Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (Science & Technology) – October 8th,2020

Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad is an industrial unit of the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India.
•NFC is the only organization in India which caters to the fuel requirements of nuclear power reactors.
•Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad was conceived in late 60’s as a pivotal industrial arm of the Department of Atomic Energy with the mandate to fuel the nuclear power program of Govt. of India.
•An ISO certified organization, NFC is the only organization in the world today to have a comprehensive manufacturing cycle from ore to core, involving processing of both Uranium & Zirconium streams under the same roof.
Source: Nuclear Fuel Complex

The immobilisation of HLW requires the formation of an insoluble, solid waste form that will remain stable for many thousands of years.
•In general borosilicate glass has been chosen as the medium for dealing with separated HLW.
•The stability of ancient glass for thousands of years highlights the suitability of borosilicate glass as a matrix material. This type of process, referred to as vitrification.
•Most HLW, other than spent fuel itself, arises in a liquid form from the reprocessing of spent fuel.
•This HLW comprises highly-radioactive fission products and some transuranic elements with long-lived radioactivity.
•India is one of the few countries to have mastered the technology of vitrification. Over the years BARC has developed the technology for vitrification of HLW.
•India has a unique distinction of having operating vitrification plant at Tarapur and Trombay.
•In our existing plant at Trombay vitrification process is essentially batch operation consisting of heating and fusing of pre-concentrated waste and glass forming additives and is carried out in melters based on induction heating.
Source: The Hindu & IAEA

CODIS is the acronym for the Combined DNA Index System and is the generic term used to describe the FBI’s program of support for criminal justice DNA databases as well as the software used to run these databases.
The National DNA Index System or NDIS is considered one part of CODIS, the national level, containing the DNA profiles contributed by federal, state, and local participating forensic laboratories.
Source: The Hindu

JUICE, also known as the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, is a European Space Agency mission intended to explore Jupiter and three of its icy moons: Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.
•A single orbital spacecraft, with no lander, will be the first to orbit Ganymede, and one of a handful of spacecraft to visit the Jupiter system since the 1970s. JUICE is targeted to launch in June 2022 aboard an Ariane 5 spacecraft.
•It will take more than 7.5 years to get to Jupiter, using gravity assists from Venus and Earth to speed the spacecraft up and get it into the outer solar system.
•The spacecraft is expected to be inserted in Jupiter’s orbit in January 2030, starting a 2.5-year observation session of Jupiter’s moons, as well as the planet’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Source: The Hindu & NASA

The Prithvi was India’s first indigenously developed ballistic missile produced by the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMDP).
Prithvi is a road-mobile, surface to surface short range ballistic missile (SRBM) powered by a single-stage, two engines, and liquid-fuel. Development of the Prithvi began in 1983, and it was first tested fired on February 25, 1988.
Source: The Hindu

India plans for its own space-to-space tracking and communication of its space assets this year by putting up a new satellite series called Indian Data Relay Satellite System (IDRSS).
•A set of 2 IDRSS satellites will be placed in geostationary orbit, enabling satellite to satellite communication and transfer of data.
•It will track, send and receive real-time information from other Indian satellites, in particular those in low-earth orbits (LEO) which have limited coverage of earth.
•It will also be useful in monitoring launches and benefitting crew members of the Gaganyaan mission ensuring mission control throughout their travel.
•First satellite will be launched by 2020 end and second one by 2021. India will join US, China, Japan and Europe who already have such DRS systems.
Source: The Hindu

Cartosat satellites are earth observation satellites, used mainly for large-scale mapping of the Earth through high-resolution cameras.
•They help to detect changes in natural geographical or man-made features.
•Cartosat-3 satellite is a third-generation agile advanced satellite having high resolution imaging capability.
•The mission life of the Cartosat-3 is 5 years. It will be followed by additional satellites of the same design, namely Cartosat-3A and 3B, next year.
Source: The Hindu & ISRO

Nag is a third-generation; fire-and-forget, anti-tank guided missile developed by India’s state-owned Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to support both mechanised infantry and airborne forces of the Indian Army.
Source: The Hindu

RFID technology is an electronic tag that can exchange data with an RFID reader through radio waves.
RFID is faster connection and its operational range is about 100m.
Source: Indian Express

In a landmark decision, the Lok Sabha passed “The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill – 2019”.
•The purpose of this Bill is to expand the application of DNA-based forensic technologies to support and strengthen the justice delivery system of the country.
•The utility of DNA based technologies for solving crimes, and to identify missing persons, is well recognized across the world.
•By providing for the mandatory accreditation and regulation of DNA laboratories, the Bill seeks to ensure that with the proposed expanded use of this technology in this country, there is also the assurance that the DNA test results are reliable, and furthermore that the data remain protected from misuse or abuse in terms of the privacy rights of our citizens.
•The key components of this Bill include: establishment of a DNA Regulatory Board; accreditation of DNA laboratories undertaking DNA testing, analysing, etc.; establishment of the National and Regional DNA Data Banks, as envisaged in the Bill, will assist in forensic investigations.
•This will aid in scientific up-gradation and streamlining of the DNA testing activities in the country with appropriate inputs from the DNA Regulatory Board which would be set up for the purpose.
•The Bill will add value in empowering the criminal justice delivery system by enabling the application of DNA evidence, which is considered the gold standard in crime investigations.
Source: PRS India

Statement 1 is incorrect. In Ensemble Forecasting, instead of running just a single forecast, the computer model is run a number of times from slightly different starting conditions. The complete set of forecasts is referred to as the ensemble, and individual forecasts within it as ensemble members.
Statement 2 is correct. Various countries have migrated to ensemble weather forecasting for optimal results. A forecast is an estimate of the future state of the atmosphere. It is created by estimating the current state of the atmosphere using observations, and then calculating how this state will evolve in time using a numerical weather prediction computer model.
The ensemble forecasts give the forecaster a much better idea of what weather events may occur at a particular time. By comparing these different forecasts, the forecaster can decide how likely a particular weather event will be.

