SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY · Kanpur (IIT-K) has unveiled a new supercomputer recently. • It is the...

Current Affairs 12 2

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Sun-observing IRIS• Nasa’s sun-observing IRIS (Interface

Region Imaging Spectrograph) spacecrafthas captured its first stunning close-up ofa colossal coronal mass ejection(CME)erupting from the sun.

• The field of view for this imagery is aboutfive times the width of earth and aboutseven-and-half times its length, atremendous sheet of solar material can beseen erupting in a latest video releasedby Nasa.

• The view is unprecedented for IRIS whichwas launched in June last year to observethe lowest levels of the sun’s atmospherewith better resolution than ever before.

• IRIS must commit to pointing at certainareas of the sun at least a day in advance,so catching a CME in the act involvessome educated guesses and a little bit ofluck.

Kepler-10c• Astronomers have discovered the

“Godzilla” of all Earths – a new type ofrocky planet that weighs 17 times as muchas our planet and is more than twice aslarge in size, a surprising find that couldchange scientists’ understanding of theorigins of the universe.

• The newly found mega-Earth, Kepler-10c,circles a Sun-like star once every 45 days.It is located about 560 light-years fromEarth in the constellation Draco. Theorists

believed such a world could not formbecause anything so hefty would grabhydrogen gas as it grew and become aJupiter-like gas giant. This planet, though,is all solid and much bigger thanpreviously discovered “super-Earths,”making it a “mega-Earth.”

• Kepler-10c was originally spotted byNASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Kepler-10cwas known to have a diameter of about18,000 miles, 2.3 times as large as Earth.This suggested it fell into a category ofplanets known as mini-Neptunes, whichhave thick, gaseous envelopes. The teamused the HARPS-North instrument on theTelescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in theCanary Islands to measure the mass ofKepler-10c. They found that it weighed17 times as much as Earth – far more thanexpected. This showed that Kepler-10cmust have a dense composition of rocksand other solids.

New supercomputer unveiled by IIT-Kanpur

• One of India’s top educational institutes,the Indian Institute Of Technology atKanpur (IIT-K) has unveiled a newsupercomputer recently.

• It is the second supercomputer that hasbeen developed by the prestigiousinstitute. The computer has been rankedfifth in the country in terms ofperformance and 130th in the list of worldtop 500 supercomputers.

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• According to Srivastava , the machineoperate at a peak performance of 307.2Terra Flops (TF) and a realisedperformance of about 249 TF.

• They said the new machine would beused for regular education, research andtraining purposes.

• The machine has been launched afterextensive research by a seasoned teamand the engineers behind the project feltthat this is one of the best supercomputers.

• The project cost Rs 48 crore to the institute.

Renewable power in Germany• May 11, 2014 was a red letter day for

renewable power in Germany. The biggestclean energy market reached an enviablerecord of almost 75 per cent renewablemarket share for several hours that day.Germany faces its own travails over itschosen path.

• Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts-by opening new coal and gas fired plants.Renewable electricity is proving sounreliable and chaotic that it is startingto undermine the stability of the Europeangrid and provoke international incidents.

• The spiraling cost of the renewables surgehas sparked a backlash, includinggovernment proposals to slash subsidiesand deployment rates.

• For all modes of power generation,capacity factor — CF (the amount ofelectricity, a generator produces in a yeardivided by the amount it will produce ifit ran at full capacity for all 8,760 hrs ayear) — is important. Typically during2012, CFs (per cent) in Germany were, forsolar: 11; wind: 17; fossil fuel: 80 and fornuclear: 94.

• Since India has in place an ambitiousrenewable energy programme, we mustlearn from the experiences of other

countries particularly Germany;Germany’s tryst with renewable power isoften taken as a model.

• India must promote all modes of powergeneration including solar and wind.Copious sunshine and abundant windmay lead to over production in the grid.Balancing the grid may be a challenge.Central Government must organise asystematic review of the challenges toarrive at India- centric solutions.

Scientists develop water-based organicbattery

• Scientists have developed a water-basedorganic battery that is long lasting andbuilt from cheap, eco-friendlycomponents.The new battery - which usesno metals or toxic materials - is intendedfor use in power plants, where it can makethe energy grid more resilient andefficient by creating a large-scale meansto store energy for use as needed.

• “The batteries last for about 5,000recharge cycles, giving them an estimated15 year lifespan,” said Sri Narayan,professor of chemistry at the Universityof Southern California Dornsife Collegeof Letters, Arts and Sciences and thecorresponding author of thestudy.”Lithium ion batteries degrade afteraround 1,000 cycles, and cost 10 timesmore to manufacture,” Narayan said.

• Narayan collaborated with SuryaPrakash, professor of chemistry anddirector of the USC Loker HydrocarbonResearch Institute, as well as USC’s BoYang, Lena Hoober—Burkhardt, andFang Wang.”Such organic flow batterieswill be game-changers for grid electricalenergy storage in terms of simplicity, cost,reliability and sustainability,” saidPrakash.






• Solar panels and wind turbines areinherently unreliable which makes itdifficult for power companies to rely onthem to meet customer demand.Withbatteries to store surplus energy and thendole it out as needed, that sporadicunreliability could cease to be such anissue, researchers said.

• “Mega-scale energy storage is a criticalproblem in the future of the renewableenergy, requiring inexpensive and eco—friendly solutions,” Narayan said.Thenew battery is based on a redox flowdesign — similar in design to a fuel cell,with two tanks of electroactive materialsdissolved in water.

• The solutions are pumped into a cellcontaining a membrane between the twofluids with electrodes on either side,releasing energy.The design has theadvantage of decoupling power fromenergy.The tanks of electroactivematerials can be made as large as needed— increasing total amount of energy thesystem can store — or the central cell canbe tweaked to release that energy fasteror slower, altering the amount of power(energy released over time) that thesystem can generate.

• While previous battery designs have usedmetals or toxic chemicals, Narayan andPrakash wanted to find an organiccompound that could be dissolved inwater.Such a system would create aminimal impact on the environment, andwould likely be cheap, they figured.

• They found that certain naturallyoccurring quinones — oxidised organiccompounds — fit the bill. Quinones arefound in plants, fungi, bacteria, and someanimals, and are involved inphotosynthesis and cellularrespiration.The research was published inthe Journal of the Electrochemical Society.

New algae species could providevaluable biofuel

• The discovery of a new species of macroalgae along the coast at south Goa couldopen up vast reserves of biofuel besidesproviding raw material for anti-cancerdrugs.A variety of macro algae was lastdiscovered some 45 years back in thecoastal region of Chennai.

• Such macro algae can be a rich source ofbiomass,” said Felix Bast, principleinvestigator and scientist at the Centre forBiosciences, Central University of Punjab.“Macro algae or seaweed changes itsmorphology frequently and hence it isextremely tough to record or find outabout various species.

• Algae larger than 100 micrometre in sizeis termed a macro algae, or seaweed, inlayman’s language. The new species hasbeen named Cladophora goensis Bastafter the researcher who found it. Greenmarine algae is responsible for thephenomenon of the massive green tidesoccurring in Goa, due to the explosivegrowth of seaweeds.

• This is a rapidly growing algae whichcultivates in marine areas only and inwater with salinity greater than 30ppm,”said Bast. Apart from the possibility of thisbeing used as a raw material for biofuel,it can be cultivated and used in theproduction of FDA-approved anti-cancerdrugs.

• The team of researchers including FelixBast and his students Aijaz Ahmad Johnand Satej Bhushan used DNA sequencingtechniques to establish their findings.Theresearchers said this bloom forming algaeneeds some hard sub-strata or rock-likesubstance to grow on and was seen to begrowing on mooring lines, buoys, hullsof wooden dinghies and intertidal






substrata, including natural rocks andconcrete breakwaters. Its morphologicalcharacters distinguish it from its earlierspecies including the green pigment-chloroplast- containing organic cell.

El Niño in 2014• The El Niño weather phenomenon, which

can cause global famines, floods and evenwars, has a 90 per cent chance of strikingthis year, according to the latest forecastreleased .

• El Niño begins as a giant pool of warmwater swelling in the eastern tropicalPacific that sets off a chain reaction ofweather events around the world, somedevastating and some beneficial.

• India is expected to be the first to suffer,with weaker monsoon rains, followed byfurther scorching droughts in Australiaand collapsing fisheries off SouthAmerica. But some regions could benefit,in particular the U.S., where El Niño isseen as the “great wet hope”, bringingrains that could break the searing droughtin the west.

• The knock-on effects can impact evenmore widely, from cutting global goldprices to making England’s World Cupfootballers sweat a little more.

Earth size white dwarf star found inspace

• A team of astronomers has identifiedpossibly the coldest, faintest white dwarfstar ever detected. This ancient stellarremnant is so cold that its carbon hascrystallised, forming, in effect, an earth-sized diamond in space.

