Science and Technology MCQ Set 23
Showing question 111 to 115 of total 301 MCQs
MCQ Set: 23
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Question No: 111
Name the Stephen Hawking project which detected 15 short radio bursts from space.
- Breakthrough Mission
- Breakthrough Listen
- Breakthrough Communication
- Breakthrough Action
Answer and Explanation
Answer: B
Explanation
A mission to explore intelligent alien life in the universe has recorded some mysterious signals coming from a galaxy three billion light years away, according to an Indian-origin scientist working on the ambitious project co-founded by Stephen Hawking.
The team working under the Breakthrough Listen project - set up by Hawking, one of the world’s best-known scientists, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner - is set to discover the truth about the universe.
The latest fast radio bursts (FRBs) prove their equipment is working well and ready to pick up signs of life if they exist.
Breakthrough Listen is a USD 100-million global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 by Hawking and Miller and has teams around the world using their telescopes to look for evidence of life.
The initial 10-year programme will survey the 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth, scanning the entire galactic plane of the Milky Way.
Beyond our galaxy it will listen for messages from the 100 closest galaxies at 10 billion different frequencies.
Announcing the project at the time at a press conference in London, Hawking said it was time to commit to finding the answer to life beyond Earth.
Explanations for the latest signals detected range from rotating neutron stars with extremely magnetic fields, to energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilisations to power spacecraft.
Whatever they are they left their galaxy when our Solar System was just two billion years old and life was just getting going on Earth.
At first scientists thought the signals were the fallout from a catastrophic event in space, like a supernova, but then they repeated again in 2015 and 2016 suggesting the whatever object produced them was still there.
In the fresh experiment, which will be elaborated upon in scientific journals in future, University of California, Berkeley, experts scanned the same galaxy at a higher frequency than which had been used to see the original bursts, and found 15 more.
Question No: 112
Which dwarf star 40 light years away is orbited by earth sized planets?
- TRAPPIST-1
- TRAPPIST-2
- TRAPPIST-3
- TRAPPIST-4
Answer and Explanation
Answer: A
Explanation
The Earth-sized planets orbiting the ultracool TRAPPIST-1 dwarf star 40 light-years away may have substantial amounts of water and could be habitable.
An international team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to estimate whether there might be water on the seven planets orbiting in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 planetary.
The results suggest that the outer planets of the system might still harbour substantial amounts of water.
This includes the three planets within the habitable zone of the star, lending further weight to the possibility that they may indeed be habitable.
This makes TRAPPIST-1 the planetary system with the largest number of Earth-sized planets discovered so far.
Following up on the discovery, scientists used the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble telescope to study the amount of ultraviolet radiation received by the individual planets of the system.
While lower-energy ultraviolet radiation breaks up water molecules - a process called photodissociation - ultraviolet rays with more energy (XUV radiation) and X-rays heat the upper atmosphere of a planet, which allows the products of photodissociation, hydrogen and oxygen, to escape.
As it is very light, hydrogen gas can escape the exoplanets’ atmospheres and be detected around the exoplanets with Hubble, acting as a possible indicator of atmospheric water vapour.
The observed amount of ultraviolet radiation emitted by TRAPPIST-1 suggests that the planets could have lost gigantic amounts of water over the course of their history.
Question No: 113
What is Hortinet?
- Integrated traceability system designed by APEDA
- Internet based serves provider to stakeholders for farm registration
- Portal for horticultural crops
- Both a and b
- None of the above
Answer and Explanation
Answer: D
Explanation
Hortinet is an integrated traceability system developed by APEDA.
To harness the potential of mobile technology, APEDA has developed a mobile app to allow farmers to apply on-line to facilitate their farm registration, tracking the status of application & approvals by State Government and Lab sampling by authorized Laboratories.
This mobile app initiative is expected to increase the accessibility and reach of the Traceability software system among the farmers and other stakeholders.
This new Mobile app will also assist State Horticulture/ Agriculture Department to capture real time details of farmers, farm location, products and details of inspections like date of inspection, name of inspecting directly from field. After registration and approval of farm, farmer gets approval information.
Commerce Secretary, Government of India, Smt Rita Teaotia launched the app. The occasion was followed by display of a film depicting all the facets of the utility of the new app.
Question No: 114
Researchers at IIT have discovered a bioartificial model of which organ growing within a 3D silk scaffold?
- Liver
- Kidney
- Stomach
- Pancreas
Answer and Explanation
Answer: D
Explanation
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati have successfully created an implantable bioartificial pancreas model grown within a 3D silk scaffold.
The “pancreas”, which encapsulates insulin-producing cells, is capable of naturally producing insulin in a sustained manner.
If successful in animal and human trials, it can be used for treating people with type 1 diabetes.
The silk scaffold was found to be biocompatible (not toxic to living tissue) as it did not trigger any immune reaction.
The silk scaffold (6 mm in diameter and 2 mm in thickness) was made porous by using salt grains of specific size to dissolve the silk proteins.
The pores - 400 - 500 micrometre in size - allowed glucose and oxygen to enter the scaffold and insulin released by the beta cells to enter the bloodstream;
There was also greater cell survival. Insulin producing beta cells taken from 8 - to 10 - week-old rats were added to the scaffold.
Type 1 diabetes arises when the body’s immune system kills the insulin-producing beta cells.
Since type 1 diabetes patients do not have insulin-producing beta cells, the researchers have turned to stem cells to produce beta cells.
Question No: 115
Microsoft has kicked off a new project to deliver real time AI via cloud called _______.
- Project Deep Blue
- Project Brainwave
- Project Mindwave
- Project Deep Learning
Answer and Explanation
Answer: B
Explanation
In a bid to make artificial intelligence more accessible all-round, Microsoft has kicked off a new project which delivers real-time AI via the cloud.
It is utilizing some nifty technology from Intel.
Project Brainwave is described by Microsoft as a deep learning acceleration platform which employs Intel’s Stratix 10 FPGA (field programmable gate array) hardware accelerator to run AI.
This is through the cloud and still deliver near-instant results.
The system is capable of processing and transmitting data with ‘ultra-low latency’, delivering results as fast as that data comes in, and so effectively operating in real-time.
And that’s a clear boon for the sort of applications that need this, from digital assistants through to the likes of autonomous driving.
The system has already shown that Intel’s Stratix 10 tech can exceed 39 Teraflops in terms of performance on a single request.
Microsoft engineer Doug Burger notes that at that level of performance, the Brainwave architecture sustains execution of over 130,000 compute operations per cycle.
It is driven by one macro-instruction being issued each 10 cycles.
Running on Stratix 10, Project Brainwave thus achieves unprecedented levels of demonstrated real-time AI performance on extremely challenging models.
And further gains are expected as Microsoft hones the system over the next year or so.
Project Brainwave supports deep learning frameworks including Microsoft’s own Cognitive Toolkit and Google’s Tensorflow, and the firm is planning to bring it to Azure customers as well.
Powerful real-time AI processing capabilities on tap will be another major string to Azure’s bow.