💥Join UPSC 2027,2028 Mentorship (August Batch) + XFactor Notes & Microthemes PDF
Talk to Mentor

Civilsdaily

Login

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

  • Drone Census

    India’s first drone census has seen only 2,500 Ownership Acknowledgment Numbers (OANs) being issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) since five days of beginning.

    Drone Census

    • The MoCA had issued a notice providing a one-time opportunity for voluntary disclosure of all drones and operators starting from January 14.
    • The DGCA issued the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR), Section 3 – Air Transport Series X, Part I, Issue I, dated August 27, 2018 regulates use of drones.
    • It provides the process for obtaining Unique Identification Number, Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) and other operational requirements; there are drones that do not comply with the CAR.
    • If a drone is not enlisted by 5 p.m. on January 31, then it will most definitely be confiscated.
    • After January 31, only authorised retailers will be allowed to sell them after uploading buyers’ Know your Customer (KYC) and sale invoice, similar to the sale of mobile phones and cars.

    Why such move?

    • The exercise will give the government a picture of who owns what kind of drone in which part of the country.
    • It will help in making policy decisions that should ideally become the base for understanding the scale of operations.

  • [pib] Novel Corona Virus (nCoV)

    The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has been closely monitoring the situation after the reports of 41 confirmed cases of novel Corona virus (nCoV) including one death from Wuhan, China, 2020.

    About Novel Corona Virus

    • Corona viruses are large family of viruses, which cause illnesses to people and also circulate in animals including camels, cats and bats.
    • They cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
    • 2019-nCoV is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.
    • Much remains to be understood about the new coronavirus, which was first identified in China earlier this month.
    • Not enough is known about 2019-nCoV to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, clinical features of disease, or the extent to which it has spread. The source also remains unknown.

  • GSAT-30 successfully launched

    India’s first satellite of 2020, the GSAT-30 was successfully launched. The launch vehicle Ariane 5 VA-251 lifted off from Kourou Launch Base, French Guiana.

    GSAT-30 

    • GSAT-30 derives  its  heritage  from ISRO’s  earlier INSAT/GSAT  satellite  series  and  will  replace  INSAT-4A  in 
    • In the  days  ahead,  orbit-raising  manoeuvres  will  be  performed  to  place  the satellite  in  Geostationary  Orbit  (36,000  km  above  the  equator)  by  using  its  onboard  propulsion
    • During the  final  stages  of  its  orbit  raising  operations,  the  two  solar  arrays  and  the antenna  reflectors  of  GSAT-30  will  be
    • Following this,  the satellite will be  put in  its final orbital .     The satellite will  be  operational  after  the successful  completion  of  all in-orbit  tests.

    Utility of the satellite

    • GSAT-30 will provide  DTH  Television  Services, connectivity to  VSATs for  ATM,  Stock-exchange,  Television unlinking and Teleport  Services,  Digital  Satellite  News  Gathering  (DSNG)  and e-governance applications.
    • The satellite  will  also  be  used  for  bulk  data  transfer  for  a  host  of an emerging  telecommunication

  • Virtual human’ NEON

    NEONs are being called the world’s first artificial humans. They look and behave like real humans, and could develop memories and emotions — though from behind a 4K display.

    NEON

    • Star Labs is headed by India-born scientist Pranav Mistry who underlines that what was showcased at CES was the product of just four months’ work.
    • The company says NEONs are computationally created virtual humans — the word derives from NEO (new) + humaN.
    • For now, the virtual humans can show emotions when manually controlled by their creators.
    • But the idea is for NEONs to become intelligent enough to be fully autonomous, showing emotions, learning skills, creating memories, and being intelligent on their own.
    • Star Labs thinks they can be “friends, collaborators, and companions”, but all that is a few years away.

    How does it work?

    There are two core technologies behind his virtual humans.

    • First, there is the proprietary CORE R3 technology that drives the “reality, real time and responsiveness” behind NEONs.
    • It is the front-end reality engine that is able to give you that real expression.
    • The company claims CORE R3 “leapfrogs in the domains of Behavioral Neural Networks, Evolutionary Generative Intelligence and Computational Reality”, and is “extensively trained” on how humans look, behave and interact.
    • But in the end, it is like a rendition engine, converting the mathematical models to look like actual humans.
    • The next stage will be SPECTRA, which will complement CORE R3 with the “spectrum of intelligence, learning, emotions and memory”.
    • But SPECTRA is still in development, and is not expected before NEONWORLD 2020 later this year.

