Daily Quiz 15 July 2025

Answer: (a)

Explanation:

• Statement Iis correct: Maternal deaths in India are significantly influenced by delays in recognizing complications, reaching health facilities, and getting timely, quality treatment.
• Statement II is correct: The Three Delays Model accurately describes the chain of delays contributing to maternal mortality:
  1. Delay in recognizing and deciding to seek care.
  2. Delay in reaching the health facility.
  3. Delay in receiving adequate and timely care at the facility.
• Statement III is correct: Government initiatives directly address these issues:

• PMSMA (2016) offers free antenatal check-ups and aims to detect complications early.
• LaQshya (2017) works on labour room quality improvement and staff training.

Statement II explains the causes of maternal care challenges mentioned in Statement I.
Statement III explains the government’s efforts to address those delays.

Hence, option (a) is correct.

Answer: (a)

Explanation:

• Statement 1 is correct: The NagariPrachariniSabha, established in 1893 in Varanasi, worked actively to promote Hindi in the Devanagari script and oppose the use of Persian and Urdu in official domains during the colonial era.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: It was founded in Varanasi, not New Delhi. However, it later expanded and established regional branches, including one in New Delhi. Jawaharlal Nehru supported it after Independence, not at its inception.

Statement 3 is correct: It was instrumental in the creation of the ShabdSagar dictionary and in publishing magazines like Saraswati and NagariPrachariniPatrika, shaping Hindi literature.

Answer: (c)

Explanation:

• Solar PV panels absorb sunlight and convert only a fraction into electricity. The rest is dissipated as heat, especially in dense cities.
• This leads to temperature rises in urban spaces, contributing to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, where cities become hotter than surrounding rural areas.

While solar adoption reduces dependence on fossil fuels, the thermal impact of large-scale rooftop or ground installations can exacerbate local heat conditions if not mitigated through cooling or green infrastructure.

Answer: (d)

Explanation:

With the launch of weather derivatives by NCDEX and IMD, India is moving toward climate risk mitigation via financial instruments. Crucial for agriculture, energy, insurance, and banking sectors that face increasing losses due to climate variability.

Heating Degree Days (HDD)

• What it means: HDD is a measurement that reflects how cold the weather has been over a certain period, in relation to a base temperature (typically 18°C).
• Use case: It estimates energy demand for heating purposes.
  • Example: If the outside temperature on a day is 10°C, HDD = 18 – 10 = 8.
• Sectors Benefited: Utilities, energy suppliers, and heating oil companies hedge winter demand spikes using HDD contracts.

Cooling Degree Days (CDD)

• What it means: CDD reflects how hot the weather has been above a base temperature (often 18°C), indicating the need for cooling.
• Use case: Helps businesses (e.g., power utilities, HVAC companies) predict air conditioning and refrigeration demand.
  • Example: If the day’s temperature is 30°C, CDD = 30 – 18 = 12.

Total Rainfall

• What it means: Refers to the cumulative rainfall recorded over a specific period (e.g., a month or season) in a particular location.
• Use case: Used in rainfall-indexed weather derivatives, especially in agriculture, where both deficit (drought) and excess rainfall (flood) impact crop yields.
  • Example: If a contract is based on 100 mm expected rainfall and actual is 60 mm, payout = (100 – 60) × agreed rate.

Weather Derivatives

• What they are: Financial contracts used to hedge against adverse or unpredictable weather conditions.
• Key Difference from Insurance:
  • No need to prove actual physical damage.
  • Payout is based on weather index thresholds, such as temperature, rainfall, etc.
• Issued by: Exchanges like NCDEX, and often settled using data from IMD-certified weather stations.

Example: A tea grower buys a derivative contract that pays out if rainfall drops below 75 mm in July.

Answer: (a)

Explanation:

 Vera C. Rubin Observatory

• Located in the Chile Andes, this ground-based telescope is designed to scan the entire southern sky every few nights over a decade.
• It carries the world’s largest digital camera at 3200 Megapixels, the size of a small car.
• Capable of producing 20 terabytes of data daily, it uses wide-field imaging to:
  • Detect asteroids, transients, and cosmic events.
  • Track dark matter and dark energy
  • Create a dynamic, time-lapse map of the universe.
• Its field of view is 40 times the size of a full Moon, allowing quick scanning of large sky areas.

 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

• Launched in December 2021, it is a space-based infrared telescope positioned at the L2 Lagrange point (~1.5 million km from Earth).
• JWST observes celestial bodies in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to:
  • Peer into the earliest galaxies (nearly 13.6 billion years old).
  • Detect exoplanets and their atmospheres.
  • See through dust clouds that obstruct visible light.
• It is sometimes dubbed the “successor to Hubble”, but it focuses on infrared, not visible or UV light.

Hubble Space Telescope

• Launched in 1990 and still operational in Earth’s orbit.
• It observes in visible light, ultraviolet (UV), and a bit of near-infrared.
• Renowned for its deep space images and contributions to:
  • Measuring the expansion rate of the universe (Hubble Constant).

Discovering exoplanets, nebulae, and supernovae.