• It is likely its age is the same as of theMilky Way, approximately 11 billion yearsold.It is a really remarkable object,” saidDavid Kaplan, professor at University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee in the US.These

things should be out there, but becausethey are so dim they are very hard to find.

• Kaplan and his colleagues found thisstellar gem using the National RadioAstronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) GreenBank Telescope (GBT) and Very LongBaseline Array (VLBA), as well as otherobservatories.White dwarfs are extremelydense end-states of stars that havecollapsed.

• The researchers calculated that the whitedwarf would be no more than acomparatively cool 3,000 degrees Kelvin(2,700 degrees Celsius).Astronomersbelieve that such a cool, collapsed starwould be largely crystallised carbon, notunlike a diamond.The findings werepublished in the Astrophysical Journal.

‘Super-adapted’ chikungunya virus apossibility

• The chikungunya virus circulating inparts of India as well as Sri Lanka andSouth-East Asia could gain the ability tospread more efficiently by combiningmutations, becoming ‘super-adapted’ fortransmission by the Asian tiger mosquito,Aedes albopictus, according to researchpublished recently.

• The virus has been primarily transmittedby the Aedes aegypti mosquito. However,ten years back, a novel form of the virusemerged in coastal Kenya, which thenspread to countries around the IndianOcean, including India, causing hugeoutbreaks.

• Strains of this virus found in islands offAfrica, states in India such as Kerala, SriLanka and in countries in South-East Asiahad a mutation that allowed it to bepassed on by the A. albopictus mosquitoas well. The mutation changed the virus’E1 protein.






• Subsequently, an additional mutation wasdiscovered in a virus isolated in Kerala in2009 and from Orissa a year later thataltered the viral E2 protein.The mutation,known as ‘E2-L210Q,’ further enhancedthe virus’ ability to replicate in the A.albopictus mosquito and thereby increaseits circulation among humans.

• A team of scientists led by Scott C. Weaverof the University of Texas Medical Branchat Galveston in the U.S. has identifiedmore E2 mutations, each of which, alongwith the change in the E1 protein, madethe virus more efficient in establishingitself in A. albopictus.

• One of these mutations, ‘E2-K252Q,’ firstturned up in a virus isolated in Kerala in2007 and later in viruses from South-EastAsia.More ominously, their paperpublished recently in NatureCommunications also providedexperimental evidence that a ‘super-adapted’ form of the virus couldpotentially emerge by combining E2mutations.

• A lab-created virus with both the E2-L210Q and E2-K252Q mutations was farmore effective than either one of thosemutations at colonising A. albopictus.Thefindings indicated that even more efficientchikungunya virus transmission by A.albopictus “will likely evolve whencombinations of these second-stepmutations occur in their current ranges ofendemic circulation in India andSoutheast Asia, followed by their likelyglobal spread,” the scientists noted in thepaper.

Full capacity attained in Kudankulamreactor

• The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Projectcrossed the much-awaited milestone asthe first reactor of the upcoming nuclear

park attained its maximum capacity of1,000 MW.

• The Nuclear Power Corporation of IndiaLimited (NPCIL) engineers wereoperating 1,000 MWe reactors built withVVER technology, supplied byAtomstroyexports, Russia.

• When the reactor reached 90 per cent ofits capacity on May 5 last, it was expectedthat the first unit would attain themaximum power generation capacitywithin a week or so.

• Though the NPCIL had originallyplanned to commission the first of the 2 X1,000 MWe reactor within five years fromthe date of ‘first pouring of concrete’, thecompletely new technology for the NPCILtechnocrats, a range of technical issues,delayed supply of components,incorporation of additional safetymeasures, anti-KKNPP struggle and otherreasons delayed its completion. Finally,the reactor is now ready for commercialpower generation 11 months after itattained criticality last year.

PSLV C23 successfully put five foreignsatellites

• India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-23 successfully put five foreign satellitesinto orbit in the presence of PrimeMinister Narendra Modi at the IndianSpace Research Organisation’s spaceportin Sriharikota.

• In a smooth 20-minute mission, the ISROlaunched the 714-kg French earthobservation satellite SPOT-7, the 14-kgGerman AISAT, the two 15-kg CanadianNLS7.1 (CAN-X4) and NLS7.2 (CAN-X5)and the 7-kg Singapore VELOX-1.Following a “perfect” lift-off at 9.52 a.m.,the PSLV-C23’s four stages came to lifeand fell off as programmed — the 4-storeyheat shield which protected the satellites






from turbulence, split in two and fell intothe Bay of Bengal. Soon, all five were intheir slots at a height of more than 660 km.

• Observing that 40 of the 67 PSLV satelliteswere put into orbit from 19 foreigncountries, Mr. Modi said it was “a globalendorsement of India’s capabilities”.

ISRO must develop Saarc satellite- PM• Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked

India’s space community to take up “thechallenge of developing a Saarc satellite”which can be dedicated to “ourneighbourhood, as a gift from India”.

• He suggested that the Saarc satellite couldprovide a full range of applications andservices to all neighbours of India. He alsoasked the Indian Space ResearchOrganisation (ISRO) “to enlarge thefootprint of our satellite-based navigationsystem to cover all of South India.”

• Mr. Modi, who addressed the ISROemployees from the Mission ControlCentre (MCC) at Sriharikota after thePolar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C23)successfully put five foreign satellites intoorbit, wanted the ISRO to develop moreadvanced satellites with higher degree ofcomputation, imaging and transmission.“We must expand our satellite footprintin terms of frequency and quality.”

• The Prime Minister praised India’s spacescientists for helping the country becomea self-reliant space power. India could beproud that its space programme wasindigenous and the country developed itdespite international hurdles.

Akash ready for induction into Army• The DRDO-developed air defence missile

system was successfully test-fired by theArmy and hit an unmanned aerialvehicle.The Army on Wednesday fired asurface-to-air Akash missile, which

intercepted a fast-moving, smallunmanned aerial vehicle called Bansheeat an altitude of 30 metres above the sealevel.

• The interception proved the missile’scapability against subsonic cruise missile,said officials from the Defence Researchand Development Organisation (DRDO)which developed Akash. Wednesday’slaunch was the last among the validationtrials done by the Army on the missile’sproduction model.

• A modern radar, which forms part of theentire Akash system, continuouslytracked the low-flying target. Specialtechniques developed by the DRDO forovercoming the reflections of the targetvehicle Banshee coming from the seaworked perfectly in the mission. With thisflight trial, the Army had accomplishedall the validation trials on the missile’sproduction model and the Akash systemwas being delivered for induction into theArmy.

• Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL),Hyderabad, is producing the missile for theArmy, the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL)is the production agency for the Air Force.BEL and BDL were executing productionorders for more than Rs.23,000 crore of theAkash missile system.

KLOTHO• People who have a variant of a longevity

gene have improved brain skills such asthinking, learning and memory. Re-searchers found that increasing levels ofthe gene, called KLOTHO, in mice madethem smarter, possibly by increasing thestrength of connections between nervecells in the brain.

• The study was published in Cell Reports.Those who have one copy of a variant of






the KLOTHO gene, called KL-VS, tend tolive longer and have lower chances ofsuffering a stroke whereas those who havetwo copies may live shorter lives and havea higher risk of stroke.

• The study also found that those with onecopy performed better on cognitive testsregardless of age, sex or the presence ofthe apolipoprotein 4 gene, the maingenetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

India's first cyber lab• The National Law School of India

University (NLSIU) on May 6 will launchwhat is touted to be the country's firstcyber lab in a legal academic institution.

• The lab, co-funded by the Department ofElectronics and Information Technology(DEITY), Ministry of Communication andInfor-mation Technology, will beinaugurated by Shyamal Ghosh, theformer Telecom Secretary, Government ofIndia; Gulshan Rai, Director-General,Indian Computer Emergency ResponseTeam (CERT-In) and R. Venkata Rao, Vice-Chance-llor, NLSIU.

• A release from NLSIU's Advanced Centrefor Cyber Law and Cyber Forensics, saidthe centre also offers training programmesfor bank officials and other professionalswho want to gain knowledge of cybertechnology and forensics crucial fordetection and investigation of cybercrimes.

• The centre launched its PostgraduateDiploma in Cyber Law and CyberForensics in June 2013, which senior policeofficers, IT security officers and lawyershave enrolled for.

Implantable Device to Control BP• Not being able to control blood pressure

even after gulping pills would no longerbe a problem. Soon, an implantable device

will reduce blood pressure by sendingelectrical signals to the brain.

• In a first, German researchers haveuccessfully reduced the blood pressure inrats by 40 percent with this device withoutany major side effects.

• This could offer hope for a significantproportion of patients worldwide who donot respond to existing medical treatmentfor the condition.

• The implantable device uses an intelligentcircuit to record the activity of the patient,for instance when they are exercising, andadjust the blood pressure accordingly.