Quasars are extremely remote celestial objects, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy.
Quasars are believed to produce their energy from supermassive black holes in the center of the galaxies in which the quasars are located. Because quasars are so bright, they drown out the light from all the other stars in the same galaxy.

: Statement 1 is correct. When wave energy like sound or radio waves travels from two objects, the wavelength can seem to be changed if one or both of them are moving. This is called the Doppler effect.
The Doppler effect causes the received frequency of a source (how it is perceived when it gets to its destination) to differ from the sent frequency if there is motion that is increasing or decreasing the distance between the source and the receiver.
Statement 2 is incorrect. When the distance between the source and receiver of electromagnetic waves remains constant, the frequency waves is the same in both places.
When the distance between the source and receiver of electromagnetic waves is increasing, the frequency of the received wave forms is lower than the frequency of the source wave form. When the distance is decreasing, the frequency of the received wave form will be higher than the source wave form.

Statement 1 is correct. The Code on Social Security provides definition of Platform Work as a work arrangement outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship in which organizations or individuals use an online platform to access other organizations or individuals to solve specific problems or to provide specific services.
Statement 2 is correct. The Code on Social Security, 2020 states that the central government will set up social security funds for unorganized workers, gig workers and platform workers.
Further, state governments will also set up and administer separate social security funds for unorganized workers. It also makes provisions for registration of all three categories of workers – unorganized workers, gig workers and platform workers.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 has been awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.”
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have discovered one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. Using these, researchers can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision.
# The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019: John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino “for the development of lithium-ion batteries”.
# The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018: Frances H. Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes”, George P. Smith and Sir Gregory P. Winter “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies”.
# The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017: Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson “for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution”.
# The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines”.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister has recently approved ‘Natural Gas Marketing Reforms’.
— The policy aims to provide standard procedure for sale of natural gas in a transparent and competitive manner to discover market price by issuing guidelines for sale by contractor through e-bidding.
— The policy has also permitted Affiliate companies to participate in the bidding process in view of the open, transparent and electronic bidding. This will facilitate and promote more competition in marketing of gas. However, rebidding will have to be done in case only affiliates participate, and there are no other bidders.
— The policy will also grant marketing freedom to the Field Development Plans (FDPs) of those Blocks in which Production Sharing Contracts already provide pricing freedom.

The Union Cabinet has recently given its approval for signing a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) in the field of cybersecurity between India and Japan.
Statement 1 is incorrect. The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
Statement 2 is correct. The MoC will enhance cooperation in areas of mutual interest, in­cluding capacity building in the area of cyberspace; protection of critical infrastructure; cooperation in emerging technologies; sharing information on cyber security threats/incidents and malicious cyber activities etc.
India and Japan commit to an open, interoperable, free, fair, secure and reli­able cyberspace environment and to promote the Internet as an engine of innova­tion, economic growth, and trade and commerce that would be consistent with their respective domestic laws and international obligations, and with their wide-ranging strategic partnership.

Ministry of Textiles has launched the 1st ever Brand & Logo for Indian Cotton on 2nd World Cotton Day on 7th October, 2020. Now India’s premium Cotton would be known as ‘Kasturi Cotton’ in the world cotton Trade.
Cotton is one of the principal commercial crops of India:It provides livelihood to about 6.00 million cotton farmers. India is the 2nd largest cotton producer and the largest consumer of cotton in the world. India produces about 6.00 Million tons of cotton every year which is about 23% of the world cotton. India produces about 51% of the total organic cotton production of the world.

Statement 1 is correct. India had ratified the Stockholm Convention on January 13, 2006 as per Article 25(4), which enabled it to keep itself in a default “opt-out” position such that amendments in various Annexes of the convention cannot be enforced on it unless an instrument of ratification/ acceptance/ approval or accession is explicitly deposited with UN depositary.
Statement 2 is incorrect. The Union Cabinet recently delegated its powers to ratify chemicals under the Stockholm Convention to Union Ministers of External Affairs (MEA) and Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MEFCC) in respect of POPs already regulated under the domestic regulations thereby streamlining the procedure.

Statement 1 is correct. Pusa Decomposer Technology is a microbial-based strategy (liquid formulation & capsules) which degrades the waste (pit or windrows).
Statement 2 is incorrect. The recycling of this agri-waste is both an ecological necessity and economic compulsion. Similarly, vegetable, fruit, and kitchen waste when degraded properly are great sources of nutrient-rich compost.
Pusa Decomposer converts waste into nutrient-enriched compost. This is an eco-friendly and environmentally useful technology.
It is being proposed as a solution for stubble disposal in farm fields around Delhi which is usually burned by farmers causing pollution.