SSC CHSL Tier 1 2024 General Awareness Questions with Solutions

Explanation

Walther Flemming was a German anatomist who pioneered the study of cytogenetics. In 1882, he published his seminal work Cell Substance, Nucleus, and Cell Division, where he documented his systematic observations of chromatin behavior during cell division in salamander larvae. Flemming coined the term mitosis, derived from the Greek word mitos meaning thread, to describe the thread-like appearance of chromatin as it condensed into chromosomes and divided during karyokinesis. His meticulous drawings and descriptions established the fundamental stages of cell division.

Explanation

The Bikaner Camel Festival is a prominent annual event organized by the Department of Tourism of the Government of Rajasthan in Bikaner. This festival is dedicated entirely to the camel, celebrating its indispensability to the desert state. The event showcases decorated camels, traditional camel races, fur cutting design competitions, camel dances, and vibrant cultural performances. It serves as a major tourist attraction, highlighting the rich cultural heritage, folklore, and desert lifestyle of the region.

Explanation

The national song of India, Vande Mataram, was composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in Sanskrit and was first published in his influential Bengali novel Anandamath in 1882. The song served as a powerful source of inspiration during the Indian independence movement and its first two verses were formally adopted as the National Song of India by the Constituent Assembly on January 24, 1950.

Explanation

The framers of the Indian Constitution did not include a specific list of fundamental duties in the original 1950 text because they believed that the citizens of a newly independent democratic nation would naturally and willingly perform their civic duties and responsibilities towards the state and society. In the traditional Indian ethos, duties (Dharma) were always viewed as inseparable from daily life, making explicit constitutional codification seem unnecessary at the inception of the republic. It was anticipated that the exercise of fundamental rights would automatically foster a sense of responsibility, rendering the forced imposition of duties redundant.

Explanation

The MAX function in Microsoft Excel is specifically designed to return the largest value from a selected range of cells, column, or set of numbers. It automatically scans all numerical data within the specified range and outputs the highest value, ignoring empty cells, text, and logical values.

Explanation

Mallikarjun Mansur was an eminent Indian classical singer in the Hindustani music tradition. He belonged to the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, a major style of Hindustani classical music, and was widely celebrated for his mastery over rare and complex ragas. His contribution to Hindustani music earned him all three national Padma awards, including the Padma Vibhushan.

Explanation

In cricket, a bouncer is a fast delivery that is pitched short on the pitch so that it bounces high, typically reaching the height of the batsman's chest or head as it passes them. Bowlers use this delivery strategically to intimidate batters, disrupt their rhythm, or force them into playing a rushed and potentially error-prone shot.

Explanation

Revenue deficit occurs when the government's revenue expenditure exceeds its revenue receipts. To reduce this deficit, the government must either increase its revenue receipts or decrease its non-productive revenue expenditure. Tax reforms help in restructuring the tax system, broadening the tax base, improving tax compliance, and reducing tax evasion. This leads to a substantial increase in the government's tax revenue collections, which directly increases revenue receipts and consequently helps in minimizing the revenue deficit.

Explanation

In equestrian show jumping, a knockdown is defined as an occurrence where a horse or rider, in the process of clearing an obstacle, lowers any rail, pole, or other element that establishes the height or width of that jump. This is considered a fault and results in four penalty points being added to the rider's score during a competition.

Explanation

According to the 2011 Census of India, the Union Territory of Lakshadweep recorded the highest female literacy rate in the country among all Union Territories, standing at approximately 87.9%. This outstanding performance in female education is part of Lakshadweep's overall high literacy achievements, where the total literacy rate was recorded at 91.8%.

Explanation

Mahendra Singh Dhoni captained the Indian cricket team during the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup, leading India to a historic tournament victory. In the final match played against Sri Lanka at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on April 2, 2011, Dhoni promoted himself up the batting order and played an unbeaten match-winning innings of 91 runs off 79 balls. He sealed India's victory with a famous winning six, securing India's second World Cup title and earning the Player of the Match award for his performance.

Explanation

The North Star, scientifically known as Polaris, is called the Pole Star because it lies almost directly above the Earth's geographic North Pole. As the Earth rotates on its axis, the North Star appears stationary in the sky while all other stars seem to rotate around it, making it an essential celestial marker for navigation and determining direction in the Northern Hemisphere.

Explanation

The Mewar Festival of Udaipur is celebrated to welcome the onset of spring and coincides with the festival of Gangaur. It is a highly significant cultural event in Rajasthan, during which women carry the images of Gangaur and Isar in a grand procession to the Gangaur Ghat at Lake Pichola for immersion, reflecting the rich heritage and traditions of the Mewar region.