• The device consists of 24 individualelectrodes that are integrated into a micro-machined cuff. It is designed to wraparound the vagus nerve, which extendsfrom the brainstem to the thorax andabdomen - supplying and stimulatingvarious major organs including the heartand major blood vessels.

Supermassive black holes• Luck for the average pedestrian is

happening upon a crisp dollar billtumbling down the sidewalk. ForEuropean astronomers, it's happening tobe looking at the right portion of sky atthe exact moment a star is ripped apartby a giant black hole.

• The auspicious discovery was made bythe European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton. Thecosmological providence revealed not oneblack hole, but two — the first pair ofsupermassive black holes observed in anormal galaxy. Normal galaxies, orquiescent galaxies -- as opposed to activegalaxies -- are no longer activelyproducing stars.Black holes are much easier to locate innewer active galaxies. While black holesin active galaxies are constantly eating up






gas clouds and star matter, giving offdetectable X-rays as a result, similaractivity is less frequent and more sporadicin normal galaxies.

• Currently, the only way to find a normalblack hole is by happening upon a "tidaldisruption event," like the starconsumption witnessed by ESA's XXM-Newton.

• What makes the latest discovery evenmore unusual is that the two black holeswere found together, orbiting each other-- the product of two galaxies havingmerged.

Helix's twisted cousin• The helix is a complex shape found in

many natural settings. It is commonlyillustrated by the shape of DNAmolecules. The roots of some plants alsoburrow as helices, like corkscrewswinding downward in search of richersoil. But during an experiment at HarvardUniversity, mechanical engineers weresurprised when a pair of rubber ribbonsexpected to form a helix did not, bucklinginto a shape rarely observed in nature.

• Every helix winds in a left or rightdirection. The engineers observed whatthey called a hemihelix: a helix thatchanges its direction midway. The regionalong which it changes its direction iscalled aperversion. Charles Darwinobserved plant tendrils forminghemihelices in 1888.

• Starting with two strips of an elasticpolymer of different lengths, theengineers stretched the shorter one to bethe same length as the other. Then, whilemaintaining the stretching force, theyjoined the strips side-by-side. As the forcewas dwindled, the bi-strip twisted andbent to create either a helix or a hemihelix.

• As energy due to stretching flows through

the strip, the strip twists to reduce the loadit bears. However, imperfections in thematerial could cause the strip to buckleat certain places, where perversions formand the chirality reverses.

From thin air to drinking water• An Israeli company has developed a new

and inexpensive technology thatproduces drinking water from thin air, anadvancement that can address theproblem of water scarcity in developingcountries such as India.

• Using the technology, a litre of water canbe produced for a mere Rs. 1.5, ascompared to Rs. 15 for a litre of bottledwater, the company claims. TheAtmospheric Water-Generation Unitscreated by Water-Gen use a "GENius" heatexchanger to chill air and condense watervapour.

• The clean air is passed through the heatexchanger system where it getsdehumidified. The water is then removedfrom the air and collected in a tank insidethe unit.

• The company claims its water generatoris more energy efficient than other suchcompanies as it uses the cooled air createdby the unit to chill incoming air. Thesystem can produce 250-800 litres ofpotable water a day depending ontemperature and humidity conditions.

Orbit of the International Space Station(ISS)

• The orbit of the International SpaceStation (ISS) will be corrected by raisingit by 2.15 kilometres.

• The maneouver were carried out usingthe thrusters of the Progress M-21M cargospacecraft.

• The station was raised to the altitude of415.2 kilometres and the adjustment is






made to ensure better docking condi-tionsof the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft, whichis scheduled to blast off from the Baikonurspace centre in Kazakhstan on May 28 tobring a new crew to the ISS.

• The Progress M-21M docked with theorbital station on November 30. Thedocking operation was being carried outby means of the new approach system inan automatic mode.

Microbes could Colonize Mars• In the race to colonise Mars, microbes may

end up beating humans!• Hardy little micro-organisms from Earth

could hitch a ride on a spacecraft andcolonise the surface of Mars and trickscientists into thinking they are aliens, anew study by NASA scientists, includingone of Indian-origin, has found.

• These bacteria could conta-minatecelestial bodies such as Mars, making itdifficult for researchers to determine if alife form actually originated on the site,researchers said.

• Currently, spacecraft landing on Mars orother planets where life might exist mustmeet requirements for a maximumallowable level of microbial life, orbioburden.

• These acceptable levels were based onstudies of how various life forms surviveexposure to the rigours associated withspace travel, researchers said.

• Spore-forming bacteria are of particularconcern because spores can withstandcertain sterilisation procedures and maybest be able to survive the harshenvironments of outer space or planetarysurfaces.

• Spores of Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032have shown especially high resistance totechniques used to clean spacecraft, suchas ultraviolet (UV) radiation and peroxide

treatment.• When researchers exposed this hardy

organism to a simulated Marsenvironment that kills standard spores in30 seconds, it survived 30 minutes.

The link between Tobacco and Cancerin India

• Every year nearly one million new cancercases are dia-gnosed in India, theprevalence being 2.5 million. With morta-lities of 6,00,000-7,00,000 a year, cancercauses six per cent of all adult deaths inthe country.

• The number of deaths per year isprojected to shoot up to 1.2 million by2035, according to a series of paperspublished in the Lancet Oncology journal.

• Currently, people in the 30-69 age groupaccount for over two-thirds of cancerdeaths in India, with less than a third ofthe patients surviving more than fiveyears after diagnosis.

• The most common, nearly half of all, arecancers of the lung and oral cavity in men,and of the breast and cervix in women.

• Tobacco use alone accounts for about 40per cent of all cancers in India.

• The geographical distribution of cancersis quite varied across the country. Basedon the data from Chennai, cervical cancerwas more prevalent (22.7 per 100,000)than breast cancer in Tamil Nadu, whileoral cancer accounted for 243 per 100,000men in Kerala.

• With a rate of 215 per 100,000 women,Delhi had the highest incidence of gallbladder cancer in women in the world.

Plant Growth Chamber for Space• Astronauts will now turn into cosmic

gardeners and grow lettuce in space asUnited States space agency NationalAeronautics and Space Administration






(NASA) is all set to send the largest everplant growth chamber to the InternationalSpace Station (ISS).

• It will launch the Vegetable ProductionSystem aboard SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

• The plant growth chamber will growlettuce inside prototype flight pillows thatwill help the plants withstand zerogravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue,and green light emitting diodes (LEDs)will help sustain the vegetables, and theplant chamber itself can grow to 11.5inches wide and 14.5 inches deep.

• This will be "the largest plant growthchamber for space to date.

• The chamber may even be used for moreambitious projects, like providing food forthe average person back on Earth. Afterextensive testing on weightlesshorticulture, NASA is confident the lackof gravity will not impede growth.

• However, space-borne micro-bes thatmay develop during growth are a causeof concern. Therefore, the lettuce willundergo extensive testing beforeastronauts chow down.

High Manganese level Detected in theSelaulim Reservoir

• High manganese level has been detectedin the Selaulim reservoir in Goa, whichsup-plies drinking water to more than halfof the coastal State. The governmentengineers have however said that therewas "no reason" to worry.

• The State Public Works Department hasstarted monitoring the water content atthe South Goa reservoir.

• The manganese level in the water fromthe reservoir has risen up from 0.1 to 0.8mg per litre.

• The reservoir has an earth dam withconcrete spillway and is on the Selaulim

tributary of Zuari river.• The reservoir has production capacity of

214 MLD of water, which is supplied toentire South Goa and some parts of northdistrict.

LADEE• NASA's robotic moon explorer, LADEE,

is no more.• Researchers believe LADEE likely

vaporized when it hit because of itsextreme orbiting speed of 3,600 mph(5,800 kph), possibly smacking into amountain or side of a crater. No debriswould have been left behind.

• LADEE - short for Lunar Atmosphere andDust Environment Explorer - waslaunched in September from Virginia.From the outset, NASA planned to crashthe spacecraft into the back side of themoon, far from the Apollo artifacts leftbehind during the moonwalking days of1969 to 1972.

Earth-like Planet Spotted• Astronomers have discovered what they

say is the most Earth-like planet yetdetected a distant, rocky world that'ssimilar in size to our planet and exists inthe Goldilocks zone where it's not too hotand not too cold for life.

• The planet was detected by NASA'sorbiting Kepler telescope, whichexamines the heavens for subtle changesin brightness that indicate an orbitingplanet is crossing in front of a star. Fromthose changes, scientists can calculate aplanet's size and make certain inferencesabout its makeup.

• The newfound object, dubbed Kepler-186f, circles a red dwarf star 500 lightyears from Earth in the constellationCygnus. A light year is about 9.5 trillionkm.






