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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 24 September 2017

::National ::

Arvind Subramanian to continue as Chief Economic Adviser for another year

Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian, who had planned to return to the U.S. after his three-year tenure ended on October 16, has been persuaded by the government to stay back for another year.
Official orders to this effect will be issued soon, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on, putting an end to rumours about Dr. Subramanian’s resignation
“Dr. Arvind Subramanian will continue for one more year after the completion of his three-year tenure on 16th October, 2017,” the Finance Ministry said.
An IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, who went to Oxford University for further studies, Mr. Subramanian was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics before he took over as India’s Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) in October 2014.
Mr. Subramanian’s term as CEA has been marked by dynamic suggestions and analysis to do with the economy including coining the term ‘JAM trinity’ (for Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile), mooting the idea of a ‘bad bank’ to deal with the persistent problem of non-performing assets (NPAs) afflicting the balance sheets of banks and corporates, and proposing the concept of a Universal Basic Income.
In August, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya resigned to pursue his career in academics in the U.S. The CEA’s post had been vacant since September 2013 before Mr. Subramanian took charge, after the previous incumbent Raghuram Rajan resigned to take over as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Dr. Rajan resigned as Governor in September 2016, after a three-year term, without receiving an extension from the government.

Chakmas issue till now

Home Ministry officials held a meeting with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu and Union Minister of State for Home KirenRijiju, who represents the State in Parliament, on various administrative issues. The subject of granting citizenship to the Chakma-Hajongs was also discussed.
After the meeting, Mr. Rijiju said a “middle ground” would be chosen so that the Supreme Court’s 2015 order to grant citizenship to Chakma-Hajong refugees could be honoured and the rights of the local population not diluted.
The Supreme Court order has to be honoured. Chakmas are settled in Arunachal Pradesh since 1964. But the Scheduled Tribe status and indigenous people’s rights won’t be diluted. This led to widespread outrage in the State and several incidents of violence were reported.
In September 2015, the court, after hearing a petition filed by the Committee for Citizenship Rights of the Chakmas, directed the State government to grant citizenship to Chakmas and Hajongs within three months. ]
The State government had opposed the move in court. After giving a statement that the order had to be honoured, Mr. Rijiju changed his stand and said it was not implementable. He clarified that since the Home Ministry was the implementing authority for granting citizenship, it would approach the Supreme Court to modify its order.
Mr. Khandu said the State’s unique history was governed by a special Act and the Constitution gives special protection rights to the predominantly tribal State. “These provisions were legislated with the singular objective to protect the tribes of the State from the onslaught of alien culture and overwhelming influx of non-Arunachalese in the State.
Mr. Rijiju blamed the Congress for settling outsiders in a tribal State in the first place. “Originally 2,700 families were settled in Arunachal Pradesh by the then Congress government from 1964 to 1969. The settlement itself was not as per regulations. The settlement violates the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, or the Inner Line Permit system,” he said.
Since Arunachal Pradesh is a protected State, any outsider visiting the State needs a permit to do so. Mr. Rijiju had earlier said that Chakma-Hajongs would not get any rights to buy property or land in Arunachal Pradesh.
In the 1960s, over one lakh Chakmas and Hajong refugees, Buddhists and Hindus, fled to India from the Chittagong Hill Tract area in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), facing religious persecution. The areas where the Chakma-Hajongs lived was submerged following the construction of the Kaptai Dam. They were made to settle in the Tirap division of Arunachal Pradesh, then known as the North East Frontier Agency, administered by the Ministry of External Affairs through the Governor of Assam.
Arunachal Pradesh became a Union Territory in 1972, which coincided with the formation of Bangladesh, and soon local political parties began protesting against the settlement of outsiders in the State. The agitation gained momentum in 1987 when Arunachal Pradesh became a State.
The logjam persists even as the government looks for damage control. Mr. Rijiju said Chakma-Hajongs were entitled to live anywhere in India but their stay in Arunachal Pradesh would violate the constitutional rights of indigenous tribes protected by Article 37 IH.

Policy of revising fuel prices daily in turmoil

Amid protests against the recent spike in petrol and diesel prices, Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has ruled out the possibility of an end to the recently introduced policy of revising fuel prices daily.
Since June 16 this year, petrol and diesel prices across the country have been revised on a daily basis, against the previous policy of revising prices every fortnight. By opting for daily pricing, India has joined advanced countries like the United States and others which follow the practice.
The daily pricing policy is in line with the government’s efforts over the years to deregulate the pricing of essential fuels. The prices of petrol and diesel were first deregulated in 2010 and 2014 respectively, bringing in the practice of fortnightly revision of prices.
The new daily pricing policy, the government argues, will now allow oil marketing companies such as Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and others to price their products even better, that is, in accordance with their fluctuating input costs.
The oil companies need not wait a fortnight to change prices, and it is believed that this would allow them to quickly pass on the benefit of lower crude oil prices to retail customers. Also, daily price revisions will reduce the risk of huge revisions in prices, which is more common under the fortnightly pricing policy.
The daily pricing policy has been blamed in recent weeks for the sharp increase in petrol and diesel prices. Fuel prices fell in the initial days after the implementation of the new policy, but have seen a sharp acceleration ever since. The price of petrol in metro cities like Delhi and Kolkata, for instance, has risen by more than Rs. 5 since the introduction of daily pricing.
The government has blamed supply constraints due to floods in the United States for the present rise in prices. A wider criticism, however, is that domestic fuel prices have also failed to match the drastic fall in international crude oil prices over the last few years. Petrol, for instance, sold at a retail price of Rs. 65 in 2012 when the price of the Indian crude oil basket was around $120.
Today, even as the price of crude oil has dropped by more than half to hover around $50, the retail price of petrol stands at well over Rs. 70. The surprising divergence in the cost of crude oil and domestic fuel prices has caused a lot of anger. What is being missed is the fact that fuel prices are determined by market forces, not costs.
So lower crude oil prices need not necessarily lead to lower fuel prices. Costs only determine the profits of oil companies, whose operating margins have naturally improved since deregulation.
Taxes are the main culprit stopping petrol and diesel prices from reflecting the fall in international crude oil prices. About half the retail price paid by consumers for petrol and diesel goes towards paying the excise duty and the value added tax imposed on them.
These taxes increase the price at which oil companies can profitably sell essential fuels to consumers, thus restricting supply and keeping prices high.

