Today’s GK Test Quiz

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was on December 31, 1991. The former Soviet Union disintegrate into 15 independent Republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

Bagasse is the dry pulpy fibrous material that remains after crushing sugarcane or sorghum stalks to extract their juice. It is used as a biofuel for the production of heat, energy, and electricity, and in the manufacture of pulp and building materials.

Both male and female mosquitoes eat the same things—Plant sap, nectar and plant derivatives—for energy. But only female mosquitoes imbibe a blood meal.

The approximate time required for a heartbeat is 0.8 second. A normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 to 100 (for children- 70 to 100) beats per minute. (Approximate time required for a heartbeat = 60 second ÷ average heart rate ≈ 0.8 second).

The undesirable plants that grow along with the desirable plants are called weeds. Water hyacinth is useful to check water pollution caused by industrial effluents. It is observed that water hyacinth has the capability to reduce the pH of textile waste water from alkaline to neutral, COD and BOD reduction in the range of 40–70%, total solids with a maximum reduction of 50.64%. The reduction in pH further favoured microbial action to degrade COD and BOD in wastewater.

Milk of magnesia is also known as magnesium hydroxide. It is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Mg(OH)₂. It occurs in nature as the mineral brucite.

Condensation point is a temperature at which gas changes to liquid. Generally, boiling point is same as condensation point. The boiling and freezing points of helium are lower than those of any other known substance.

The most abundant inert gas in the atmosphere is Argon (Ar). The most abundant gas in the atmosphere is N₂, which makes up about 78% of air. O₂ is the second most abundant gas at about 21%. The inert gas Ar is the third most abundant gas at 0.93%. There are also trace amounts of CO₂, Ne, He, CH₄, Kr, H₂, NO, Xe, O₃, I₂, CO, and NH₃ in the atmosphere.

Magma contains dissolved gases and lava does not. Gas gives magmas their explosive character because the volume of gas expands as pressure is reduced. The composition of the gases in magma are: mostly H₂O (water vapor) and some CO₂ minor amounts of sulphur, chlorine, and fluorine gases.

Devaluation is the deliberate downward adjustment of the value of a country's money relative to another currency. It has effects on a country's international trade by alluring traders but, usually, internal prices remain unchanged.

An indirect tax is charged on producers of goods and services and is paid by the consumer indirectly. It is not directly levied on the income of a person. Instead, he/she has to pay the tax along with the price of goods or services bought by the seller. The person paying the tax to the government and the person bearing the liability to pay the tax are thus, two different people.

An Open Market Operation (OMO) is the buying and selling of government bonds and securities in the open market by the RBI in India.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is vested with the responsibility of conducting monetary policy. This responsibility is explicitly mandated under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.

The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is an international organisation of seven South Asian and Southeast Asian nations. India, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan are the member countries of BIMSTEC.

Zero is an important invention of India. It may have been invented by either Aryabhata or Brahmagupta. The first modern equivalent of numeral zero comes from a Hindu astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta (590-668 AD) in 628 AD. Brahmagupta was the first to give rules to compute with zero. Aryabhatta (598-665 AD) a great mathematician and an astronomer used zero in the decimal system.

The Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was the first Satyagraha movement led by Gandhi in India. It was a farmer's uprising that took place in Champaran district of Bihar, during the British colonial period.

Shivaswami Iyer examined the Simon commission Report and said that this report should be thrown on a heap of rubbish. He was a prominent lawyer, administrator and statesman who served as the Advocate General of Madras from 1907 to 1911.

The first governor-general in India (of Bengal) was Warren Hastings, the first official governor-general of British India was Lord William Bentinck, and the first governor-general of the Dominion of India was Lord Mountbatten.

The concept was first proposed by Herman Potocnik in 1928 and popularised by the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke in a paper in Wireless World in 1945.

Anemometer is an instrument used to measure the force, pressure and velocity (speed) of the wind. It is an important tool for meteorologists, who study weather patterns.