• The planet is about 10 per cent larger thanEarth and may very well have liquidwater a key ingredient for life on itssurface. That is because it resides at theouter edge of the habitable temperaturezone around its star the sweet spot wherelakes, rivers or oceans may exist withoutfreezing solid or boiling away.

World's Smallest, Fastest Nanomotor• Researchers have built the smallest,

fastest and longest-running tiny syntheticmotor to date.

• The team's nanomotor is an importantstep toward deve-loping miniaturemachines that could one day movethrough the body to administer insulin fordiabetics when needed, or target and treatcancer cells without harming good cells.

• With the goal of powering these yet-to-be invented devices, UT Austin engineersfocused on building a reliable, ultra-high-speed nanomotor that can convertelectrical energy into mechanical motionon a scale 500 times smaller than a grainof salt.

• The team's three-part nano-motor canrapidly mix and pump biochemicals andmove through liquids, which is importantfor future appli-cations.

• With all its dimensions under 1micrometer in size, the nanomotor couldfit inside a human cell and is capable ofrotating for 15 continuous hours at aspeed of 18,000 RPMs, the speed of amotor in a jet airplane engine. Compa-rable nanomotors run signi-ficantly moreslowly, from 14 RPMs to 500 RPMs, andhave only rotated for a few seconds up toa few minutes.

Indian Cities with Minimum airPollution

• Hassan city is among three Indian cities

with minimum air pollution, according tothe latest World Health Organi-sation(WHO) study on ambient air quality. Thestudy spanned over 1,600 cities in 91countries.Of the 123 Indian cities that were coveredby the study, Hassan ranked third in termsof least concentration of dust particles inair. The other two cities are Kollam andPathanamthitta in Kerala.

• The WHO conducted the study andprepared a database of ambient airquality, considering the concentration ofparticulate matter in air. Particulatematter with a diameter of 10 micron(PM10) and 2.5 micron (PM2.5) wereconsidered for the study. The collecteddaily measurements or data wereaggregated into annual mean for thedatabase.

• As per the database, in Hassan, the annualmean of PM10 was recorded at 44 ?g/m3(micrograms per cubic metre of air) andPM2.5 at 19 ?g/m3.

• In Kollam, it was 39 ?g/m3 and 17 ?g/m3 respectively and in Pathanamthitta, itwas 23 ?g/m3 and 10 ?g/m3 respectively.

• The concentration of particulate matterrecorded in Pathanamthitta is closer to therecommended level.

New Species of Dancing Frogs• Scientists have discovered 14 new species

of so-called dancing frogs in the WesternGhats, just in time, they fear, to watchthem fade away.

• Indian biologists say they found the tinyacrobatic amphibians, which earned theirname with the unusual kicks they use toattract mates, declining dramatically innumber during the 12 years in which theychronicled the species throughmorphological descriptions andmolecular DNA markers. They breed after






the yearly monsoon in fast-rushingstreams, but their habitat appears to bebecoming increasingly dry.

• The study listing the new speciespublished in the Ceylon Journal of Sciencebrings the number of known Indiandancing frog species to 24.

• Only the males dance: it's actually aunique breeding behavior called foot-flagging. They stretch, extend and whiptheir legs out to the side to draw theattention of females who might havetrouble hearing mating croaks over thesound of water flowing through perennialhill streams.

• They bigger the frog, the more they dance.These are tiny, delicate frogs no biggerthan a walnut and can easily be sweptaway in a gushing mountain stream. Sobreeding happens only once the level of astream drops to the point where the waterbabbles over stones.

WHO Report on Pollution• The 2014 version of the Ambient Air

Pollution (AAP) database contains resultsof monitoring of outdoor air pollutionfrom 1600 cities in 91 countries and itfound that Delhi has the highestconcentration of PM2.5 - particulatematters less than 2.5 microns - form of airpollution.

• According to WHO, this type ofconcentration is dangerous because itconsists of tiny particles that increase therisk of respiratory diseases and otherhealth problems.

• The Delhi air has PM2.5 concentrationsof 153 micrograms and PM10concentrations of 286 micrograms, whichis much more than the permissible limits.

• Beijing, which was once regarded bymany as the most polluted cities in theworld, has PM2.5 concentration of 56

micrograms and PM10 concentration of121 micro grammes.

• The WHO study covers the database from2008 to 2013, with the majority of valuesfor the years 2011 and 2012.

Change in U.S. Climate• The effects of human-induced climate

change are being felt in every corner ofthe United States, with water growingscarcer in dry regions, torrential rainsincreasing in wet regions, heat wavesbecoming more common and moresevere, wildfires growing worse, andforests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.

• Such sweeping changes have been causedby an average warming of less than 2degrees Fahrenheit over most land areasof the country in the past century, thescientists found. If greenhouse gases likecarbon dioxide and methane continue toescalate at a rapid pace, they said, thewarming could concei-vably exceed 10degrees by the end of this century.

• Climate change, once consi-dered an issuefor a distant future, has moved firmly intothe present.

• The report is the latest in a series of direwarnings about how the effects of globalwarming that had been long foreseen byclimate scientists are already affecting theplanet. Its region-by-region documen-tation of changes occurring in the UnitedStates, and of future risks, makes clearthat few places will be unscathed - andsome, like northerly areas, are feeling theeffects at a swifter pace than had beenexpected.

• Alaska in particular is hard hit. Glaciersand frozen ground in that state aremelting, storms are eating away at fragilecoastlines no longer protected by wintersea ice, and entire communities are having






to flee inland - a precursor of the large-scale changes the report foresees for therest of the United States.

"Save Our Snow Leopards"• The strikingly beautiful snow leopards

are in "real danger" and there was needto observe, study and develop ways toconserve this rare and endangered speciesas only 400-700 of the world's bestmountain climbers remain in India,according to a leading conservationorganisation.

• Launching a campaign "Save Our SnowLeopards", WWF-India said thatpoaching is the major challenge for theprotection of this so magni-ficent speciesfound high altitude Himalayan region.

• Snow leopards are poached for their peltswhile their bones and other body partsare also in demand for use in traditionalAsian medicines.

• Snow leopards also face habitat and preyloss with the increase of humansettlements and developmental activitiesin their territories.

• The snow leopard is found across almost1,29,000 sq kms in India, in the states ofJammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand,Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and ArunachalPradesh.

• The WWF-India said that the snowleopard is at the apex of the mountain eco-system and is also an indicator species forthe high altitude mountain ecosystem.

Happy Earth Day doodle• Google is celebrating Earth Day"(April

22), which is marked to raise awarenessfor our planet's environment, throughanimated doodles featuring six creaturesfrom the animal planet.

• Earth Day was first held in 1970 and isnow observed in over 192 countries each

year, with activities being coordinated bythe nonprofit Earth Day Network whichis chaired by the first Earth Daycoordinator Denis Hayes.

These are a few facts about theseanimals:

• The Rufous Hummingbird, which is thefirst to appear, is beautifully incorporatedin the doodle. A couple of bloomingflowers become the Os of Google as theRufous hummingbird, which is known toattack flowers relentlessly, flaps its wingsat the speed of light while devouring thenectar.

• The Rufous Hummingbird makes one ofthe longest migratory journeys of any birdin the world, as measured by body size.

• Next is a pair of sleeping JapaneseMacaques sticking to each other forwarmth in the falling snow as they makethe Os of Google. They are also knownsas "snow monkeys" and inhabit three outof four main islands of Japan.

• Then there is the bloated, rotating pufferfish which is known for its abilitytransform and enlarge its body in a splitof a second. It also makes one of the Os ofGoogle.

• The puffer fish is one of the mostpoisonous creatures on Earth and isconsidered a major delicacy in Japan.When prepared correctly, the flesh of thefish gives a tingling sensation on thetongue because of a non-lethal dose oftetrodotoxin which is a potent neurotoxinand has no antidote.

• However, anyone eating a badly madedish of puffer fish could completely beparalysed and die.

River policing• Batting to end all encroach-ments and to

enforce a ban on developmental activities



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on the floodplains of River Yamuna, theUnion ministry of Environment andForests (MoEF) said that a dedicated'river policing' unit should be set up tostop unauthorised construction andmaintain the ecological integrity of theriver.

• It also said the entire 52-km stretch of theYamuna in Delhi and UP should bedeclared a 'conservation zone' in order toframe proper rules for permitting/prohibiting human activities.

• The MoEF recommendations came in theform of a report to the National GreenTribunal (NGT) for saving Yamuna.

• Acting on a complaint byenvironmentalist Manoj Mishra regarding"serious degradation" of the river, NGTlast year asked MoEF to submit acomprehensive report for restoration,preservation and beautification of theriver, as well as identify people whoshould carry out the work.

• It has also sought immediate action foridentifying "addi-tional landfill sites,catering to the next 25 years of require-ment" as there is shortage of landfill sitesin Delhi.

