SCIENCENVIRO (Opinion): India has become the world's biggest importer of arms, displacing China

• India has become the world's biggest importer of arms, displacing China by accounting for 10 per cent of global arms sales volumes.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Use of enriched uranium in PHWRs proposed

• The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) plan to use slightly enriched uranium (SEU) in the future 700 MWe Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) instead of the current technology of using natural uranium as the fuel in all the PHWRs of Indian nuclear programme until now.
• Natural uranium contains only 0.7 per cent of the fissile isotope Uranium-235, the rest being the fertile isotope Uranium-238, which gets converted to Plutonium-239 in the reactor by neutron absorption. 

  • The SEU, which is being proposed to be used in future 700 MWe PHWRs, will contain 1.1 per cent of U-235.
• The Light Water Reactors (LWRs) of the type being built at Kudankulam and the types that are likely to be supplied by other foreign vendors use low enriched uranium (LEU), which has 3 to 5 per cent U-235 enrichment.
• The advantage of using SEU, according to Mr. Jayaraj, is the higher nuclear burn-up that can be achieved.

  • Burn-up is a measure of the amount thermal energy that is extracted from a given amount of nuclear fuel.

Flaw led to claim of faster-than-light

• Researchers have found a flaw in the technical setup of an experiment that startled the science world last year by appearing to show particles travelling faster than light.
• Two separate issues were identified with the GPS system that was used to time the arrival of neutrinos at an underground lab in Italy
• One could have caused the speed to be overestimated, the other could have caused it to be underestimated
• The experiment involved neutrinos being fired from CERN's site on the Swiss-French border to a vast underground laboratory 730 km away at Gran Sasso in Italy.
• Researchers found that the neutrinos appeared to arrive 60 nanoseconds sooner than if they were travelling at light's speed of 299,792 km a second.
• The experiment's margin of error allowed for just 10 nanoseconds. A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.

Another green initiative from BIAL

• In what could be described as a shot in the arm for the promotion of alterative fuels such as biodiesel in the State, Karnataka State Biofuel Development Board has managed to rope in Bangalore International Airport Ltd. (BIAL) to use biofuel for running its ground vehicles at the airport.
• Bengaluru International Airport is said to be the first airport in the country to run ground vehicles on biofuel.About 10 BIAL ground vehicles are being operated by creating biodiesel blend mixing eco-friendly biooil with petroleum diesel.

War against polio far from over

• Having achieved one full polio-free year, the key challenge now is to ensure that any residual or imported poliovirus in the country is rapidly detected and eliminated.
• The challenge is also to ensure that all children up to 5 years continue to take OPV at every available opportunity (during polio campaigns and routine immunisations) until global eradication is achieved
• The last bastions of polio in India are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal
• On January 13, 2012 India achieved a milestone in the history of polio eradication — a 12-month period without any case of polio being recorded.
• In 2010, there were 42 cases, while as many as 1,50,000 cases were reported in 1985.
• Since the launch of Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, the incidence of wild poliovirus has reduced by 99 per cent
• In 2006, the number of polio-endemic countries (countries that have never stopped indigenous wild poliovirus transmission) was reduced to four — India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• One of the three types of wild poliovirus –— wild poliovirus type 2 (WPV2) has been eradicated globally. The last case of WPV 2 was reported from Aligarh in October 1999.
• The two polio-endemic States of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have not reported any case of polio since April 2010 and September 2010 respectively.
• The transmission of the most dangerous WPV1, which caused 95 per cent of polio in India until 2006, dropped to record low levels in 2010.
• Uttar Pradesh, the epicentre of most polio outbreaks in the country, has not reported any WPV1 case since November 2009.
• The challenge really is to check imported poliovirus because neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan have a large number of cases.

Virtual laboratories launched

• In an effort to provide easy access to education in the rural areas, the Human Resource Development Ministry on Thursday launched Virtual Labs — a collection of 91 online laboratories containing hundreds of experiments in nine disciplines of science and engineering.
• It is part of the government's National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), focusing on providing graduate and undergraduate students the facility to perform experiments, using the World Wide Web, a standard computer, and an Internet connection.
• It enables sharing of costly equipment across the country, and in the rural areas, students will be able to perform experiments that they would otherwise not be able to access.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Ant colonies use odour to compete with rivals

• A new study has shown that weaver ants share a collective memory for the odour of ants in rival nests, and use the information to identify them and compete, like sports fans knowing each other by their colours.

