Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon – February 1, 2018

Coliforms can be found in the aquatic environment, in soil and on vegetation; they are universally present in large numbers in the faeces of warm blooded animals.

While Coliforms themselves are not normally causes of serious illness, they are easy to culture, and their presence is used to indicate that other pathogenic organisms of faecal origin may be present.

coli), a rod-shaped member of the coliform group.

Most strains of E. coli are harmless, but some can cause serious illness in humans. Infection symptoms and signs include bloody diarrhoea, stomach cramps, vomiting and occasionally, fever.

‘Make-II’ procedure which will enable greater participation of industry in acquisition of defence equipment.

This process will greatly help import substitution and promote innovative solutions. This simplified ‘Make-II’ procedure will amend the existing ‘Make Procedure’ in Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP)-2016.

The revised procedure has been finalized after a series of consultations held with industry.

The salient features of the new ‘Make-II’ procedure include the following:

• The industry can suggest projects, especially among those items which are currently being imported. Start-ups or individuals can also suggest proposals. Service Headquarters will also list out a series of projects which can be undertaken as ‘Make-II’ projects under the new procedure.
• The potential ‘Make-II’ projects will be approved by a collegiate comprising of DRDO, HQ (IDS), Department of Defence under a committee chaired by Secretary (Defence Production). Based on the in-principle approval agreed by this committee, the projects will be hosted on Ministry of Defence/Department of Defence Production’s website inviting industry to participate.
• There will be no limit to the number of industry who may respond to the EoI for development of the prototype subject to meeting the minimum qualification criteria. The design and development time of 12 to 30 weeks is granted to industry to offer the prototypes.
• There is no limit to the number of industry players who may show interest and offer prototype.
• After this period, a commercial RFP will be issued. Once the RFP is issued, it shall not be retracted. The industry who wins the bid, is assured of an order.
• Service Headquarter (SHQ) will constitute a Project Facilitation Team for facilitating the process under this procedure.
• The case will be progressed even if there is single entity offering an innovative solution.
• The industry who develops the product will retain the title and ownership and all other rights in intellectual property. However, for some specified reasons like National Security, Government shall have ‘March-in’ rights.
• Normally, there shall be no negotiations by Contract Negotiation Committee (CNC) in multi-vendor contracts.
• ‘Make-II’ procedure reduces the total time from in-principle approval to placing of order by 50 percent. The estimated time to finish the whole process has come down to 69 to 103 weeks.

Projects involving developmental cost of less than three crores will be reserved for MSME.

Statement 1 is correct

SOHUM, an indigenously developed low-cost hearing screening device for newborns. The Sohum aims to make this battery-operated non-invasive screening device available across the country to  minimise or reverse the hearing loss damage.

Statement 2 is correct:

It has been one of the key contributions to the ‘Make in India’ campaign of the Government of India.

Statement 3 is incorrect

It is developed by the Stanford India Biodesign (SIB) programme’s start-up M/s Sohum Innovation Labs India Pvt. Ltd under Department of Bio-Technology

Statement 1 is correct:

• India unveiled Pratyush, an array of computers that will be used for weather and climate research
• Pratyush is the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world dedicated to weather and climate research and follows machines in Japan, USA and the United Kingdom
• It will also move an Indian supercomputer from the 300s to the 30s in the Top500 list, a respected international tracker of the world’s fastest supercomputers

Statement 2 is correct

A key function of the machine’s computing power would be monsoon forecasting using a dynamical model

This requires simulating the weather for a given month — say March — and letting a custom-built model calculate how the actual weather will play out over June, July, August and September

• The Ballistic Missile Defence programme aims to provide an effective missile shield against incoming enemy ballistic and nuclear missiles.
• A hostile missile needs to be intercepted at boost (launch) point, mid-course (flight through space), or terminal phase (during atmospheric descent).
• The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)began developing a two-tier BMD system in late-1990s.
• An interceptor missile was first tested in 2006.
• Since then, interceptor missiles have been tested around 10 times. At least three such tests are known to have failed.
• The BMD system is designed to track and destroy hostile missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth’s atmosphere.
• However, it has not yet been tested in integrated mode, with both exo and endo interceptor missiles together
• Phase-I of BMD system is geared towards tackling enemy missiles with a 2,000-km range. Phase-II will enable interception of missiles in 5,000-km range

Scientists prove the existence of new form of matter

Existence of Excitonium – which was first theorized almost 50 years ago, has been proved by scientists

This has been done by studying non-doped crystals of a transition metal— dichalcogenide titanium diselenide (1T-TiSe2)

About Excitonium

Excitonium exhibits macroscopic quantum phenomena, like a superconductor

It is made up of excitons, particles that are formed in a very strange quantum mechanical pairing

How is exciton formed?

• When an electron, seated at the edge of the crowded-with-electrons valence band in a semiconductor, gets excited and jumps over the energy gap to the otherwise empty conduction band, it leaves behind a “hole” in the valence band
• That hole behaves as though it were a particle with positive charge, and it attracts the escaped electron
• When the escaped electron with its negative charge, pairs up with the hole, the two remarkably form a composite particle, a boson – an exciton