• The MoEF has recommended a slew ofmeasures like controlled dredging,construction of culverts, development ofwetlands and floodplain vegetationhaving native biodiversity, developmentof green belt on both sides of theembankments, controlling of sewagepollution, etc for saving the Yamuna. Italso said agricultural activity onfloodplains should be regulated to totallyprohibit the use of pesticides andfertilisers.

• The ministry has also called for a separateprogramme for promoting publicawareness on river conservation and

community participation in restoration,management and monitoring of the river.

15 Endangered Indian Birds• Fifteen Indian bird species are part of a

list of avians which are evolutionarilydistinct and globally endangered. TheZoo-logical Society of London (ZSL) andYale University has come out with a studyof 100 Evolutionarily Distinct andGlobally Endangered (EDGE) speciesworldwide.

• The study says Bengal Florican, LesserFlorican, Great Indian Bustard, SociableLapwing and Jerdon's Courser are birdsthat are under threat due to thedestruction of their habitat of grasslandsand scrub forests. The survival of Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Siberian Crane andWhite-bellied Heron greatly depend onthe existence of their wetland habitat.

• Forest Owlet's survival is impossible if itshabitat of deciduous forests in centralIndia is destroyed, the study said.Officials of the Bombay Natural HistorySociety (BNHS), which works on theconservation of 12 of these threatenedbirds, said these species were threatenedby human factors such as uncontrolledurbanisation, unsustainableindustrialisation and rampant use ofchemicals in agriculture.

Indian projects shortlisted for GreenOscars

• IT giant Infosys leads five Indian cleanenergy projects that have been shortlistedfor the annual Ashden Awards, referredto as the Green Oscars.

• The awards recognise world-widecontributions towards green energyinitiatives and a move away from fossilfuels.

• Infosys has been nominated in the






'Ashden Award for Sustain-ableBuildings' category for the Bangalore-based company's cutting edge design ofnew buildings which helps keep officescooler and maximises natural light.

• The other finalists include two projectsfrom Maharashtra - Sakhi Unique RuralEnterprise (SURE) and GreenwayGrameen - which have been nominatedin the 'Ashden Clean Energy for Womenand Girls Award' category.

• SURE is a not-for-profit social enterprisein central Maharashtra that has selected,trained and supported more than 600women micro-entrepreneurs to sell cleanenergy products like solar lanterns andcleaner cook-stoves to other women.

• Mumbai based Greenway Grameen'smission is to provide an affordable,desirable cookstove to improve quality oflife for Indian women.

The link between tobacco and cancer inIndia

♦ Every year nearly one million new cancercases are diagnosed in India, theprevalence being 2.5 million. Withmortalities of 6,00,000-7,00,000 a year,cancer causes six per cent of all adultdeaths in the country.

♦ The number of deaths per year isprojected to shoot up to 1.2 million by2035, according to a series of paperspublished in the Lancet Oncology journal.

♦ Currently, people in the 30-69 age groupaccount for over two-thirds of cancerdeaths in India, with less than a thaird ofthe patients surviving more than fiveyears after diagnosis.

♦ The most common, nearly half of all, arecancers of the lung and oral cavity in men,and of the breast and cervix in women.

♦ Tobacco use alone accounts for about 40

per cent of all cancers in India.♦ The geographical distribution of cancers

is quite varied across the country. Basedon the data from Chennai, cervical cancerwas more prevalent (22.7 per 100,000)than breast cancer in Tamil Nadu, whileoral cancer accounted for 243 per 100,000men in Kerala.

♦ With a rate of 215 per 100,000 women,Delhi had the highest incidence of gallbladder cancer in women in the world.

Plant growth chamber for space♦ Astronauts will now turn into cosmic

gardeners and grow lettuce in space asUnited States space agency NationalAeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) is all set to send the largest everplant growth chamber to the InternationalSpace Station (ISS).

♦ It will launch the Vegetable ProductionSystem aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.

♦ The plant growth chamber will growlettuce inside prototype flight pillows thatwill help the plants withstand zerogravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue,and green light emitting diodes (LEDs)will help sustain the vegetables, and theplant chamber itself can grow to 11.5inches wide and 14.5 inches deep.

♦ This will be “the largest plant growthchamber for space to date.

♦ The chamber may even be used for moreambitious projects, like providing food forthe average person back on Earth. Afterextensive testing on weightlesshorticulture, NASA is confident the lackof gravity will not impede growth.

♦ However, space-borne microbes that maydevelop during growth are a cause ofconcern. Therefore, the lettuce willundergo extensive testing beforeastronauts chow down.






High manganese level in Selaulimreservoir

♦ High manganese level has been detectedin the Selaulim reservoir in Goa, whichsupplies drinking water to more than halfof the coastal State. The governmentengineers have however said that therewas “no reason” to worry.

♦ The State Public Works Department hasstarted monitoring the water content atthe South Goa reservoir.

♦ The manganese level in the water fromthe reservoir has risen up from 0.1 to 0.8mg per litre.

♦ The reservoir has an earth dam withconcrete spillway and is on the Selaulimtributary of Zuari river.

♦ The reservoir has production capacity of214 MLD of water, which is supplied toentire South Goa and some parts of northdistrict.

LADEE♦ NASA’s robotic moon explorer, LADEE,

is no more.♦ Researchers believe LADEE likely

vaporized when it hit because of itsextreme orbiting speed of 3,600 mph(5,800 kph), possibly smacking into amountain or side of a crater. No debriswould have been left behind.

♦ LADEE - short for Lunar Atmosphere andDust Environment Explorer - waslaunched in September from Virginia.From the outset, NASA planned to crashthe spacecraft into the back side of themoon, far from the Apollo artifacts leftbehind during the moonwalking days of1969 to 1972.

Earth-like planet spotted♦ Astronomers have discovered what they

say is the most Earth-like planet yet

detected a distant, rocky world that’ssimilar in size to our planet and exists inthe Goldilocks zone where it’s not too hotand not too cold for life.

♦ The planet was detected by NASA’sorbiting Kepler telescope, whichexamines the heavens for subtle changesin brightness that indicate an orbitingplanet is crossing in front of a star. Fromthose changes, scientists can calculate aplanet’s size and make certain inferencesabout its makeup.

♦ The newfound object, dubbed Kepler-186f, circles a red dwarf star 500 lightyears from Earth in the constellationCygnus. A light year is about 9.5 trillionkm.

♦ The planet is about 10 per cent larger thanEarth and may very well have liquidwater a key ingredient for life on itssurface. That is because it resides at theouter edge of the habitable temperaturezone around its star the sweet spot wherelakes, rivers or oceans may exist withoutfreezing solid or boiling away.

15 endangered Indian birds♦ Fifteen Indian bird species are part of a

list of avians which are evolutionarilydistinct and globally endangered. TheZoological Society of London (ZSL) andYale University has come out with a studyof 100 Evolutionarily Distinct andGlobally Endangered (EDGE) speciesworldwide.

♦ The study says Bengal Florican, LesserFlorican, Great Indian Bustard, SociableLapwing and Jerdon’s Courser are birdsthat are under threat due to thedestruction of their habitat of grasslandsand scrub forests. The survival of Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Siberian Crane andWhite-bellied Heron greatly depend onthe existence of their wetland habitat.






♦ Forest Owlet’s survival is impossible if itshabitat of deciduous forests in centralIndia is destroyed, the study said.Officials of the Bombay Natural HistorySociety (BNHS), which works on theconservation of 12 of these threatenedbirds, said these species were threatenedby human factors such as uncontrolledurbanisation, unsustainableindustrialisation and rampant use ofchemicals in agriculture.

Indian projects shortlisted for GreenOscars

♦ IT giant Infosys leads five Indian cleanenergy projects that have been shortlistedfor the annual Ashden Awards, referredto as the Green Oscars.

♦ The awards recognise worldwidecontributions towards green energyinitiatives and a move away from fossilfuels.

♦ Infosys has been nominated in the‘Ashden Award for Sustainable Buildings’category for the Bangalore-basedcompany’s cutting edge design of newbuildings which helps keep offices coolerand maximises natural light.

♦ The other finalists include two projectsfrom Maharashtra — Sakhi Unique RuralEnterprise (SURE) and GreenwayGrameen — which have been nominatedin the ‘Ashden Clean Energy for Womenand Girls Award’ category.

♦ SURE is a not-for-profit social enterprisein central Maharashtra that has selected,trained and supported more than 600women micro-entrepreneurs to sell cleanenergy products like solar lanterns andcleaner cookstoves to other women.

♦ Mumbai-based Greenway Grameen’smission is to provide an affordable,desirable cookstove to improve quality oflife for Indian women.

Climate Panel onRising Emissions

♦ The U.N.’s expert panel on climate changehas highlighted the disconnect betweeninternational goals to fight globalwarming and what is being done to attainthem.

