(General Awareness For Bank's Exams) Science & Technology

March - 2015

INS Alleppey decommissioned

•  INS Alleppey , one of the six Ponchicherry class coastal minesweepers purchased from the erstwhile USSR in the 1970s, decommissioned at sunset after nearly 35 years of service under the Western Naval Command.

•  After INS Alleppey ’s decommissioning, the Indian Navy will be left with six other operational minesweeper vessels.

•  The ship was decommissioned by Rear Admiral MS Pawar, Flag Officer Commanding Maharashtra and Gujarat Naval Area at Mumbai Naval Dockyard.

ISRO’s launcher assembly unit gets Rs. 120 crore

•  ISRO’s proposal for having a second facility to assemble launchers at Sriharikota has got a Rs. 120-crore Budget boost.

•  The amount is the first big allocation for additional infrastructure since it was approved in late 2013.

•  Estimated at Rs. 360 crore, the second Vehicle Assembly Building (SVAB) was conceived to increase the number of satellite launches from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota.

•  M.Y.S. Prasad, Director of SDSC, said the project was going through a multiple tendering process to choose agencies that would build it over the next two years.

•  The SDSC has got a separate allocation of Rs. 559 crores.

NASA launches 4 spacecraft to solve magnetic mystery

•  NASA has launched four identical spacecraft on a billion-dollar mission to study the explosive give-and-take of the Earth and sun’s magnetic fields.

•  The unmanned Atlas rocket, and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft, soared into a clear late-night sky, right on time. Within two hours, all four observatories were flying free.

•  The quartet of observatories is being placed into an oblong orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles into the magnetosphere, nearly halfway to the moon at one point.

•  They will fly in pyramid formation, between 6 miles (10 kilometres) and 250 miles (402 kilometres) apart, to provide 3-D views of magnetic reconnection on the smallest of scales.

•  Magnetic reconnection is what happens when magnetic fields like those around Earth and the sun come together, break apart, then come together again, releasing vast energy.

•  This repeated process drives the aurora, as well as solar storms that can disrupt communications and power on Earth.

•  Data from this two-year mission should help scientists better understand so-called space weather.

•  Each observatory resembles a giant octagonal wheel, stretching more than 11 feet (3.35 meters) across and 4 feet (1.22 meters) high, and weighing 3,000 pounds (1,360.79 kilogrammes) a piece.

•  Numbered and stacked like tires on top of the rocket for launch, No 4 popped free first more than an hour after liftoff, followed every five minutes by another.

•  “They’re all healthy and turned on. Essentially, we’re all green and headed into our mission,” said NASA project manager Craig Tooley.

•  Once the long, sensor-laden booms are extended in a few days, each spacecraft could span a baseball field.

•  Principal investigator Jim Burch from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said measurements will be made down to the electron scale, significantly smaller than previous heliophysics missions.

•  In all, there are 100 science sensors. Primary science-gathering will begin this summer, following a five-month checkout.

•  The findings from the USD 1.1 billion mission will be useful in understanding magnetic reconnection throughout the universe.

•  Closer to home, space weather scientists along with everyone on Earth hopefully will benefit.

Malaria: people with blood group A more vulnerable to severe disease

•  A protein produced by some strains of the malaria parasite can cause red blood cells, especially in blood group A individuals, to form clumps, thereby increasing the severity of disease, according to research just published.

•  When certain strains of Plasmodium falciparum , the single-celled parasite that is responsible for the most dangerous forms of malaria, get into red blood cells, those cells start sticking to other red blood cells as well as to walls of blood vessels.

•  The resulting obstruction to blood flow can damage tissues and lead to severe malaria that is life-threatening.

•  Previous research had implicated the ‘ P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1’ (PfEMP1) in red blood cells forming clumps. (Such clumps are called ‘rosettes’).

•  Once the parasite infects red blood cells, this protein that it produces appears on the outer surface of those cells. The protein then latches on to receptor molecules found on other red blood cells, creating rosettes.

•  However, when PfEMP1 was removed from red blood cell surfaces using enzymes, rosette-formation was reduced only in those of blood group O but not blood group A.

•  This indicated that PfEMP1 may not be the only molecule involved in rosette formation, noted a Scandinavian team of scientists in a Nature Medicine paper.

•  With a series of experiments, the team showed that another protein could have a hand too, principally affecting individuals of blood group A.

•  The RIFINs too are secreted by the parasite and then get to the surface of red blood cells. There are 150 rif genes that carry the genetic information for RIFINs.

