Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 December 2017

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 December 2017

::National::

Mr. Modi dedicated the 60-MW Tuirial hydropower power project

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated crucial connectivity and power projects in Mizoram and Meghalaya.
• On a day-long visit to the Northeast, Mr. Modi dedicated the 60-MW Tuirial hydropower power project, which made Mizoram the third power-surplus State in the region after Sikkim and Tripura.
• The project is expected to produce “251 million units” of power annually. The first major Union government project to be successfully commissioned in Mizoram was announced in 1998 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
• Mr. Modi said the dam could be used for improving connectivity in remote villages, fisheries, ecotourism and also as a source of potable water.
• In Meghalaya, he announced a grant of Rs. 90,000 crore for improving roads and national highways in the northeast over two or three years to improve connectivity.
• He dedicated to the nation a 271-km two-lane national highway connecting Tura in western Meghalaya to Shillong.
• He said the Act East Policy of his government would soon make Mizoram the gateway to the Southeast Asian countries, which include Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.
• He said the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, connecting Aizawl with the deep-water Sittwe Port in Myanmar, would provide great benefits to the people of the north-eastern States.
• The development of the Rih-Tiddim road and the establishment of numerous rural markets along the Mizoram-Myanmar border would increase trade volume, he said.

Growing antibiotic resistance made IMA to advise doctors to follow strict guidelines on antibiotics

• Alarmed over the growing antibiotic resistance that has made it difficult to treat many bacterial infections, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has advised doctors to follow strictly guidelines while prescribing antibiotics.
• Despite the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) setting up the National Anti-Microbial Resistance Research and Surveillance Network (AMRRSN) to enable compilation of data of such resistance at different levels of healthcare and publishing of treatment guidelines for anti-microbial use in common syndromes, the problem of multi-drug resistance due to widespread and indiscriminate use of antimicrobial and antibiotic drugs continues unabated in the country.
• To address this issue, the IMA, at the Antimicrobial Resistance Conference held in New Delhi, advised its members to mandatorily restrict the usage of antibiotics for treatment of proven bacterial infections. It also came out with a policy on anti-microbial resistance.
• IMA national president K.K. Aggarwal told that doctors should henceforth write the antibiotic in a box to differentiate it from other drugs in the prescription.
• “When prescribing antibiotics, clear instructions should be given to the patient about no refill of antibiotic prescription without the signature of the doctor. The role of antibiotics should be discussed in an informed consent,” he said.
• Expressing concern over irrational antibiotic usage, Dr. Aggarwal said: “As per our policy, doctors should not prescribe antibiotic cover or prophylactic antibiotic without a high degree of clinical suspicion. No antibiotics should be prescribed for small bowel diarrhoea, fever with cough and cold, dengue, chikungunya, malaria and fever with rashes. However, early initiation of antibiotics is the rule in suspected sepsis bacterial pneumonia meningitis and confirmed tuberculosis cases.”
• This has also been included in the National Health Policy and Karnataka Public Health Policy prepared by the Knowledge Commission. The Karnataka Health Policy — that is yet to be implemented — also recommends that the State Health Ministry should also have its own antibiotic policy.
• Attributing the growing antibiotic resistance to self-medication by most people, Dr. Jagashetty said: “Many people go to a chemist and ask for medicines for their health problem without visiting a doctor. Buying medicines over the counter is a major reason for misuse. Moreover, some doctors too prescribe higher antibiotics due to the impatience shown by their patients in getting well soon.”

Right to non discriminatory access is not negotiable:Prasad

• Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the “right of non-discriminatory access to Internet is not negotiable”.
• “When Facebook came to India with Free Basics, I examined it ... and I found it will be free only when you enter from my gate. India does not believe in one gate and I didn’t give them permission,” Mr. Prasad said while addressing the Digital India Summit.
• He said it was for the U.S. to decide its stand on Net neutrality, but “our stand is very clear — right of non-discriminatory access to internet is not negotiable”.
• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issued a regulation in February 2016 on discriminatory pricing for internet access, which led to a ban of platforms such Free Basics and Airtel Zero.
• TRAI ruled against discriminatory pricing for different data platforms or content, and said operators could not enter into pacts with Internet companies to subsidise access to some websites.
• As per ruling, the companies violating the rules would be fined Rs. 50,000 per day for the duration of contravention, subject to a maximum of Rs. 50 lakh.
• Following debate over Net neutrality, Mr. Prasad, as Telecom Minister, had set up a panel of officers from the Department of Telecommunications to examine the matter and come up with recommendations.
• TRAI prohibited Internet service providers from making any discrimination in traffic while providing Web access.
• The DoT has to now take a call on TRAI recommendations over Net neutrality.
• He said the government was making efforts to make India a $1 trillion digital economy in the coming five years which include IT and IT-enabled services.