♦ Emissions of carbon dioxide and othergreenhouse gases must drop by 40—70per cent by 2050 to keep the globaltemperature rise below the 2—degree C(3.6—degree F) cap set in U.N. climatetalks, the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change said.

♦ The opposite is happening now. Onaverage global emissions rose by 2.2percent or 1 gigaton a year between 2000and 2010, outpacing growth in previousdecades to reach “unprecedented levels”despite some efforts to contain them, theIPCC said.

♦ The graphics divided the world into fourcategories low, lower—middle, upper—middle and high income countries.Participants in the closed—door sessionsaid many developing countries objectedto using such income categories.

♦ Counting all emissions since theindustrialized revolution in the 18thcentury, the U.S. is the top carbon polluter.China’s current emissions are greater thanthose of the U.S. and rising quickly.China’s historical emissions are expectedto overtake those of the U.S. in the nextdecade.

♦ Global temperatures have already risenabout 0.8 C since record—keeping startedin the 19th century. The IPCC said the goalof keeping the warming below 2 C by2100 would require a significant shift inthe energy system, away from oil andcoal, which generate the highestemissions. That would mean a near—






quadrupling of energy from zero— orlow—carbon sources such as solar andwind power.

New spy satellite by Israel♦ Israel has successfully launched a new

observation satellite into orbit, one whichis expected to be used to observe Iran andhostile militant groups in the Middle East.

♦ The Israeli-made “Ofek 10” satellite waslaunched in cooperation with state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. Thesatellite has already begun transmittingdata and visual material. It is expected tobe operational within months.

♦ Israel is expected to use the satellite tokeep tabs on Iran and the region. Itbelieves Iran is trying to develop a nuclearweapon a charge Iran denies and accusesit of arming militants across the region.

♦ Unlike other countries that launchsatellites eastward in the direction of theearth’s orbit, Israel launched the satellitewestward, opposite the direction of theearth’s orbit, to prevent debris followingthe launch to land in enemy countries eastof Israel. The satellite completes a fullorbit around the earth every 90 minutes.

The Rising Red Planet♦ This month, the Red Planet (Mars) looks

bigger and brighter than it has for the pastsix years.

♦ That may sound like the Great Mars Hoax— the occasional (and totally false) claimthat Mars will loom as big as the moon inthe night sky. But in this case, the claim istotally true. This month, Mars will haveits closest encounter with Earth sinceDecember 2007.

♦ The reason has to do with orbitalmechanics. As Earth and Mars trace theirelliptical orbits around the sun, thedistance between the two planets varies

dramatically. There are times when theseparation amounts to almost 250 millionmiles (400 million kilometers). On April14, that separation narrows to a mere 57million miles (92 million kilometers).

Tectonic plates of Earth♦ The tectonic plates of earth took around

one billion years to form.The outermostlayer of earth, or lithosphere, wasweakened by movement in viscous layersbelow it. Around four billion years ago,cooler parts of crust of earth were pulleddownwards into the warmer uppermantle and it damaged the surroundingcrust. It continued until the weak areasformed plate boundaries.

♦ To investigate how the plates formed,Bercovici and Yanick Ricard of Universityof Lyon in France developed a computermodel of earth’s crust as it may haveexisted billions of years ago.

♦ The model included a low-pressure zoneat the base of the crust which caused apiece of the crust to sink into the uppermantle - mimicking conditions thought tohave occurred early in the earth’s history.

♦ As the process repeated over time, itcreated a large tectonic plate with anactive subduction zone.

♦ Prior studies suggested the age of theplates based on evidence of subductiongathered from minerals preserved inancient rocks.

♦ In geology, subduction is the process thattakes place at convergent boundaries bywhich one tectonic plate moves underanother tectonic plate and sinks into themantle as the plates converge.

♦ The oldest such specimens are four-billion-year-old zircons found in the JackHills of Australia that appear to haveformed at temperatures and pressuresthat are indicative of subduction.






Varicose veins♦ Varicose veins are a widely prevalent

condition where veins, typically in the leg,swell and become twisted.

♦ The development of varicose veins is notwell understood.Women can get varicoseveins during pregnancy and it is oftenseen in those who need to stand for longperiods of time, such as policemen andshop assistants.

♦ There is also a strong genetic componentto it. When both parents suffered from thecondition, their progeny had 90 per centrisk of developing it too, compared to a25 per cent to 62 per cent risk when onlyparent had it and 20 per cent risk whenneither parent had been affected.

♦ The researchers decided to look atwhether a gene know as ‘human forkheadbox C2’ (FoxC2) could be involved. Thisgene is known to be important for bloodvessel development.

Gilead hepatitis C drug patent♦ Natco Pharmaceuticals, the Hyderabad-

based generic pharmaceutical company,has filed a ‘pre-grant opposition’ with theIndian Controller General of Patents,Designs & Trademarks to prevent thegranting of a patent to U.S.pharmaceutical major Gilead Sciences forits breakthrough drug for treatment ofHepatitis C, Sovaldi.

♦ Under India’s patent laws, a third partycan dispute the validity of a pendingpatent application.

♦ The grant of a patent can be opposedunder 11 grounds that include lack ofnovelty and inventive step.

♦ Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) andInitiative for Medicine and Access toKnowledge (I-MAK) have also filed pre-grant opposition on similar grounds

earlier.♦ Sofosbuvir is considered a breakthrough

as it is a once-daily regimen expected toreplace the injection-based therapy. It is adirect-acting anti-viral (DAA), andreduces treatment time to 12 weeks from24-48 weeks. The existing treatment hasseveral side-effects while sofosbuvir hasnone.

Heartbleed :The Internet Bug

♦ Heartbleed is an Internet bug that hasbeen widely employed in software thatsecures users’ personal information on theweb.

♦ In an advisory to users in the country, theComputer Emergency Response Team ofIndia, a nodal agency, has categorised theproblem’s severity as “high”.

♦ Ominously named Heartbleed, this buginterferes with the regular function ofsoftware called OpenSSL by causing it tospill the secrets, it’s tasked withprotecting, to malicious attackers.

♦ When users key in their personalinformation on a website and hit ‘Enter,’the data is on the Internet travellingbetween your computer and the site’sserver. To safeguard it, the site usesOpenSSL (SSL refers to Secure SocketsLayer) to encrypt it — turning it into anincoherent jumble of characters — usingan encryption key.

♦ With Heartbleed in the picture, OpenSSLallows malicious messages sent to theserver implementing it to potentiallyhand over the encryption key to theattacker.

♦ Companies like Amazon and Google haveissued advisories to their customersstating that they have updated theirsystems and eliminated the threat.






Kaspersky, a security firm, advisedcaution because a Heartbleed attackleaves no traces nor does it give users achance to protect themselves.

Tiangong 2♦ In 2015, China is expected to launch its

next space laboratory.♦ Tiangong 2 will follow on from the

Tiangong 1 module, which was launchedin 2011 and is still in orbit at the time ofwriting.

♦ Tiangong 1 received two crews ofastronauts and carried out China’s firstspace dockings.

♦ It is a small, roughly cylindrical modulewith a crew cabin and a service modulefeaturing solar panels. AlthoughTiangong 1 is officially designated as a“space laboratory”, it is really a smallspace station.

♦ The launch of Tiangong 2 has beenexpected for a long time, but spaceanalysts are puzzled by the nature of thisspacecraft.

♦ Originally, China planned to launch threeTiangong modules, and Tiangong 2 wasexpected to be a marginally improvedversion of the Tiangong 1 spacecraft.

♦ Later, China seemed to drop plans forthree Tiangongs and launch just two.

New guidelines for treating rape victims♦ The Union Health Ministry, which has

drawn new guidelines for treating rapevictims, has asked all hospitals to set upa designated room for forensic andmedical examination of victims besidesoutlawing the two-finger test performedon them, dubbing it as unscientific.

♦ The Department of Health Research(DHR) along with Indian Council ofMedical Research (ICMR) with the helpof experts formulated this set of national

guidelines for dealing with criminalassault cases, which will hopefully put anend to the “horrendous” medical process,which the victims are subjected to afterthe sexual abuse.

♦ The DHR has also drafted a new manualto address the psycho-social impact ofsexual violence including counselling thatthe victims should receive to alleviate herwoes.

♦ These guidelines have been madeavailable to health care providers whowork with victims of sexual violence.

Indoor maps launched by Google♦ Technology giant Google has launched

indoor maps in India that will help usersbrowse through and locate specificlocations inside venues like malls andmuseums.

♦ The service, available as part of GoogleMaps, is already available in countrieslike the U.S., Japan, Singapore, HongKong and the Netherlands.

♦ The service will be available free toAndroid and iOS users.

♦ Apart from the metros, indoor maps willcover locations in cities like Bhopal,Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Dehradun,Jaipur, Kochi, Lucknow, Ludhiana andMoradabad.

