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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 22 February 2015

:: National ::

India and Russia have generally agreed upon the amount and division of work during the research and development (R&D) stage of the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project.
A contract for the R&D phase is being prepared and expected to be signed this year, said Yuli Slyusar, president and chairman of Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) at Aero India 2015 in Bengaluru.
The work share of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has been a contentious issue as the project will have equal investment between India and Russia and is likely to cost over $30 billion for about 400 aircraft. India plans to induct 144 of them.
But HAL’s share in the work has been limited to a meagre 13 per cent so far which will not build any critical technological gains.
Both sides have been holding discussions to sort this out before the final agreement.
FGFA is crucial for Indian Air Force’s evolving structure as was recently acknowledged by the air chief recently.
The final announcement could come later this year with President Pranab Mukherjee visiting Moscow in June, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi expected to visit Russia twice.

In a breakthrough, researchers led by an Indian-origin scientist, have shown that stem cells from the skin of two adults of the same sex can be used to make human egg and sperm cells.
Scientists at Cambridge University collaborated with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science and used stem cell lines from embryos as well as from the skin of five different adults.
Researchers have previously created live baby mice using engineered eggs and sperm, but until now have struggled to create a human version of these ‘primordial germ’ or stem cells.
Ten different donor sources have been used so far and new germ-cell lines have been created from all of them, researchers said.
The team has compared the engineered germ cells with natural human stem cells taken from aborted human foetuses to check that the artificially created versions of the cells had identical characteristics, The Times reported.
A gene called SOX17, previously considered to be unimportant in mice, has turned out to be critical in the process of ‘reprogramming’ human cells, researchers said.