[Mission 2022] QUIZ – 2021: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 16 November 2021 – INSIGHTSIAS

Solution: d)

The air quality in the Capital improved to the “very poor” category after remaining in the “severe” level for the last three days. This comes on a day when the Delhi Government, in a move to control local sources of air and dust pollution, decided to close educational institutions and ban construction activities, while encouraging work from home.

Environment Minister has issued orders under the Environment Protection Act, 1986, regarding closure of schools, colleges, skill development centres, and educational institutions till November 20.

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Solution: c)

Metaverse is as a parallel, virtual, world where users can have different identities, possessions and characters.

Interoperability is key to metaverse’s success.

Metaverse is not something that just one company can build. Nor is Facebook the only one working on this.

The metaverse is being envisioned as a new world order really, where your services could be offered virtually in exchange for other virtual assets, or Cryptocurrencies. 

According to Facebook’s definition, the metaverse will let users hang out with people who are not in the same physical space. “You’ll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create, and more.

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Solution: b)

Among the winners of this year’s Padma awards is Rahibai Popere, popularly known as Seedmother. Her Padma Shri is a recognition of her work that has helped save hundreds of landraces (wild varieties of commonly grown crops) at the village level.

Landraces refer to naturally occurring variants of commonly cultivated crops. These are as opposed to commercially grown crops, which are developed by selective breeding (hybrids) or through genetic engineering to express a certain trait over others. 

Biodiversity allows a natural mechanism for crops to develop traits to face challenging situations. However, given the large-scale human interference in crop selection, that ability is now lost in most commercially crops

Naturally occurring landraces have a large pool of still untapped genetic material, which can provide solutions. Genetic diversity is nature’s survival mechanism. The wider the gene pool, the more the chance of developing a trait that can help in surviving extreme climate events.

kalbhat, a unique landrace of scented rice. Over the years, this variant had almost vanished from cultivators’ fields as hybrid variants became popular. It has better climate resilience than popularly grown rice and can withstand flood or drought better.

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Solution: a)

An elusive swallowtail butterfly carrying ‘India’ in its name and has become the State butterfly of Arunachal Pradesh.

The State Cabinet had approved the large, brightly coloured Kaiser-i-Hind as the State butterfly.

Kaiser-i-Hind (Teinopalpus imperialis) literally means Emperor of India. This butterfly with a 90-120 mm wingspan is found in six States along the Eastern Himalayas at elevations from 6,000-10,000 feet in well-wooded terrain.

The butterfly also flutters in Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and southern China.

The Kaiser-i-Hind is protected under Schedule II of Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

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Solution: d)

Within its sovereign credit ratings cohort – countries rated between A+/A1 and BBB-/Baa3 for S&P/ Moody’s – India is a clear outlier on several parameters, i.e. a sovereign whose rating is significantly lower than mandated by the effect on the sovereign rating of the parameter. These include

• GDP growth rate,
• inflation,
• general government debt (as per cent of GDP),
• cyclically adjusted primary balance (as per cent of potential GDP),
• current account balance (as per cent of GDP),
• political stability,
• rule of law,
• control of corruption,
• investor protection,
• ease of doing business,
• short-term external debt (as per cent of reserves),
• reserve adequacy ratio and
• sovereign default history.