‘Use new frontiers in nano-technology'

• The new frontiers in nano-technology, for precise and result oriented delivery systems, can help us, in many specialized areas of agriculture and health.
• Issues like environmental safety and sustainability, through integrated pest management approaches are very important.
• The use of chemicals in agriculture and its adverse impact on the ecosystems is further complicating the overall scenario of food production, safety and sustainability.
• Former Member of Planning Commission urged to look into three major areas of concern — increasing load of agricultural chemicals causing soil and environmental problems, gradual increase in use of pesticides and lack of general awareness.

Test tube hamburgers to become a reality in October

• Scientists have claimed they would serve the world's first test tube hamburger this October.
• A team, led by Prof Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, says it has already grown artificial meat in the laboratory, and now aims to create a hamburger, identical to a real stuff, by generating strips of meat from stem cells.
• Although it is possible to extract a limited number of stem cells from cows without killing them, the scientists say the most efficient way of taking the process forward would still involve slaughter.
• Each animal will be able to produce about a million times more meat through the lab— based technique than through traditional method of butchery.
• To produce the meat, stem cells are placed in a broth containing vital nutrients and serum from a cow foetus which allow them to grow into muscle cells and multiply up to 30 times.
• At the moment the method produces meat with realistic fibres and a pinkish—yellow tinge, but the scientists expect to produce more authentically coloured strips in near future.
• The project, funded by a wealthy and anonymous individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food, and in doing so reduce one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

New iridescent lizard, sea snake species discovered

• 
• A new species of lizard with striking iridescent rainbow skin, a long tail and very short legs has been discovered in the rainforest in northeast Cambodia
• Scientists named the skink Lygosoma veunsaiensis to honour the Veun Sai-Siem Pang Conservation Area in Rattanakiri province where it was found, Conservation International (CI) said in a statement.
• The lizard was discovered in 2010 in the remote and little-explored rainforest area during biological surveys led by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) in partnership with CI
• These creatures are difficult to find because they spend so much of their life underground
• The lizard was the third new species in the last two years to be found in Veun Sai, following the discovery of a new type of bat and a gibbon.
• Scientists have discovered a new species of sea snake in the Gulf of Carpenteria, a shallow sea enclosed on three sides by Australia, which they claim could provide important clues about evolution.
  

  • The snake, which is unique in having raised scales, has been given the scientific name Hydrophis donaldii and the common name “rough-scaled sea snake” to reflect the scalation 
  • Hydrophis donaldii had evaded earlier discovery as it prefers estuarine habitats which are poorly surveyed and also not targeted by commercial fisheries.
• All venomous animals are bio- resources and provided sources of many life-saving medications such as treatments for high-blood pressure and diabetes.
  

  • This reinforces why we need to conserve all of nature as the next billion dollar wonder-drug may come from as unlikely a source as sea snake venom

Circadian rhythms linked to sudden cardiac death

• Ventricular arrhythmias, or abnormal heart rhythms, are the most common cause of sudden cardiac death: the primary cause of death from heart disease.
• They occur most frequently in the morning waking hours, followed by a smaller peak in the evening hours.
• The research team discovered that a novel genetic factor, Kruppel-like Factor 15 (KLF15), links the body's natural circadian rhythm to, and regulates the heart's electrical activity. A lack or excess of KLF15, causes a loss or disruption in the heart's electrical cycle and greatly increases susceptibility to arrhythmias.

  • A lack of KLF15 is seen in patients with heart failure, while its excess causes electrocardiography (ECG) changes such as those seen in patients with Brugada syndrome, a genetic heart rhythm disorder.
• With this understanding, scientists can propose new patient treatments with the goal of reducing incidences of sudden cardiac death.
• Further studies are needed to examine the how additional components of the biological clock can affect electrical stability in the heart.

Insect excreta

• Do small insects like mosquitoes and ants excrete solid waste? Are these excreta visible to the naked eye?
• Insects feed on different types of food and the nature of their excretory materials mainly depends on the type of foods that they consume. Insects feeding on liquid diet generally excrete liquid waste, whereas insects feeding on solid food produce dark coloured fecal pellets.
• The excretory substance of an insect is discharged from the anus and it contains the undigested food from the gut and metabolic excretions from the Malpighian tubules, the slender outgrowths of the gut that float freely in the blood. Insect gut is composed of fore-, mid- and hind-guts.
• The proteins in the blood meal are hydrolyzed in the midgut into free aminoacids which are essential for the synthesis of its egg yolk proteins.
• Because of the liquid diet, mosquito adults excrete the sticky feces. However, the feces are not visible unless a large number of mosquitoes excrete in a confined area.

