Science & Technology Current Affairs MCQs

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National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited said that nearly 99.95% of total land acquisition has been completed so far for the 508 km Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train corridor. The project is funded by a soft loan from Japan and aims to build India’s first high speed rail line based on Japan’s Shinkansen technology to cover the route in under 3 hours.
Shinkansen, also known as the Japanese Bullet Train, is a high-speed rail system. It utilizes advanced technology, like aerodynamic designs, electromagnetic braking, and dedicated tracks, to achieve speeds up to 200 mph, making it efficient and safe for passenger transport.

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NewSpace India Limited, the commercial arm of ISRO, plans to launch communications satellite GSAT-20 in Q2 of 2024 on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. It is a demand-driven high throughput satellite ordered by NSIL to meet India’s growing broadband needs.

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A groundbreaking discovery in astronomy reveals HD 63433d, an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting the young sun-like star HD 63433, just 73 light years away in Ursa Major. At 400 million years old, it’s one-tenth the age of Earth, making it the youngest confirmed exoplanet. Being the closest Earth-sized planet found, HD 63433d is tidally locked, exposing its dayside to intense stellar radiation, reaching temperatures of 2,300°F. With a mere 4.2-day orbit, this planet challenges our understanding of celestial bodies, offering a unique glimpse into the diversity of planetary systems beyond our solar system.

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A team led by Lalit Sahu, an Assistant Professor at NIT Raipur, has developed a ‘Fault Tolerant Inverter’ to address electricity supply faults. This innovation enables uninterrupted use of solar-generated electricity for residential and industrial purposes, compensating for the frequent faults in power conversion devices. The inverter, refined through two patents, enhances power supply stability by regulating solar panel variations. It marks a significant advancement, considering the typical 15-20 years lifespan of solar panels and 10-12 years for power conversion objects.

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CoRover.ai, a key player in Conversational AI, has unveiled BharatGPT, India’s first Large Language Model (LLM). Designed for 22 Indian languages, BharatGPT addresses linguistic diversity challenges. As an Indigenous Generative AI platform, it seamlessly integrates voice and text modes, offering a unique solution. Notably, BharatGPT supports voice in 12 languages and text in 22 languages, achieved through collaboration with the National Hub of Language Technology under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s National Language Translation Mission.

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NASA has identified a potential “super-Earth,” TOI-715 b, situated 137 light-years away. This distant planet orbits a small, reddish star within the conservative habitable zone, indicating the possibility of liquid water. TOI-715 b is 1.5 times wider than Earth, completes an orbit in just 19 days, and may have a companion Earth-sized planet. NASA’s findings suggest conditions for surface water, pending atmospheric factors. This groundbreaking discovery opens avenues for further investigation into extraterrestrial life.

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An Alaskan man recently became the first to die from Alaskapox, an orthopox virus discovered in 2015. It is DNA virus belonging to the same genus as smallpox, monkeypox, and cowpox, it primarily affects small mammals. Symptoms include skin lesions, swollen lymph nodes, and muscle pain, with mild illnesses usually resolving in a few weeks. While human-to-human transmission hasn’t been observed, orthopoxviruses can spread through direct contact with lesions. Immunocompromised individuals may face a higher risk of severe illness.

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Officials in Oregon are addressing a rare case of bubonic plague, likely transmitted by a pet cat. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, commonly found in small mammals and fleas. Named the Black Death, it killed millions in the Middle Ages. Symptoms include fever, chills, abdominal, arm, and leg pains, and swollen lymph nodes. Spread by fleas, it has a case-fatality ratio of 30-60% but can be treated with antibiotics like Ciprofloxacin and Doxycycline.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the 300 MW Barsingsar Solar Power Plant in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, advancing India’s renewable energy goals. NLC India Limited, a Navratna CPSE, is implementing the project under the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy’s CPSE Scheme. The initiative, aligned with the Atma Nirbhar Bharat initiative, uses cutting-edge technology, aims to produce 750 million units of green power annually, and marks NLCIL as the first CPSE to achieve a 1 GW Solar capacity milestone in India.

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OpenAI has introduced Sora, a cutting-edge generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model capable of transforming text prompts into high-quality videos up to a minute in length. GenAI utilizes machine learning to produce content by learning patterns from training data. Sora maintains visual excellence and follows user prompts, showcasing the potential of AI in creative content generation.