Explanation

Article 23 of the Constitution of India guarantees the Right against Exploitation by explicitly prohibiting trafficking in human beings, beggar, and other similar forms of forced labour. It declares any contravention of this provision as an offence punishable in accordance with the law. This fundamental right is available to both citizens and non-citizens, protecting individuals against state as well as private actions.

Explanation

According to the laws of demand and supply, the equilibrium price of a good is determined by the intersection of its demand and supply curves. When there is a fall in demand, the demand curve shifts to the left. With the supply curve remaining constant, this shift creates an excess supply or a surplus of the good at the original equilibrium price. To clear this surplus, sellers reduce their prices to attract buyers, which causes the market price to decline. This downward adjustment continues until a new equilibrium is reached at a lower price point.

Explanation

The Kachin Manaw Festival is the most important traditional festival of the Kachin people, who primarily inhabit the Kachin State in northern Myanmar. Celebrated annually in January, this festival features the erecting of large, colorful, and decorated Manaw poles around which thousands of participants perform synchronized dances. The festival serves to celebrate the New Year, foster tribal unity, commemorate victories, and pay gratitude to ancestral spirits.

Explanation

The tropopause is the transitional boundary layer in the Earth's atmosphere that separates the troposphere below from the stratosphere above. It is characterized by a significant change in the temperature lapse rate, where the decrease in temperature with altitude that occurs throughout the troposphere ceases and stabilizes before beginning to increase in the stratosphere. This zone acts as a barrier that limits the vertical mixing of air and moisture between the two layers, containing most of the planet's weather systems within the troposphere.

Explanation

Public sector industries are owned and operated by government agencies, making Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) a public sector company.

Private sector industries are owned and operated by individuals or a group of individuals, making Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) a private sector company.

Joint sector industries are jointly run by the state and individuals or a group of individuals, making Oil India Limited (OIL) a joint sector company.

Explanation

Stable exports are crucial for promoting modernization and overall prosperity because they serve as a reliable source of foreign exchange earnings. This foreign currency allows a country to import advanced technologies, sophisticated machinery, and essential capital goods that are necessary to modernize domestic industries. Furthermore, stable exports integrate a nation into the global market, encouraging local businesses to improve efficiency, adopt international standards, and benefit from economies of scale. This continuous inflow of revenue and technological integration drives sustainable economic growth and long-term prosperity.

Explanation

The Census Act was enacted in India in the year 1948 to provide a legal framework for conducting the population census in independent India. This legislation, which came into force on 3 September 1948, empowers the Central Government to declare its intention to take a census, appoints census officers, and ensures the confidentiality of the information collected during the census operations.

Explanation

Karewa formations are lacustrine deposits of clay, silt, sand, gravel, and lignite found in the valley basin of the Kashmir Himalayas. These flat-topped terraces were formed during the Pleistocene Epoch when a massive lake occupied the region. The lake eventually drained out due to tectonic uplift and the cutting of the Jhelum River, leaving behind these fertile sedimentary structures. The Karewa soils are highly suitable for agriculture and are famous for the cultivation of Zafran, a premium local variety of saffron, as well as almonds, walnuts, and apples.

Explanation

LTE, which stands for Long-Term Evolution, is a standard for high-speed wireless communication for mobile phones and data terminals. It is designed to provide high-speed data transmission by using a redesigned and simplified network architecture, utilizing digital signal processing techniques to improve capacity and speed. This technology enables faster download and upload speeds, lower latency, and highly efficient spectral efficiency, making it the global benchmark for high-speed mobile broadband networks.

Explanation

Jawaharlal Nehru was selected by Mahatma Gandhi as the second individual satyagrahi, following Acharya Vinoba Bhave, to protest against the British government's decision to drag India into the Second World War without the consent of its leaders. The Individual Satyagraha was launched to assert the right to free speech against the war. Nehru was arrested on 31 October 1940 at Gorakhpur for his anti-war speeches and was subsequently sentenced to four years of imprisonment.

Explanation

The Central Board for Indirect Taxes and Customs launched the Indian Customs Compliance Information Portal in August 2021. This portal was introduced as a trade facilitation measure to provide free, comprehensive, and easy access to information on all import and export procedures, regulatory compliance, and customs duties for nearly 12,000 Customs Tariff items, thereby enhancing the ease of doing business in India.

Explanation

Calcutta FC was established in 1872 in Calcutta, making it the oldest football club in India and Asia. Originally founded as a rugby club by British expatriates, it later merged with the Calcutta Cricket Club and incorporated association football, pioneering the organized development of the sport in the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era.