Cyclones and their effects on India

• First, it helps to get a sense of how cyclones move. The ones that typically strike the Indian neighbourhood in the northern hemisphere rotate anticlockwise. Their normal behaviour is to derive strength from the moisture in waters such as the Bay of Bengal, move west, incline in a northerly direction and peter out into the sea or land, depending on their origin.
• This is how you would explain a regular cyclone, say like Mora, which formed over the Bay of Bengal on May 26. It rapidly strengthened on May 28, with the India Meteorological Department classifying it as a “depression” and eventually as a cyclonic storm. It kept north, almost parallel to the Myanmar coast and then made landfall in Bangladesh and blew over Nagaland. In a re-curving cyclone, the cyclone gets a sort of second wind when it is on the wane.
• Like the googly in cricket, it’s deflected right or eastwards. This is due to air currents in the local atmosphere that push cold air from the poles towards the equator and interfere with cyclone formation. That’s what make them ‘re-curving.’ In the southern hemisphere, the cyclones spin clockwise and therefore also re-curve in the opposite direction.
• During the monsoon months, cyclones in the Western Pacific move westwards towards India and aid the associated rain-bearing systems over the country. However, in the years of a re-curve, they do not give as much of a push to the rain as they do in the good monsoon years and that is why monsoon rain this August was a dampener.
• Rain that month was 13% short of what is usual and meteorologists say it was almost certainly because of an active hurricane season in the Pacific that consisted of a few re-curving cyclones. However, these are back in the news due to Cyclone Ockhi. The whirlwind that arose in the Bay of Bengal and revved up over Sri Lanka was expected to pass over Lakshadweep and then ease into the Arabian Sea, far away from India’s west coast.
• However, the cyclone ended up sharply swerving into parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat. It did not blow in very strongly because there it had not gained as much moisture from the Arabian Sea like it had over the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean boundary. And though it wreaked havoc in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, even a weakened Ockhi destroyed several beaches in Goa when it curved back to the land.
• Long-term data suggest that while there has been an increase in the number of tropical cyclones in India’s neighbourhood there is no clear trend in re-curving ones. In general, cyclone activity in India peaks around November, by which time, the summer monsoon has already passed. Rarely do re-curving cyclones pose a mortal threat to Indian coasts and Cyclone Ockhi raised hackles because it had already left a certain amount of damage and threatened Gujarat and Maharashtra. It was also among the rare curving cyclones with a presence over the Arabian Sea.
• As climate change is projected to increase the frequency of extreme events, scientists have warned that tropical cyclones are likely to get more intense, and this could mean more scrutiny of re-curving ones. A challenge with re-curving cyclones is that it is hard for weather models to pick them early on — as was the case with Ockhi — and so they pose unique challenges in terms of hazard preparedness and disaster management.

Wassenaar Arrangement and its importance to India

•  Before its nuclear weapons test in 1998, India was considered a nuclear capable country but was not recognised as one. This meant that there was no formal recognition that India was capable of producing both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
• The reason for this was mainly because India had not acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which aims to prevent spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology and promote nuclear disarmament, which India considered discriminatory since it could do so only as a non-nuclear power.
• That would mean that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the U.S., the U.K., China, France and Russia — coincidentally all nuclear powers, would in effect continue to deny India the recognition as a nuclear power as well, even though it was widely acknowledged as a nuclear capable country after the 1974 “peaceful nuclear explosion” at Pokhran.
• India wanted to break out into the open and be recognised as a nuclear power like the other nuclear countries and be part of the global nuclear order, not as a nuclear hold out. For that to happen, India needed to be recognised as a nuclear power and be made part of the global non-proliferation architecture.
• There are four groupings of countries that multilaterally work to prevent and address proliferation of nuclear weapons, the technology that enables making of nuclear weapons and the systems that are capable of delivering those weapons. The Wassenaar Arrangement is one such.
• The Missile Control Technology Regime (MTCR) is another; India became a member of this grouping last year. The Australia Group and the Nuclear Suppliers Group are the other two; India is not a member of either yet.
• The Wassenaar Arrangement is a grouping of 42 countries, of which India is the latest entrant (on December 8) that seek to bring about security and stability, by fostering transparent practices in the process of sale and transfer of arms and materials and technologies that can be used to make nuclear weapons with a view to prevent any undesirable build-up of such capabilities.
• By doing so the grouping hopes to stymie destabilising developments. A further aim is also to prevent these proscribed items and technologies from falling into the hands of terrorists as well.
• Significantly, one of the purposes of the arrangement is to “enhance co-operation to prevent the acquisition of armaments and sensitive dual-use items for military end-uses, if the situation in a region or the behaviour of a state is, or becomes, a cause for serious concern to the Participating States.”
• They periodically exchange detailed and specific information on transfer or denial of items or technology, both conventional and nuclear capable, to countries outside the grouping. This is done through maintenance and updating of detailed lists, of dual use and munitions that are considered militarily significant.
• There are various classifications of the sub-sections of the lists. The dual use list has for example, the sensitive list and the very sensitive list. The disclosure of such sale or transfer is voluntary.
• India will be able to more easily access dual use technologies and materials and military equipment that are proscribed for non-participating members. India will also be able to sell its nuclear reactors and other materials and equipment indigenously produced without attracting adverse reactions. It will also be in a better position to collaborate with other countries in developing such capabilities.
• There are more or less the same countries in all these groupings, with one crucial exception. China, which has been opposed to India’s entry into the NSG, is not part of both the MTCR as well as the Australia Group. So it should be easier to get into the Australia Group.

