1. Environment: exam trend and future strategy for UGC NET
    1. International treaties / commitments
    2. Gaseous Pollutants
    3. Disasters and diseases
  2. Polity: Paper trend and future strategy for UGC/NET-JRF exams
    1. Parliament
    2. Emergency
    3. Judiciary
  3. Computer / ICT in UGC-JRF/NET exam
    1. Binary conversion
    2. Hardware
    3. Software 
    4.  Web / Internet

Environment: exam trend and future strategy for UGC NET

Trend in the last three years in January-2017 exam
Each time they ask 6 MCQs from environment, pollution and disasters. Same.
  • one question about gaseous pollutants
  • one question related to ‘numbers’- India’s commitment or world commitment for climate change/ renewable energy / temperature control etc.
 Same
For the first time, they’ve asked question about “disease”.
asked examples of meteorological disaster This time hydro-meteorological disaster examples.
Asked India’s Biomass energy target for 2022 now asked small hydro target by 2022.

How to prepare the pollution and disaster topic for future UGC-NET exams?

  • For theory portion: NIOS’s PDF Material and NCERT’s environmental chemistry chapter is sufficient. (Free download CLICK ME)
  • Keep in mind You’ve to prepare ONLY the pollution related topics.  You DONOT HAVE to prepare entire environment (like food chain, wildlife park sanctuaries etc. those things are not asked in NET exam.)
  • In current / contemporary topics: they ask about international treaties and summits- basic GK/factual things. Solvable by following newspaper / economic survey’s chapter on environment.

Anyways, let’s solve the questions asked in January 2017’s NET exam

International treaties / commitments

Q) India government’s target for power production from small hydro projects by the year 2022 is

  1. 1 Giga-Watt
  2. 5 Giga-Watt
  3. 10 Giga-Watt
  4. 15 Giga-Watt

UGC JRF/NET Answerkey
Mrunal’s Lecture BES165/P1– INDC commitment number #3: we aim to develop 175GW renewable energy source by 2022, and out of that 5 GW to come from small hydro. Hence answer is 2.

Q) In which country, the recent international agreement on phasing out Hydro Fluoro Carbons (HFCs) was signed?

  1. Rwanda
  2. Morocco
  3. South Africa
  4. Algeria

UGC JRF/NET Answerkey
Mrunal’s lecture ML16/GSM3- Pollution: Summit held at Kigali, Rwanda to amend the Montreal protocol of UNEP & gradually phase out use of HFCs. Hence answer 1.

Q) Assertion (A): Sustainable development critical to wellbeing of human society.
Reason (R): Environmentally sound policies do not harm the environment or deplete the natural resources.
Choose the correct code:

  1. Both (A) and (R) are correct and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
  2. Both (A) and (R) are correct, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
  3. (A) is true and (R) is true
  4. (A) is false and (R) is true

Debatable either 1 or 2. Because from official answerkeys of the past UGC exams, they don’t have much consistency in interpretation of what constitutes as “correct explanation” of assertion.

Gaseous Pollutants

Q) The dominant source of pollution due to oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in urban areas is

  1. Road transport
  2. Commercial Sector
  3. Energy use in industry
  4. Power plants

NIOS environment page 74: Transport sector is the fastest growing source of Nitrous oxides and carbon dioxide.
Just to be sure, let’s crosscheck with NCERT Class Chemistry 11 chapter on Environmental Chemistry: It lists two primary sources for production of oxides of nitrogen

  1. When lightning strikes
  2. When fossil fuel is burnt in automobile engine.

So all this points to answer 1.

Disasters and diseases

Q) Which of the following is not a water-borne disease?

  1. Typhoid
  2. Hepatitis
  3. Cholera
  4. Dengue

NIOS environment page 190 Table 11.1 lists typhoid, hepatitis and cholera as water borne diseases. Hence by elimination, the answer is 4 Dengue.

Q) Which of the following natural hazards is not hydro-meteorological?