    How could NEONs be used?

    • NEONs are the interface for technologies and services.
    • They could answer queries at a bank, welcome you at a restaurant, or read out the breaking news on television at an unearthly hour.
    • This form of virtual assistance would be more effective, for example, while teaching languages, as NEONs will be capable of understanding and sympathizing.

    How are they different from Virtual Assistants?

    • Virtual Assistants now learn from all the data they are plugged into. NEONs will be limited to what they know and learn.
    • Their leaning could potentially be limited to the person they are catering to, and maybe her friends — but not the entire Internet.
    • They will not be an interface for you to request a song, rather they will be a friend to speak to and share experiences with.
    • Currently, its developer doesn’t want NEONs to have collective memory, or to share data among themselves.

  • Artemis Mission

    NASA wants to send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by the year 2024, which it plans on doing through the Artemis lunar exploration program. An Indian American astronaut named Raja Chari is set to accompany the crew in this mission.

    Artemis Mission

    • In 2011, NASA began the ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence, and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) mission using a pair of repurposed spacecraft and in 2012 the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft studied the Moon’s gravity.
    • For the program, NASA’s new rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft a quarter of a million miles away from Earth to the lunar orbit.
    • The astronauts going for the Artemis program will wear newly designed spacesuits, called Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or xEMU.
    • These spacesuits feature advanced mobility and communications and interchangeable parts that can be configured for spacewalks in microgravity or on a planetary surface.

  • Coronavirus

    A new virus has been identified by Chinese researchers which is responsible for a new pneumonia-like illness.

    Coronavirus

    • Coronaviruses are a specific family of viruses, with some of them causing less-severe damage, such as the common cold, and others causing respiratory and intestinal diseases.
    • A coronavirus has many “regularly arranged” protrusions on its surface, because of which the entire virus particle looks like an emperor’s crown, hence the name “coronavirus”.
    • Apart from human beings, coronaviruses can affect mammals including pigs, cattle, cats, dogs, martens, camels, hedgehogs and some birds.
    • So far, there are four known disease-causing coronaviruses, among which the best known are the SARS coronavirus and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, both of which can cause severe respiratory diseases.

  • Lithium-Sulfur Battery

    Researchers from Australia have claimed that they have developed the world’s most efficient lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery, capable of powering a smartphone for five continuous days. With this equivalence, an electric car would be able to drive a distance of over 1,000 km in one charge.

    What are Lithium-Sulfur Batteries?

    • Researchers who have developed this new Li-S battery claim it has an “ultra-high capacity” and has better performance and less environmental impact.
    • This means that they may be able to outperform the Li-ion batteries by more than four times.
    • With Li-ion batteries, some disadvantages include their susceptibility to overheating and their being prone to damage at high voltages.
    • Such batteries also start losing their capacity over time — for instance, a laptop battery in use for a few years does not function as well as a new one.

    Construction

    While the materials used in the Li-S batteries are not different from those in Li-ion batteries, the researchers have reconfigured the design of the sulfur cathodes (a type of electrical conductor through which electrons move) to accommodate higher stress without a drop in overall capacity.

    Advantages of the Li-S batteries

    • Li-S batteries are generally considered to be the successors of the Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries because of their lower cost of production, energy efficiency and improved safety.
    • Their cost of production is lower because sulfur is abundantly available.
    • Even so, there have been some difficulties when it comes to commercialising these batteries, mainly due to their short life cycle and poor instantaneous power capabilities.

    Why is this development important?

    • As the market share of electric vehicles (EV) is increasing and people are becoming more aware and conscious of global warming and climate change.
    • There is a need for development in terms of the kind of batteries used in these vehicles.
    • The growth of the EV market is linked to the development of batteries that are cost-effective, more efficient and leave a smaller environmental burden.
    • Today, most EV use Li-ion batteries, but are slowly reaching their theoretical limits of being able to provide roughly up to 300-watt hour per kilogram of energy.
    • Thus arises the need for batteries that can store more energy to run these cars, and Li-S batteries are considered to be a good alternative.

  • Genome Sequencing of Cobra Venom

    This week, an international team of researchers reported that they have sequenced the genome of the Indian cobra, in the process identifying the genes that define its venom.  This has provided a blueprint for developing more effective antivenom.

