(General Awareness For Bank's Exams) Science & tech
April - 2014

New spy satellite by Israel

• Israel has successfully launched a new observation satellite into orbit, one which is expected to be used to observe Iran and hostile militant groups in the Middle East.
•  The Israeli-made “Ofek 10” satellite was launched in cooperation with state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries. The satellite has already begun transmitting data and visual material. It is expected to be operational within months.
•  Israel is expected to use the satellite to keep tabs on Iran and the region. It believes Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon a charge Iran denies and accuses it of arming militants across the region.
•  Unlike other countries that launch satellites eastward in the direction of the earth’s orbit, to

prevent debris following the launch to land in enemy countries east of Israel. The satellite completes a full orbit 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 past six years.
•  That may sound like the Great Mars Hoax — the occasional (and totally false) claim that Mars will loom as big as the moon in the night sky. But in this case, the claim is totally true. This month, Mars will have its closest encounter with Earth since December 2007.
•  The reason has to do with orbital mechanics. As Earth and Mars trace their elliptical orbits around the sun, the distance between the two planets varies dramatically. There are times when the separation amounts to almost 250 million miles (400 million kilometers). On April 14, that separation narrows to a mere 57 million miles (92 million kilometers).

Tectonic plates of Earth

•  The tectonic plates of earth took around one billion years to form.The outermost layer of earth, or lithosphere, was weakened by movement in viscous layers below it. Around four billion years ago, cooler parts of crust of earth were pulled downwards into the warmer upper mantle and it damaged the surrounding crust. It continued until the weak areas formed plate boundaries.
•  To investigate how the plates formed, Bercovici and YanickRicard of University of Lyon in France developed a computer model of earth's crust as it may have existed billions of years ago.
•  The model included a low-pressure zone at the base of the crust which caused a piece of the crust to sink into the upper mantle - mimicking conditions thought to have occurred early in the earth's history.
•  As the process repeated over time, it created a large tectonic plate with an active subduction zone.
•  Prior studies suggested the age of the plates based on evidence of subduction gathered from minerals preserved in ancient rocks.
•  In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle as the plates converge.
•  The oldest such specimens are four-billion-year-old zircons found in the Jack Hills of Australia that appear to have formed at temperatures and pressures that 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 not well understood.Women can get varicose veins during pregnancy and it is often seen in those who need to stand for long periods of time, such as policemen and shop assistants.
•  There is also a strong genetic component to it. When both parents suffered from the condition, their progeny had 90 per cent risk of developing it too, compared to a 25 per cent to 62 per cent risk when only parent had it and 20 per cent risk when neither parent had been affected.
•  The researchers decided to look at whether a gene know as ‘human forkhead box C2’ (FoxC2) could be involved. This gene is known to be important for blood vessel development.

Gilead hepatitis C drug patent

• Natco Pharmaceuticals, the Hyderabad-based generic pharmaceutical company, has filed a ‘pre-grant opposition’ with the Indian Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trademarks to prevent the granting of a patent to U.S. pharmaceutical major Gilead Sciences for its breakthrough drug for treatment of Hepatitis C, Sovaldi.
•  Under India’s patent laws, a third party can dispute the validity of a pending patent application.
•  The grant of a patent can be opposed under 11 grounds that include lack of novelty and inventive step.
•  Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) and Initiative for Medicine and Access to Knowledge (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 to replace the injection-based therapy. It is a direct-acting anti-viral (DAA), and reduces treatment time to 12 weeks from 24-48 weeks. The existing treatment has several side-effects while sofosbuvir has none. 

Heartbleed : the internet bug

•  Heartbleed is an Internet bug that has been widely employed in software that secures users’ personal information on the web.
•  In an advisory to users in the country, the Computer Emergency Response Team of India, a nodal agency, has categorised the problem’s severity as “high”.
•  Ominously named Heartbleed, this bug interferes with the regular function of software called OpenSSL by causing it to spill the secrets, it’s tasked with protecting, to malicious attackers.
•  When users key in their personal information on a website and hit ‘Enter,’ the data is on the Internet travelling between your computer and the site’s server. To safeguard it, the site uses OpenSSL (SSL refers to Secure Sockets Layer) to encrypt it — turning it into an incoherent jumble of characters — using an encryption key.
•  With Heartbleed in the picture, OpenSSL allows malicious messages sent to the server implementing it to potentially hand over the encryption key to the attacker.
•  Companies like Amazon and Google have issued advisories to their customers stating that they have updated their systems and eliminated the threat. Kaspersky, a security firm, advised caution because a Heartbleed attack leaves no traces nor does it give users a chance to protect themselves.

The link between tobacco and cancer in India

• Every year nearly one million new cancer cases are diagnosed in India, the prevalence being 2.5 million. With mortalities of 6,00,000-7,00,000 a year, cancer causes six per cent of all adult deaths in the country.
• The number of deaths per year is projected to shoot up to 1.2 million by 2035, according to a series of papers published in the Lancet Oncology journal.
•  Currently, people in the 30-69 age group account for over two-thirds of cancer deaths in India, with less than a third of the patients surviving more than five years after diagnosis.
•  The most common, nearly half of all, are cancers 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. Based on the data from Chennai, cervical cancer was more prevalent (22.7 per 100,000) than breast cancer in Tamil Nadu, while oral cancer accounted for 243 per 100,000 men in Kerala.
•  With a rate of 215 per 100,000 women, Delhi had the highest incidence of gall bladder cancer in women in the world.