•  One P. falciparum parasite examined by the team carried 85 such genes, but with just one of those genes being responsible for much of the RIFINs it produced.

•  The RIFINs were thought to act as decoys, making it difficult for the human immune system to detect and destroy parasite-infected red blood cells, commented G. Padmanabhan of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, who has studied the malaria parasite over many decades but was not involved in the research that led to the Nature Medicine paper.

•  Those cells, with the RIFIN protein on their surface, “bound large numbers of group A RBCs [red blood cells],” the scientists noted in their paper.

•  The rosette formation with group O RBCs was “less pronounced.” Moreover, when molecular tags that marked RBCs as belonging to group A were removed, their binding to cells bearing RIFIN were similar to those of group O.

•  Only RIFINs of sub-group A, which accounts for about 70 per cent of these proteins, led to rosettes being formed.

•  The protection offered by blood group O could “explain why the blood type is so common in the areas where malaria is common,” said Mats Wahlgren, the study’s principal investigator, in a press release.

Oldest primitive animal fossil found in China

•  Scientists have discovered the “earliest and most credible” primitive animal fossil in 600-million-year-old rocks in southwest China, media reports say.

•  The research led by Chinese scientists described a well-preserved, rice grain-sized primitive sponge fossil in the Guizhou Province, a Xinhua report said.

•  “It’s the world’s earliest and most credible fossil record of primitive animal bodies,” said the lead author of the research, Maoyan Zhu, of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.

•  “The discovery will help remove doubts whether animals have emerged on earth 600 million years ago,” Mr. Maoyan said.

•  The fossilised animal, slightly more than 1.2-mm wide and 1.1-mm tall, displays many characteristics of modern adult sponges, an analysis based on advanced imaging techniques found.

•  The specimen is composed of hundreds of thousands of cells, and has a structure consisting of three adjacent hollow tubes sharing a common base, the researchers said.

Natco to launch Hepatitis C drug in India soon

•  Natco Pharma plans to launch the generic version of Sovaldi, the blockbuster drug used to treat chronic Hepatitis C in India soon.

•  Sovaldi is made by U.S. pharma major Gilead Sciences, and Natco recently entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Gilead to make and sell generic versions of Sovaldi in 91 developing countries.

•  The company, launched the generic version of Sovaldi in Nepal under the brand Hepcinat. The product is priced at Rs.19,900 per bottle of 28 tablets in Nepal, and covers the treatment duration of three months for a patient.

•  Gilead’s compound sofosbuvir is a breakthrough treatment for Hepatitis C, a disease affecting the liver. If untreated, it can cause liver cirrhosis or liver cancer and has a high mortality rate.

•  Sovaldi with a 90 per cent cure rate for Hepatitis C, was introduced in the U.S. in November 2013 priced at $84,000 per patient.

•  In India Hepcinat will be priced as in Nepal, which is a fraction of the price Gilead prices it in developed markets. As per the agreement with Gilead, Natco will pay Gilead royalty at 7 per cent of billing price.

•  In an unrelated development, the U.S. Supreme Court declined a review of a federal circuit court which had ruled in favour of Natco Pharma in a patent infringement litigation over Tamiflu, a drug used to treat swine flu. Natco has partnered with Alvogen in the U.S. to market the product.

•  A statement from Natco said it was “pleased with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to deny certiorari for the generic version of Tamiflu oral capsules (oseltamivir phosphate).”

•  Natco had received a tentative approval on March 14, 2014, for Oseltamivir Phosphate Capsules USP, 30 mg, 45 mg and 75 mg on the Abbreviated New Drug Application containing a paragraph IV certification filed with the  U.S. FDA.

India can shape the future of Internet, says ICANN chief

• With next billion people on the Internet likely to come from India, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) CEO Fadi Chehadé said the country had the power to shape the future of Internet.

•  ICANN, a non-profit organisation, is the global body that oversees operation and administration of the Internet domain name system.

•  He added since his last visit to the country in October 2013, India’s place at the global level “has taken a new energy that is remarkable”.

•  Mr. Chehadé said India plays an important role in making sure things are run in the right direction in digital economy. “Its shaping how digital economy would look like, not tomorrow, but 10 years form now because the next billion people who will share the Internet will come from here... you will shape the future of internet,” he said.

•  Meanwhile, speaking at the same event, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the future architecture of the Web should not be a prerogative of a few and should be open to all.

•  He added that Internet must be equitable, effective, open-for-all and no one should be able to claim early arrival benefit.

