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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced another successful mission. ISRO chairman S. Somanath said that three small satellites successfully separated and were injected into orbit.

ISRO had launched three small satellites powered by its SSLV-D2 launch vehicle from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on February 10, 2023 at 09:18 AM IST. The launch vehicle was carrying EOS-07, Janus-1 & AzaadiSAT-2 satellites and aimed to inject them into a 450 km circular orbit. The launch took place at the first launch pad at SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.

The SSLV-D2 had to take a 15 minutes flight to inject EOS-07, Janus-1 and AzaadiSAT-2 satellites into 450 km circular lower orbit. “It is configured with three solid propulsion stages and a velocity terminal module. It is a 34 m tall, 2 m diameter vehicle having a lift-off mass of 120 t,” said ISRO. The EOS-07 satellite weighs 156.3 kg and is made by ISRO. About 13 minutes into its flight, the SSLV rocket ejected EOS-07 and soon after that the other two satellites Janus-1 and AzaadiSAT-2 were ejected — all at an altitude of 450 km, said ISRO.

With the new rocket in its portfolio, ISRO will have three rockets — Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and its variants (cost about Rs 200 crore), Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-MkII cost about Rs 272 crore and LVM3 Rs 434 crore) and SSLV (Development cost of three rockets about Rs 56 crore each) and production cost may go down later.

“New experiments include mm-Wave Humidity Sounder and Spectrum Monitoring Payload. Janus-1, a 10.2 kg satellite belongs to ANTARIS, USA. A 8.7 kg satellite AzaadiSAT-2 is a combined effort of about 750 girl students across India guided by Space Kidz India, Chennai,” it added.

SSLV caters to the launch of up to 500 kg satellites to Low Earth Orbits on ‘launch-ondemand’ basis. “It provides low-cost access to Space, offers low turn-around time and flexibility in accommodating multiple satellites, and demands minimal launch infrastructure,” as per a statement by ISRO

Match the satellites with their weight.

Satellites Weight

a. EOS-07 1. 10.2 kg

b. AzaadiSAT-2 2. 156.3

c. Janus 1 3. 8.7 kg

Read the following passage and answer the questions given after it.

The giraffe is the tallest land mammal alive, its long legs and neck contributing to its impressive stature. Males can be up to 18ft (5.5m tall), females a little less.

In the wild, these beautiful creatures stretch their necks beyond those of antelope, kudu and even elephants to strip leaves from the untouched upper reaches of trees. The French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is usually credited as the first person to suggest that long necks have evolved in giraffes because they allow them to get to the parts other herbivores cannot reach.

As the giraffe lives "in places where the soil is nearly always arid and barren, it is obliged to browse on the leaves of trees and to make constant efforts to reach them," he wrote in his 1809 book ‘Philosophie Zoologique’. "From this habit long maintained in all its race, it has resulted that the animal's fore-legs have become longer than its hind legs, and that its neck is lengthened."

The English naturalist Charles Darwin also thought the giraffe's extraordinary legs and neck must have something to do with foraging. "The giraffe, by its lofty stature, much elongated neck, fore-legs, head and tongue, has its whole frame beautifully adapted for browsing on the higher branches of trees," he wrote in ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859. In short, giraffes' long necks are the result of generation upon generation of repeated stretching and inheritance.

During the dry season when feeding competition should be most intense giraffe generally feed from low shrubs, not tall trees. What's more, giraffes feed most often and faster with their necks bent

Male giraffes often fight for access to females, a ritual referred to as "necking". The rivals stand flank to flank, then start to whack each other with their heads. The top or back of the well-armoured skull is used as a club to strike the neck, chest, ribs, or legs of the opponent with a force capable of knocking a competitor off balance or unconscious. The largest males usually win these battles and do most of the breeding, says zoologist Anne Innis Dagg of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who has been studying giraffes since the 1950s. "The other giraffes don't get much breeding opportunity." There is also evidence that females are more receptive to advances from larger males.

According to the passage, ‘necking’ is the:

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of these.

If you’re concerned that automation and artificial intelligence are going to disrupt the economy over the next decade, join the club. But while policymakers and academics agree there’ll be significant disruption, they differ about its impact.

On one hand, techno-pessimists argue that new forms of automation will displace most jobs without creating new ones. In other words, most of us will lose our jobs. On the flip side of the debate, techno-optimists contend that continued investments in education and research and development will offset the job losses and generate many new human tasks that complement AI.

Researchers have been studying jobs that involve digital skills for years to try to understand their merit. But what does it really mean for a job or skill to be “digital”?