A serious initiative to wean away youth from harmful habits

• If a few ounces of water can tell you whether sugar has been adulterated with powdered chalk, hydrochloric acid solution can reveal whether the coffee powder has been spiked with tamarind particles while a little washing soda can do the trick when it comes to determining the authenticity of jaggery.
• Highlighting the loopholes in the implementation of the Control of Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) was the mission of students from Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, who exposed the ambiguity in the pictorial signs on a few paan samples while volunteers from Government Yoga Naturopathy College upheld the Hippocrates axiom that food should be thy medicine and not the other way around; the diet, they said, was a powerful weapon in preventing and controlling disorders such as anaemia, diabetes and obesity.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Assange protests UNESCO “ban''

• WikiLeaks has lodged a strong protest with the UNESCO for “banning'' it from an international conference it is hosting at its headquarters in Paris on the impact of the whistleblower website's activities.
• Describing it as “an intolerable abuse'' of the U.N. organisation, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange demanded an immediate investigation and said it was “time to occupy UNESCO''.
• UNESCO reportedly told WikiLeaks that it “did not have intention to cause any polemic” and that WikiLeaks could attend the conference as long as it did not demand to participate as speakers.
• WikiLeaks argued, was an attempt “to deny WikiLeaks work as journalism''.

U.N. urged to get India to close Andaman Trunk Road

• British rights activists on Thursday urged the United Nations to press India to close the Andaman Trunk Road that runs through the Jarawa tribal reserve in order to end “human safaris” in the Andaman Islands.
• In a letter to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) ahead of a crucial meeting in Geneva, campaign group Survival International said that despite growing national and international pressure India had still not implemented the 2002 Supreme Court order on closing the road.
• Far from meddling in India's affairs, Britain, Europe and the U.N.'s concern shows the gravity of the situation, and the need to respect human rights by closing the road
• Recently, British MPs signed a parliamentary motion expressing concern over reports that tourists were taken in coaches to goggle at members of the Jarawa tribe, who were treated like attractions in a “human safari park.”

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Parkinson's disease: some hope for patients

• Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder affecting the nerve cells in the brain that control movements. As a result the nerve cells or neurons do not make the chemical dopamine leading to disharmony of neurotransmitters and cause the disorder
• Around one per cent of the country's population is estimated to be afflicted with the disease, which is more common in men and usually occurs around 60 years (adult onset). However, it is manifesting almost a decade earlier among Indians and even cases of young onset (below 40 years) are on the rise
• In most cases relating to “young onset” of the disease, the cause could be genetic.
• Under the specialised procedure, called Pallidotomy, a small 2-3 millimetre lesion in the sub-thalamus region of the brain is done and specific nucleus responsible for causing the involuntary and excessive movement of either hands or any other limb is destroyed by giving radio-frequency ablation. This, in turn, would set right the imbalance in neuro-chemicals in the brain and in the circuit.
• Although another procedure -- Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), involving implantation of electrodes in brain and connected to pace-maker -- was also is in vogue to provide relief to patients suffering from PD
• Pallidotomy was far less expensive than the former technique.
• Pallidotomy was that it was a one-time procedure

“Study climate change impact on food production”

• “Develop science to overcome the impact of the changes in the climate on food production,” M.S. Swaminathan, eminent agricultural scientist, appealed to scientists
• He pointed out that around 50 per cent of India's currently favourable, high potential, wheat production area may be reclassified as a heat stressed, lower potential, short season growing environment by 2050.
• For each one degree Celsius rise in mean temperature, wheat yield losses in India are likely to be around six million tonnes per year. Hence, the major implication for research would be ‘shift selection from per crop productivity to per day productivity'.
• He pleaded that everyone should realise the dream of Mahatma Gandhi who said “unsustainable lifestyles and unacceptable poverty should become problems of the past to achieve harmony with nature and with each other”.
• With “fatigue setting in on Green Revolution”, he advocated an “ever-green revolution” which means increasing productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm.
• According to him, a green economy is one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risk and ecological scarcities.
• Charting a pathway to sustainable livelihood, he suggested bio-villages with a focus on natural resources conservation and enhancement.
• He underlined the role of terrestrial carbon banks in mitigating climate change.
• Dr.Swaminathan was confident that bioresources could be converted into jobs and income in an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable manner. “This is the only way to break the dichotomy between the prosperity of Nature and poverty of people”, he asserted.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Cardiac stem cells can restore heart muscles, says study

• Infusion of cardiac stem cells into persons who suffered heart attack recently can help to regenerate their heart muscles, says a study published
• The stem cells were created from the patients' heart tissues.
• Visible improvements were seen in those who received infusion of stem cells, compared with the control group at the end of six months and a year. While no change in the scar size was seen in the control group, there was more than 12 per cent reduction in the size at the end of six months in the treatment group.
• Surprisingly, scar mass reduction was accompanied by an increase in viable myocardial mass.
• The study thus “challenges the conventional wisdom that once established, cardiac scarring is permanent, and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored.”
• However, a change in scar size was accompanied by only 2 per cent increase in ejection factor (the amount of blood pumped by the heart), which is not considered significant.