    Big four in Snake bites

    • India alone accounts for about 50,000 deaths annually, and these are primarily attributed to the “big four”.
    • The challenge has been producing antivenom for the species known collectively as the “big four” — the Indian cobra (Naja naja), common krait (Bungarus caeruleus), Russell’s viper (Daboia russelii), and saw-scaled viper (Echis carinatus).
    • In India, common antivenom is marketed for the treatment of bites from the “big four”, but its effectiveness is questionable.
    • While the common antivenom worked as marketed against the saw-scaled viper and the common cobra, it fell short against some neglected species and also against one of the “big four” — the common krait.
    • Accidental contact with snakes leads to over 100,000 deaths across the world every year.

    What is antivenom?

    • Antivenom is currently produced by a century-old process — a small amount of venom is injected into a horse (or a sheep), which produces antibodies that are then collected and developed into antivenom.
    • This is expensive, cumbersome and comes with complications. Some of the antibodies raised from the horse may be completely irrelevant.

    Why has production of effective antivenom been challenging?

    • Venom is a complex mixture of an estimated 140-odd protein or peptides.
    • Only some of these constituents are toxins that cause the physiological symptoms seen after snakebite.
    • But antivenom available today does not target these toxins specifically.

    Issues with present antivenom

    • The horse also has a lot of antibodies floating in its blood that have nothing to do with the venom toxins.
    • One more problem with horse antibodies — our immune system recognises it as foreign and when antivenom is given our body mounts an antibody response. This leads to what is called serum sickness.
    • Also, next time if one is unlucky and has a snakebite incident (even if it is a different snake) and they are given a horse-derived antivenom, the body is going to have a severe allergic reaction.

    How does decoding the genome help?

    • In the Indian cobra genome, the authors identified 19 key toxin genes, the only ones that should matter in snakebite treatment.
    • They stress the need to leverage this knowledge for creation of antivenom using synthetic human antibodies.
    • Targeting these 19 specific toxins using synthetic human antibodies should lead to a safe and effective antivenom for treating Indian cobra bites.

    Back2Basics

    Genome Sequencing

    • Genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.
    • Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome—more than 3 billion DNA base pairs—is contained in all cells that have a nucleus.
    • Genome sequencing is figuring out the order of DNA nucleotides, or bases, in a genome—the order of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts that make up an organism’s DNA.

  • Goldilocks Zone

    NASA has reported the discovery of an Earth-size planet, named TOI 700 d, orbiting its star in the “habitable zone”.

    Goldilocks Zone

    • A habitable zone, also called the “Goldilocks zone”, is the area around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets.
    • Our Earth is in the Sun’s Goldilocks zone. If Earth were where the dwarf planet Pluto is, all its water would freeze; on the other hand, if Earth were where Mercury is, all its water would boil off.
    • Life on Earth started in water, and water is a necessary ingredient for life as we know it.
    • So, when scientists search for the possibility of alien life, any rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone of its star is an exciting find.

    TOI 700 d

    • The newest such planet was found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which it launched in 2018.
    • The star, TOI 700, is an “M dwarf” located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado, is roughly 40% of our Sun’s mass and size, and has about half its surface temperature.
    • The find was confirmed by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which sharpened the measurements that TESS had made, such as orbital period and size.
    • TOI 700 d measures 20% larger than Earth. It orbits its star once every 37 days and receives an amount of energy that is equivalent to 86% of the energy that the Sun provides to Earth.

  • Indian Data Relay Satellite System (IDRSS)

    India plans to ring in its own era of space-to-space tracking and communication of its space assets this year by putting up a new satellite series called the Indian Data Relay Satellite System.

    Indian Data Relay Satellite System (IDRSS)

    • The IDRSS is planned to track and be constantly in touch with Indian satellites, in particular those in low-earth orbits which have limited coverage of earth.
    • In the coming years, it will be vital to ISRO whose roadmap is dotted with advanced LEO missions such as space docking, space station, as well as distant expeditions to moon, Mars and Venus.
    • It will also be useful in monitoring launches.
    • The first beneficiary would be the prospective crew members of the Gaganyaan mission of 2022 who can be fully and continuously in touch with mission control throughout their travel.
    • IDRSS satellites of the 2,000 kg class would be launched on the GSLV launcher to geostationary orbits around 36,000 km away.