In earlier research, all it meant was that a worker used a computer. Since nearly all workers use a PC today, we need a more refined definition of digital skills that takes into account how much a job depends on doing things like programming, crunching data in Excel spreadsheets and even using a smartphone.

In a particular research, a new way was created to measure digital or information technology skills in the labour market based on how frequently they’re used in an occupation. For example, how much time does a financial adviser spend analyzing data or an event planner use a computer?

It was found that workers in occupations that rank higher in IT industry earn more than demographically similar peers in other occupations – and that this earnings gap has been growing. Not only that, but it was also found something interesting on the impact of a college degree on the lifetime earnings of a person in IT industry. Historically, workers with a college degree have earned a lot more than peers without one. Even the level of the college makes a difference. Recent research has shown that this so-called college premium has been flattening. The main cause, according to the analysis, is that the college premium for occupations requiring fewer digital skills has been declining, while it has been rising for those we identified as digital jobs such as software developers, programmers and aerospace engineering. At least some of the flattening in the college premium is due to the increasing number of bachelor’s degrees that convey few skills that are valued in the marketplace.

Another research compares the measures of job quality – such as a sense of purpose, enjoyability and career advancement – with income, occupations and a range of demographic characteristics. It found that jobs that require greater interaction with technology tended to score higher in quality, particularly in terms of measures like career advancement.

The fact that these jobs not only pay more but also provide greater levels of employee satisfaction and engagement paints a more optimistic picture about the future of work. And that gives hope, particularly since the digital economy is growing at a pace nearly four times faster than the broader economy.

The key is making tomorrow’s jobs “robot-proof” by designing them in a way that takes advantage of the digital skills described above. And universities must play a big role in this by identifying what a good job looks like and ensuring future generations learn the necessary skills.

A “digital” job or skill means __________.
 A. The remuneration & perks generated by utilizing the digital or information technology skills
 B. A worker using a computer
 C. Frequency of using digital or information technology skills

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Wetlands are amongst the most productive ecosystems on the Earth and provide many important services to human society. They exhibit enormous diversity according to their genesis, geographical location, water regime and chemistry, dominant species, and soil and sediment characteristics. Globally, the areal extent of wetland ecosystems ranges from 917 million hectares (m ha) to more than 1275 m ha. One of the first widely used wetland classifications systems, devised by Cowardin et al., 1979, categorized wetlands into marine (coastal wetlands), estuarine (including deltas, tidal marshes, and mangrove swamps), lacustrine (lakes), riverine (along rivers and streams), and palustrine ( marshes, swamps and bogs) based on their hydrological, ecological and geological characteristics.

Ramsar Convention on Wetlands was an international treaty signed in 1971. Overall, 1052 sites in Europe; 289 sites in Asia; 359 sites in Africa; 175 sites in South America; 211 sites in North America; and 79 sites in Oceania region have been identified as Ramsar sites or wetlands of International importance.

As per the Ramsar Convention definition most of the natural water bodies (such as rivers, lakes, coastal lagoons, mangroves, peat land, coral reefs) and man- made wetlands (such as ponds, farm ponds, irrigated fields, sacred groves, salt pans, reservoirs, gravel pits, sewage farms and canals) in India constitute the wetland ecosystem distributed in different geographical regions ranging from Himalayas to Deccan plateau. As of February, 2022, India has 49 Ramsar sites covering an area of 10,93,636 hectares, the highest in South Asia. As per the estimates, India has about 757.06 thousand wetlands with a total wetland area of 15.3 m ha, accounting for nearly 4.7% of the total geographical area of the country . Out of this, areas under inland wetlands accounts for 69%, coastal wetlands 27%, and other wetlands (smaller than 2.25 ha) 4%.

Gujarat has the highest proportion (17.5%) and Mizoram has the lowest proportion (0.66%) of the area under wetlands. Among Union Territories, Lakshadweep has the highest proportion (around 96%) and Chandigarh has the least proportion (3%) of geographical area under wetlands.

Which of the following questions cannot be answered after reading the above passage?

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been highlighted for your attention.

Most people spend (on average) half of their day tapping away at their hand-held devices. Either, surfing the net or checking notifications. Facebook ranks the highest in all social networking platforms, followed by Twitter, Instagram and so forth.

Social media is addictive- which is why so many people are 'hooked'. Often referred to as Social networking addiction, this phrase is often used to describe someone who spends too much time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other channels. A blog post, Instagram post, tweet, or youtube video can be produced easily by anyone and shared, which can then be viewed by millions for free. Psychologists and scientists have now taken the time to study social media in terms of why they believe it interferes with aspects of our daily life. There is no official medical term that identifies addiction and social networking. It cannot be deemed as a disease or disorder as the cases are not severe and the habit can easily be maintained or prevented. Furthermore, instead of spending long periods of time on social media, we dip into and out of these sites all day long. We check for updates from friends and family as well as news and information. However, the behavior associated with the excessive use of these channels has become the subject of much public and sociological debate. We actively post, like, comment and share personal posts. Not only that, we tend to share and reshare expressions (of either negative or positive) contagiously. But, why?

