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Subject: Science and Technology

  • Species in news: Henneguya Salminicola

     

     

    Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered a non-oxygen breathing animal, which significantly changes one of science’s assumptions about the animal world — that all animals use aerobic respiration and therefore, oxygen.

    Henneguya Salminicola

    • The organism is Henneguya salminicola, a fewer-than-10-celled microscopic parasite that lives in salmon muscle.
    • It relies on anaerobic respiration (through which cells extract energy without using oxygen).
    • In the case of this non-oxygen breathing organism, evolution turned it into a simpler organism that shed “unnecessary genes” responsible for aerobic respiration.
    • Other organisms such as fungi and amoebas that are found in anaerobic environments lost the ability to breathe over time.
    • The new study shows that the same can happen in the case of animals, too.

    What is Aerobic respiration?

    • Animals, including humans, need energy to perform the various tasks that are essential for survival.
    • Aerobic respiration is one such chemical reaction through which organisms take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
    • Through this mechanism, energy is transferred to cells, which can use it for multiple purposes — for instance, to burn food.
    • Mitochondria is the “powerhouse” of the cell, which captures oxygen to make energy — its absence in the H. salminicola genome indicates that the parasite does not breathe oxygen.

  • NASA’s InSight Mission

     

    It’s now more than a year since NASA’s InSight lander mission touched down on Mars on November 26, 2018. This week, NASA published a report regarding findings on the Mars.

    About InSight Mission

    • The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars.
    • It is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the Martian surface.
    • Among its science tools are a seismometer for detecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, a magnetometer, and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet’s temperature.
    • The InSight mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program.
    • It is being supported by a number of European partners, which include France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA).

    Key findings of the Mission

    Underground: rumbles

    • Mars trembles more often than expected, but also more mildly.
    • This emerged from readings of the ultra-sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS).
    • The instrument enables scientists to “hear” multiple trembling events from hundreds to thousands of miles away.
    • Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth, but it does have volcanically active regions that can cause rumbles.

    The surface: Magnetism

    • Billions of years ago, Mars had a magnetic field.
    • Although it is no longer present, it left behind what NASA describes as “ghosts” – magnetized rocks that are now between 61 m to several km below ground.
    • InSight is equipped with a magnetometer, which has detected magnetic signals.
    • At a Martian site called Homestead hollow, the magnetic signals are 10 times stronger than what was predicted earlier (based on data from orbiting spacecraft).

    In the wind: dust devils

    • InSight measures wind speed, direction and air pressure nearly continuously.
    • Weather sensors have detected thousands of passing whirlwinds, which are called dust devils when they pick up grit and become visible.
    • The site has more whirlwinds than any other place where a landing has been made on Mars while carrying weather sensors.
    • Despite all that activity in the wind and frequent imaging, InSight’s cameras have yet to see dust devils. But SEIS can feel these whirlwinds pulling on the surface.

    The core: still to come

    • InSight has two radios. One is for regularly sending and receiving data. The other radio, which is more powerful, is designed to measure the “wobble” of Mars as it spins.
    • This X-band radio, also known as the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE), can eventually reveal whether the planet’s core is solid or liquid.
    • A solid core would cause Mars to wobble less than a liquid one would.
    • This first year of data is just a start, NASA said in the statement. When it is two years on Earth, Mars will have completed one year.

  • [pib] ICoSDiTAUS-2020

    ICoSDiTAUS-2020 a two-day International Conference on Standardisation of Diagnosis and Terminologies in Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha systems of Medicine was concluded in New Delhi.

    ICoSDiTAUS-2020

    • The conference was jointly organized by the Ministry of AYUSH and the WHO at New Delhi
    • It adopted the “New Delhi Declaration on Collection and Classification of Traditional Medicine (TM) Diagnostic Data”.
    • The New Delhi declaration emphasised the commitment of the countries to Traditional Medicine (TM) as a significant area of health care.
    • It further sought the opportunity for including traditional systems of medicine like Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) of WHO which is the standard diagnostic tool for health management across the world.

  • Taj Mahal Complex

    The Taj Mahal complex has been spruced up for the visit of US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

    About Taj

    • The Taj Mahal is an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the city of Agra.
    • It was commissioned in 1632 by Shah Jahan (reigned from 1628 to 1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself.
    • The tomb is the centrepiece of a 17-hectare (42-acre) complex, which includes a mosque and a guest house, and is set in formal gardens bounded on three sides by a crenellated wall.
    • The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which in 2015 would be approximately 52.8 billion rupees (U.S. $827 million).
    • The construction project employed some 20,000 artisans under the guidance of a board of architects led by the court architect to the emperor, Ustad Ahmad Lahauri.
    • The Taj Mahal was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983 for being “the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world’s heritage”.

