60 Days Plan: UPSC IAS Prelims 2019 – Science & Technology and Current Affairs (Day 17)

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is a not-for-profit Section 8, Schedule B, Public Sector Enterprise, set up by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India as an Interface Agency to strengthen and empower the emerging Biotech enterprise to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally relevant product development needs.

BIRAC is a industry-academia interface and implements its mandate through a wide range of impact initiatives, be it providing access to risk capital through targeted funding, technology transfer, IP management and handholding schemes that help bring innovation excellence to the biotech firms and make them globally competitive. In its Five years of existence, BIRAC has initiated several schemes, networks and platforms that help to bridge the existing gaps in the industry-academia Innovation research and facilitate novel, high quality affordable products development through cutting edge technologies. BIRAC has initiated partnerships with several national and global partners to collaborate and deliver the salient features of its mandate.

Vision

“To Stimulate, foster and enhance the strategic research and innovation capabilities of the Indian biotech industry, particularly start-ups and SME’s, for creation of affordable products addressing the needs of the largest section of society”

Key Strategies

• Foster innovation and entrepreneurship
• Promote affordable innovation in key social sectors
• Empowerment of start-ups & small and medium enterprises
• Contribute through partners for capability enhancement and diffusion of innovation
• Enable commercialization of discovery
• Ensure global competitiveness of Indian enterprises

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found within the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. These sequences are derived from DNA fragments from viruses that have previously infected the prokaryote and are used to detect and destroy DNA from similar viruses during subsequent infections. Hence these sequences play a key role in the antiviral defense system of prokaryotes.

Cas9 (or “CRISPR-associated protein 9”) is an enzyme that uses CRISPR sequences as a guide to recognize and cleave specific strands of DNA that are complementary to the CRISPR sequence. Cas9 enzymes together with CRISPR sequences form the basis of a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 that can be used to edit genes within organisms. This editing process has a wide variety of applications including basic biological research, development of biotechnology products, and treatment of diseases.

Scientists in southwest China’s Yunnan province have cloned what they called the ”Sherlock Holmes of police dogs” in a programme they hope will help cut training times and costs for police dog.

The dog, named Kunxun, was cloned from a police sniffer dog by the Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University, with support from the Ministry of Public Security.

Sinogene is hoping to make it possible to achieve “volume production” of cloned police dogs in order to significantly reduce training time.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria normally live in the intestines of healthy people and animals. Most varieties of E. coli are harmless or cause relatively brief diarrhea. But a few particularly nasty strains, such as E. coli O157:H7, can cause severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.

Rice was the first sequenced crop genome, paving the way for the sequencing of additional and more complicated crop genomes. The impact that the genome sequence made on rice genetics and breeding research was immediate, as evidence by citations and DNA marker use. The impact on other crop genomes was evident too, particularly for those within the grass family.

Merismatic tissues consist of a group of cells that have the ability to divide. These tissues are small, cuboidal, densely packed cells which keep dividing to form new cells. These tissues are capable of stretching, enlarging and differentiating into other types of tissues as they mature. Meristematic tissues give rise to permanent tissues. Merismatic tissues can be of three types depending on the region where they are present: Apical meristems, lateral meristems, and intercalary meristems.

DNA profiling (also called DNA fingerprinting) is the process of determining an individual’s DNA characteristics, which are as unique as fingerprints. DNA analysis intended to identify a species, rather than an individual, is called DNA barcoding.

DNA profiling is a forensic technique in criminal investigations, comparing criminal suspects’ profiles to DNA evidence so as to assess the likelihood of their involvement in the crime. It is also used in parentage testing, to establish immigration eligibility, and in genealogical and medical research. DNA profiling has also been used in the study of animal and plant populations in the fields of zoology, botany, and agriculture.

Gel electrophoresis

• Gel electrophoresis is a technique used to separate DNA fragments according to their size.
• DNA samples are loaded into wells (indentations) at one end of a gel, and an electric current is applied to pull them through the gel.
• DNA fragments are negatively charged, so they move towards the positive electrode. Because all DNA fragments have the same amount of charge per mass, small fragments move through the gel faster than large ones.
• When a gel is stained with a DNA-binding dye, the DNA fragments can be seen as bands, each representing a group of same-sized DNA fragments.

Biosorption is a property of certain types of inactive, dead, microbial biomass to bind and concentrate heavy metals from even very dilute aqueous solutions. Biomass exhibits this property, acting just as a chemical substance, as an ion exchanger of biological origin.