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::INTERNATONAL::

The spectre of Chinese influence

• America’s mainstream media and policy establishment is still seized of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, but a new fear has come to grip it — the spectre of Chinese influence.
• China’s new willingness to be the vanguard of globalisation, along with its proposal of a new model of economic integration and connectivity, has begun to rankle the American establishment.
• At a Congressional hearing last week convened by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, titled “The Long Arm of China: Exporting Authoritarianism with Chinese Characteristics”, a thought that was repeatedly expressed was on the possibility of Beijing influencing the outcome of an American election in the future. Experts who deposed before the Congressional committee said it was “certainly a possibility”.
• A November article in Foreign Policy raised questions about the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation, founded in 2008 by Tung Chee-hwa, a Hong Kong shipping magnate who was also the province’s Chief Executive.
• The foundation conducts exchange programmes that take journalists, scholars, and political and military leaders to mainland China. It has also partnered with an array of American think tanks.
• More than 100 American colleges and universities host Confucius Institutes, an initiative started by Beijing in 2004. Add to that the willingness of American tech companies to abide by Chinese laws to be able to operate there.
• All this came up during the hearing. A recent report by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) termed these Chinese efforts ‘sharp power’ as opposed to ‘soft power’ that the West seeks to exercise in other parts of the world through similar initiatives.
• But neither the lawmakers nor the witnesses could frame the illegality or even impropriety. At one point, independent Senator Angus King sought to know how Chinese exchange programmes were different from America’s own.
• As professional strategic experts and lawmakers add China to their agonies, President Donald Trump has no quarrel with the Chinese insistence on national sovereignty. He has repeatedly stated that all international engagements must be based on the principle of national sovereignty. The Trump administration has also made it clear that it is not interested in expanding American soft power, and considers such efforts a waste of money.

Malananda the Indian Buddhist Monk.

• It was at the port of Beopseongpo along the southwestern coast where centuries ago, an Indian Buddhist monk by the name of Malananda set foot on Korean soil. The journey of Malananda or Marananta in Korean parlance, is the stuff of legends.
• He belonged to Gandhara, now in northern Pakistan — one of the major fulcrums in South Asia, from where Buddhism spread its wings across the vast Asian continent. After breaching the lofty Karakoram mountains through the Gilgit valley, Malananda headed for Hunza — the picturesque town on the edge of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan and the Xinjiang region of China. It was along this northern branch of the ancient Silk Road that he entered China.
• With the backing of the East Jin dynasty, he began his voyage to Korea. In 384 AD, he landed at the port of Beopseongpo. It is widely believed that the monk was an emissary from East Jin to King Chimnyu of Baekje, one of the three major kingdoms of Korea.
• Consequently, royal patronage allowed him to channel Mahayana Buddhism in southwest Korea. Being a major maritime power, the Baekje Kingdom became a springboard for the spread of Buddhism further into East Asia and Japan.
• “Malananda hand-picked 10 Buddhist monks to spread the word about Mahayana Buddhism,” Master Manndang, the abbot of the famous Bulgapsa temple in Yeonggwang.
• The Bulgapsa temple, founded by Malananda, was the first Buddhist temple in Korea. Over centuries, it has evolved into a cluster of 40 buildings and 500 rooms, spread along stepped terraces, cut out of the verdant Moaksan mountain
• Over centuries, the temple has also mutated to pursue the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. This is a fusion of Zen Buddhism brought from China, sutra -based teachings of Buddhist schools and Korean Pure Land Buddhism.
• Yet the Koreans have not forgotten their Gandhara Buddhist roots. A sprawling complex in the Yeonggwang general area, where Malanada first set foot in Korea, evokes the memories of Gandhara.
• The Koreans reverentially call the site Sacred Memorial Ground of the Birthplace of Korean Buddhism. Large Stone Buddha Statues, built in Gandhara style flank all four directions. Ornate sculptures narrate the pivotal episodes in Buddha’s life — his birth, renunciation, enlightenment, entering monkhood and attainment of Nirvana.
• On the spot, Professor Moon Myung Dae of Dongguk University grabs the attention of his largely Korean audience, during an elaborate powerpoint presentation, on Buddhism’s roots in India. He weaves into his narrative episodic events in Bodhgaya, Rajgir, Sarnath and the cave art of Ajanta and Ellora to explain the early evolution of the faith.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY::

