(Current Affairs) Science & Technology, Defence, Environment | May: 2015

Science & Technology, Defense, Environment

INS Alleppey decommissioned

  • INS Alleppey , one of the six Ponchicherry class coastal minesweepers purchased from the erstwhile USSR in the 1970s, decommissioned at sunset after nearly 35 years of service under the Western Naval Command.
  • After INS Alleppey ’s decommissioning, the Indian Navy will be left with six other operational minesweeper vessels.
  • The ship was decommissioned by Rear Admiral MS Pawar, Flag Officer Commanding Maharashtra and Gujarat Naval Area at Mumbai Naval Dockyard.

ISRO’s launcher assembly unit gets Rs. 120 crore

  • ISRO’s proposal for having a second facility to assemble launchers at Sriharikota has got a Rs. 120-crore Budget boost.
  • The amount is the first big allocation for additional infrastructure since it was approved in late 2013.
  • Estimated at Rs. 360 crore, the second Vehicle Assembly Building (SVAB) was conceived to increase the number of satellite launches from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota.
  • M.Y.S. Prasad, Director of SDSC, said the project was going through a multiple tendering process to choose agencies that would build it over the next two years.
  • The SDSC has got a separate allocation of Rs. 559 crores.

NASA launches 4 spacecraft to solve magnetic mystery

  • NASA has launched four identical spacecraft on a billion-dollar mission to study the explosive give-and-take of the Earth and sun’s magnetic fields.
  • The unmanned Atlas rocket, and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft, soared into a clear late-night sky, right on time. Within two hours, all four observatories were flying free.
  • The quartet of observatories is being placed into an oblong orbit stretching tens of thousands of miles into the magnetosphere, nearly halfway to the moon at one point.
  • They will fly in pyramid formation, between 6 miles (10 kilometres) and 250 miles (402 kilometres) apart, to provide 3-D views of magnetic reconnection on the smallest of scales.
  • Magnetic reconnection is what happens when magnetic fields like those around Earth and the sun come together, break apart, then come together again, releasing vast energy.
  • This repeated process drives the aurora, as well as solar storms that can disrupt communications and power on Earth.
  • Data from this two-year mission should help scientists better understand so-called space weather.
  • Each observatory resembles a giant octagonal wheel, stretching more than 11 feet (3.35 meters) across and 4 feet (1.22 meters) high, and weighing 3,000 pounds (1,360.79 kilogrammes) apiece.
  • Numbered and stacked like tires on top of the rocket for launch, No 4 popped free first more than an hour after liftoff, followed every five minutes by another.
  • “They’re all healthy and turned on. Essentially, we’re all green and headed into our mission,” said NASA project manager Craig Tooley.
  • Once the long, sensor-laden booms are extended in a few days, each spacecraft could span a baseball field.
  • Principal investigator Jim Burch from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said measurements will be made down to the electron scale, significantly smaller than previous heliophysics missions.
  • In all, there are 100 science sensors. Primary science-gathering will begin this summer, following a five-month checkout.
  • The findings from the USD 1.1 billion mission will be useful in understanding magnetic reconnection throughout the universe.
  • Closer to home, space weather scientists along with everyone on Earth hopefully will benefit.

Malaria: people with blood group A more vulnerable to severe disease

  • A protein produced by some strains of the malaria parasite can cause red blood cells, especially in blood group A individuals, to form clumps, thereby increasing the severity of disease, according to research just published.

  • When certain strains of Plasmodium falciparum , the single-celled parasite that is responsible for the most dangerous forms of malaria, get into red blood cells, those cells start sticking to other red blood cells as well as to walls of blood vessels.

  • The resulting obstruction to blood flow can damage tissues and lead to severe malaria that is life-threatening.

  • Previous research had implicated the ‘ P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1’ (PfEMP1) in red blood cells forming clumps. (Such clumps are called ‘rosettes’).

  • Once the parasite infects red blood cells, this protein that it produces appears on the outer surface of those cells. The protein then latches on to receptor molecules found on other red blood cells, creating rosettes.

  • However, when PfEMP1 was removed from red blood cell surfaces using enzymes, rosette-formation was reduced only in those of blood group O but not blood group A.

  • This indicated that PfEMP1 may not be the only molecule involved in rosette formation, noted a Scandinavian team of scientists in a Nature Medicine paper.

  • With a series of experiments, the team showed that another protein could have a hand too, principally affecting individuals of blood group A.

  • The RIFINs too are secreted by the parasite and then get to the surface of red blood cells. There are 150 rif genes that carry the genetic information for RIFINs.

  • One P. falciparum parasite examined by the team carried 85 such genes, but with just one of those genes being responsible for much of the RIFINs it produced.

  • The RIFINs were thought to act as decoys, making it difficult for the human immune system to detect and destroy parasite-infected red blood cells, commented G. Padmanabhan of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, who has studied the malaria parasite over many decades but was not involved in the research that led to the Nature Medicine paper.

  • Those cells, with the RIFIN protein on their surface, “bound large numbers of group A RBCs [red blood cells],” the scientists noted in their paper.

  • The rosette formation with group O RBCs was “less pronounced.” Moreover, when molecular tags that marked RBCs as belonging to group A were removed, their binding to cells bearing RIFIN were similar to those of group O.

  • Only RIFINs of sub-group A, which accounts for about 70 per cent of these proteins, led to rosettes being formed.

  • The protection offered by blood group O could “explain why the blood type is so common in the areas where malaria is common,” said Mats Wahlgren, the study’s principal investigator, in a press release.

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