IAS Prelims GS Questions and Answers - Jan 18, 2016

ANSWER: 3 – every four months

Explanation:
India presently follows the trivalent version of polio vaccine. It plans to switch to bivalent oral polio vaccine (OPV) from its present trivalent version. Trivalent OPV contains live and weakened versions for all the three types (1, 2 and 3) of wild polio while the bivalent vaccine will contain type 1 and 3. India has already introduced injectable inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) into its routine immunisation programme along with oral polio vaccine (OPV) from November 2015. In the first phase, IPV has been introduced in Assam, Gujarat, Punjab, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh.

ANSWER: Leptons

Explanation:
Neutrinos are leptons. Neutrinos are elementary particles i.e. whose substructure is unknown. Known elementary particles include the fundamental fermions (quarks, leptons, antiquarks, and antileptons), which generally are "matter particles" and "antimatter particles", as well as the fundamental bosons (gauge bosons and the Higgs boson), which generally are "force particles" that mediate interactions among fermions. A particle containing two or more elementary particles is a composite particle. Every minute billions of neutrinos must be passing through our body but we do not get affected by them. Neutrino is an electrically neutral elementary particle with half-integer spin. Neutrinos have mass but tiny even compared to other subatomic particles and they constitute the only identified matter associated with hot dark matter specifically hot dark matter. They do not carry any electrical charge and hence are not affected by electromagnetic radiation and they are leptons so do not get affected by strong forces and not even by the subatomic forces in the nucleus. They typically pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected just like light travels through transparent material. The neutrinos in our vicinity are mainly due to the nuclear reactions occurring in the Sun. Stellar phenomena such as big bang, supernovae, production of cosmic radiation result in the production of neutrinos in abundance. Since their mass is negligible and they are uncharged, neutrinos do not cause any ionizing radiation and do not produce any changes in our bodies. Neutrinos are used conveniently in probing the environment wherein other radiations such as light, radio waves cannot penetrate, in detecting Sun's core conditions and also in probing Supernovae.

ANSWER: Bonda

Explanation:
They belong to the Bonda Tribe. They live atop the Bonda hills in Odisha’s Malkangiri district, segregated from the mainstream and have rarely stepped out of their environs. The Bondas are members of the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) (earlier called as Primitive Tribal Groups). The husband is younger than his wife as Bonda community has the tradition of girls marrying boys less than their age. The population of Bonda community is about 7,000. The Bonda are a scheduled tribe of India and are also known as the Remo (meaning "people" in the Bonda language). The tribe is one of the oldest and most primitive in mainland India; their culture has changed little for more than a thousand years. They are one of the 75 Primitive Tribal Groups identified by the Government of India. The Bonda are generally semi-clothed, the women wear thick silver neck bands. In Bonda society, the women enjoy a privileged position. They are the primary workers and providers of food for the community. This matriarchal dominance is also seen in the marital norms of the community.

ANSWER: Hudhud

Explanation:
In a novel initiative, the World Bank has embraced a zoo for its eco-development. This is a new addition in the portfolio of the bank as part of its ever-expanding work on urban regeneration. In Visakhapatnam, the global bank is extending an assistance of USD 20 million to help reconstruct the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP), which got devastated during cyclone Hudhud. The World Bank is currently in talks with the Smithsonian Institution that runs the world famous National Zoo in Washington DC, USA to see if their expertise can be tapped to re-develop the Vizag zoo as a model 21st century ‘ecological park’. The IGZP is already a breeding centre for the Indian Wild Dog or the Dhole and it is hoped the ‘modern’ version will house an even better breeding centre.

ANSWER: Bombay Natural History Society

Explanation:
Wetlands International (WI) has defined waterbirds as species of bird that are ecologically dependent on wetlands. Waterbirds are well-known indicators of the quality of certain types of wetlands. Any wetland site which regularly holds one per cent or more of a waterbird population qualifies as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, according to WI. Of the 1,200 species of birds reported in India, around 600 are wetlandsbirds. The birds could be considered as the health indicators of wetlands of a region. The annual exercise, Asian Waterbird Census, which is organised as part of the International Waterbird Census, is going full steam in most parts of the country under the behest of the Bombay Natural History Society and the Wetlands International. The information helps to promote the designation and management of internationally important sites such as nationally protected areas, Ramsar Sites, and Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) as well as helps in identifying and protecting new sites of importance for waterbirds. The census data and information are essentially used for promoting national waterbird and wetland conservation and international cooperation along the Central Asian Flyway.

ANSWER: 1, 2, 3

Explanation:
Wetlands include rivers, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, freshwater swamps, mangroves, mudflats, coral reefs, rice fields and sewage farms. And the waterbirds include pelicans, herons, egrets, storks, flamingos, ducks, geese, swans, and many more.