One gene to tackle all stresses

• Different types of stress can affect the life of plants including that induced by pathogens (biotic stress) and that caused by non-living entities such as drought, osmotic stress, chemical or salt stress and so on (abiotic stress).
• For a long time, researchers have been trying to understand the genetics of stress, and now a collaboration of scientists from Bengaluru’s National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has discovered a single gene whose expression controls the plants’ response to both biotic and abiotic stress.
• This finding can be used to engineer plants that can withstand, for instance, drought or bacterial infections. The research has been published in Plant Molecular Biology.
• Previous studies at best identified genes that provide resistance to diverse abiotic stresses that are connected physiologically. For example, drought and salt stress are related and one single gene could provide resistance to both,” says P.V. Shivaprasad, professor at NCBS. The novelty of this research is that it proposes that by expressing a single gene, it is possible to develop resistance in plants to various diverse and unrelated types of stress.
• It has been known that the accumulation of an aldehyde – methylglyoxal – above a certain level can be toxic in all organisms. “Under normal developmental conditions, methylglyoxal levels remain very low (30-75 microM) and this regulates processes such as cell proliferation and their survival, and control of toxins,” says Prof. Shivaprasad.
• However, the problem begins when this level increases beyond an optimum. Methylglyoxal is highly toxic in all organisms including humans at higher concentrations. “High levels of methylglyoxal targets proteins and DNA and modify them in such a way that they are non-functional,” he adds.
• Studying tobacco plants, the researchers have shown that overexpression of heat shock protein (Hsp31), which has the capacity to detoxify the plant cells of methylglyoxal, can render them highly tolerant to both biotic and abiotic stress. This protein – Hsp31 – is very similar to the PARK7 protein in humans which is linked to early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Nano composite has potential to be used as a regenerative bone graft

• A novel nanocomposite developed by researchers from CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR-NML) has shown potential to be used as a regenerative bone graft especially in regions which need high strength.
• The nanocomposite was synthesised through a simple and cost-effective route. The composite contains carboxymethyl cellulose, gelatin and hydroxyapatite, with the hydroxyapatite in nanoscale (25-10 nm size).
• The bone graft to be used in load-bearing application must match the strength of the natural bone. So the researchers evaluated the strength and elasticity of the nanocomposite and found it to be in the same range as human cancellous and cortical bone.
• They also examined the biocompatibility and proliferation of the human bone cell line (MG-63) cells in the presence of the nanocomposite. The human cells were found attached and had spread well on the surface of the nanocomposite indicating that they were well suited for cell growth and proliferation.
• They also observed that the nanocomposite accelerated the bone cell line for new bone tissue formation.
• In vivo tests need to be carried out to get a full understanding of the nanocomposite.
• There are several options available for replacement of damaged/diseased bones such using patient’s own bone, donor’s bone and metallic implants.
• The risk of transferring diseases and chances of biological rejection from host body are very high in the case of bones transplanted from others (allo-graft).
• Metallic implants have high mechanical strength and mismatch with natural bone causing stress shielding and bone loosening which may damage or fracture adjacent bones.
• “The compressive strength and modulus of our nanocomposite is in the range of human bone. So there is no risk of damage to adjacent bones after implantation. Importantly, the nanocomposite has regenerative property, with time it will be absorbed inside the body and new bone will be formed in that place. Unlike metallic implants, there is no need to take out our implants.

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