  1. Snow avalanche
  2. Sea erosion
  3. Tropical cyclone
  4. Tsunami

Avalanche and cyclone are hydro-meteorological disasters as per National institute of disaster management’s self-help book. This eliminates 1 and 3.

  • Natural disasters are classified into two parts 1) geophysical such as tsunamis and 2) hydro-meteorological such as flood, tornadoes etc. as per this google book
  • National disaster management plan 2016 table 1-2 list following
    • coastal erosion and avalances as hydrological disaster;
    • cyclone as meteorological disaster and
    • tsunami as geophysical disaster

So going by all these. The answer is Tsunami is the odd man in this group. Hence answer 4.

Polity: Paper trend and future strategy for UGC/NET-JRF exams

  • Each year, they ask 3-5 MCQs from this Indian Polity and Constitution in the UGC NET exam.
  • This time difficulty: Easy to moderate. Possible to quickly arrive at answer by elimination method.
  • Thankfully no factual questions about Constitutional article, or amendment years, unlike previous years.

How to prepare Polity and Constitution for future exams?

Anyways, let’s solve the Polity questions asked in January 2017’s NET exam

Parliament

Q) Which of the following statements are correct?

  1. Rajya Sabha is a permanent House which can be dissolved only during national emergency.
  2. Rajya Sabha does not represent the local interests of the States.
  3. Members of the Rajya Sabha are not bound to vote at the dictates of the states they represent.
  4. No Union territory has a representative in the Rajya Sabha.

Select the correct answer from the codes given below:
Code:

  1. (a) and (d)
  2. (b) and (c)
  3. (b), (c) and (d)
  4. (a), (b), (c) and (d)

Refer to the table given on page 22.33 of Indian polity by M.Laxmikanth (5th Ed).
UT of Delhi and Puducherry have 3 and 1 Rajya Sabha seats respectively.
Hence statement (D) is wrong, thus by elimination we are left with answer (2).

Emergency

Q) Which of the following are not necessarily the immediate consequences of the proclamation of the President’s Rule in a State?

  1. Dissolution of the State assembly
  2. Removal of the Council of Ministers in the State.
  3. Takeover of the State administration by the Union Government
  4. Appointment of a new Chief Secretary

Select the correct answer from the codes given below:

  1. (a) and (d)
  2. (a), (b) and (c)
  3. (a), (b), (c) and (d)
  4. (b) and (c)

Refer to Indian polity by M.Laxmikanth (5th Ed) page 16.6 and 16.7: “consequences of president’s rule in state”

  • executive and legislative powers of the state are assumed by the centre. Hence “C” is the immediate consequence. By elimination, we are left with “1”.

Just to cross check.

  • President either suspends or dissolves the state assembly. (so “A” is not immediate consequence, because he could merely suspend it)
  • Governor carries the state administration with help of chief Secretary. (so “D” is not immediate consequence that CS will be replaced)

Hence answer1: “A” and “D” are not immediate consequences.

Judiciary

Q) Instead of holding the office during the pleasure of the President who among the following hold (s) office during good behavior?

  1. Governor of a state
  2. Attorney General of India
  3. Judges of the High Court
  4. Administrator of a Union Territory

Select the correct answer from the codes given below:
Codes:

  1. (a) only
  2. (c) Only
  3. (a) and (c)
  4. (a), (b), (c) and (d)

Governor, UT administrator and attorney general can be removed / replaced as and when union government pleases. But judge of high court can be removed only by proved misbehavior or incapacity- (Page 34.2, M.Laxmikanth)
Hence 2 is the answer.

Computer / ICT in UGC-JRF/NET exam

  • In every exam, they ask 6 MCQS from computer ICT. No change in that pattern.
  • Usually, 1-2 full forms- like HTTP, ASCII, RAM etc. this time asked DVD’s full form.
  • Bit Tougher than last papers. Because as such in UGC’s ICT questions- one MCQ means one fact answer.  But now they also moved towards 2TF (two statement true and false) question – check hexadecimal Qs. given below.

How to ICT prepare for future exam?