Scientists believed some years ago that, dopamine was simply a pleasure chemical in the brain. Recent studies have shown that; dopamine actually produces the desire in people to 'want' by drawing out the need for us to -seek and search. Creating the ultimate drive to find what is that what we want.

Dopamine is spontaneous. It’s stimulated by unpredictability and small bits of information as well as reward cues which are the same conditions that social media presents to all users. In addition, the pull of dopamine is so strong that recent studies have shown that tweeting, for example, can be harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol!

Researchers at Chicago University studied the effects of social media. They concluded quite quickly that people presented higher levels of addiction to social media than the need to smoke or drink. Media cravings ranked higher.

And, let’s not forget oxytocin, many call it the cuddle chemical because the brain releases pleasure chemicals that transpire usually when you kiss and hug- or tweet. It is also known as the hormone that builds the strong yet unique bond between mothers and their babies. Oxytocin is now regarded as the human stimulant of empathy, generosity, trust, and more. These are factors which many advertisers and marketers play on when promoting a brand or business over social media.

Nevertheless, problems have arisen most commonly with school kids - whereby mobile phone devices have been confiscated because exam results have fallen severely due to lack of attention on homework or studies. Schools in many westernized countries have had to take drastic action - banning smartphones, iPad and most portable devices from school premises- as it is claimed to be a huge distraction. Whereas, other schools use it for educational purposes and as a rewards system for their pupils.

Research has also indicated unsurprisingly that Facebook is the most common activity that university students switch to, when studying. Worryingly, it has also found that those who most engage in this type of internet browsing tend to have lower levels of educational achievement.

Also, there have been many cases of students posting or sharing content that is unethical, which has caused parents and academic institutions to limit the use of these online networking channels.

Which is the most common activity that university students switch to when studying?

Read the following passage and answer the questions given after it

Amidst a maze of rocks tucked in the Aravalli mountain ranges of Haryana, a team of archaeologists discovered cave paintings they believe belong to the Upper Palaeolithic age. The cave paintings have been discovered just outside the national capital and a stone’s throw away from a holy grove called Mangar Bani- the region’s only surviving patch of primary forest.

While the residents of the villages have been familiar with the paintings for ages, the Haryana government’s museum and archaeology department took note of them just recently. A fact-finding team was sent to the area in the last week of June. The team came across cave paintings comprising images of human figurines, animals, foliage, and geometric drawings. While some have paled over time, others are still very visible. They also discovered rock art and open-air ceremonial sites.

Banani Bhattacharyya, deputy director of the department of archaeology and museums informed, “So far, cave paintings in Delhi-NCR have only been found here. The paintings are yet to be dated but at least some of them belong to the Upper Palaeolithic period in all likelihood. We are viewing the paintings in continuation with the Soanian culture which has been found in Shivalik hills, Narmada and Aravallis.”

Most of the cave paintings found were in ochre colour, but some were in white. As per experts, cave paintings in white are usually from a later stage (early contemporary era), while Stone Age paintings are more often than not in ochre. “Stone age paintings generally use red and ochre colours. Stones of these colour used to be available locally and inhabitants crushed the stones for preparing the colour for paintings,” added Bhattacharyya

The Upper Paleolithic Age began around 40,000 years ago and lasted till around 10,000 years ago. While yet to be established through archaeological dating, Bhattacharyya says the Mangar cave art is 20,000-40,000 years old. Bhattacharyya claimed that the discovery is extremely significant. “Starting from the Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic then Upper Palaeolithic, we see the evolution here. We have found significant remains from Lower Palaeolithic till Middle and Upper Palaeolithic period too,” she explained. “Though tools from the Palaeolithic Age have been identified earlier in parts of the Aravallis, it is for the first time that cave paintings and rock art of a large magnitude have been found in Haryana,” she added.

Most of the cave paintings found in Mangar forest area in Haryana are in which colour?

Direction: Three statements are given below at A, B and C. There may be some errors in the given statements. Mark the correct statement as the answer. If all the statements are incorrect, mark option E, i.e., "All are incorrect" as the answer.

(A) The centre and the service has been under development for the last one and a half years.
(B) The centre will run on advanced technologies and AI / ML tools to mitigate potential threats.
(C) We will be continue to invest in the centre in all forms as the business expands.

Choose the word that is opposite in meaning to the given word.

Devious