Walter Sutton – Chromosomal basis of heredity

Alexander Fleming – Penicillin

Nuclear binding energy is the minimum energy that would be required to disassemble the nucleus of an atom into its component parts. These component parts are neutrons and protons, which are collectively called nucleons. The binding is always a positive number, as we need to spend energy in moving these nucleons, attracted to each other by the strong nuclear force, away from each other. The mass of an atomic nucleus is less than the sum of the individual masses of the free constituent protons and neutrons, according to Einstein’s equation E=mc2. This ‘missing mass’ is known as the mass defect, and represents the energy that was released when the nucleus was formed.

When energy is provided to the nucleus, it increases the potential energy of the nucleons and makes it unstable.

A gamma ray or gamma radiation (symbol γ), is a penetrating electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves and so imparts the highest photon energy. Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900 while studying radiation emitted by radium. In 1903, Ernest Rutherford named this radiation gamma rays based on their relatively strong penetration of matter; he had previously discovered two less penetrating types of decay radiation, which he named alpha rays and beta rays in ascending order of penetrating power.

The country’s first indigenously developed 500-megawatt (mw) prototype fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu is expected to achieve criticality in 2019.

About Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR)

• The Kalpakkam PFBR is using uranium-238 not thorium, to breed new fissile material, in a sodium-cooled fast reactor design.
• The power island of this project is being engineered by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, largest power equipment utility of India.
• The surplus plutonium (or uranium-233 for thorium reactors) from each fast reactor can be used to set up more such reactors and grow the nuclear capacity in tune with India’s needs for power.
• India has the capability to use thorium cycle based processes to extract nuclear fuel.
• This is of special significance to the Indian nuclear power generation strategy as India has one of the world’s largest reserves of thorium, which could provide power for more than 10,000 year.
• Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam (Bhavini), a public sector company under DAE, has been given the responsibility to build the fast breeder reactors in the country.

Fissile Material:

• A fissile material is one that can sustain a chain reaction upon bombardment by neutrons.
• Thorium is by itself fertile, meaning that it can transmute into a fissile radioisotope [U-233] but cannot itself keep a chain reaction going.
• In a thorium reactor, a fissile material like uranium or plutonium is blanketed by thorium.
• The fissile material, also called a driver in this case, drives the chain reaction to produce energy while simultaneously transmuting the fertile material into fissile material.
• India has very modest deposits of uranium and some of the world’s largest sources of thorium. It was keeping this in mind that in 1954, Homi Bhabha envisioned India’s nuclear power programme in three stages to suit the country’s resource profile.

India’s three stage Nuclear Programme:

1. In the first stage, heavy water reactors fuelled by natural uranium would produce plutonium [U-238 will be transmuted to Plutonium 239 in PHWR];
2. The second stage would initially be fuelled by a mix of the plutonium from the first stage and natural uranium. This uranium would transmute into more plutonium and once sufficient stocks have been built up, thorium would be introduced into the fuel cycle to convert it into uranium 233 for the third stage [thorium will be transmuted to U-233 with the help plutonium 239].
3. In the final stage, a mix of thorium and uranium fuels the reactors. The thorium transmutes to U-233 which powers the reactor. Fresh thorium can replace the depleted thorium [can be totally done away with uranium which is very scares in India] in the reactor core, making it essentially a thorium-fuelled reactor [thorium keeps transmuting into U-233. It is U-233 that generates the energy].

As of 2016, India has signed civil nuclear agreements with 14 countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Namibia, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.

In nuclear engineering, a neutron moderator is a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, thereby turning them into thermal neutrons capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235 or a similar fissile nuclide.

Commonly used moderators include regular (light) water (roughly 75% of the world’s reactors), solid graphite (20% of reactors) and heavy water (5% of reactors). Beryllium has also been used in some experimental types, and hydrocarbons have been suggested as another possibility.

Control rods are used in nuclear reactors to control the fission rate of uranium and plutonium. They are composed of chemical elements such as boron, silver, indium and cadmium that are capable of absorbing many neutrons without themselves fissioning. Because these elements have different capture cross sections for neutrons of varying energies, the composition of the control rods must be designed for the reactor’s neutron spectrum. Boiling water reactors (BWR), pressurized water reactors (PWR) and heavy water reactors (HWR) operate with thermal neutrons, while breeder reactors operate with fast neutrons.

In nuclear chemistry, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in atomic “binding energy” between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Fusion is the process that powers active or “main sequence” stars, or other high magnitude stars.

A fusion process that produces a nucleus lighter than iron-56 or nickel-62 will generally yield a net energy release. These elements have the smallest mass per nucleon and the largest binding energy per nucleon, respectively. Fusion of light elements toward these releases energy (an exothermic process), while a fusion producing nuclei heavier than these elements will result in energy retained by the resulting nucleons, and the resulting reaction is endothermic. The opposite is true for the reverse process, nuclear fission. This means that the lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium, are in general more fusible; while the heavier elements, such as uranium, thorium and plutonium, are more fissionable.

ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment. It is an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that is being built next to the Cadarache facility in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, in Provence, southern France.

The ITER thermonuclear fusion reactor has been designed to produce a fusion plasma equivalent to 500 megawatts (MW) of thermal output power for around twenty minutes while 50 megawatts of thermal power are injected into the tokamak, resulting in a ten-fold gain of plasma heating power. Thereby the machine aims to demonstrate the principle of producing more thermal power from the fusion process than is used to heat the plasma, something that has not yet been achieved in any fusion reactor.

In 1985, at the Geneva summit meeting in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev suggested to Ronald Reagan that the two countries jointly undertake the construction of a tokamak EPR as proposed by the INTOR Workshop. The ITER project was initiated in 1988. India became an official member of the project in 2005.

Source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=183495

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/too-close-for-comfort/article24910063.ece

The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, and its flagship project The New Climate Economy, were set up to help governments, businesses and society make better-informed decisions on how to achieve economic prosperity and development while also addressing climate change.

The New Climate Economy was commissioned in 2013 by the governments of seven countries: Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The Commission has operated as an independent body and has been given full freedom to reach its own conclusions. Lead by its global commission, it has disseminated its messages by engaging with heads of governments, finance ministers, business leaders and other key economic decision-makers in over 30 countries around the world.

Johnson & Johnson’s faulty hip implants

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/johnson-johnson-implant-government-forms-panel-on-damages/article24937611.ece

World’s largest bird

Read More – https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/elephant-bird-vorombe-titan-named-largest-ever-bird/articleshow/65962342.cms

Probiotics

• These are live bacteria found in certain foods or supplements. They can provide numerous health benefits.

There are also many probiotic foods that naturally contain helpful bacteria, such as yogurt.

A high-quality, plain yogurt with live cultures can be a fantastic addition to your diet if you want to add beneficial bacteria.

Fermented foods are another great option, as they contain beneficial bacteria that thrive on the naturally occurring sugar or fiber in the food.

Examples of fermented foods include:

• Sauerkraut.
• Kimchi.
• Kombucha tea.
• Kefir (dairy and non-dairy).
• Some types of pickles (non-pasteurized).
• Other pickled vegetables (non-pasteurized).

If you are going to eat fermented foods for their probiotic benefits, make sure they are not pasteurized, as this process kills the bacteria.

Prebiotics

• These substances come from types of carbs (mostly fiber) that humans can’t digest. The beneficial bacteria in your gut eat this fiber.
• Prebiotics are types of fiber found in vegetables, fruits and legumes.

These types of fiber are not digestible by humans, but your good gut bacteria can digest them.

Foods that are high in prebiotic fiber include:

• Legumes, beans and peas.
• Oats.
• Bananas.
• Berries.
• Jerusalem artichokes (not the same as regular artichokes).
• Asparagus.
• Dandelion greens.
• Garlic.
• Leeks.
• Onions.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/probiotics-a-first-look-at-what-s-going-on-in-the-gut-61578

Both are correct.

The Sabarimala temple is a temple complex located at Sabarimala inside the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala, India.

It is the site of the largest annual pilgrimage in the world with an estimate of between 17 million and 50 million devotees visiting every year.

The temple is dedicated to the Hindu celibate deity Ayyappan also known as Dharma Sastha, who according to belief is the son of Shiva and Mohini, the feminine incarnation of Vishnu.

The traditions of Sabarimala are a confluence of Shaivism, Shaktism, Vaishnavism, and other Śramaṇa traditions.

The Pamba River (also called Pampa river) is the third longest river in the South Indian state of Kerala after Periyar and Bharathappuzha and the longest river in the erstwhile princely state of Travancore. Sabarimala temple dedicated to Lord Ayyappa is located on the banks of the river Pamba. In old Hindu Epics, Pampa was Lord Brahma’s daughter, who was later married to Lord Shiva.

The river is also known as ‘Dakshina Bhageerathi’. During ancient times it was called ‘River Baris’.

Remember these diagrams for INSTC. Saudi Arab is not a member.

https://fiata.com/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/recent_views/REU/International_North_South_Transport_Corridor_.pdf

In its decision in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India, the Supreme Court has struck down the colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality and the lives of LGBTQ persons.

In its four concurring judgments, the court traversed the protections of fundamental rights in the Constitution to find that the provision violated the rights of LGBTQ persons to dignity, equality, privacy and expression.

https://iasbaba.com/2018/09/rstv-section-377-decriminalised/

https://indiankanoon.org/doc/168671544/

Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The disease mainly affects the skin, the peripheral nerves, mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes. Leprosy is known to occur at all ages ranging from early infancy to very old age. Leprosy is curable and early treatment averts most disabilities.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/reality-different-in-leprosy-free-india-says-supreme-court/article24949051.ece