AYUSH to be included in national health schemes

• The Centre is planning to launch a special scheme for delivery of healthcare services in 100 out of 264 focus districts across the country where the health indicators are very low, by integrating allopathic and other Indian systems of medicine soon.
• Under the scheme, joint teams of doctors of allopathy, Ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and homoeopathy systems of medicine will visit villages frequently to bring about an improvement in the general health condition of people.
• Validation of systems of treatment in allopathic and AYUSH could not be done on common parameters as procedures in allopathy were laboratory-based while they were based on nature in AYUSH.
  “Indian systems of medicine will get back the body of a patient in harmony with the nature,”

‘DARE should become main lab for avionics in the country'

• The Defence Avionics and Research Establishment (DARE), which is celebrating its silver jubilee, should be developed as “the main laboratory for avionics in the country”
• Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister V.K. Saraswat urged technologists at the facility to prepare for the opportunities which would arise from the defence offsets that would result from the recent decision to source 126 Rafale medium multi-role combat aircraft.
• Warning that “that there will be cut-throat competition for supplying weapon systems”, Dr. Saraswat urged technologists at DARE to develop “indigenous systems.”
• Dr. Saraswat said the DRDO's labs were developing its “exclusive” operating system.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Expert sees hope on the horizon for multiple sclerosis cure

• Modern medicine stands somewhere half way in its race for a cure for Multiple Sclerosis, an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, and the next couple of years could see a larger choice of drugs and advances in personalised medicine
• Neurology which had gone past the stage of “ABCR” drugs (Avonex, Betaseron and Copaxone and Rebif), had now entered an era of personalised medicine where an array of about ten drugs could be optimised to completely block multiple sclerosis disease (MS) activity.
• There was also promising work with stem cells and molecules on remyelination or regenerating lost tissue.
• Also, while it is now recognised that there is a genetic basis for MS susceptibility, neurologists were still on a learning curve on the impact of genetics on diagnosis and treatment and in fully understanding variability.
• While the lack of diagnostic test and the non-specific nature of early-stage symptoms made MS a conundrum, neurologists were on much firmer ground when it came to identifying environmental triggers for MS such as low vitamin D levels, a history of Epstein-Barr virus ( EBV ) infection and smoking while the important unknowns included lifestyle, diet and stress
• Pointing out that the prevalence of multiple sclerosis in the U.S. was 100 per lakh of population, Dr. Rudick said prevalence of the disease in India remained unclear and possibly underestimated but would only go up as neurology grows and awareness about the condition improved.

Valentine's Day brings smiles to rose growers in northeast

• Soaring prices of roses resulting from shortfall in production across the country due to extreme cold have brought smiles to rose cultivators in the northeast, particularly those from Mizoram, as traders vie with one another to cater to the huge demand for Valentine's Day celebration in the region.
• About one lakh Dutch roses are expected to be sold in the northeast. About 50,000 roses are likely to be sold on Valentine's Day alone. Demand for about 40,000 flowers is expected to be met by production in the region while the rest would be flown in from Bangalore and Pune
• Apart from rose cultivators in Mizoram, strawberry growers in Meghalaya are also going to get a good return this time.
• Rose production in Nagaland and Meghalaya was hit because of extreme cold weather this winter. In Mizoram the weather was a little warmer due to which the production was on the expected lines.
• Rose is primarily grown in Mizoram, Nagaland and some areas of Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Technology ensures timely healthcare for pregnant women

• Health Department authorities have successfully used mobile phone technology to provide timely healthcare to pregnant women and infants in Karnataka.

  • Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), an innovative initiative launched by the Department of Health and Family Welfare in January last year, is aimed at tracking pregnant women throughout their pregnancy period and providing medical services to them as per the guidelines of the World Health Organisation. 
  • It also tracks children until they get full immunisation.
• MCTS had won Innovators' Challenge Award instituted by Rockefeller Foundation and mHealth Alliance.
• The jurisdictional Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) register pregnant women and issue a Thayi card.
• ANMs will monitor services given to pregnant women and children and inform the data centre about it by sending an SMS .

