s AI powered Big Data Analytics platform – Data Lake.

Statement 1 is correct. The East Asia Summit (EAS) is the Indo-Pacific’s premier forum for strategic dialogue.

The EAS has 18 members – the ten ASEAN countries (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) along with Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, the United States and Russia.

Statement 2 is correct. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) was set up in 1993 as a regional security cooperation and dialogue platform based on deliberations in the ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference between the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN and its full dialogue partners.

India became a member of ARF in 1996. ARF comprises 27 members: the 10 ASEAN member states, the 10 ASEAN dialogue partners (Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States); Bangladesh, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste; and one ASEAN observer (Papua New Guinea).

# The Ministry of External Affairs in partnership with the Foreign Ministry of Thailand recently organized the 6th Round Table of ASEAN-India Network of Think Tanks (AINTT).

Statement 1 is correct. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion 2019-2024 in January, 2020. It sets forth the vision and objectives of financial inclusion policies in India.

The strategy was prepared by the RBI with inputs from the central government and financial sector regulators (Securities and Exchange Board of India, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India and Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority of India).

Statement 2 is correct. RBI identified six strategic objectives of a national strategy for financial inclusion:

(i) universal access to financial services, (ii) providing basic bouquet of financial services, (iii) access to livelihood and skill development, (iv) financial literacy and education, (v) customer protection and grievance redressal, and (vi) effective coordination.

To achieve this vision, it identified certain milestones such as:

-providing banking access to every village (or hamlet of 500 households in hilly areas) within a five km radius by 2020,

-strengthening digital financial services to create infrastructure to move towards a cash less society by 2022;

-ensuring that every adult has access to a financial service provider through a mobile device by 2024.

# Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently released the National Strategy for Financial Education 2020-25.

Statement 1 is correct. Constitution under article 120 provides that the Chairman of the Council of States or Speaker of the House of the People, or person acting as such, as the case may be, may permit any member who cannot adequately express himself in Hindi or in English to address the House in his mother-tongue.

Statement 2 is correct. Article 350A states that it shall be the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups; and the President may issue such directions to any State as he considers necessary or proper for securing the provision of such facilities.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Nagaland became the full-fledged 16th state of India on 1 Dec 1963.

This state borders with Assam in the northwest, Arunachal Pradesh in north and Manipur in the south. It also shares an international boundary with Myanmar.

Statement 2 is correct. The Purvanchal Range, or Eastern Mountains, is a sub-mountain range of the Himalayas in northeast India.

Saramati is a peak rising above the surrounding peaks at the mountainous border of Nagaland state and the Sagaing Region, Burma. It is located near Thanamir Village in the Kiphire District of Nagaland. It is the highest peak in the state of Nagaland.

The Wet Bulb temperature is the temperature of adiabatic saturation. This is the temperature indicated by a moistened thermometer bulb exposed to the air flow.

Wet Bulb temperature can be measured by using a thermometer with the bulb wrapped in wet muslin. The wet bulb temperature is always lower than the dry bulb temperature but will be identical with 100% relative humidity (the air is at the saturation line).

-The Dry Bulb Temperature refers basically to the ambient air temperature. It is called “Dry Bulb” because the air temperature is indicated by a thermometer not affected by the moisture of the air. Dry-bulb temperature can be measured using a normal thermometer freely exposed to the air but shielded from radiation and moisture.

-The Dew Point is the temperature at which water vapor starts to condense out of the air, the temperature at which air becomes completely saturated.

Microbeads are small, solid, manufactured plastic particles that are less than 5mm and don’t degrade or dissolve in water. They may be added to a range of products, including rinse-off cosmetics, personal care and cleaning products.

Microbeads are used as ingredients in these products for a variety of purposes. This includes as an abrasive or exfoliant, a bulking agent, for controlled timed release of active ingredients, and to prolong shelf life. They are also a relatively cheap ingredient.

Microbeads may be found in some products. These include toothpaste, sunscreen, facial scrubs, body wash, cosmetics such as foundation and blush, and other care products.

Aptameters are oligonucleotide or peptide molecules that bind to a specific target molecule. Aptamers can be classified as: DNA or RNA aptamers consisting of (usually short) strands of oligonucleotides and Peptide aptamers consisting of one (or more) short variable peptide domains, attached at both ends to a protein scaffold.

These the artificial single-stranded DNA or RNA sequences (or peptides) fold into secondary and tertiary structures making them bind to certain targets with extremely high specificity.

# Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, has initiated the research with support from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under DST on the covid-19 detection kit, which can be stored under less stringent conditions.
Scientists are working on detecting a target spike protein using bioinformatics tools. The kit will use aptamer (a biosensor) to detect SARS-Co-V2.