Science and Technology MCQ Set 9
Showing question 41 to 45 of total 301 MCQs
MCQ Set: 9
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Question No: 41
NASA telescopes have spotted which cosmic bodies making massive planets on 3 distant solar systems?
- Dwarf stars
- Moons
- Comets
- Asteroids
Answer and Explanation
Answer: C
Explanation
Scientists using NASA telescopes have spotted narrow dense rings of comets coming together to form massive planets on the outskirts of at least three distant solar systems.
Estimating the mass of these rings from the amount of light they reflect shows that each of these developing planets is at least the size of a few Earths.
Over the past few decades, using powerful NASA observatories such as the Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii and the Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have found a number of young debris disk systems with thin but bright outer rings composed of comet-like bodies at 75 to 200 astronomical units from their parent stars - about two to seven times the distance of Pluto from our own Sun.
The composition of the material in these rings varies from ice-rich (seen in the Fomalhaut and HD 32297 systems) to ice-depleted but carbon rich (the HR 4796A system).
The scientists are especially intrigued by the red dust ring surrounding HR 4796A, which shows unusually tight form for an infant solar system.
Lisse traced the extreme red colour to the burnt-out rocky organic remains of comets, a result of the system's ring being close enough to the star that they have all boiled off.
Comets crashing down onto these growing planet surfaces would kick up huge clouds of fast-moving, ejected 'construction dust,' which would spread over the system in huge cloud.
The only apparent solution to these issues is that multiple mini-planets are coalescing in these rings, and these small bodies, with low kick-up velocities, are shepherding the rings into narrow structures - much in the same way many of the narrow rings of Saturn are focused and sharpened.
Comets in Distant Solar Systems
In Fomalhaut and HD 32297, researchers expect that millions of comets are contributing to form the cores of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune.
However, this is without the thick atmospheres enveloping the cores of Uranus and Neptune since the primordial gas disks that would form such atmospheres are gone.
In HR 4796A, with its warmer dust ring, even the ices normally found in the rings' comets evaporated over the last million years or so, leaving behind core building blocks that are rich only in leftover carbon and rocky materials.
Question No: 42
Which country has approved the medical and therapeutic use of cannabis and its derivatives on 19th Oct 2017?
- Cambodia
- Qatar
- Pakistan
- Peru
Answer and Explanation
Answer: D
Explanation
The Peruvian Congress has approved a bill that authorises the medicinal and therapeutic use of cannabis and its derivatives in the country.
The proposal received 67 votes against five as three abstained in a full legislative on Oct 19, 2017 allowing the bill to be enacted by the executive without going through the second voting session as required by law.
The bill will legalise the medicinal use of marijuana and its derivatives, such as cannabis oil, to alleviate the symptoms of diseases such as cancer, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.
Congressman Alberto de Belaunde, who was the advocate of the proposal, said that once the bill is promulgated the government will have 60 days to work on the regulations.
The legislative approval came following the government's proposal to decriminalise the medical use of marijuana, following a "controversial" raid in February at a clandestine laboratory where marijuana oil was manufactured for sick children.
Question No: 43
Which country has the highest number of space debris till date?
- France
- Russia
- Japan
- China
Answer and Explanation
Answer: B
Explanation
Satellite debris, rocket bodies and a collection of other man-made objects which orbit the earth may harm satellites, space stations which are now in operation.
As of today, 24,193 such objects orbiting the earth have been recorded and monitored.
Below is a country or group-wise split to whom those debris belong to
Question No: 44
What is the rush hour in internet usage?
- Peak time when data speed drops by 30%
- Peak time when users equal 1 millionPeak time when bandwidth is insufficient to meet user needs
- Peak time when bandwidth is insufficient to meet user needs
- Peak times when slow loading websites result
- Only a, c and d
Answer and Explanation
Answer: E
Explanation
Slow Internet and 'rush hour' - the peak time when data speeds drop by up to 30% - could soon be history, thanks to scientists who have developed new hardware that consistently provides high-speed broadband connectivity.
The new technology enables dedicated data rates at more than 10,000 megabits per second (Mb/s) for a truly superfast, yet low-cost, broadband connection, researchers said.
By 2025, average speeds over 100 times faster will be required to meet increased demands for bandwidth-hungry applications such as ultra-high definition video, online gaming, and the Internet of Things.
The future growth in the number of mobile devices, coupled with the promise of 5G to enable new services via smart devices, means we are likely to experience bandwidth restrictions; the new optical receiver technology will help combat this problem.
Scientists, including those from the University of Cambridge in the U.K., developed a simplified receiver to be used in optical access networks: the links connecting Internet subscribers to their service providers.
To maximise the capacity of optical fibre links, data is transmitted using different wavelengths, or colours, of light. Ideally, scientists dedicate a wavelength to each subscriber to avoid the bandwidth sharing between the users.
Though this is possible using highly sensitive hardware, they are costly.
Question No: 45
What technology does the gene therapy for cancer use?
- CAR-R
- CAR-N
- CAR-T
- CAR-P
Answer and Explanation
Answer: C
Explanation
US regulators approved a second gene therapy for a blood cancer, a one-time, custom-made treatment for aggressive lymphoma in adults.
The Food and Drug Administration allowed sales of the treatment from Kite Pharma.
It uses the same technology, called CAR-T, as the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. in August, a treatment for childhood leukemia from Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
The treatment, called Yescarta, will cost $373,000 per patient, according to drugmaker Gilead Sciences.
Kite became a subsidiary of Foster City, California-based Gilead this month.
CAR-T treatment uses gene therapy techniques not to fix disease-causing genes but to turbocharge T cells, immune system soldiers that cancer can often evade.
The T cells are filtered from a patient’s blood, reprogrammed to target and kill cancer cells, and then hundreds of millions of copies are grown.
Returned to the patient, all the revved-up cells can continue multiplying to fight disease for months or years. That’s why these immunotherapy treatments are called "living drugs."
Kite’s therapy is for patients with three types of aggressive, or fast-growing, large B-cell lymphoma. The most common one accounts for about a third of the estimated 72,000 new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosed each year.
Yescarta, also known as axicabtagene ciloleucel, was approved for patients who have already been treated with at least two cancer drugs that either didn’t work for them or eventually stopped working.
At that point, patients are generally out of options and only have about a 10% chance of even temporary remission of their cancer.
Yescarta is not a benign treatment, though - three people died after getting the treatment, which can cause serious side effects.
The FDA is requiring Kite to do a long-term safety study and train hospitals to quickly spot and handle those reactions.
A different type of gene therapy is waiting in the wings at the FDA.
Spark Therapeutics’ treatment for a rare form of blindness could be approved within months. It aims to improve vision by replacing a defective gene needed to process light.
Other gene therapies for blood cancers are being tested and scientists think they may work for solid tumours within several years.