    Various threats to Taj

    • The Supreme Court had earlier expressed concern over the marble of the Taj changing colour, and asked how the white marble, which had first become yellowish, was now turning brownish and greenish.
    • Firstly, the polluting industries and the vehicular emissions in the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ) area are a major source of pollution.
    • The second reason is that the Yamuna River, which flows behind the Taj, has become highly polluted.
    • There is no aquatic life in it, and has caused insect and algae infestation on the Taj Mahal and other monuments situated on its banks.

    Use of mud packs

    • Increasing pollution in the air over the Gangetic Valley affecting the Taj has been a reason for concern for archaeologists and conservationists for long now.
    • Mud packs were applied on the surface of the monument first in 1994, and then again in 2001, 2008, and, most recently, beginning 2014.
    • Mud packs have been one of the ASI’s favoured ways to remove the yellow stains that have appeared over the years on the Taj Mahal’s white marble facade.
    • The clay is applied in the form of a thick paste that absorbs the grime, grease and bird droppings on the marble, before being washed off using distilled water.
    • The process is slow and tortuous, but is believed to leave the marble cleaner and shinier.
    • The intricate parts are applied with special “multani mitti’ (Fuller’s clay) treatment.

  • Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF)

     

    At 100 light-years from Earth, a low-mass star was sending signals in a pattern that suggested that an exoplanet was orbiting the star confirmed the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF).

    Habitable-zone Planet Finder

    • NASA’s Kepler mission observed a dip in the host star’s light, suggesting that the planet was crossing in front of the star during its orbit.
    • To confirm, researchers turned to an instrument called Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF). It has confirmed that there is indeed an exoplanet.
    • HPF is an astronomical spectrograph, built by Penn State University scientists, and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas.
    • The instrument is designed to detect and characterize planets in the habitable zone — the region around the star where a planet could sustain liquid water on its surface — around nearby low-mass stars.
    • The newly confirmed planet, called G 9-40b, is the first one validated by HPF. It is about twice the size of Earth and orbits its star once every six Earth-days.

    How it works

    • A spectrograph is an instrument that splits light into its component wavelengths.
    • Scientists then measure the properties of light over a specific portion of the spectrum and draw conclusions on what is responsible for the trends they observe.

    Why need HPF?

    • Kepler’s observations alone were not enough to confirm a planet. It was possible that a close stellar companion was responsible for the dip in the star’s light.
    • Precision spectroscopic observations from HPF ruled out this possibility.
    • Shooting a high-power laser into the air, researchers generated a “laser guide star”, and subsequent observations found no evidence of blending of light or other stellar companions.
    • Finally, using HPF, an analysis of a set of radial velocities helped provide estimates for the planet’s mass.

  • Spontaneous Regression

    Patients sometimes make ‘miraculous’ recoveries from severe ailments. This is called spontaneous healing or spontaneous regression.

    Spontaneous healing/regression

    • A patient improves unexpectedly from a disease that usually progresses, such as cancer, and at times is even cured.
    • Such cases notwithstanding, the medical fraternity is often sceptical and takes “miraculous” recoveries as flukes.
    • A research explores patterns behind healing illnesses such as the deadliest kinds of cancers, and lays out physical and mental principles associated with recovery.
    • These include physically healing diets and immune systems, and mentally healing stress responses and identities.

    How does it occur?

    • The research states that much of our physical reality is created in our minds and perception changes our experiences, sometimes to the point of changing our bodies.
    • Therefore it argues that healing our identities may be a key tool to recovery.

  • Explained: One Health Concept

     

    The concept of ‘One Health’ is gaining importance as most of the contagious diseases affecting humans are zoonotic (animal to man origin) in nature. It can be effectively implemented for reducing incidence of emerging zoonotic threats like COVID-19.

    The One Health concept

    • The World Organization of Animal Health, commonly known as OIE (an abbreviation of its French title), summarizes the One Health concept.
    • It says that as “human health and animal health are interdependent and bound to the health of the ecosystems in which they exist”.
    • Circa 400 BC, Hippocrates in his treatise On Airs, Waters and Places had urged physicians that all aspects of patients’ lives need to be considered including their environment; disease was a result of imbalance between man and environment.
    • So One Health is not a new concept, though it is of late that it has been formalized in health governance systems.

