GS Paper: GS3-17.Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, Robotics, Nano-technology, Bio-technology and issues relating to Intellectual Property Rights.

The LHCb experiment at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) has announced the results of their latest analysis of data.

LHCb Experiment: An easy explanation

• LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed the matter to survive and build the Universe we inhabit today.
• Fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began with a bang.
• Crammed within an infinitely small space, energy coalesced to form equal quantities of matter and antimatter.
• But as the Universe cooled and expanded, its composition changed.
• Just one second after the Big Bang, antimatter had all but disappeared, leaving the matter to form everything that we see around us — from the stars and galaxies to the Earth and all life that it supports.

What is the new finding?

• CERN scientists are excited enough to reveal that if the anomaly they had detected was confirmed.
• Because, if confirmed, it would require a new physical process, such as the existence of new fundamental particles or interactions.

What is this excitement all about?

It is necessary to delve into the world of elementary particles to understand this.

(1) Particle zoo

Until now it is believed that the electron, muon and tauon and their antiparticles, though they differ in mass, behave similarly in particle interactions.

• Broadly speaking, elementary particles are classified into the particles called baryons – which include protons, neutrons and their antiparticles the antiprotons etc.
• The “middle mass” particles, roughly speaking, are called the mesons and they include members such as the K and B particles.
• We then have the leptons, which include the electron and its cousins the muon and tau particles and the anti-particles.
• At a still smaller scale, there are tiny particles called quarks and gluons.
• There are six flavours of quarks: up, down, truth, beauty, charm and strange. They too have antiquarks associated with them.

In this particle zoo, while the baryons are made up of combinations of three quarks, the mesons contain two quarks, more accurately a quark and antiquark pair, and the leptons are truly fundamental and are thought to be indivisible.

Do you know?

Higgs Boson is called the god particle.

(2) Colliding particle beams

By interactions here, is meant the following:

• If a huge particle accelerator such as the LHC were to accelerate beams of hadrons (such as protons) to very high speeds, a fraction of that of light, and then cause them to collide.
• Basically, smash through the repulsive nuclear forces and shatter them, the hadrons would break up into constituents which would recombine to form short-lived particles, which would decay into stabler states.
• Roughly speaking, during this process, they are imaged in a huge multistorey detector and the number of specific processes and particles are counted.

(3) Lepton universality principle

• One such process that was measured was the decay of a meson B (which contained the beauty quark) into K-meson (which contains the strange quark) and a muon-antimuon pair, and this was compared with the decay of B into K and an electron-antielectron pair.
• The expectation is that the ratio of the strengths of these two sets of interactions would be just one.
• This is because the muons are not essentially different from the electrons as per the Standard Model, the presently accepted theoretical model of all elementary particle interactions.
• This is called the lepton universality principle.

Changing climate has transformed the time spring unfolds in front of us.

Early bud-break

• Bud-break — which is when trees leaf out — has undergone a change.
• Several trees initiate bud-break too early or too late, which affects the harvest.
• Spring, for example, arrived earlier than usual in Kashmir this year due to higher temperatures in February and March.
• Gul-tour, a spring-flowering herb started blooming in mid-February in Kashmir. Its yellow flowers would usually blossom in March, heralding Spring.

Try this PYQ:

Q.Other than resistance to pests, what are the prospects for which genetically engineered plants have been created?

1. To enable them to withstand drought
2. To increase the nutritive value of the produce
3. To enable them to grow and do photosynthesis in spaceships and space stations
4. To increase their shelf life

Select the correct answer using the code given below

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 3 and 4 only

(c) 1, 2 and 4 only

(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer: (d)

What causes early bud-break?

• This is why understanding the genetics of bud-break helps scientists modify or select crop varieties that can be more resilient to the climate threat.
• The properties of transcription factors are genes that regulate other genes by binding to deoxyribonucleic acid and giving activation instructions.
• It helps scientists determine what other genes might be involved in a process such as a bud-break.

EBB genes

• Researchers of the study had earlier identified transcription factors for early bud-break 1 (EBB1) and short vegetative phase (SVL), which directly interact to control bud-break.
• EBB1 is a positive regulator of bud-break, whereas SVL is a negative regulator of bud-break.
• Now, the research team has identified and characterized the early bud-break 3 (EBB3) gene.

Identified mechanism of Bud-break

• EBB3 is a temperature-responsive, positive regulator of bud-break that provides a direct link to activation of the cell cycle during bud-break.
• EBB3 provides a direct link through the signalling pathway for how these cells divide.
• The analysis reveals how particular genes activate through the season or in response to specific environmental factors.

Significance of the study

• New approaches for accelerated tree adaptation to climate change helps ensure bud-break happens at the right time each spring.
• Using their understanding of the genetic pathways that control bud-break, scientists hope to genetically modify crops to adapt to warmer winters and unpredictable frosts.

Researchers from London have found that eye colour in Asians with different shades of brown is genetically similar to eye colour in Europeans ranging from dark brown to light blue.

Human Eye Colour

• Human eye colour ranges from black, brown to blue, green, and even red.
• Eye colour is primarily determined by melanin abundance within the iris pigment epithelium, which is greater in brown than in blue eyes.
• There are two forms of melanin – eumelanin and pheomelanin – and the ratio of the two within the iris as well as light absorption and scattering by extracellular components are additional factors that give irises their colour.
• Absolute melanin quantity and the eumelanin–pheomelanin ratio is higher in brown irises, while blue or green irises have very little of both pigments and relatively more pheomelanin.

Try this PYQ:

Q.Recently, LASIK (Lasser Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis) procedure is being made popular for vision correction. Which one of the following statements in this context is not correct?

(a) LASIK procedure is used to correct refractive errors of the eye

(b) It is a procedure that permanently changes the shapes of the cornea

(c) It reduces a person’s dependence on glasses or contact lenses

(d) It is a procedure that can be done on the person of any age

What has the research found?

• Previously a dozen genes (mainly HERC2 and OCA2) were found to influence eye colour.
• The researchers have now identified 50 new genes for eye colour.
• Genetic analysis of nearly 0.2 million people across Europe and Asia helped the researchers to identify the new genes.
• The findings collectively explain over 53% of eye colour variation using common single-nucleotide polymorphisms.

Outcome of the research

• Overall, the study outcomes demonstrate that the genetic complexity of human eye colour considerably exceeds previous knowledge and expectations.
• These findings will help improve our understanding of eye diseases such as pigmentary glaucoma and ocular albinism where pigment levels play a role.