Explanation

Raganis are a highly popular genre of folk songs in Haryana, deeply embedded in the state's cultural heritage. They form an integral part of Saang, the traditional folk theatre of Haryana. These songs are narrative in nature, typically set to classical Hindustani ragas, and are performed using traditional instruments like the dholak, sarangi, and harmonium to convey historical, mythological, and socially relevant stories.

Explanation

Siddharth Choudhary won the gold medal in the men's shot put event at the 2023 Asian Under-20 Athletics Championships held in Yecheon, South Korea. He clinched the top spot on the podium by achieving a personal best throw of 19.52 meters.

Explanation

Guru Mayadhar Raut is a pioneering exponent, guru, and choreographer of Odissi. He played a monumental role in the mid-twentieth century revival and reconstruction of this classical dance form. As a key member of Jayantika, an association of gurus and scholars, he helped standardize the grammar, techniques, and syllabus of Odissi. He is credited with introducing classical mudras and sancharibhava into the dance repertoire, which significantly enriched its expressive narrative depth. In recognition of his lifetime dedication and contribution to the art form, he was honored with the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award and the Padma Shri.

Explanation

Dharmapala was a prominent emperor of the Pala dynasty of Bengal and Bihar, ruling from approximately 770 to 810 CE. He was a devout patron of Buddhism and established the famous Vikramshila University in response to a perceived decline in the quality of scholarship at Nalanda. Located at modern-day Kahalgaon near Bhagalpur in Bihar, the university became a premier global center for Buddhist learning, particularly specializing in Vajrayana Buddhism, and attracted scholars from across Asia before its destruction in the late 12th century.

Explanation

Mohammad Iqbal wrote the famous patriotic poem Tarana-e-Hindi, commonly known as Sare Jahan se achcha, Hindustan hamara, in 1904. The poem was first published in the weekly journal Ittehad in August 1904 and was later publicly recited by him at the Government College in Lahore in 1905. It quickly became an influential anthem of patriotic sentiment and resistance against British colonial rule in undivided India.

Explanation

Part II of the Constitution of India, spanning Articles 5 to 11, contains provisions regarding citizenship. These articles deal with citizenship at the commencement of the Constitution, rights of citizenship of certain migrants from Pakistan and to Pakistan, rights of citizenship of certain persons of Indian origin residing outside India, termination of citizenship upon voluntary acquisition of citizenship of a foreign state, continuance of the rights of citizenship, and the power of Parliament to regulate the right of citizenship by law.

Explanation

Henry Moseley, an English physicist, discovered the systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number in 1913. By studying the spectral lines of the characteristic X-rays emitted by different elements when bombarded with high-energy electrons, he formulated Moseley's law:

√ν = a(Z - b)

where ν is the frequency of the X-ray emission line, Z is the atomic number, and a and b are constants. This work established that the properties of elements are determined by their atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus) rather than their atomic weight, providing a rigorous physical basis for the periodic table.

Explanation

Captain Shiva Chouhan of the Fire and Fury Corps became the first woman officer to be operationally deployed at the Siachen Glacier in January 2023. She was posted at the Kumar Post, located at an altitude of around 15,600 feet, after undergoing rigorous endurance and survival training at the Siachen Battle School.

Explanation

Symmetric encryption is also referred to as conventional, single-key, or secret-key encryption because it represents the traditional method of cryptography used for centuries before the advent of public-key cryptography. In this conventional system, a single shared secret key is used by both the sender to encrypt the plaintext and the receiver to decrypt the ciphertext.

Explanation

The Super Fours is a phase or round-robin stage within the Asia Cup, which is an international cricket tournament organized by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). It is not a domestic cricket tournament organized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for domestic teams in India.

Explanation

Gregor Mendel formulated the law of independent assortment based on his observations of dihybrid crosses. In these experiments, he crossed pea plants that differed in two distinct characters, such as seed shape (round versus wrinkled) and seed color (yellow versus green). By tracking both traits simultaneously through the F₁ and F₂ generations, Mendel observed a phenotypic ratio of 9:3:3:1 in the F₂ generation. This demonstrated that the inheritance of one trait is entirely independent of the inheritance of another, as the alleles for different genes segregate autonomously during gamete formation.

Explanation

The Maharashtra Cabinet in April 2023 approved a 4% reservation in promotions for Divyang (specially-abled) employees in state government services. This policy applies to cadres and promotional posts where the proportion of direct recruitment does not exceed 75%. The decision follows the guidelines of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, to ensure equitable career advancement and representation for persons with disabilities in higher-level positions across various state government departments.