    Why accept this model?

    • Of the contagious diseases affecting humans, more than 65% are of zoonotic or animal to man origin.
    • One Health model is a globally accepted model for research on epidemiology, diagnosis and control of zoonotic diseases.
    • One Health model facilitates interdisciplinary approach in disease control so as to control emerging and existing zoonotic threats.
    • Increasing stress on animals due to loss of their habitat would increase scope of zoonotic diseases.

    Why corona is so deadly?

    • Current outbreak of COVID-19 still could not find out the actual source of virus.
    • Even though genomics of the virus has been published ambiguity still exists whether it was from bats, snakes, pangolin, etc.

    Frequent Outbreaks of Zoonotic Diseases

    • Not so long ago, the widespread prevalence of avian influenza in poultry, or bird flu as it commonly became known, created nationwide panic resulting in the culling of millions of poultry birds.
    • It was concern for human health that prompted the extreme reaction and subsequent establishment of protocols; containment of avian influenza is managed quite effectively now.
    • Similarly in 2003, SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome emanated suddenly in China and vanished soon.

    Followed by hues and panic

    • These outbreaks culminated emergency response that included extreme measures like travel bans and restrictions.
    • In both cases, panic spread much faster than the virus.
    • Besides drawing a response from governments, these events also brought forth the hitherto forgotten philosophy of One Health.
    • This idea recognizes inter-connectivity among human health, the health of animals, and the environment.

    Why rise in zoonotic outbreaks?

    • As human populations expand, it results in greater contact with domestic and wild animals, providing more opportunities for diseases to pass from one to the other.
    • Climate change, deforestation and intensive farming further disrupt environment characteristics, while increased trade and travel result in closer and more frequent interaction, thus increasing the possibility of transmission of diseases.

    Need for a robust animal health system

    • Private sector presence in veterinary services is close to being nonexistent.
    • Unlike a physician, a veterinarian is always on a house call on account of the logistic challenge of transporting livestock to the hospital, unless they are domestic pets.
    • There could not be a stronger case for reinventing the entire animal husbandry sector to be able to reach every livestock farmer, not only for disease treatment but for prevention and surveillance to minimize the threat to human health.
    • Early detection at animal source can prevent disease transmission to humans and introduction of pathogens into the food chain. So a robust animal health system is the first and a crucial step in human health.

    Conclusion

    • Developing countries like India have a much greater stake in strong One Health systems on account of agricultural systems resulting in uncomfortably close proximity of animals and humans.
    • This builds a strong case for strengthening veterinary institutions and services.
    • Further delay may pave way for emergence of new communicable diseases.

    Way Forward

    • The most effective and economical approach is to control zoonotic pathogens at their animal source.
    • It calls not only for close collaboration at local, regional and global levels among veterinary, health and environmental governance, but also for greater investment in animal health infrastructure.
    • Need of the hour is to scale up such a model across the country and to establish meaningful research collaborations across the world.
    • Health, veterinary, agriculture and life science research institutions and universities can play a lead role.

  • Aditya L1 Mission

     

    NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched on August 12, 2018 has completed its fourth close approach — called perihelion very recently, whizzing past at about 3.93 lakh km/h, at a distance of only 18.6 million km from the Sun’s surface.

    Aditya L1: Exciting ahead

    • The ISRO is preparing to send its first scientific expedition to study the Sun.
    • Named Aditya-L1, the mission, expected to be launched early next year, will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
    • ISRO categorizes Aditya L1 as a 400 kg-class satellite that will be launched using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in XL configuration.
    • The space-based observatory will have seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.
    • Aditya L1 will be ISRO’s second space-based astronomy mission after AstroSat, which was launched in September 2015.

    What is L1?

    • L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
    • Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
    • These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position.
    • The L1 point is home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO), an international collaboration project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
    • The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun.

    But why is studying the Sun important?

    • Every planet, including Earth and the exoplanets beyond the Solar System, evolves — and this evolution is governed by its parent star.
    • The solar weather and environment, which is determined by the processes taking place inside and around the sun, affects the weather of the entire system.
    • Variations in this weather can change the orbits of satellites or shorten their lives, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power blackouts and other disturbances on Earth.
    • Knowledge of solar events is key to understanding space weather.
    • To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
    • Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.

    Why are solar missions challenging?

    • What makes a solar mission challenging is the distance of the Sun from Earth (about 149 million km on average, compared to the only 3.84 lakh km to the Moon).
    • More importantly the super hot temperatures and radiations in the solar atmosphere make it difficult to study.
    • NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has already gone far closer — but it will be looking away from the Sun.
    • The earlier Helios 2 solar probe, a joint venture between NASA and space agency of erstwhile West Germany, went within 43 million km of the Sun’s surface in 1976.

    Problem of Heat

    • The Parker Solar Probe’s January 29 flyby was the closest the spacecraft has gone to the Sun in its planned seven-year journey so far.
    • Computer modelling estimates show that the temperature on the Sun-facing side of the probe’s heat shield, the Thermal Protection System, reached 612 degrees Celsius, even as the spacecraft and instruments behind the shield remained at about 30°C, NASA said.
    • During the spacecraft’s three closest perihelia in 2024-25, the TPS will see temperatures around 1370°C.

    Hurdles for Aditya L1

    • It will stay much farther away, and the heat is not expected to be a major concern for the instruments on board. But there are other challenges.
    • Many of the instruments and their components for this mission are being manufactured for the first time in the country, presenting as much of a challenge as an opportunity for India’s scientific, engineering, and space communities.
    • One such component is the highly polished mirrors which would be mounted on the space-based telescope.
    • Due to the risks involved, payloads in earlier ISRO missions have largely remained stationary in space; however, Aditya L1 will have some moving components, scientists said.

  • Supergiant star ‘Betelgeuse’

     

    Using the European Space Organization’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have noticed the unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse.

     Betelgeuse

    • It is a red supergiant star (over 20 times bigger than the Sun) in the constellation Orion.
    • Along with the dimming, the star’s shape has been changing as well, as per recent photographs of the star taken using the VISIR instrument on the VLT.
    • Instead of appearing round, the star now appears to be “squashed into an ova”.

    Why is it significant?

    • Betelgeuse was born as a supermassive star millions of years ago and has been “dramatically” and “mysteriously” dimming for the last six months.
    • While Betelgeuse’s behaviour is out of the ordinary, it doesn’t mean that an eruption is imminent since astronomers predict the star to blast sometime (supernova explosion, which is the largest explosion to take place in space) in the next 100,000 years or so.

  • India’s Scientific Expedition to the Southern Ocean

     

    A South African oceanographic research vessel SA Agulhas set off from Port Louise in Mauritius, on a two-month Indian Scientific Expedition to the Southern Ocean 2020. Recently the vessel was at Prydz Bay, in the coastal waters of “Bharati”, India’s third station in Antarctica.

    India’s polar mission

    • This is the 11th expedition of an Indian mission to the Southern Ocean, or Antarctic Ocean.
    • The first mission took place between January and March 2004.

    About the Southern Ocean expedition

    • The researchers from IITM Pune are collecting air and water samples from around 60 stations along the cruise track.
    • These will give valuable information on the state of the ocean and atmosphere in this remote environment and will help to understand its impacts on the climate.
    • A key objective of the mission is to quantify changes that are occurring and the impact of these changes on large-scale weather phenomenon, like the Indian monsoon, through tele-connection.

    Why study Southern Ocean?

    • We know that carbon dioxide is getting emitted into the atmosphere, and through atmospheric circulation goes to the Antarctic and Polar Regions.
    • Since the temperature is very low there, these gases are getting absorbed and converted into dissolved inorganic carbon or organic carbon, and through water masses and circulation it is coming back to tropical regions.
    • All oceans around the world are connected through the Southern Ocean, which acts as a transport agent for things like heat across all these oceans.
    • The conveyor belt that circulates heat around the world is connected through the Southern Ocean and can have a large impact on how climate is going to change due to anthropogenic forces.

    Core projects of the expedition

    • Study hydrodynamics and biogeochemistry of the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean; involves sampling seawater at different depths. This will help understand the formation of Antarctic bottom water.
    • Observations of trace gases in the atmosphere, such as halogens and dimethyl sulphur from the ocean to the atmosphere. This will help improve parameterizations that are used in global models.
    • Study of organisms called coccolithophores that have existed in the oceans for several million years; their concentrations in sediments will create a picture of past climate
    • Investigate atmospheric aerosols and their optical and radiative properties. Continuous measurements will quantify the impact on Earth’s climate.
    • Study the Southern Ocean’s impact on Indian monsoons. Look for signs in a sediment core taken from the bottom of the ocean
    • Dynamics of the food web in the Southern Ocean; important for safeguarding catch and planning sustainable fishing