Daily Current Affairs Quiz: August 12, 2023

ANSWER: D

ANSWER: B

ANSWER: C

ANSWER: A

• Meghalaya government has notified several sacred forests as Community Reserves.

About Community reserves

• Community reserves fall under protected areas, along with marine protected areas, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and conservation reserves, according to the Wild Life (Protection) Act (WLPA), 1972.
• It denotes protected areas that typically act as buffer zones between established national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, etc.
• Conservation reserves and community reserves are protected area categories were first introduced in the Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act of 2002 — the amendment to WLPA, 1972.
• The provisions of the WLPA apply to an area once it has been declared a community reserve.
• State Government may designate any community land or private land as a Community Reserve if the members of that community or individuals involved agreed.
• Chief Wildlife Warden of the State becomes the governing authority of such forest.
• Once a forest area is designated as a community reserve, it becomes a no-hunting zone.
  • Similarly it cannot be used it for agricultural practices.

ANSWER: C

• Cell culture is the process by which cells are grown in a petridish, in a lab in controlled conditions, outside of their natural environment.
• These cells are used in critical and path breaking scientific research to develop drugs, vaccines (polio), study the effects of radiation, how pathogens affect humans, gene mapping
• Usually cells cultured in the lab from human cells could be kept alive for only a few days, subject to the phenomenon of cellular senescence, or the cessation of cell division.
• However, all that changed when it was discovered that tumour cells from Henrietta Lacks , a patient with cervical cancer, could grow indefinitely in culture.
  • An immortalised cell line, simply, is a population of cells from which would normally not proliferate indefinitely but, due to mutations, has achieved the ability to keep on dividing, never reaching the point of senescence.
• Henrietta Lacks’ (HeLa) cells were the first human cells to be successfully cloned in 1953 by Theodore Puck and Philip I. Marcus at the University of Colorado.
• Since then, HeLa cells have ‘continually been used for research’.

ANSWER: D

• It is Joint naval exercise between 4 Indo-Pacific partner nations: Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
• It will be conducted off the coast of Sydney, Australia.

ANSWER: B

• Recently, Mushkbudji Rice received the Geographical Indication (GI) tag from Kashmir.
• It is a short grain rice variety with distinctive aroma.
• It is grown in higher reaches of Kashmir valley majorly Anantnag district.

ANSWER: D

• AU Small Finance Bank has become India’s first bank to provide 24×7 Video Banking Service.
  • It is also the largest small finance bank in India.
• The service enables customers to engage in face-to-face video interactions with expert bankers, akin to video calls.

ANSWER: A

• Ecuador declared a state of emergency after the assassination of a popular presidential candidate.
• It is situated in Western South America.
• It has borders with Colombia and Peru and is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west.
• The Galápagos Islands, the first natural site to be inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, come under its jurisdiction.

ANSWER: A

• 4 out of 35 guest rooms of around 600-year-old collapsed at Nalagarh in Solan following heavy rain.
• Constructed in 1421 during the reign of Raja Bikram Chand, who represented the Chand dynasty of Himachal Pradesh, the resort is located on a hilltop.
• A luxury resort is being run in the fort since 1995.