Question 1

Which magazines recently released its cover featuring image of PM Narendra Modi with headline 'India's Divider in Chief'?

Accepted Answer

TIME magazine features Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the headline 'India's Divider in Chief' in its May 20, 2019 edition. The headline pertains to the story "Can the World's Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government?" by journalist Aatish Taseer.

Question 2

India and Japan's ISE Foods signed MoU to improve __________.

Accepted Answer

India has inked Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ISE Foods, Japan's largest egg producer. The objective is to improve the quality of eggs, disease diagnosis and waste management in poultry farms across India. ISE Foods will establish two poultry farms in India out of which first will be in Gujarat's Surat city and second will be in Telangan's Siddipet.The egg production process used by ISE Foods is fully automated, the chickens are totally antibiotic-free and ISE's production process is considered the most hygienic in the world.ISE Foods also regulates "ISE Integration System" which supervise the production of feed, poultry farming, egg collection, packing and delivery production to control quality.

Question 3

Which of the following initiation of the Rotary Club of Madras North provides sanitary napkins to the students?

Accepted Answer

Project Kannamma is the initiative of the Rotary Club of Madras North to provide sanitary napkins to the students. It was started in August of 2018 by providing free, biodegradable sanitary napkins to 82 students at the Government High School in Uthandi of Tamil Nadu. The sanitary napkins are provided by the Irula Tribal Women's Welfare Society (ITWWS). The project is also supporting the livelihood of the Irula Tribal Women. the group sells 15,000 pads per month, it can sustain the families of 12 tribal women.

Question 4

Scientists from this university demonstrated a device that generates electricity in an infrared photodiode from the coldness of the universe.

Accepted Answer

Scientists from Stanford University, Shanhui Fan along with Masashi Ono have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to produce a measurable amount of electricity in an infrared photodiode from the coldness of the universe.The infrared semiconductor uses the temperature difference between Space and Earth to produce the electricity. The study was published in a journal named Applied Physics Letters. The new device has generated about 64 nanowatts per square meter. According to the theoretical calculations, the device can generate almost 4 watts per square meter, roughly one million times what practically generated. In the new technology, the negative illumination effect allows electrical energy to be harvested as heat leaves a surface.

Question 5

Which of the following railway station won the title of world's longest railway station name by an alphabet?

Accepted Answer

Chennai Central Railway station in Tamil Nadu, officially known as Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station with its 57-character count missed the chance of having the title of world's longest railway station name by an alphabet. The title was won by Llanfairpwll railway station in Wales, also known for its 58 letters long name 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch'. Although, the erstwhile Chennai Central railway station which was renamed after the legendary actor-turned-politician Dr. M.G. Ramachandran is still the longest railway station name in India. The other railway stations in India with long names are Karnataka's Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna Bengaluru City station, Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta in Andhra Pradesh and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in Maharashtra.

Question 6

Which Chemical can be used to treat neurological diseases, as per the study published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)"?

Accepted Answer

Researchers at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai have identified a new function for Serotonin, a monoamine neurotransmitter. The serotonin may help treat neurological diseases.The results of the study were published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)".A research paper jointly led by Vidita A. Vaidya and UllasKolthur-Seetharam from TIFR, in collaboration with Ashok Vaidya from KHS (Kasturba Health Society), had found that stress buster Serotonin is involved in the generation of new mitochondria in neurons, increased cellular respiration and fuel (ATP- adenosine triphosphate) in the cell.The recent discovery establishes that serotonin signaling could be used to prevent mitochondrial abnormalities and neuronal loss.

Question 7

Name the last captive white tiger, that died in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Borivali, Mumbai.

Accepted Answer

The last captive white tiger at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Borivali, Mumbai named Bajirao died due to old age related problems at the age of 18. He was born at the SGNP in 2001 to tigress Renuka and tiger Sidharth. He suffered from chronic ankylosis on left shoulder and chronic senile generalised arthritis for the last four years.The tiger's autopsy was conducted by the pathology department of the Bombay Veterinary College(BVC), Mumbai.

Question 8

Who will organise WCO Asia Pacific region meeting in Kerala?

Accepted Answer

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), under the Ministry of Finance, is organizing the World Customs Organisation (WCO) for Asia-Pacific region in Kochi, Kerala from 8th to 10th May 2019. As India currently holds a seat of Vice Chairperson of Asia Pacific region, it is hosting this meeting in this capacity. Pranab Kumar Das, Chairman of CBIC will chair the meeting. It will discuss the progress being made in carrying forward various initiatives and programmes of WCO, in promoting, securing and facilitating cross-border trade in the Asia Pacific region. Participants include customs delegations from over 20 countries of Asia Pacific region and senior officials of WCO and its regional bodies namely Regional Intelligence Liaoning Office (RILO) and Regional Office for Capacity Building (ROCB).

Question 9

IIT Madras team develops easy OCR system for reading documents in Bharati script containing with how many Indian languges?

Accepted Answer

The research team from IIT Madras has used a multi-lingual Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scheme to develop a method for reading documents in Bharati script. The researchers have also developed a finger-spelling method that can be used by hearing-impaired persons to generate sign language, in collaboration with TCS Mumbai. The Bharati script is a conglomeration of 9 Indian languages, namely, Devnagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. In the last 10 years, Professor V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy's research team at IIT Madras has worked on developing this script. he OCR scheme first segments the document into 2 parts, text and non-text. After this, the text is separated into paragraphs, sentences words and letters, where every letter is recognised as a character in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) or Unicode. The letter again has several components, namely, the basic consonant, consonant modifiers, vowels.

Question 10

Which of the following released New Guidelines on 10 Ways to Use Digital Health Technology to Boost People's Health?

