Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 12 September 2013

Environment &development:

• The Supreme Court in July 2011 while delivering the Lafarge Judgment laid down guidelines on forest clearance procedures.
• These were to operate till a new regulatory mechanism was put in place.
• Two years after the judgment, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) put up a “Draft Policy on Inspection, Verification, Monitoring and the Overall Procedure relating to grant of Forest Clearances and Identification of Forests” for public comments.
• The judgment presented an important opportunity to the MoEF to revamp procedures and plug loopholes, being exploited by development project promoters from both government and the corporate sectors.
• However, the draft policy fails to infuse new conservation ideas based on sound science and misses out on tightening forest clearance/monitoring procedures.
• Even the only clause in the current policy that could have had some positive impact in reducing forest fragmentation is being cleverly bypassed.
• Most State governments are routinely relaxing an important condition — the identification and transfer of an equivalent area of non-forest land contiguous with existing forests in favour of the forest department before grant of Stage II forest clearance.
• Proposals are being cleared by imposing the simpler condition of compensatory afforestation over twice the area diverted.
• Thus, an excellent opportunity to plug this procedural loophole, which would enable the creation of viable

Australian election

• The landslide election victory of Australia’s conservative Coalition on September 7 is no surprise, but it leaves the deposed Labor Party in chaos.

• Voting is compulsory in Australia, and the fully-preferential electoral system used for the federal lower chamber, the 150-seat House of Representatives, has delivered no fewer than 88 seats to Coalition leader Tony Abbott’s grouping, with Labor winning 57; final results under the single transferable vote for the 76-place Senate, where half the seats were available, are still awaited.

• Labor has only itself to blame for this defeat. Despite a strong economy — the country has seen 22 years of uninterrupted aggregate growth and under Labor has ridden the global crash very well — the party’s bitter infighting, which saw Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ousted by his deputy Julia Gillard in 2010 and then reinstated in a June 2013 counter-coup, was predictably punished by voters. Ms Gillard had more parliamentary Labor support than Mr. Rudd, who rated better among the public, but her U-turn introducing mining and carbon taxes (which may have been intended to preserve her Green-supported minority government) was a political disaster; another right-wing policy of hers included a blanket refusal to let refugees arriving by boat set foot on the Australian mainland.

• Mr. Abbott made the most of his opportunity, and with strident Murdoch press support led the polls throughout a campaign sullied by crude sexism, particularly towards Ms Gillard.

• The incoming Prime Minister aims to abolish the carbon tax, despite doubts about the putative benefits, and to impose austerity measures.
• Furthermore, he may well try to reverse many of Ms Gillard’s policy improvements for women and for people with disabilities.
• Indigenous Australians, who in 2008 turned their backs on Mr. Abbott when he spoke during Mr. Rudd’s widely acclaimed national day of apology to them, can expect little; Mr. Abbott also opposes same-sex marriage.
• The new Coalition government will, however, have to make concessions in the Senate, where other parties including the Greens hold the balance of power. In addition, Mr. Abbott may find his austerity economics less popular than he expects; even the Business Council considers unemployment benefits too low.
• Internationally, however, little is likely to change despite proposed cuts in foreign aid. Canberra will maintain its strategic collaboration with the United States, and will continue attracting Indian students while it extends its commitment to the Asian Quadrilateral.
• Australian voters, nevertheless, may well find that voting against a party is not enough, but at present Labor is in no position to exploit that.

