Kumki Elephants (or koomkie) : Trained captiveAsian elephantsused for trapping or rescuing mostly wild elephants or sometimes other wild animal [ Recently used in search operation of T23 Tiger inMudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) ] - Kumki's are mostly trained atTheppakadu Elephant Campat MTR
Asian Elephant: Only living species of genusElephas- Distributed throughout Indian subcontinent and southeast asia [ India, Nepal, Sumatra and Borneo being the boundaries] ; IUCN: Endangered
Mudumalai Tiger Reserve : Part of Nilgiri Biosphere reserve [1st Biosphere reserve of India] at trijunction of TN, KA, KL - mudumalai hill range is as old as western ghats (65mn yrs)
Prickly Pear Cactus [Opuntia] : Native to South and North America - Mainly found in Mexico and caribbean
Uses: 1. Biodegradable plastic [can be used for packaging - alternative to single use plastics] 2. Medicine - Type 2 diabetes, high cholestrol, obesity,colitis(Shinzo abe suffered from this, hence he resigned) [Inflammation of inner lining of colon] 3. Food - candies and Jellies
Malaria is caused by aparasite calledPlasmodium.
There are 4 types of plasmodium parasites - Plasomidum. falciparum (causes cerebral malaria - fatal) , P.vivax (benign malaria) , P.ovale (tertian malaria - fever every 48hrs) , P.malariae (quartant malaria - fever every 72hrs).
P. falciparum and P.vivax are the most common in India.
Malaria is anIntermittent fever, meaning fever only comes once in 24(quotidien), 48(tertian) or 72(quartan) hours.
Plasmodium falciparum is the most deadly malaria [The recent world's 1st anti-malarial vaccine (RTS,S or Mosquirix) approved by WHO targets only this particular parasite]
- Black rhinoscan live to be 35 – 40 years in the wild.
- Gestation lasts approximately 15 – 16 months, and mothers give birth to one calf every 2.5 – 3 years.
- Females and sub-adults generally are social, but bulls are typically solitary.
- https://rhinos.org/about-rhinos/rhino-species/black-rhino/
I believe this is the wrong approach going after the gestation period of animals. Last year, the Elephant question was in the paper because in Kerala a pregnant elephant died after eating crackers. It is not all completely random.
We need to go into the reason for the question to better understand the pattern.
That is what I was thinking, conquering randomness of any government exam seems a very hard approach. I think maybe focus on basic books, NCERT's and any one CA magazine should be the approach. We just can't read and remember 'any thing and everything under the sun'.
Edit : If ever we would want to be its a repository of random things, then best way to be go about collection around some themes. Like say diseases at one place, missions at one place like that.
I both agree and disagree with y'all! I agree we cannot remember everything under the sun! And maybe UPSC will not repeat it's own patterns, but we have seen UPSC verbatim repeating it's PYQ in prelims this year! So, maybe if someone finds something similar to PYQ's in current news, I don't think there's any harm in noting it down!
The idea behind making this repository was to cover a broad surface area! Also as far as I understand the forum we can't make parallel threads here yet like discord, so in that case it will be very difficult to run theme wise in a single thread and if we divide threads as per themes then there will be proliferation of threads.
As this is still the beginning, we still cannot understand the intersectionality between the themes. I feel it is better to have a single thread, so at one point we can link between things which becomes extremely important in CSE!
Request: Kindly if anyone wants to discuss further on how we can make this better productive and worthwhile, kindly DM me! Also, if any of you have any opinion on certain user's post kindly DM them or maybe we can take it up on some other thread. The only reason being, in the run to prelims I hope to see a lot of info on this thread [ Hopeful thinking or wishful should I say :p] so, let us please avoid discussing here. I apologize if I am being very regulatory :D
@SergioRamos @Anduin Lol, I am a totally different person! But looks like I can totally be whatonly's doppelganger :p
Capsaicin [Belongs tovanilloid type of components] - Active component in all chili peppers (genus: capsicum) [News: Nobel prize for physiology/medicine 2021] - glows in dark - Used in pepper spray
Capsaicin binds to TRPV1 receptor [Central nervous system receptors - also ion-channel type receptors] - due to which you get a burning sensation when you eat a chilli - These receptors help regulate body's ability to regulate temperature and acidity levels [ Disclaimer: I didn't mention this here because they asked about ACE2 in this year's prelims :p , I mentioned it because TRPV1 receptor discovery is precisely what got them Nobel prize ]
The spiciness of chilies is measured in SHU - Scoville Heat Units [ Pure capsaicin is 16mn SHUs] - Higher the SHU, hotter the pepper
Naga chili or Raja Mircha or Ghost pepper [ GI tag - Nagaland ] - Has 1mn SHU - One of the top 5 hottest chili's in the world - Generally the seeds attached to placenta of the chili have capsaicin but even the flesh of naga chili has capsaicin.
In 2016, Committee headed by D.S Hooda looked into the alternative of replacing 'pellet guns' with 'Ghost pepper' powdered "Chili grenades"