Accepted Answer

WHO has released New Guidelines on 10 Ways to Use Digital Health Technology to Boost People's Health. The guidelines were based on a 2-year-long research study by WHO on digital technologies which was inclusive of consultations with global experts. It demonstrates that health systems need to provide response for the increasing availability of information. People should be assured of their own data being secure and not be put at risk because of their access to information on sensitive health issues such as sexual and reproductive health issues, thus in turn protecting individual's privacy.

Question 11

What was the theme of the second edition of Belt and Road Forum (BRF)?

Accepted Answer

The second edition of Belt and Road Forum (BRF) was held in Beijing, China from April 25th to April 27th, 2019 in which 37 heads-of-state had participated along with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Monetary Chief (IMF) Christine Lagarde. The theme of this event was "Belt and Road Cooperation: Shaping a Brighter Shared Future".

Question 12

Name the initiative launched by Microsoft to preserve traditional weaving forms in India.

Accepted Answer

Microsoft's Project 'ReWeave' will help to preserve traditional weaving forms by upskilling workers, designing and marketing products, and creating sustainable livelihood options. Tata Trusts' initiative, Antaran's main objective is to rejuvenate ailing handloom clusters through an end-to-end programme that would help artisans to become designers and entrepreneurs.

Question 13

Who launched a new initiative named Global Registry of Violent Deaths?

Accepted Answer

Stockholm International peace research institute (SIPRI) has launched a new initiative named Global Registry of Violent Deaths (GReVD) to establish the annual number of violent deaths worldwide.GReVD will count deaths caused by all forms of violence and display these in an open-source database and enable monitoring of progress on the world's commitment to 'significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere' by 2030 as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-Goal 16. The database will enable policymakers and researchers and the general public to track trends in violence at global, regional, national, provincial, city and municipal levels. GReVD will hold a single entry for every violent death, including perpetrator, time, location, victim and type of violence. The sources will be verifiable news reports of lethal events and processing will involve machine coding to manage the volume of entries, as well as human coding to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Question 14

Researchers from this IIT institute has found a new method to detect breast and ovarian cancer.

Accepted Answer

Researchers at the IIT Roorkee have identified a new method to detect two of the worst forms of cancer in women - breast and ovarian cancer. The research published in the journal, 'FASEB Bioadvances' details the use of whole saliva as a body fluid for early detection of breast and ovarian cancers, as opposed to the traditional method of using blood samples. The research team, led by Professor Kiran Ambatipudi from the institute's biotechnology department, identified certain proteins present in the saliva which act as potential biomarkers indicative of breast and ovarian cancer metastasis.

Question 15

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and this ministry signed an MoU for research in areas of traditional systems of medicine.

Accepted Answer

The Union Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on April 22, 2019 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in research and education in areas of traditional systems of medicine and its integration with modern science. The MoU enables collaboration in pursuit of Data mining and analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to facilitate concepts such as "Traditional knowledge inspired drug discovery and development" and "Food as Medicine".

Question 16

The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) working under ministry of science and technology has launched human tissue mapping project recently. It was named as;

Accepted Answer

Department of Biotechnology (DBT) working under ministry of science and technology has recently launched human tissue mapping project called MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative. It has been launched to improve understanding on human physiology. Objective of this initiative is to map every single tissue of human body to find out deepest information and roles of tissues and cells linked to a variety of ailments. Department of Biotechnology has issued funds of Rs 13 cr to two institutions in Pune, Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) and National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS).

Question 17

The researchers from which university created a 3D-printed device that that can produce electricity from falling snow?

Accepted Answer

The researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), US created a 3D-printed device that that can produce electricity from falling snow. The device is small, inexpensive, thin, flexible like a plastic-sheet and can work anywhere because it provides its own power and does not need batteries. The research study was published in the journal 'Nano Energy' and UCLA's Richard Kaner is the senior author of it. The device termed as snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator or snow TENG, generates charge through static electricity and produces energy from electron-exchange.

Question 18

Which organization in collaboration with Yes Bank has released the report titled "India Inbound Tourism: Unlocking the Opportunity" indicating that India's MICE tourism grow by 8% a year?

Accepted Answer

The report titled "India Inbound Tourism: Unlocking the Opportunity" published that India's MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibition) tourism are growing at 8 per cent a year. The report is published by the Federation of Indian Chambers & Industry (FICCI) in collaboration with Yes Bank.India has ranked 24th in MICE tourism worldwide. Out of 12,563 international meetings held in 2018, India hosts only 175 meetings which are around 1.4% and MICE tourism was pegged at Rs 25,000 crore with a yearly growth of 8%.In 2018, India ranked 5th in the Asia Pacific region in MICE tourism. The top four countries were Japan followed by China, South Korea and Australia.

Question 19

What is the increased percentage rate of social media fraud in 2018?

Accepted Answer

A study has found that social media fraud increased by 43% in 2018. The cybercriminals are increasingly relying on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other legitimate social media and messaging platforms to sell stolen identities, credit card numbers and other ill-gotten gains. The name of the report is Current State of Cybercrime - 2019, released by RSA security.

Question 20

Which ministry forms a panel for efficient implementation of NCAP?

Accepted Answer

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) notified that a committee will be formed to implement the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) which was launched to handle the major issue of air-pollution in India. Overall guidance would be provided by the committee to implement and review the progress of NCAP for each financial year. The committee would be headed by its Secretary, C K Mishra, and will comprise of one chief secretary each from around 20 states and union territories, an additional secretary and joint secretary, the chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board, the director general of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and an IIT Kanpur professor as its members.

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