IAS Prelims GS Questions and Answers - Jan 28, 2016

ANSWER: Karnataka

Explanation:
Nagarhole National Park (also known as Rajiv Gandhi National Park), is a national park located in Kodagu district and Mysore district in Karnataka state in South India. This park was declared the thirty seventh Project Tiger tiger reserve in 1999. It is part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. The Western Ghats Nilgiri Sub-Cluster of 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi), including all of Nagarhole National Park, is under consideration by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee for selection as a World Heritage Site. The park has rich forest cover, small streams, hills, valleys and waterfalls. The park has a healthy tiger-predator ratio, with many tigers, Indian bison and elephants.

ANSWER: Mysore

Explanation:
The Mysuru-Varanasi Express will become the country’s first Braille-embedded train. It has been provided with metallic Braille signage indicating berth numbers, location of alarm chains, toilets, and emergency windows. There are also instructions on how to operate the emergency exit windows. The initiative has been financed by Mysuru MP Pratap Simha from the MPLAD fund. Though the Puri-Delhi Purushottam Express was the first train in the country to have a Braille-embedded coach, the Mysuru-Varanasi Express will be the first in the country where all reserved coaches have embedded Braille signage.

ANSWER: Hadrosaurid

Explanation:
Researchers have identified and named an 83-million-years-old species of a rare, primitive duck-billed dinosaur, after studying its fossils discovered in the eastern United States. This new discovery also shows that duck-billed dinosaurs originated in the eastern US, what was then broadly referred to as Appalachia, before dispersing to other parts of the world. The researchers have named the new dinosaur Eotrachodon orientalis , which means “dawn rough tooth from the East.” This duck-billed dinosaur — also known as a Hadrosaurid — was probably 20 to 30 feet long as an adult and mostly walked on its hind legs, though it could come down on all four to graze on plants with its grinding teeth and had a scaly exterior. A large crest on the nose, plus indentations found in the skull and its unique teeth alerted the researchers from McWane Science Centre in US and the University of Bristol in UK that the skeleton they had was something special. The skeletal remains of this rare dinosaur were originally found by a team of amateur fossil enthusiasts alongside a creek in Alabama in marine sediment. The dinosaur likely was washed out to sea by river or stream sediments after it died.

ANSWER: Health sector initiative

Explanation:
The Indian private sector offers the cheapest price for the WHO-approved Xpert MTB/RIF, a molecular test for diagnosing TB. India also has the highest number of private labs offering the test, with 113 labs offering it at a subsidised rate. While it costs only Rs. 2,000 in the 113 labs (with 5,200 collection centres) which are part of a novel initiative — Improving Access to Affordable & Quality TB Tests (IPAQT) — that was launched in India in March 2013. The initiative was set up as a partnership of laboratories – and created a win-win partnership for all stakeholders. MGIT Liquid Culture test is for TB. Liquid culture is faster, more accurate and more comprehensive than conventional solid media or sputa smear approaches. It is important not just because it can detect drug resistant TB, but also in determining which drugs can be used to treat patients. There are four tests approved by WHO: LED Microscope, Liquid Culture and two molecular tests - Gene Xpert and Line Probe Assay. Molecular-based tests provide rapid and accurate results and are preferred choice. However, molecular-based tests are expensive.

ANSWER: Only 2

Explanation:
The Arctic Oscillation influences winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere; when it is negative, arctic air slides south. It brings a blast of cold Siberian winds to the Indian region. The degree to which Arctic air penetrates into middle latitudes is related to the AO index, which is defined by surface atmospheric pressure patterns.

When the Arctic oscillation (AO) index is positive, surface pressure is low in the polar region. This helps the middle latitude jet stream to blow strongly and consistently from west to east, thus keeping cold Arctic air locked in the polar region. When the AO index is negative, there tends to be high pressure in the polar region, weaker zonal winds, and greater movement of frigid polar air into middle latitudes.

ANSWER: All of the above

Explanation:
Among those conferred with PADMA BHUSHAN some of them are:

Anupam Kher, Art - Cinema
Udit Narayan - Art - Playback singing
Vinod Rai - Civil Service
Saina Nehwal - Sports - Badminton
Sania Mirza - Sports - Tennis
Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry - Industrialist
Prof. D. Nageshwar Reddy - Medicine - Gastroenterology
Late Swami Dayanand Sarawasati (Posthumous) Others-Spiritualism Uttarakhand
Shri Robert Blackwill (Foreigner) Public Affairs - USA
Shri Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry (NRI/PIO) Trade & Industry - Ireland

ANSWER: Monkeys

Explanation:
Lorises are unique tiny creatures that live on trees. Endemic to the Eastern Ghats they are distributed in select pockets across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. It is found in India and Sri Lanka. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. It is threatened by habitat loss. The Indian subspecies include: Malabar gray slender loris, Loris lydekkerianus malabaricus - found in the Western Ghats of India; Mysore gray slender loris, Loris lydekkerianus lydekkerianus - found in the southern plains of Mysore and Tamil Nadu extending into the Eastern Ghats.
An adult Loris measures from 35 cm to 45 cm in length and weighs around 300 grams. The mammal gives birth to two young ones every breeding season in the end of summer. The juveniles may weigh over 30 grams. A Loris is omnivorous and feeds on a range of insects, rodents, tender shoots of Acacia trees and sometimes on the young ones of birds. They are also a natural pest control, as they extensively prey on grasshoppers, scorpions and other farm pests.

ANSWER: Marvin Minsky

Explanation:
Well before the advent of the microprocessor and the supercomputer, Mr. Minsky, a revered computer science educator at MIT, laid the foundation for the field of artificial intelligence by demonstrating the possibilities of imparting common-sense reasoning to computers. Beginning in the early 1950s, he worked on computational ideas to characterize human psychological processes and produced theories on how to endow machines with intelligence. Beyond its artificial intelligence charter, however, the lab would have a profound impact on the modern computing industry, helping to impassion a culture of computer and software design. It planted the seed for the idea that digital information should be shared freely, a notion that would shape the open-source software movement, and it was a part of the original ARPAnet, the forerunner to the Internet. In 1951 he built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, which he called Snarc. And in 1956, while at Harvard, he invented and built the first confocal scanning microscope, an optical instrument with superior resolution and image quality still in wide use in the biological sciences.