Google may jump into virtual reality race

•  A team of engineers at Google is reportedly working to build a version of the Android operating system to power virtual-reality applications.

•  The move comes on the heels of Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR. The Wall Street Journal quoted “two people familiar with the project” as saying that Google has “tens of engineers” and other staff working on the project.

•  Google plans to freely distribute the new operating system, they said, mimicking a strategy that has made Android the most popular OS for smartphones.

•  The project is speculative, because no virtual-reality devices are yet shipping in large numbers.

MH370 report: Air Traffic Control supervisor was sleeping on duty

•  The Air Traffic Control (ATC) supervisor was asleep on duty during the crucial hours following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 last year, an interim report into the tragedy has said.

•  Released a year after the Boeing 777-200 went missing, transcripts of conversation between Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Controller and a Malaysia Airlines (MAS) official have showed that between 1.20 a.m. local time — when communications from the flight had ceased — and 5.20 a.m., the supervisor was asleep.

•  A controller started the four-minute-long conversation with the MAS official at 5.20 a.m. when he repeatedly pressed the former for details, especially whether there was any positive handover between Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control Centre and Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control.

•  The MAS official’s persistent request for information led the controller to say that he would wake his supervisor up.

•  The controller replied he only took over tower operations after 3 a.m., and was not sure about the details, Star Online reported.

•  The report said air traffic controllers in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control took 20 minutes to ask why the plane had not yet entered its airspace when international protocols demand this should take place within two minutes.

•  The report has also found that the battery powering the underwater locator beacon on the aircraft had expired in 2012.

•  The nearly 600-page interim report submitted yesterday on the anniversary of the flight’s disappearance, however, does not cast any suspicion on the crew.

•  Termed an “oversight” by investigators, the battery expiry could be key in legal action against Malaysia Airlines and in determining compensation, the paper said.

•  Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. There were five Indians on the flight.

•  The plane is believed to have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean.

•  A year-long, Australia-led search effort in the southern Indian Ocean where the aircraft is believed to have crashed has so far yielded no sign of the plane.

•  Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) on January 29 had declared the plane’s disappearance an accident.
  24×7 drug store in three months

•  Foundation stone was laid for the much-awaited 24x7 generic and other medicines store on the Government Wenlock hospital premises.

•  The new medical store, called Janasanjeevini Medical Centre, operated by Union government’s HLL Life Care Limited, will come up in the 700 square-foot space next to the dilapidated jail ward of the hospital.

•  The Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader Minister said the State government had fulfilled most of the promises made when the government was formed.

•  He said the government giving final shape to providing free treatment to the extent of Rs. 25,000 for road accident victims in the first 48 hours of admission to hospital.

•  The bike ambulance facility would also be launched soon.

•  MP and senior Congress leader Oscar Fernandes earlier handed to the Wenlock Hospital Superintendent Rajeshwari Devi, the keys of a hearse van donated by SASVAT Foundation. U.T. Fareed Foundation will maintain and operate  the vehicle.

Census records increase in wildlife at Point Calimere

•  The dry deciduous evergreen forest, spread over an area of 35 sq. km. at Kodiyakkarai near Vedaranyam, has recorded an increase in wildlife census when compared to last year, thanks to the intensification of anti-poaching activities, proper water management, and conducive habitat for animals and birds by the
  Forest Department.

•  The department staff along with college students of AVC Engineering College at Mayiladuthurai and Government Arts and Science College at Poompuhar conducted one-day wildlife census at Point Calimere Wildlife and Bird Sanctuary at Kodiyakkarai on February 28.

•  Over 50 students and 20 forest officials undertook this census. They were divided into 18 groups and conducted the exercise in 18 transit lines.

•  The Forest Ranger of Vedaranyam, V. Gobinath, told The Hindu that the department has identified 948 bucks, 117 spotted deer, 172 horses, 77 monkeys, 82 wild boars, 12 black napped hares, 20 jackals, and 1,525 fruit-bearing bats.

•  The department has recorded an overall 10 per cent increase in the wildlife when compared to last year.

•  The Government has allocated Rs. 2.70 lakh for the construction of water troughs at Kathan Odai, Aruvankanni, S-curve, and a few other places to quench the thirst of animals and birds under Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Greening Project. Now, the sanctuary has 17 water troughs to provide water to animals and birds in the ensuing summer.

Lessons learnt as hunt for MH370 marks one year

•  The hunt for Flight MH370 has failed to turn up any debris, but its unprecedented scale in one of the world’s remotest locations has provided valuable lessons for future search and rescue missions.

