General Knowledge Questions

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

I don’t know whether the Madras Photographic Society has anything to do with the recently-publicised Chennai Photo Biennales, the first last year and the next scheduled for 2018, but participant or not, it certainly deserves a bow for being the country’s first photographic society. Its founder was an Army doctor, Alexander Hunter. The Society was founded in 1857, shortly after Lord Canning arrived as Governor-General. Canning and Lady Canning, both photography enthusiasts, were responsible for creating the famed Government series, The People of India. Hunter had still earlier, in 1850, privately started the Madras School of Arts. The School, taken over by Government in 1852, moved from Popham’s Broadway to Poonamallee High Road. There, he and an eight-member committee revised the syllabus, offering two streams, Industrial and Artistic. Hunter was put in charge of the institution, renamed the Government School of Industrial Arts, in 1855. It was the first formal school of Art in the country. In it, Hunter introduced Photography.

Hunter retired in 1868, to be succeeded by Robert Chisholm. No mean photographer, Hunter encouraged the School, it is now the Government College of Arts and Crafts to build up a photographic collection. Unfortunately, little is left of his work, especially the monuments of South India captured by Government photographer Linnaeus Tripe and his assistant C Iyahsawmi. Hunter himself did a series of pictures of the ‘Seven Pagodas’ (Mahabalipuram) and worked with his wards on photographs of the five hill tribes of the Nilgiris. It was at a prize-giving of the School that Hunter urged the Governor to provide it more suitable premises. They came up on the PH Road site in Chisholm’s time and to his design — and remain there.

Who was in charge of the Government School of Industrial Arts before Chisholm?

Select the synonym of

deviance

What is the heat released by a heating filament rated 20 W when it is kept on for 2 seconds?

Upanishads are books on

Read each sentence to find out whether there is any error in any part

Coleridge as well as Wordsworth were(a) of the opinion that the opposite of poetry is(b) not prose but(c) science. No error.(d)

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

Prebiotics are the lesser-known gut-health promoters which serve as food for good bacteria inside the gut. "We found that dietary prebiotics can improve non-REM (random eye movement) sleep, as well as REM sleep after a stressful event," said Robert Thompson, a PhD researcher at University of Colorado Boulder in the U.S. Prebiotics are dietary fibres found naturally in foods like artichokes, raw garlic, leeks and onions.

When beneficial bacteria digest prebiotic fibre, they not only multiply, improving overall gut health, but they also release metabolic by-products. Researchers fed three-week-old male rats a diet of either standard chow or chow that included prebiotics. They then monitored the rats' body temperature, gut bacteria and sleep-wake cycles — using electroencephalogram (EEG), or brain activity testing over time. Findings revealed that the rats on the prebiotic diet spent more time in non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep, which is restful and restorative, than those on the non-prebiotic diet.

What are prebiotics?

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

It was a bittersweet moment for me when I found out that I had been selected for the Sakura Science Exchange programme, a Robotics and IoT workshop in Japan. A fully-funded opportunity of a lifetime. Fly off to Saitama without a care on the world, and all I had to do was put into practice what I love to do – computer science. The bitter part of the episode – that I would lose two weeks of IB education, an almost literal mountain to cover when I got back – was quickly forgotten when I envisioned myself programming robots in the country that gave us Anime and sushi! It was with the eagerness to have an extended vacation in an un-visited land, and the opportunity to learn more about a subject that I am passionate about, that I headed to the Kempegowda International Airport outside Bengaluru. Little did I know this would be the experience of a lifetime, more for the endearing values of the Japanese culture that made their mark on me than anything else. The first feature of Japanese society that called out to me was the Discipline. Walking into the Narita International Airport, used as I was to the noisy crowds back in India, I quite literally lost my breath to the sight that awaited me. Be it the security check or baggage claim, somehow there was a silence that felt right. Everyone went about their activities without any confusion. And, contrary to the bharatiya custom of lazy pot-bellied officials, every guard and all counter personnel did what they were supposed to do to ensure this flow was maintained.

Why was the writer travelling to Japan?

Which musical instrument Ustad Bismillah Khan used to play?