  • In SSC and Banking exams too they ask computer awareness. But NET is bit different because here they ask binary digit conversion as well. And sometimes extend it to e-governance portals / apps launched in relation to higher education.
  • Theory: either NCERT or NIOS Computer Awareness material (Free download CLICK ME). PS: You’ve to do binary conversion sums as well- from chapter #2 of NIOS.
  • Current Affairs: newspapers / magazines.

Anyways, let’s solve the IT questions asked in January 2017 exam

Binary conversion

Q) Which of the following statement(s) is/are TRUE?

  • S1: The decimal number 11 is larger than the hexadecimal number 11
  • S2: In the binary number 1110.101, the fractional part has the decimal value as 0.625

Answer choices

  1. S1 Only
  2. S2 Only
  3. Both S1 and S2
  4. Neither S1 nor S2

let’s check:
UGC-NET Answerkey 2017 for environment, Polity and IT computer MCQs
Hexadecimal number 11 to decimal
(11)16=1 x 161 + 1 x 160, Obviously this will be much bigger than decimal number 11. so first statement (S1) is wrong.
In second statement, we’ve to find the decimal value of (0.101)2
So,
1×2-1 + 0x2-2 + 1 x 2-3
=0.5+0+0.125
=0.625, hence second statement (S2) is right . Verbatim sum is also given in Kothari’s book page 369. Therefore, answer 2

Hardware

Q). DVD technology uses an optical media to store the digital data DVD is an acronym for

  1. Digital Vector Disc
  2. Digital Volume Disc
  3. Digital Versatile Disc
  4. Digital Visualization Disc

NCERT Class11 Computer Science textbook page 73. DVD:  It stands for Digital Versatile Disk or Digital Video Disk.

Q) Which of the following correctly lists computer memory types from highest to lowest speed?

  1. Secondary Storage
  2. Main Memory (RAM)
  3. Cache Memory
  4. CPU Registers

Code:

  1. i, ii, iii, iv
  2. iv, iii, i, ii
  3. iv, iii, ii, i
  4. iii, iv, ii, I

NIOS Chapter 1: Basic computing skill. Refer to page 28 onwards

Cache memory It’s extremely fast compared to main memory (RAM).
CPU registers They’re part of the Control unit and ALU rather than the memory. Hence their contents can be handled much faster than any content of memory (page4)
Secondary storage Operating speed is slower than of main memory (RAM).

So accordingly speed wise: CPU registers>Cache > RAM>secondary memory. Answer is 3

Software

Q) With regard to a word processing software, the process of combining static information in a publication together with variable information in a data source to create one merged publication is called

  1. Electronic mail
  2. Data sourcing
  3. Mail merge
  4. Spam mail

It’s “Mail merge”. Ref: NIOS Computer PDF: Chapter 11 page 207.

 Web / Internet

Q) Which of the following is a characteristic of Web2.0 applications?

  1. Multiple users schedule their time to use Web2.0 applications one by one.
  2. Web2.0 applications are focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online.
  3. Web2.0 applications provide users with content rather than facilitating users to create it.
  4. Web2.0 applications use only static pages.

Answer is 2, as per this google book
Or we can go by gut-feeling elimination. Statement 1,3 and 4 don’t sound like modern hi-fi latest technology.  So they should be wrong, hence 2 is right.

Q) Read the following two statements:

  • I: Information and communication Technology (ICT) is considered a subset of Information Technology(IT)
  • II: The “right to use” a piece of software is termed as copyright

Which of the above statement(s) is/are CORRECT?

  1. Both I and II
  2. Neither I not II
  3. II Only
  4. I Only

First statement is wrong- ICT is bigger than IT.
The proper term for “right to use a software” is not ‘copyright’ but ‘license’…I purchased the ‘license’ to use Kaspersky, we don’t say “I purchased the copyright to use Kaspersky.”
Hence answer #2 – neither 1 nor 2 is correct.
Any corrections in the Answerkey? Do post in the comments but with authentic reference and explanations.
Visit Mrunal.org/UGC for more study material and solved papers for UGC-NET / JRF exam.