Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 11 May 2021

::NATIONAL::

Acute shortage of antifungal injection ‘amphotericin’ and other anti-fungal medicines used to treat mucormycosis, a life-threatening infection that follows Covid-19 in roughly 30% diabetics, is now adding to difficulties of patients.

About:

Amphotericin B injection is used to treat serious and potentially life-threatening fungal infections.
Amphotericin B injection is in a class of medications called antifungals. It works by slowing the growth of fungi that cause infection.
It is typically given by injection into a vein.
Amphotericin B was isolated from Streptomyces nodosus in 1955 and came into medical use in 1958. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

Hakki Pikkiare a nomadic tribe which migrated from Northern India and now mainly settled in Karnataka region and other South Indian states.
They are known as Bird Catcher (Hakki means Bird and Pikki means catcher in Kannada language).
They speak Indo Aryan language named as ‘Vaari By scholars.
UNESCO has listed Hakkipikki is one of the endangered languages.
Today, they are mainly engaged in selling of herbal products like herbal oils.

Debris from a Chinese rocket made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, with remnants falling at a location to the west of Maldives.

About:

The debris came from the upper stage of a Long March 5B rocket– China’s largest– that had been launched into space on April 29 for putting into orbit a core module of the new Tianhe space station, which is expected to become operational in 2022.
For days, there had been speculation on whether the debris would hit a populated area on the Earth’s surface, leading NASA to criticise China over lack of transparency and for “failing to meet responsible standards”.

Why did the Chinese rocket spark worry?

When a rocket is launched, its discarded booster stages re-enter the atmosphere soon after liftoff and harmlessly fall into the ocean– a standard practice.
In this case, however, a 10-floor large vehicle of the rocket weighing 18 metric tonnes went into orbit along with the section of the under-construction space station that it was carrying.
While in orbit, this vehicle kept rubbing against the air at the top of the atmosphere, and the resulting friction caused it to start losing altitude.
The piece hurtled through a low-Earth orbit at roughly 25,490 km/hr, traced by the US military.
An “uncontrolled re-entry” thus became inevitable, but China did not admit this fact to the world until Sunday, when it said the debris had entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Mediterranean, flown over the Arabian peninsula and crashed near the Maldives at 72.47° East and 2.65° North.
Few expected the debris to harm humans, mainly due to most of it burning up in the atmosphere, as well as the fact that large parts of the Earth are covered by oceans and massive land areas lie uninhabited.

So, what caused the rocket piece to enter into orbit?

When rockets carry their payload into space, their booster stages that reach orbit fire the engine again after completing their job so as to drop back to Earth and not remain in orbit.
Space agencies plan this process to ensure that such rocket parts end up in uninhabited areas, such as the middle of the ocean.

A new coronavirus treatment being developed in Israel’s Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center has successfully completed phase one trials and appears to have helped numerous moderate-to-serious cases of COVID-19 quickly recover from the disease.
The EXO-CD24 substance had been administered to 30 patients whose conditions were moderate or worse.
It added that all 30 recovered with 29 of them getting well within just three to five days.
The medicine is reported to fight the cytokine storm, which is a potentially lethal immune overreaction to the coronavirus infection that is believed to be responsible for much of the deaths associated with the disease.

A technical group on social stock exchanges (SSEs), constituted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
It has recommended that political and religious organisations, trade organisations as well as corporate foundations should not be allowed to raise funds through SSEs.

About:

The technical group report said both For Profit Enterprise (FPE) and Not for Profit Organisation (NPO) will be eligible to tap the SSE if they are able to show their primary goals are social intent and impact.
SSE are engaged in at least one of the 15 broad eligible activities.
They target underserved or less privileged population segments or regions; and should have at least 67 per cent of its activities qualifying as eligible activities to the target population.
The report said that entities listed on SSE will have to disclose their social impact report on an annual basis covering aspects such as “strategic intent and planning, approach, impact score card”.
The report has also made a list of eligible activities that social enterprises can engage in such as eradicating hunger, poverty malnutrition and inequality; training to promote rural sports; promoting gender equality by empowerment of women and LGBTQIA+ communities; slum area development/ affordable housing;forest and wildlife conservation; promoting livelihoods for rural and urban poor; promotion of financial inclusion among others.
The expert panel has said FPEs, which wish to list their equity or debt, will first have to demonstrate their track record through social performance. This will allow investors to gain an insight into the FPE’s activities.

SpaceX achieved the first successful touchdown of its prototype Starship rocket during the latest test flight of the next-generation launch vehicle in south Texas yesterday, after four previous landing attempts ended in explosions.

About:

The feat marked a key milestone for the private rocket company of Elon Musk in its development of a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle to eventually carry astronauts and large cargo payloads to the moon and Mars.
The Starship SN15 blasted off from the SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, along the Gulf Coast.
Maneuvering itself back into vertical position under rocket thrust as it approached the ground, the 16-story, three-engine vehicle descended to a gentle touchdown on its landing gear.
The flight came on the 60th anniversary of the first spaceflight by an American astronaut Alan Shepard's launch on a 15-minute suborbital mission atop NASA's Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida