January 19 2024 Current Affairs MCQs

Explanation

Statement 1 is correct

• Under Section 6A, it was required to seek approval from the central government before investigating alleged offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), 1988, if the employee in question held a rank higher than joint secretary.

Statement 2 is correct

• Prior approval falls under the aegis of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), 1988.
• The 1988 PCA was enacted to combat corruption in government agencies and public sector businesses in India.
• The Act ensures that corrupt officials are held accountable for their actions.
• The Act promotes transparency and accountability in public service.

Statement 3 is correct

• The Supreme Court struck down this requirement in 2014.
• Four years later, the PCA was amended, and a similar provision was introduced as Section 17A.
• Under this section, if a public servant commits an offence under the Act while discharging their official duties, investigators must receive approval from the central/ state government, or a competent authority to open an inquiry or investigation.

Answer: (c) All; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

Statement 1 is correct

• Rossby waves are initial types of oscillations that are seen in rotating fluids in their natural state.
• These waves are a natural phenomenon in rotating fluids such as Earth’s ocean and atmosphere, resulting from the planet’s rotation.
• Shear in the spinning fluid causes the Coriolis force to vary along the sheared coordinate, leading to Rossby waves’ development.
• The Coriolis effect varies with latitude, which causes the Rossby wave to emerge in the planet’s atmosphere and oceans.
• These waves are named after Carl-Gustaf Rossby, who identified them in 1939.

Statement 2 is correct

• Rossby Waves are massive meanders in the atmosphere, also referred to as planetary waves, which significantly impact the weather.
• In planetary atmospheres, they are due to the variation in the Coriolis effect (When temperature contrast is low, speed of jet stream is low, and Coriolis force is weak leading to meandering) with latitude.

Statement 3 is correct

• These waves are also associated with the jet stream and pressure systems.
• The meandering jet streams are called Rossby Waves.
• The existence of these waves explains the low-pressure cells (cyclones) and high-pressure cells (anticyclones).

Answer: (c) All; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

• Defence Technology Council is a top body chaired by the Prime Minister, with the Defence Minister and the National Security Advisor as its Vice Presidents.
• The Defence Technology Council is a proposed top body to have an executive committee chaired by the Chief of Defence Staff.
• It will include representation from academia and industry, with two members from each sector.
• The committee believes the Defence Technology Council headed by the Prime Minister would play a pivotal role in identifying the right players for specific defence technologies.
• The 9 member Vijay Raghavan panel was set up by the government last year to review the functioning of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and it has submitted its report recently.

Answer: (d) Vijay Raghavan Committee; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

Statement 1 is incorrect

• The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has introduced the ‘One Vehicle, One FASTag‘ initiative.
• It aims to enhance the efficiency of the Electronic Toll Collection system and provide seamless movement at the Toll Plazas.
• The initiative would discourage using a single FASTag for multiple vehicles or associating multiple FASTags with a single vehicle.

Statement 2 is correct

• FASTag is an electronic toll collection system, launched in 2016.
• The device employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for payments directly from the prepaid or savings account linked to it.
• It is affixed on the windscreen, so the vehicle can drive through plazas without stopping.
• RFID tags contain an integrated circuit & an antenna, which transmit data to the RFID reader (interrogator).
• RFID is like barcoding in that data from a tag is captured by a device that stores the data in a database.
• RFID, however, has several advantages over systems that use barcode asset tracking software.
• The most notable is that RFID tag data can be read outside the line-of-sight, whereas barcodes must be aligned with an optical scanner.

Statement 3 is incorrect

• A FASTag is valid for five years & can be recharged as & when required.

Answer: (b) Only two; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

Statement 1 is correct

• ChAdOx1 Vaccine is a replication-deficient adenoviral vector vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) developed by the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.
• Replication-deficient means that a viral vector can no longer replicate due to the removal of critical portions of its genome.
• It is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus that has been modified to prevent replication.
• Adenoviruses are effective vectors for boosting and inducing cellular immunity to encoded recombinant antigen.

Statement 2 is correct

• ChAdOx1 NipahB Vaccine is the first human vaccine trials for deadly Nipah virus.
• This trial is a step forward in efforts to build a suite of tools to protect against this killer virus. Knowledge gained could also inform development of another Paramyxovirus countermeasure.
• The vaccine uses the ChAdOx1 platform, the same viral vector vaccine platform that was used for the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Answer: (c) Both 1 and 2; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

Pair 1 is correctly matched

• Mandala patterns are a centuries-old motif that are used to depict the cosmos, and have been adapted by artists the world over, each of whom have added their own interpretation and painted it as their own.
• Literally meaning “circle” or “centre” in Sanskrit, mandala is defined by a geometric configuration that usually incorporates the circular shape in some form.
• While it can also be created in the shape of a square, a mandala pattern is essentially interconnected. It is believed to be rooted in Buddhism, appearing in the first century BC in India.
• There are various elements incorporated within the mandala, each of which has its own meaning.
• For instance, the eight spokes of the wheel (the dharmachakra) represent the eightfold path of Buddhism (practices that lead to liberation from rebirth).

Pair 2 is incorrectly matched

• The lotus flower depicts balance.

Pair 3 is incorrectly matched

• The sun represents the universe.

Pair 4 is incorrectly matched

• Facing up, triangles represent action and energy, and facing down, they represent creativity and knowledge.

Answer: (a) Only one pair is correctly matched; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

Statement 1 is correct

• USOF was set up by an Act of Parliament in December 2003 by amending the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885.

Statement 2 is correct

• The objective of the USOF is to provide access to telecom services in a non-discriminatory manner to people in rural and remote areas at affordable and reasonable prices, thereby bridging the rural-urban digital divide.
• For commercially non-viable rural and remote areas, USOF provides subsidy support in the form of Net Cost or Viability Gap Funding (VGF) to incentivize telecom service providers for the expansion of telecommunications and broadband services in those areas.

Statement 3 is correct

• The USOF is funded through a levy on the revenue earned by telecom operators.
• The government imposes a Universal Service Levy (USL) on the gross revenue of the telecom companies, which is a percentage of their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR).
• This levy is collected and deposited into the USOF.

Answer: (c) All; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

• According to the Anti-Defection Law, legislators can change their party without disqualification if a split occurs within the party, provided that at least two-thirds of the legislators in the legislature join the new party.
• This exception is provided in the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution to protect instances of principled defections.
• The law also allows for mergers between political parties without the risk of disqualification if not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party have agreed to merge with another part.

Answer: (a) If at least one-third of the party legislators in the legislature join the new party; Difficulty Level: Medium

Explanation

• Many historians and archaeologists believe that a combination of factors, including changes in climate, environmental degradation, and resource depletion, contributed to the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization.
• There is evidence of shifts in river courses, reduced rainfall, and ecological stress that could have adversely affected the sustainability of the civilization.
• Dark Age is the time frame from the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization around 4,000 years ago (early 2nd millennium BCE) until the rise of the Iron Age and Mahajanapada cities like Gandhar, Koshal, and Avanti (6th-5th century BCE).

Answer: (c) Gradual environmental degradation and resource depletion; Difficulty Level: Medium