Plant growth chamber for space

•  Astronauts will now turn into cosmic gardeners and grow lettuce in space as United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to send the largest ever plant growth chamber to the International Space Station (ISS).
•  It will launch the Vegetable Production System aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
•  The plant growth chamber will grow lettuce inside prototype flight pillows that will help the plants withstand zero gravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue, and green light emitting diodes (LEDs) will help sustain the vegetables, and the plant chamber itself can grow to 11.5 inches wide and 14.5 inches deep.
•  This will be “the largest plant growth chamber for space to date.
•  The chamber may even be used for more ambitious projects, like providing food for the average person back on Earth. After extensive testing on weightless horticulture, NASA is confident the lack of gravity will not impede growth.
•  However, space-borne microbes that may develop during growth are a cause of concern. Therefore, the lettuce will undergo extensive testing before astronauts chow down.

High manganese level in Selaulim reservoir

•  High manganese level has been detected in the Selaulim reservoir in Goa, which supplies drinking water to more than half of the coastal State. The government engineers have however said that there was “no reason” to worry.
•  The State Public Works Department has started monitoring the water content at the South Goa reservoir.
•  The manganese level in the water from the reservoir has risen up from 0.1 to 0.8 mg per litre.
•  The reservoir has an earth dam with concrete spillway and is on the Selaulim tributary of Zuaririver.
•  The reservoir has production capacity of 214 MLD of water, which is supplied to entire South Goa and some parts of north district.

LADEE

• NASA's robotic moon explorer, LADEE, is no more.
•  Researchers believe LADEE likely vaporized when it hit because of its extreme orbiting speed of 3,600 mph (5,800 kph), possibly smacking into a mountain or side of a crater. No debris would have been left behind.
•  LADEE - short for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer - was launched in September from Virginia. From the outset, NASA planned to crash the spacecraft into the back side of the moon, far from the Apollo artifacts left behind during the moonwalking days of 1969 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’s similar in size to our planet and exists in the Goldilocks zone where it’s not too hot and not too cold for life.
•  The planet was detected by NASA’s orbiting Kepler telescope, which examines the heavens for subtle changes in brightness that indicate an orbiting planet is crossing in front of a star. From those changes, scientists can calculate a planet’s size and make certain inferences about its makeup.
•  The newfound object, dubbed Kepler-186f, circles a red dwarf star 500 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. A light year is about 9.5 trillion km.
•  The planet is about 10 per cent larger than Earth and may very well have liquid water a key ingredient for life on its surface. That is because it resides at the outer edge of the habitable temperature zone around its star the sweet spot where lakes, rivers or oceans may exist without freezing solid or boiling away. 

From thin air to drinking water

•  An Israeli company has developed a new and inexpensive technology that produces drinking water from thin air, an advancement that can address the problem of water scarcity in developing countries such as India.
• Using the technology, a litre of water can be produced for a mere Rs. 1.5, as compared to Rs. 15 for a litre of bottled water, the company claims. The Atmospheric Water-Generation Units created by Water-Gen use a “GENius” heat exchanger to chill air and condense water vapour.
•  The clean air is passed through the heat exchanger system where it gets dehumidified. The water is then removed from the air and collected in a tank inside the unit.
•  The company claims its water generator is more energy efficient than other such companies as it uses the cooled air created by the unit to chill incoming air. The system can produce 250-800 litres of potable water a day depending on temperature and humidity conditions.

Orbit of the International Space Station (ISS)

• The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) will be corrected by raising it by 2.15 kilometres.
•  The maneouver were carried out using the thrusters of the Progress M-21M cargo spacecraft.
•  The station was raised to the altitude of 415.2 kilometres and the adjustment is made to ensure better docking conditions of the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft, which is scheduled to blast off from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on May 28 to bring a new crew to the ISS.
•  The Progress M-21M docked with the orbital station on November 30. The docking operation was being carried out by means of the new approach system in an 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 and colonise the surface of Mars and trick scientists into thinking they are aliens, a new study by NASA scientists, including one of Indian-origin, has found.
•  These bacteria could contaminate celestial bodies such as Mars, making it difficult for researchers to determine if a life form actually originated on the site, researchers said.
•  Currently, spacecraft landing on Mars or other planets where life might exist must meet requirements for a maximum allowable level of microbial life, or bioburden.
•  These acceptable levels were based on studies of how various life forms survive exposure to the rigours associated with space travel, researchers said.
•  Spore-forming bacteria are of particular concern because spores can withstand certain sterilisation procedures and may best be able to survive the harsh environments of outer space or planetary surfaces.
•  Spores of Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032 have shown especially high resistance to techniques used to clean spacecraft, such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation and peroxide treatment.
•  When researchers exposed this hardy organism to a simulated Mars environment that kills standard spores in 30 seconds, it survived 30 minutes.
   

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