A step closer to regenerative medicine

• A landmark study published today (Sept 12) inNature shows that reprogramming of adult cells that behave like stem cells can be achieved right inside the body ( in vivo ). Till now, reprogramming of adult cells has been achieved only in labs ( in vitro
• This opens a promising window to repairing tissues right inside the body. “ “
• If reprogramming of adult cells inside the body is a stupendous achievement, the researchers crossed another milestone by making the reprogrammed adult cells exhibit totipotency.
• Aside from having the potential to become any of the specialised cells, totipotent cells can also differentiate into extraembryonic cells of the placenta.
• Even embryonic stem cells only rarely exhibit totipotency. They most often only exhibit pluripotency — ability to become any of the specialised cells but not the extraembryonic cells of the placenta.
• A blastocyst, a bunch of cells that is formed a few days after the fertilised egg starts dividing, has an inner cell mass and an outer cell mass.
• The inner cell mass, which contains the embryonic stem cells, becomes the foetus, while the outer cell mass, called the trophoblast, develops into extraembryonic tissue of the placenta.
• The study was thus able to produce totipotent cells that are seen in human embryos at the 72-hour stage of development, when they are composed of just 16 cells.
• For the study, the researchers used genetically modified mouse models that had all the four cell-reprogramming factors used in adult cell reprogramming; these factors could express themselves in the presence of a drug.
• A vaccine for Kala-azar within reach?
• A vaccine that offers protection from kala-azar, a deadly infection that affects large numbers of poor people in eastern India as well as neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh, could be developed by crippling the disease-causing organism’s ability to access a vital iron-containing molecule, according to research from a team of Indian scientists.
• Kala-azar — or visceral leishmaniasis — is the most severe form of disease produced by the single-celled parasite, Leishmania . Several internal organs, such as the spleen, liver and bone marrow, get affected and the infection can be fatal if left untreated. The parasite spreads when an infected female sandfly feeds on humans.
• The World Health Organisation estimates that five lakh cases of kala-azar, with around 50,000 deaths, could be occurring each year in the Indian subcontinent, parts of Africa, southern Europe as well as central and south America. Among parasitic diseases, only malaria kills more people.
• Nearly one lakh people become infected annually in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, according to the WHO figures. In India, the disease is endemic in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
• Drugs to treat the infection are toxic and expensive, and drug resistance has grown.
• No vaccine has yet been licensed to prevent infection.
• In their quest for a vaccine, the Indian scientists have taken advantage of the Leishmania parasite’s inability to synthesise a crucial iron-containing molecule, haem, that it needs.
• It therefore relies on pulling in its human victim’s haemoglobin, the molecule that allows red blood cells to carry oxygen all over the body.
• The parasite then breaks up the haemoglobin and makes use of the haem.
• Amitabha Mukhopadhyay of the National Institute of Immunology in Delhi and others showed 14 years back that the parasite used a protein on its outer surface to attach and drag in the haemoglobin.
• This protein is known as the haemoglobin receptor.
• The scientists made the vaccine by putting genetic information for the haemoglobin receptor into a strip of DNA.
• This DNA was then injected into the muscles of mice and hamsters. Muscle cells took up the DNA and produced the receptor protein.
• The protein generated a range of protective immune responses in the animals, including the production of antibodies that could block the haemoglobin receptor when the actual parasite turned up.
• The parasite was thus prevented from getting the haemoglobin it needed to survive.
• When animals immunised in this fashion were subsequently injected with virulent strains ofLeishmania donovani , they had far fewer parasites in the liver and spleen than those that had not been vaccinated.
• In the case of hamsters, all vaccinated animals remained healthy after being administered lethal doses of the parasite while unvaccinated ones died.
• As the haemoglobin receptor was very similar across various Leishmania species, the vaccine might provide protection against all forms of leishmaniasis,
• However, a vaccine against kala-azar developed by the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) at Seattle in the U.S. was ready to start clinical trials in India,
• The IDRI vaccine comprises a purified form of two parasite proteins fused together, given along with an additive to boost the immune response.The vaccine has already completed Phase 1 clinical trials in the U.S. to demonstrate safety and the ability to evoke a robust immune response.
• The DNA vaccine demonstrated in animals had been a wholly indigenous effort, starting with identification of the haemoglobin receptor, pointed out Dr. Mukhopadhyay. Taking the work forward to deliver a proven vaccine would require a tie-up with industry and support from governmental funding agencies, he told this correspondent.

Sources: Various News Papers