•  The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with mourning families and friends of the 239 people on board still waiting to hear what happened 12 months later.

•  There has been no trace of the Boeing airliner despite an extensive air and sea search.

•  Four ships, coordinated by Australia, continue to scour a huge underwater area at least 1,600 kilometres from the nearest piece of land in a stretch of the Indian Ocean previously only mapped by satellite.

•  The MH370 search — jointly funded by Australia and Malaysia with a budget of US$93 million — is focused on a 60,000 square kilometre priority area and is scheduled to end in May.

•  The search area is so remote that the four vessels involved — Fugro Supporter, Fugro Equator, Fugro Discovery and GO Phoenix — need up to six days to reach it from the Australian port of Fremantle, where they routinely refuel and restock.

•  While at sea, they frequently encounter conditions similar to the “Roaring Forties” north of Antarctica, winds that whip up mountainous seas.

Microsoft unveils Lumia 640, 640 XL

•  Microsoft unveiled two new smartphones — Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL — as it aims to strengthen its position in the affordable smart phone segment, especially in developing countries such as India.

•  While Lumia 640 XL will begin rolling out globally in March, Lumia 640 will be available starting April. Both devices will be available in single-SIM and dual-SIM (3G & 4G) variants.

•  “Pricing will vary by market and operator. Lumia 640 is estimated to be around 139 euro (about Rs.9,700) for the 3G model and 159 euro (about Rs.11,000) for the LTE model, before taxes and subsidies.

•  “Lumia 640 XL will be around 189 euro (about Rs.13,000) for 3G and 219 euro (about Rs.15,200) for LTE, before taxes and subsidies,” Microsoft Devices Group Executive Vice President Stephen Elop said.

•  Both smartphones are upgradeable to Windows 10, which will be available later this year.

•  “The devices come with a one-year personal subscription to Office365, enabling the full Office experience on the Lumia as well as one tablet and one PC/Mac.

•  The Lumia 640 comes with 5-inch HD display, 1.2GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim operating system, 8 MP rear and 1 MP front facing cameras, 8GB internal memory (30 GB free OneDrive and micro SD support up to 128 GB) and 2,500 mAh battery.

•  The Lumia 640 XL has a 5.7-inch display, 13 MP rear and 5 MP front cameras and 3,000 mAh battery.

Air Force to get 38 more Pilatus basic trainers

•  The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) chaired by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar cleared a follow-on order for 38 Pilatus basic trainer aircraft for the Air Force in addition to appointing Goa Shipyard Ltd. as the lead agency to build 12 Mine Counter-Measure Vessels (MCMV) for the Navy.

•  The Air Force has projected a requirement of 181 basic trainer aircraft. As many as 75 Pilatus aircraft were procured from Switzerland in 2012 and 38 cleared on Saturday. The remaining 68 will be supplied by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) by the indigenous development of HTT-40 aircraft.

•  Officials added that the progress of the project would be monitored by a committee that would periodically report to the DAC.

•  The earlier global tender for eight MCMVs was scrapped after allegations of corruption. The process would start from scratch now.

•  There would be a “Buy and Make” category under the procurement procedure and the GSL would build the ships under transfer of technology with a foreign vendor in a deal worth about Rs. 32,000 crore.

•  The GSL had already invested Rs. 500 crore to develop the required facilities, the  officials informed.

•  One C-130 would be acquired for Rs. 533 crore from the U.S. to replace the one that crashed in 2014. The crash killed five personnel, including four officers.

Govt. staff barred from using private e-mail for official purposes

•  Government employees have been barred from using private e-mail services for official communications.

•  “Users shall refrain from using private e-mail servers from government network. E-mail service authorised by the government and implemented by the IA (Implementing Agency under this policy is NIC) shall only be used for all official correspondence,” said the policy on use of IT resources notified .

•  The new policy also bars officials from using forward option in e-mails to non-government e-mail services.

•  “The e-mail services provided by other service providers shall not be used for any official communication,” the notification said.

•  This policy is applicable to all employees of Central Government and employees of those State or Union Territories governments that use the e-mail services of provided by Central Government.

•  This policy idea was mooted by the Department of Electronics and IT after whistle blower Edward Snowden claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies secretly monitors Internet data to spy on various countries, including India with help of some of software and Internet companies.

•  As per new policy, government officials will be allocated two e-mail ids — one based on designation and other on name.

Russia plans its own space station

•  The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has revealed plans to build an orbiting outpost and land cosmonauts on the moon once the International Space Station (ISS) is mothballed next decade.