Contraband drugs destroyed in public

• Heroin, intoxicating tablets and marijuana worth over Rs. 100 crore in the international market were burned in a public place
• Officials said these contraband drugs had been seized in different raids in the hills over a year.
• Though the plants were periodically destroyed, the farmers continued to indulge in this lucrative business as the interior fields and high mountains were not easily accessible to officials.

A line of defence for zebras

• Scientists claim to have finally solved the mystery of why zebras evolved their distinctive black and white stripes — to keep blood-sucking flies at bay.

  • The pattern of narrow stripes makes zebras “unattractive” to the flies.
• From a white coat, you get unpolarised light while black horizontally-polarised light [light waves move along a horizontal plane]
• Unpolarised light waves travel along any and every plane, and are much less attractive to flies. As a result, white-coated horses are much less troubled by horseflies than their dark-coloured relatives.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Edakal cave yields one more Tamil-Brahmi inscription

• A short inscription engraved in the Brahmi characters has been discovered in the Edakal cave on the Ambukuthi hill in Kerala's Wayanad district. This is the fifth Tamil-Brahmi inscription discovered in the caves.
• M.R. Raghava Varier, retired Professor of Epigraphy, Calicut University, who made the latest discovery, has read the record as ‘Sri Vazhumi.'
• In Dr. Varier's interpretation, the inscription appears to be a label attached to a human figure, engraved exactly in the Edakal style of drawing. The figure is shown as having a big phallus, probably denoting fertility, and suggesting Brahma, the Creator himself.
• The term, ‘Vazhumi,' could be the Tamil rendering of the Sanskrit name, Brahma

Conservation reserve status for Jawai forests

• Rajasthan will soon accord the bio-diversity rich Jawai Bandh forests in Pali district the status of a conservation reserve.
• The rich forests and the water bodies along the Jawai dam in Sumerpur tehsil have a large presence of crocodiles. The wildlife census in 2011 had put their number at 288.
• The reserve is fifth in the category in the State. The conservation reserves, a concept introduced in the Act through the amendments, replaces the “closed area” concept.
• The existing conservation reserves in the State are Jhodbede in Bikaner district, Bisalpur in Tonk district, Soonda Mata in Jalore district and Gudha Vishnoi in Jodhpur district.
• Rajasthan has a lone community reserve — also introduced after the 2002 amendment to the Act — in Rotu in Nagaur district.
• Located in the south-western transition zone of the Aravallis on the Jawai river and the Luni river basin, and in close proximity of Kumbalgarh sanctuary, the Jawai dam was built in 1957 for drinking water purposes.
• The Jawai Bandh terrain was declared a closed area in 1983 and after the 2002 amendments it ceased to exist in that category.
• the creation of the conservation reserve would provide a fillip to eco-tourism and help preserve crocodiles, aquatic life in the dam and the leopard and wolf population in the forest.

Lakshya-1 test-flight

• India's indigenously developed micro-light pilotless target aircraft ‘Lakshya-1' was successfully test-flown from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, near here, on Wednesday, as part of a routine trial.
• Lakshya-1, fitted with an advanced digitally controlled engine, was once again test-flown at about 1.10 p.m. from a mobile launcher

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

“Need to involve anthropologists in making health policy”

• Anthropologists have not received due recognition in the eyes of those who control health care delivery

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Fourth phase of intensive tiger monitoring programme begins

• The fourth phase of the intensive ‘Tiger Monitoring Programme,' envisaged by the Tiger Task Force of

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Buxa Tiger Reserve to upgrade facilities

• Authorities of the Buxa Tiger Reserve are formulating plans for a major overhaul of the tourist facilities at

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Study to locate oil resources in Kerala-Konkan basin

• Efforts to locate oil in the Kerala-Konkan offshore basin may have failed so far, but the Oil and Natural

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

At loggerheads with loggers

• Peruvian authorities say they are struggling to keep outsiders away from a clan of previously isolated

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

History of horse domestication traced

• A study published today suggests that the common female ancestor of all modern horses lived between

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology to use Kankaria design for Bhopal Lake makeover

• City's Kankaria Lakefront project will lend its design to the country's oldest manmade lake in Bhopal.

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

New ‘killer' bacteria on the prowl: article

• After the scary New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase-1 or the “superbug” was detected two years ago,

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Follow China model and give fillip to solar units'

• “Solar India” had much to learn from the Chinese Government, banks and policy-makers and match

SciTech Medical and Envirnoment

Focus shifts to guaranteed delivery service in IT

• Mr. Gopalan (CEO of MNC) said the immediate challenge was to discover the ways to replicate the