♦ Apart from malls, indoor maps would beavailable for National Gallery of ModernArt in Delhi, Salar jung museum inHyderabad and Hyderabad InternationalConvention Centre.

World’s first 3D fingerprint♦ A team of Michigan State University

computer scientists led by Indian Instituteof Technology(IIT) Kanpur alum Anil Jainhave built the first three-dimensionalmodel of a human fingerprint.






♦ Jain, a University Distinguished Professorof computer science and engineering, andhis team did was develop a method thattakes a two-dimensional image of afingerprint and maps it to a 3-D fingersurface.

♦ The 3-D finger surface, complete with allthe ridges and valleys that make up thehuman fingerprint, is made using a 3-Dprinter. It creates what Jain’s team calleda fingerprint “phantom.”

♦ While the 3-D model doesn’t yet have theexact texture or feel of a real finger, itcould advance fingerprint sensing andmatching technology.

Commitment of Google to involve morewomen into technology sector

♦ The Reserve Bank said that India is fullycommitted to bring in reforms in theover—the—counter (OTC) derivativesmarkets, but its pace and nature willdepend on the domestic marketconditions.

♦ However, the pace and scope of reformimplementation depend on the domesticmarket conditions and characteristics,” itsaid in a report on ‘OTC DerivativesMarket Reforms’

♦ In response to the financial crisis thatbegan in 2008, G—20 had initiated a seriesof reforms designed to strengthenregulation and oversight of the financialsystem and tasked the Financial StabilityBoard (FSB) with coordinating thereforms and assessing theirimplementation.

♦ In India, the OTC derivative productswere introduced by RBI in a phasedmanner, keeping in view the hedgingneeds of the real sector.

Smaller particles than Higgs Boson♦ Until 2012, nobody was certain it existed

till the European Organisation for NuclearResearch (CERN) announced they hadfound the God Particle.

♦ Scientists now say that it is more likelythan ever now that there must be particlessmaller than Higgs particle

♦ According to the Standard Model,everything, from flowers and people tostars and planets, consists of just a fewbuilding blocks: matter particles. Theseparticles are governed by forces mediatedby force particles that make sureeverything works as it should.

♦ The entire Standard Model also rests onthe existence of a special kind of particle:the Higgs particle.

♦ CERN’s particle collider, LHC (LargeHadron Collider), is probably the largestand the most complex machine everconstructed by humans.

♦ Last year, the Royal Swedish Academy ofSciences announced that the 2013 NobelPrize for Physics to Peter Higgs afterwhom the particle is named.

♦ If techni-quarks exist they will form anatural extension of the Standard Modelwhich includes three generations ofquarks and leptons.

♦ These particles together with thefundamental forces form the basis of theobserved matter in the universe.

Setting up a chain of 25 cancerdetection

♦ Medical diagnostics and imagingequipment company GE Healthcare,saidit was jointly investing Rs.720 crore withU.S.-based Cancer Treatment ServicesInternational (CTSI) to set up a chain of25 cancer detection and treatment centresacross the country.

♦ GE Healthcare would put a minor portioninto the $120-million programme plannedover the next five years.






♦ With the new tie-up format, thediagnostics-focussed company had madeits closest approach towards treating adisease anywhere in the world.

♦ GE was also developing low-costdiagnostic technologies ‘in India and forIndia’ for various diseases, 100 of themtargeting cancer alone. It recentlylaunched a low-cost version of PET-CTthat is widely used to find canceroustumours.

♦ GE would provide equipment whileCTSI, which set up the 250-bed AmericanOncology Institute in Hyderabad in 2012,would take care of treatment, doctors,medical personnel and related services.

Creation of X-Rays brighter than amillion suns

♦ Scientists have for the first time evercreated the brightest light ever imaginedin the entire Universe.

♦ X-rays brighter than a million suns werecreated which exposed the biochemicalstructure of a 50 million-year-old fossilplant to stunning visual effect when theywere bombarded on it.

♦ The team of palaeontologists, geochemistsand physicists investigated the chemistryof exceptionally preserved fossil leavesfrom the Eocene-aged “Green RiverFormation” of the western United Statesby bombarding the fossils with X-raysproduced by synchrotron particleaccelerators.

♦ The work shows that the distribution ofcopper, zinc and nickel in the fossil leaveswas almost identical to that in modernleaves. Each element was concentrated indistinct biological structures such as theveins and the edges of the leaves and theway these trace elements and sulphurwere attached to other elements was very

similar to that seen in modern leaves andplant matter in soils.

♦ The data has led the team to conclude thatthe chemistry of the fossil leaves is notwholly sourced from the surroundingenvironment as has previously beensuggested but represents that of the livingleaves.

Rehearsal forPSLV-C24 Launch

♦ The campaign for the lift-off of the PolarSatellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C24) isgathering momentum. The rocket willblast off at 5.14 p.m. on April 4 fromSriharikota and put into orbit a 1,432-kgnavigation satellite, called the IndianRegional Navigation Satellite System(IRNSS-1B).

♦ Engineers of the Indian Space ResearchOrganisation (ISRO) have stacked up thevehicle’s four stages in the first launchpad. The satellite, sheathed in the heat-shield, has been mated with the vehicle.The launch rehearsal was completedwithout hitch.

♦ The IRNSS-1B is the second in a series ofseven satellites. The IRNSS-1A was putinto orbit on July 1, 2013. The PSLV willlaunch two more such satellites before theend of 2014.

♦ The IRNSS-1B will be useful in terrestrial,aerial and sea navigation. It will beamback accurate information on the positionof trucks, cars, battle tanks, aircraft,missiles, ships and submarines withprecise timing reference. Truck and cardrivers, pilots of civilian or combataircraft and ship captains can properlyplan their route using the IRNSS satelliteswhich will guide them towards theirdestination with the help of a receiver. Thesatellites will way-point the missiles totheir targets.






Chinese environment policy♦ Iron ore exporters from Goa may face

daunting task ahead for shipment of thenewly purchased steelmaking rawmaterial through online auctions due torestrictions imposed by Chinese recentlypassed environment law. The strictChinese environment law may also affectiron ore sales through online auctions inGoa.

♦ The state government of Goa conductedtwo auctions in the last one month todispose off little over two million tonnesof iron ore of the total unsold inventoryof around 11.5 million tonnes. While steelmills stayed away, traders and exportersdominated participation. Auctions for theremaining quantity are scheduled forshortly.

♦ Indian iron ore exporters face high exportduty of 30%, which make themuncompetitive in overseas markets. Apartfrom that, the government of China hasput strict environmental regulation inplace which restricts steel mills topurchase low grade iron ore fromanywhere in the world including India.

♦ Iron ore deposits in goal are mainly of lowgrade with between 45-60% of iron (Fe)content, which requires beneficiation toconvert into high grade pellets for directuse in furnace.

National Environment Regulator♦ The Congress has tried to make a virtue

of the inevitable by packaging theSupreme Court’s orders for setting up anational environment regulator as acommitment in its Lok Sabha electionmanifesto .

♦ The party promises to bring in “a Bill toset up a National EnvironmentalAppraisal and Monitoring Authority to

conduct rigorous and time-boundenvironmental appraisals andrecommend environment clearances … ina time-bound and transparent manner.”

♦ In tune with its recent inclinations, theparty promises to set up a regulatoryreform task force to review all regulatoryprocesses to streamline them and improvethe “ease of doing business in India.”

♦ While the UPA toyed with the idea ofsetting up an environment regulator in itssecond term, the move got a fillip whenthe Supreme Court endorsed such a bodyin the Lafarge judgement of February2012. It set a deadline for the governmentto set it up by the end of March 2014.

♦ While the UPA has consistently been introuble with the National Ganga RiverBasin Authority, it has promised moresuch bodies for other key rivers, and tostart a national mission on wind energy.

Birth of Mount Everest♦ Mount Everest - the world’s highest

mountain - may have been born as Asiawas squeezed like a tube of toothpasteafter India smashed into the rest of thecontinent, scientists say.

♦ The unexpectedly prolonged collision ledto the formation of the Himalayas andthen caused them to grow ever taller.

♦ These mountains are home to the world’s100 highest mountain peaks, including theEverest.

♦ Moresi and colleagues have developed acomputer model that explains whathappens when continents collide.

♦ The model shows that when one continentbears thick or buoyant crust that blockssubduction, the other continent getssqueezed like a tube of toothpaste andfolds around the blockage, creating acomplex array of geophysical features.






♦ It suggests that as India shoves intoEurasia, China and South-East Asiainitially resist being pushed underneath,and then get pushed aside instead.

♦ The process unclogs the subduction zoneand allows India to keep pushing intoEurasia, raising up Mount Everest and itstowering siblings.

The biggest environmental health risk♦ Air pollution killed an estimated 7 million

people around the world in 2012, makingit the biggest environmental health risk,according to the World HealthOrganization (WHO) .

