Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Science & Technology) – June 4, 2020

Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system.

Statement 1 is incorrect: Submarines are essentially of two types: conventional and nuclear. Conventional submarines use a diesel-electric engine, and must surface daily for oxygen for fuel combustion. If fitted with an Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system, the submarine needs to take in oxygen only once a week.

Statement 2 is incorrect: The state-of-the-art “air independent propulsion” (AIP) system that the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) is indigenously developing will be ready to drive the Indian Navy’s submarines from 2024 onwards. Consequently, this AIP will not power the six new submarines that the navy is tendering in a Rs 45,000crore programme called Project 75-I. Instead, those six boats (as the navy traditionally refers to submarines) will have AIP systems that the foreign vendor must offer.

Recently, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) unveiled its first ‘woman’ astronaut, named Vyom Mitra who will ride to space in the first test flight of the human space mission, Gaganyaan. She is half-humanoid and her body stops at the torso and has no legs. She is capable of switching panel operations, performing Environment Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) functions, conversations with the astronauts, recognising them and solving their queries.

The Very Large Telescope array (VLT) is the flagship facility for European ground-based astronomy at the beginning of the third Millennium. It is the world’s most advanced optical instrument, consisting of four Unit Telescopes with main mirrors of 8.2m diameter and four movable 1.8m diameter Auxiliary Telescopes. The telescopes can work together, to form a giant ‘interferometer’, the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, allowing astronomers to see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes. The large telescopes are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun.

Statement 1 is correct: Aditya – L1 First Indian mission to study the Sun. The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in a 800 km low earth orbit.

Statement 2 is correct: Satellite will be placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.  Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth.  The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives.

Statement 3 is incorrect: The project is approved and the satellite will be launched during 2019 – 2020 timeframe by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota. Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona.  The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona.  It has a temperature of more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6000K. How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics.

Quantum Computers work by harnessing the properties of quantum mechanics.

Statement 1 is correct: As the reality of a quantum computer comes closer, it is useful for us to understand both how one functions and how it’s different from a traditional computer. The first thing to bear in mind is that they use different basic units of data: ‘bits’ and ‘qubits’. Every element of a classical computer is written in binary code (1s and 0s) and is translated into electricity: high voltage is represented by 1, and low voltage by 0. In quantum computing, qubits are the basic unit and their value can be 1, 0, or 1 and 0 simultaneously, overlapping (superposition) and intertwining (entanglement) according to the laws of physics. This means that qubits, as opposed to bits, can take on various values at one time and can perform calculations that a conventional computer cannot.

Statement 2 is correct: The classical computer, if there is interference with the system; the system can correct itself and continue running. For the time being, this is not the case with quantum computers. “External disturbances force the system to define itself as 1 or 0, causing it to lose its quantum coherence. To avoid this kind of external ‘noise,’ the system has to be completely isolated: the atoms have to be very quiet, ensuring nothing makes them collide or interact with the surroundings. Quantum computers have to be at a temperature of -273 °C (-459 °F) with hardly any atmospheric pressure and isolated from Earth’s magnetic field.

West Bengal government’s rice research centre has come up with a new variety of rice called Muktoshri that can be grown in arsenic prone areas. It was developed jointly by the Rice Research Station at Chinsurah, coming under West Bengal’s Agriculture Department and the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow.

Polycrack technology is world’s first patented heterogeneous catalytic process which converts multiple feed stocks into hydrocarbon liquid fuels, gas, carbon and water. Polycrack Plant can be fed with all types of Plastic, Petroleum sludge, Un-segregated MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) with moisture up to 50%, E–Waste, Automobile fluff, Organic waste including bamboo, garden waste etc., and Jatropha fruit and palm bunch.

Polycrack has the following advantages over the conventional approach of treating solid waste:-

• Pre-segregation of waste is not required to reform the waste. Waste as collected can be directly fed into Polycrack.
• It has high tolerance to moisture hence drying of waste is not required.
• Waste is processed and reformed within 24 hours.
• It is an enclosed unit hence the working environment is dust free.
• Excellent air quality surrounding the plant.
• Biological decomposition is not allowed as the Waste is treated as it is received.
• The foot print of the plant is small hence the area required for installing the plant is less when compared with conventional method of processing.
• All constituents are converted into valuable energy thereby making it Zero Discharge Process.
• Gas generated in the process is re-used to provide energy to the system thereby making it self-reliant and also bring down the operating cost.
• There is no atmospheric emission during the process unlike other conventional methods except for combustion gases which have pollutants less than the prescribed norms the world over.
• Operates around 450 degrees, making it a low temperature process when compared with other options.
• Safe and efficient system with built-in safety features enables even an unskilled user to operate the machine with ease.
• Low capital cost and low operating cost.
• Fully automated system requires minimum man power.

NOTE: A patent is defined as a statutory privilege granted by the government to inventors, and to other persons deriving their rights from the inventor, for fixed years, to exclude other persons from manufacturing, using or selling a patented product or process. Hence a patent can be for a process or for a product. There is strict divergence between product and process patent regimes. The developed countries follow product patent system. On the other, process patent system is preferred by the developing world. The two systems are known for their different levels of protection to inventors. Under a process patent, the patent is granted for a particular manufacturing process, and not for the product itself. Any other person can produce the same product through some other PROCESS, modifying the various parameters.  The implication is that there will be more than one producer for the same product because of the possibility of different process for the manufacturing of the product.

Biosimilars.

• A biosimilar is a biological product that is developed to be similar to an already FDA-approved biologic, known as the reference product. It can be tempting to think of a biosimilar as a “generic” version of the reference product. However, there are many important differences between biosimilars and generic versions of conventional medications (generic drugs).
• A generic drug is chemically identical to its brand-name counterpart—an exact copy. The generic drug and brand-name drug have the same active ingredient, dosage form, safety profile, strength, route of administration, performance characteristics, and intended use. Accordingly, the brand-name drug and generic drug are considered to be bioequivalent.
• A biosimilar is not an exact duplicate of another biologic. There is a degree of natural variability in all biological products; it is not possible to generate a precise copy of a product that comes from living cells. All biologics—including reference products—show some batch-to-batch variation.
• Generic drugs are chemically identical to the original branded drug and, as such, cost significantly less because they don’t require much testing. Because biosimilars are made from living organisms, though, and don’t contain identical ingredients to their name-brand counterparts, they still require some testing. So, they cost more than generics, but less than the branded biologic.

FrogPhone.

Statement 1 is incorrect: Researchers have developed a device that will allow scientists to monitor frogs in the wild. Described as the world’s first solar-powered remote survey device that can be installed at any frog pond and which receives a 3G or 4G cellular network, it has been named “FrogPhone”. It has been developed by a team from various Australian institutions, including the University of New South Wales and the University of Canberra. A field trial conducted between August 2017 and March 2018 in Canberra proved successful.

Statement 2 is correct: With FrogPhone, researchers can simply “call” a frog habitat. After a call is made to one of the FrogPhones already on a site, the device will take three seconds to receive it. During these few seconds, the device’s temperature sensors will get activated and environmental data such as air temperature, water temperature and battery voltage will be sent to the caller’s phone via a text message.

Project Soli, driven by Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team, was first showcased back in 2015. The idea is that a radar chip can be used to detect hand movements and gestures to interpret what they could mean. It’s only recently that Google figured out how to reduce the size of this radar chip and fit it on the front of the smart phone, still ensuring accuracy.