Explanation

The Somasila Dam is constructed across the Pennar River near Somasila in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. The dam creates a major reservoir that regulates the flow of the Pennar River, providing essential water for irrigation, drinking purposes, and industrial use in the surrounding regions of Andhra Pradesh.

Explanation

The New India Literacy Programme, also known as Nav Bharat Saksharta Karyakram, is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme approved by the Government of India for implementation during the financial years 2022 to 2027. The scheme aligns with the National Education Policy 2020 and aims to target five crore non-literates in the age group of 15 years and above. It covers five key components: Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, Critical Life Skills, Basic Education, Vocational Skills, and Continuing Education. The implementation of this program began in March 2023 with the launch of its implementation guidelines and the mobile application for learner and volunteer registration.

Explanation

Authentication is the process of verifying the identity or genuineness of a user, device, or organization attempting to access a system, network, or resource. It ensures that the entity requesting access is indeed who or what it claims to be, thereby preventing unauthorized access. Common methods of authentication include passwords, biometrics, security tokens, and digital certificates.

Explanation

Article 20(2) of the Constitution of India incorporates the doctrine of double jeopardy, which provides that no person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offense more than once. This principle is based on the common law maxim nemo debet bis vexari pro una et eadem causa, which means that no one should be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense. For this protection to apply, the person must have been prosecuted and punished in a previous proceeding before a court of law or a judicial tribunal for the same offense.

Explanation

Khordad Sal is celebrated by the Parsi community as the birth anniversary of Prophet Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism. It falls on the sixth day of the first month, Farvardin, in the Shenshai Parsi calendar. The festival is observed with special prayers in fire temples, cleaning of homes, wearing new clothes, and preparing festive meals, marking a time of reflection, thanksgiving, and community gathering.

Explanation

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana (DAY) was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. The scheme is structured to alleviate rural poverty through the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM). It aims to organize the rural poor, particularly women, into Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and support them through capacity building, financial services, and diverse livelihood opportunities to ensure sustainable income generation.

Explanation

According to the Census of India 2011, Rajasthan registered the highest gender gap in literacy among all Indian states. The male literacy rate in Rajasthan stood at 79.19%, whereas the female literacy rate was 52.12%. This represents a significant gap of 27.07 percentage points between male and female literacy rates in the state.

Explanation

Rasmi Ranjan Das, a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, was appointed to the United Nations Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters as a member for the 2021 to 2025 term in July 2021. The committee, comprising 25 tax experts from around the world, plays a crucial role in shaping international tax norms, particularly helping developing countries navigate complex tax challenges, including tax treaty negotiations, transfer pricing, and issues arising from the digitalization of the global economy.

Explanation

Guttation is the exudation of water in the form of liquid droplets from the margins or tips of leaves of some vascular plants. This process occurs through specialized structures called hydathodes, which are located at the vein endings. Guttation typically takes place during the night or early morning when soil moisture is high and transpiration is low. Under these conditions, root pressure develops in the xylem, forcing water up the plant stem and out through the hydathodes as droplets on the leaves.

Explanation

According to the Badminton World Federation (BWF) laws of badminton, which govern Olympic matches, a standard match consists of the best of three games of 21 points. In the third and deciding game of a match, players change ends as soon as one side reaches 11 points. This rule ensures that any environmental advantages, such as court lighting, wind drift from air conditioning, or background glare, are shared equally between both competitors during the final game.

Explanation

India is the most successful nation in the history of the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship, securing the title 9 times as of December 2023. The Indian men's national football team won the championship in the years 1993, 1997, 1999, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2021, and 2023. In the 2023 final held in Bengaluru, India defeated Kuwait in a penalty shootout to claim their ninth title.

Explanation

In Microsoft Word, the Different Odd | Even Pages feature is specifically designed to allow users to set up alternating headers and footers for odd and even pages. When this option is enabled from the Options group under the Header | Footer tab on the Ribbon, Word separates the headers and footers into Odd Page Header/Footer and Even Page Header/Footer. This enables different content, alignment, or formatting to be applied to opposing pages, which is a standard layout practice for printed books and double-sided documents.

Explanation

Milankovitch theory describes how cyclical changes in Earth's orbit and rotation cause long-term variations in its climate over thousands of years. Developed by Milutin Milankovitch, the theory identifies three main orbital cycles: eccentricity (changes in the shape of Earth's orbit), obliquity (changes in the tilt of Earth's axis), and precession (the wobble of Earth's axis). These variations collectively alter the amount and geographic distribution of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, which drives the cyclical transition between ice ages and warmer interglacial periods.