♦ The situation was worst in developingand emerging countries in Southern Asia,South-East Asia and East Asia, where atotal of 3.3 million deaths were linked toindoor air pollution and 2.6 million tooutdoor pollution.

♦ Use of wood, coal or dung for cooking isthe biggest indoor polluter.

♦ In Europe’s industrialised countries,279,000 deaths could be traced to airpollution.

♦ The WHO said bad air quality outsidewas a result of unsustainable policies inthe transport, energy and waste sectors,as well as in industry.

♦ ‘Cleaning up the air would reduce risks,especially for vulnerable children and theelderly’, said the UN health body.

Nuclear fuel Complex♦ Following the approval of the Cabinet

Committee on Security, the country’ssecond nuclear fuel complex will come upat Kota in Rajasthan. The Rs. 2,400-crorecomplex, next to the Rawatbhata nuclearplant, will have the facility to reprocessatomic fuel.

♦ The Department of Atomic Energy hasmade the new arrangement, keeping in

mind the growing demand for fuelrequired for nuclear plants. The complexwill serve atomic plants which areproposed to be developed in Gorakhpur,Uttar Pradesh; Haryana; Jaitapur inMaharashtra and Mithi Virdhi in Gujarat.

♦ India’s first nuclear fuel complex,developed at Hyderabad, does not havethe capacity to meet the growingdemands from reactors which will comeup by the next decade. Also, under the12th Plan, India aims to increase itsnuclear energy generation capacity toover 17,300 MWe, from over 5,500 MWenow.

Ice loss in Greenland♦ According to a study , sea levels will

probably rise more now that the lastremaining stable portion of Greenland’sice sheet — the world’s second-largest —is unstable.

♦ Scientists have known Greenland’s icesheet has been thinning for decades, butfor the first time, they’ve found that’s evenoccurring in its northeast region that hadbeen stable for 25 years. Since 2003, thenortheast’s ice loss has nearly tripled.

♦ The decline of Greenland’s ice sheet,which is second in size only toAntarctica’s and covers 80% ofGreenland’s surface, has been a majorcontributor to global sea level rise overthe past 20 years.

Nuclear reactor to yield plutonium♦ Iran and world powers locked horns over

the future of a planned Iranian nuclearreactor that could yield plutonium forbombs as the United States warned “hardwork” will be needed to overcomedifferences when the sides reconvene inApril.

♦ Tehran’s foreign minister voiced






optimism that a July 20 deadline forsettling a long-running dispute about thescope of Iran’s nuclear programme waswithin reach.

♦ The meeting in Vienna was the second ina series that the six nations - the UnitedStates,China, Russia, Germany, France,Britain - hope will produce a verifiablesettlement, ensuring Iran’s nuclearprogramme is oriented to peaceful endsonly, and put to rest the risk of a newMiddle East war.

♦ Western nations want to ensure that theArak reactor is modified sufficiently toensure it poses no bomb proliferationthreat. Iran insists that the desert complexbe free to operate under any accord as itwould be designed solely to produceradio-isotopes for medical treatments.

Sea Anemones♦ Sea anemones are classified as animals,

but a surprising new research has foundthat these water-dwelling predatorycreatures are technically half plant andhalf animal.

♦ It was discovered that sea anemonesdisplay a genomic landscape with acomplexity of regulatory elements similarto that of fruit flies or other animal modelsystems.

♦ This suggests, that this principle of generegulation is already 600 million years oldand dates back to the common ancestorof human, fly and sea anemone.

♦ On the other hand, sea anemones aremore similar to plants rather tovertebrates or insects in their regulationof gene expression by short regulatoryRNAs called microRNAs.

Zebra pattern in Earth’s inner radiationbelt.

♦ Scientists, using data from the twin NASA

Van Allen Probes, have discovered a new,persistent pattern in Earth’s innerradiation belt.

♦ The probes, which launched on August30, 2012 as the Radiation Belt StormProbes, were re-named in honour ofphysicist James Van Allen who, in 1958,discovered the radiation belts encirclingour planet.

♦ The Van Allen Probes mission goal is toshed light on how and why radiationlevels in the belts change with time.

♦ The radiation belts are dynamic,doughnut-shaped regions around ourplanet, extending high above theatmosphere, made up of high-energyparticles trapped by Earth’s magneticfield.

♦ Radiation levels across the belts areaffected by solar activity, such as solarstorms, and can ebb and flow.

♦ During active conditions, radiation levelscan dramatically increase, which cancreate hazardous space weatherconditions that harm orbiting spacecraftand endanger humans in space.

Limb bone marrow’s earliest evidence♦ Scientists have found the earliest fossil

evidence for the presence of bone marrowin the fin of a 370 million-year-old fish.

♦ Long bones, which are found in the limbof tetrapods, are not only important forlocomotion and supporting the weight ofthe body, but also host the bone marrow.

♦ The latter plays a major role inhaematopoiesis, the formation of bloodcells. In a healthy adult human, about ahundred billion to one trillion new bloodcells are produced every day to maintainthe stable blood circulation.

♦ It was discovered that Eusthenopteron, aDevonian (370-million-year-old) lobe-finned fish from Miguasha in Canada that






is closely related to the first tetrapods,exhibited typical marrow processes insideits humerus (upper arm bone).

♦ These processes are longitudinal, largerthan blood vessel canals, and connect tothe shoulder and elbow joint surfaces ofthe humerus.

Green mobile in Ghana♦ Indian telecom equipment-maker Vihaan

Networks Ltd (VNL) is powering acommunications revolution in Africa,particularly in villages and remotelocations, through its innovative, greenmobile tower solutions.

♦ The latest to join its client list is Ghana,which has chosen VNL’s solar-powered‘WorldGSM’ mobile tower architecture —an environment-friendly and cost-effective mobile system — to deliveraffordable services in villages.

♦ VNL is already present in Nigeria,Uganda and Benin, while it is in talks withother African nations to deploy its cheapand green telecom solutions. In LatinAmerica, VNL has deployed its networkin Bolivia and Peru. In Bolivia, it haspartnered with Entel S.A., state-runtelecom operator, for deployment of GSMmobile tower sites in remote locationsunder the ‘Cobertura Movil Rural’ (ruralmobile coverage) project.

Kollam’s Bird survey♦ A brood of the highly elusive nocturnal

forest bird, the Great Eared Nightjar, hadbeen spotted in Kerala.

♦ A team of the nature lovers’ forumWarblers and Waders, on its annual birdsurvey at the Shendurney WildlifeSanctuary in Kollam during February,was able to record a Great Eared Nightjarsitting on brood in the forest. The Warblersand Waders team claim “it is the firstrecord from the State”.

♦ An earlier sighting had been recordedfrom the Siruvani foothills in Tamil Naduin May 1995. The Great Eared Nightjar(Eurostopodus macrotis bourdilloni)belongs to the nightjar family. It gets itsname from the two erect earlike tufts offeathers on its head, behind the eyes.

♦ The Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary is richin biodiversity and the Warblers andWaders has been conducting bird surveysthere in association with the Kerala ForestDepartment since 1995.

♦ Significant bird species recorded were thePainted Bush Quail, Sri LankanFrogmouth, White-Bellied BlackWoodpecker, Great Indian Pied Hornbill,Black Baza, Blue-Bearded Bee-eater, Red-Winged Crested Cuckoo, Great-earedNightjar, Lesser Fishing Eagle, MountainHawk Eagle, Booted Warbler, Blue RockThrush, Malay Bittern, Brown Fish Owl,Black-capped Kingfisher, Thick-billedWarbler, Speckled Piculet, WayanadLaughing Thrush, and the Nilgiri WoodPigeon.

Initiative by France to ease airpollution

♦ Recently, France has proposed freetransport over the weekend after poor airquality and pollution hit a record level inthe country’s northern region, particularlyin Paris and its suburbs.

♦ The increase in pollution level was causedby above average temperatures heatingup traffic and industrial pollutants andthe hot air re-circulating slowly acrossdensely populated north France and thecapital.

♦ In Paris, officials encourage residents andvisitors to use Velib and Autolib, publicsharing services of bicycle and electriccars.

♦ Furthermore, the government






recommended to reduce driving speeds,avoid intense physical activity andoutdoor walks with children under 6years of age, and a prohibition againstlighting fires outside.

World’s first solar-powered toilet♦ A revolutionary waterless toilet powered

by the sun, developed to help some of the2.5 billion people lacking safe andsustainable sanitation around the world,will be unveiled in India this month.

♦ Designed and built using a $7,77,000grant from the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation, the self-contained, waterlesstoilet with its innovative technologyconverts human waste to biochar, a highlyporous charcoal.

♦ It aims to provide an eco-friendly solutionto help some of the 2.5 billion peoplearound the world lacking safe andsustainable sanitation.



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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY · Kanpur (IIT-K) has unveiled a new supercomputer recently. • It is the...

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