10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: October 20th,2020

Statement 1 is incorrect. It is not held on Malabar coast every year.
The Malabar series of Naval exercises started in 1992 as a bilateral Indian Navy-US Navy exercise. Japan joined the Naval exercise in 2015. This annual exercise has been conducted off the coast of Guam in the Philippine Sea in 2018, off the coast the Japan in 2019 and is expected to be held in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea later this year.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Malabar 2020 will see the participation of the Australian Navy alongside the Indian, US and Japan naval forces. This year, the exercise has been planned on a ‘non-contact – at sea’ format.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Ayushman Sahakar scheme aims to assist cooperatives play an important role in creation of healthcare infrastructure in the country.
Ayushman Sahakar specifically covers establishment, modernization, expansion, repairs, renovation of hospital and healthcare and education infrastructure encompassing:
Statement 2 is correct. It will be implemented/funded by the NCDC. Any Cooperative Society with suitable provision in its byelaws to undertake healthcare related activities would be able to access the NCDC fund. NCDC assistance will flow either through the State Governments/ UT Administrations or directly to the eligible cooperatives.

Both statements are correct.
Indian Institute of Technology Madras researchers have booted up a microprocessor ‘Moushik’.
The design of the microprocessor, motherboard printed circuit board design, assembly and post-silicon boot-up were done at IIT Madras. The foundry-specific back-end design and fabrication were undertaken at Semi-Conductor Laboratory of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Chandigarh and manufacturing of this motherboard was done at Bengaluru.
The field application of Moushik includes smart cards, such as credit and debit cards; ID cards; travel cards for Metros and driving licences; electronic voting machines etc.
# The SHAKTI Processor Program, was started as an academic initiative back in 2014 by the RISE group at IIT-Madras.

Manama is the capital and largest city of Bahrain. Israel and Bahrain have formally established diplomatic relations after signing the US brokered deal.
Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria. The Nigerian Army has deployed soldiers to several parts of Abuja to curtail the violent outcome of the EndSARS protests.
Minsk is the capital city of Belarus. Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, has been rocked by strikes and weekly street protests since authorities announced Lukashenko, who has ruled in authoritarian fashion since 1994, had secured re-election

: Both statements are incorrect.
Heeng (asafoetida) is one of the widely used spices in Indian cuisine since time immemorial. But there is no production of heeng in India and currently about 1,200 tons of raw heeng worth Rs 600 crore is being imported annually from Afghanistan, Iran and Uzbekistan.
CSIR Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT) has introduced six accessions of heeng from Iran through the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), and standardized its production protocols under Indian conditions.
# Bt cotton is the only GM crop that is allowed in India.
Heeng is a perennial plant and it produces oleo-gum resin from the roots after five years of plantation. It can be grown in unutilized sloppy land of cold desert regions.

Vitamin A is involved in immune function, vision, reproduction, and cellular communication. Two forms of vitamin A are available in the human diet: preformed vitamin A (retinol and its esterified form, retinyl ester) and provitamin A carotenoids.
Concentrations of preformed vitamin A are in liver and fish oils, milk and eggs, which also include some provitamin A. Most dietary provitamin A comes from leafy green vegetables, orange and yellow vegetables, tomato products, fruits, and some vegetable oils.
# Three out of four rural Indians cannot afford a nutritious diet, according to a paper recently published in journal Food Policy.

Statement 1 is correct. International Financial Sevices Centres Authority (IFSCA) is a statutory unified regulatory body under the Department of Economic Affairs established by an Act of Parliament to develop and regulate the financial products, financial services and financial institutions located / performed in the International Financial Services Centres in India.
Statement 2 is correct. The Authority will function as a unified regulator and is empowered to exercise the powers of RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA in respect of financial services, financial products and financial institutions performed/located in the international financial services centres in the country.
IFSCA has introduced a framework for “Regulatory Sandbox”. Under this, entities operating in the capital market, banking, insurance and financial services space shall be granted certain facilities and flexibilities to experiment with innovative FinTech solutions in a live environment with a limited set of real customers for a limited time frame.

A regulatory sandbox (RS) usually refers to live testing of new products or services in a controlled/test regulatory environment for which regulators may (or may not) permit certain regulatory relaxations for the limited purpose of the testing.
It allows the regulator, the innovators, the financial service providers (as potential deployers of the technology) and the customers (as final users) to conduct field tests to collect evidence on the benefits and risks of new financial innovations, while carefully monitoring and containing their risks.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Urea is highly soluble in water as result nitrification and de-nitrification reduces its efficiency. If urea is coated with neem the loss can be minimized as coating of urea makes it a slow release fertilizer, making available to plants for a longer duration.
A reduced solubility of urea also keeps contamination of ground water under control and the coating reduces ammonia volatilization and controls atmospheric pollution.
Statement 2 is correct. A study conducted by the Department of Agriculture; Cooperation & Farmers Welfare (DAC&FW) had found the effects of Neem Coating of Urea as:
–Improvement in soil health.
–Reduction in costs with respect to plant protection chemicals.
–Reduction in pest and disease attack.
–An increase in yield of paddy, sugarcane, maize, soyabean and Tur/Red Gram.

Statement 1 is incorrect. HIV after entering the human body gradually destroys the immune system, i.e. the ability to fight infections/diseases.
AIDS is the later stage of HIV infection. It is a condition in which a group of symptoms appear as the immune system becomes very weak. It can take around 8-10 years from the time of HIV infection to the stage of AIDS.
Being diagnosed with HIV does not mean a person will also be diagnosed with AIDS. Healthcare professionals diagnose AIDS only when people with HIV infection begin to get severe opportunistic infections (OIs), or their CD4cell counts fall below a certain level.
Statement 2 is incorrect. The 2019 HIV estimates by the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) states that there has been a 66.1% reduction in new HIV infections among children and a 65.3% reduction in AIDS-related deaths in India over a nine-year period. The number of pregnant women living with HIV has reduced from 31,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019.
Under the leadership of NACO, a ‘Fast-Tracking of EMTCT (elimination of mother-to-child transmission) strategy-cum-action plan’ was outlined by June 2019, in the run-up towards December 2020: the deadline to achieve EMTCT.