•  In an official statement , Roscosmos pledged its support for the ISS until 2024 but outlined plans to disconnect its modules soon after, and use them to build a Russian space station in its place.

•  The creation of a national space station would ensure that Russia has a base to fly cosmonauts to until it has developed its more ambitious plans to send crews on orbiting missions around the moon and land them on its surface by 2030.

•  Since Nasa, the U.S. space agency, retired its fleet of space shuttles, Russia has been the only nation able to ferry humans to and from the ISS aboard its Soyuz rockets.

•  The Russians’ commitment to the ISS was welcomed by some experts, including Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut who covered the David Bowie classic, Space Oddity, from the ISS.

•  Despite the enthusiasm over Moscow’s decision to extend its support, the plans outlined by Roscosmos for a national space station and human missions to the moon suggest that Russia is poised to break away from its international partners in space exploration.

Too many waiting for blood stem cell transplants: Study

•  Over a million people have received blood and marrow stem cell transplants for life-threatening diseases in the past 57 years, but too many are still waiting, a study said.

•  Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) often offers the only possibility of a cure for blood diseases and rare cancers like myeloma or leukaemia.

•  The procedure involves taking healthy stem cells from the blood or marrow of the patient or from a healthy donor, with which to boost the system of someone whose blood-manufacturing bone marrow or immune system is damaged or defective.

• By 1985, 28 years after the first experimental marrow transplant, about 10,000 such procedures had been performed, rising to 500,000 by 1995, said a study in The Lancet Haematology journal.

•  By December 2012, that number had risen to almost a million at 1,516 transplant centres in 75 countries.

India’s own GPS soon

•  Scientists are eagerly awaiting the March 9 launch of IRNSS-1D, the fourth Indian regional navigation satellite.

•  The Rs. 1,400-crore-plus IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System) has been called ‘India’s own GPS.’ It can do all that we do with GPS, a U.S. military system, but apparently much better and at a local level.

•  This satellite will complete more than half of the ambitious ‘Indian GPS’ ring over the subcontinent and allow ISRO’s sat-nav team to prove its usefulness in location-based applications.

•  Four satellites out of the constellation of seven are said to be the minimum the scientists need to check out signals and accuracy.

•  S.K. Shivakumar, Director of ISRO Satellite Centre in Bengaluru, told The Hindu that IRNSS-1D would finetune the details being provided by its earlier three siblings. The next three navigation satellites, he said, would take this to the targeted precision levels and make it easy to pinpoint required positions for many users.

•  IRNSS-1D is slated to be put on the PSLV launcher on February 28 at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The first one, IRNSS-1A, was launched in July 2013.

Spacewalk on ISS completed

•  NASA astronauts at International Space Station (ISS) have successfully completed the first of three spacewalks to create parking spots for Boeing and SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the orbital laboratory.

•  The 6-hour, 41-minute-spacewalk by Expedition 42 astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts was meant to prepare the ISS for a pair of international docking adapters that will allow future commercial crew vehicles to dock.

•  The cable routing work is part of a reconfiguration of station systems and modules to accommodate the delivery of new docking adapters that commercial crew vehicles will use later this decade to deliver astronauts to the orbital laboratory.

•  The spacewalk was the first for Mr. Virts. Mr. Wilmore now has spent 13 hours and 15 minutes in the void of space during two spacewalks.

•  Astronauts have now spent a total of 1,159 hours and 8 minutes conducting space station assembly and maintenance during 185 spacewalks, NASA said.

Babies made from skin may be boon for same sex couples

•  In a breakthrough, researchers led by an Indian-origin scientist, have shown that stem cells from the skin of two adults of the same sex can be used to make human egg and sperm cells.

•  Scientists at Cambridge University collaborated with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and used stem cell lines from embryos as well as from the skin of five different adults.

•  Researchers have previously created live baby mice using engineered eggs and sperm, but until now have struggled to create a human version of these ‘primordial germ’ or stem cells.

•  Ten different donor sources have been used so far and new germ-cell lines have been created from all of them, researchers said.

•  The team has compared the engineered germ cells with natural human stem cells taken from aborted human foetuses to check that the artificially created versions of the cells had identical characteristics, The Times reported.

•  A gene called SOX17, previously considered to be unimportant in mice, has turned out to be critical in the process of ‘reprogramming’ human cells, researchers said.

A new weapon in the fight against malaria

•  A new family of bacteria that are common in malaria mosquitoes has been found.

•  Scientists are trying to genetically modify them to produce substances that stop malaria parasite development.

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