After Sardar Sarovar Dam completion focus should be on building canals

The Sardar Sarovar dam, built over the Narmada river in south Gujarat, is the second biggest concrete gravity dam by volume after the Grand Coulee Dam in the U.S. It faced many hurdles, including the World Bank’s refusal to fund it on grounds of environmental damage and displacement of tribals in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The cost, originally pegged at Rs. 6,000 crore, has increased several times over and is now estimated to be around Rs. 50,000 crore.
The project was originally planned to deliver water to the parched Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat regions and also parts of neighbouring Rajasthan. The question being asked by farmers, the real beneficiaries of the project, is when will the canals to bring the water all the way from south Gujarat to the parched fields in Surendranagar, Rajkot or Banaskantha be completed.
Though the dam has been built with full height permitted by the Supreme Court, all gates have been closed as the canal network is not in place to take water from the dam to the fields in the project command area.
As per the Gujarat government’s figures, the Sardar Sarovar Project will provide irrigation facilities to 18.45 lakh hectares, covering 3,112 villages of 73 taluks in 15 districts of Gujarat, 2.46 lakh hectares in Barmer and Jalore in Rajasthan and 3,75,00 hectares in Maharashtra.
The project’s canal network involves a 532 km main canal and 32 branch canals and minor, sub-minor canals and finally field channels. Though the main canal was completed a decade ago, the State authorities have not been able to build minors, sub-minors and field channels to realise the full benefits of the project.
Under the original plan, about 90,389 km of canal network was proposed to be built to irrigate 1.8 million hectares in Gujarat. However, there is no clarity on how much network has been built so far and the area it has brought under irrigation.
The State brought down the canal network size from 90,389 km to 71,748 km, which means a reduction of 18,641 km.
Academic VidhyutJodhi, who has written two books on the project, said that not more than three lakh hectares was under irrigation by Narmada waters because the government, having completed the main canal and branch canals, had not built field channels to take the water to the last mile.
Owing to absence of minor, sub-minor and field channels, farmers along the branch canals have put up diesel engines to draw water to irrigate their farms which are near the main canal network.
Having built the dam, the State must strive to make it a participatory project which means handing over the water management to local water users’ associations in villages. So far, the government has only registered such associations on paper. Farmers will need to be educated on crop patterns to boost production.

A study shows that India third in nuclear power installations

But share of energy generation stagnates globally, and several countries shut down nuclear reactors in 2017
India is third in the world in the number of nuclear reactors being installed, at six, while China is leading at 20, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2017, released this month, shows.
The number of nuclear reactor units under construction is, however, declining globally for the fourth year in a row, from 68 reactors at the end of 2013 to 53 by mid-2017, the report says.
The latest report further reveals that most nuclear reactor constructions are behind schedule, with delays resulting in increase in project costs and delay in power generation.
There are 37 reactor constructions behind schedule, of which 19 reported further delays over the past year. In India itself, five out of the six reactors under construction are behind schedule. Eight nuclear power projects have been under construction globally for a decade or more, of which three have been so for over 30 years.
Data gathered by the authors shows that global nuclear power generation increased by 1.4% in 2016 due to a 23% increase in China, though the share of nuclear energy in electricity generation stagnated at 10.5%.
By comparison, globally, wind power output grew by 16% and solar power by 30%. Wind power increased generation by 132 TWh (terawatt hours) or 3.8 times, and solar power by 77 TWh or 2.2 times more than nuclear power’s 35 TWh respectively. Renewables represented 62% of global power generating capacity additions.
Russia and the U.S. shut down reactors in 2016, while Sweden and South Korea both closed their oldest units in the first half of 2017, the report notes.
The report also documents the financial crisis plaguing the industry. After the discovery of massive losses over its nuclear construction projects, Toshiba filed for bankruptcy of its U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse, the largest nuclear power builder in history. AREVA has accumulated $12.3 billion in losses over the past six years.
The French government has provided a $5.3 billion bailout and continues its break-up strategy, the report notes.
In the chapter on the status of the Fukushima nuclear power project in Japan, six years after the disaster began, the report notes how the total official cost estimate for the catastrophe doubled to $200 billion.

Soft loan from Japan to fund mass rapid transit systems

$4.5 billion soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency to boost $100 bn Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor project
Funds from a Japanese government loan will soon be utilised for the first time in the $100 billion, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project. So far, the mega-project was being developed only with the Indian government’s financial assistance.
The DMIC spans six States (Uttar Pradesh, Delhi National Capital Region, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra). It uses ‘the 1,500-km-long, high-capacity western Dedicated Railway Freight Corridor (DFC) as the backbone’ and aims to be ‘a global manufacturing and investment destination’.
A soft loan (with concessional conditions) to the tune of $4.5 billion to be extended by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), will shortly be utilised to develop two Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS) one each in Gujarat and Haryana that will be part of the DMIC.
The JICA is the Japanese governmental agency in charge of implementation of Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) with the main objective of ‘promoting economic development and welfare in developing countries. The interest rate of the loan (in Japanese Yen) will be kept ‘very low’ (at 0.1%) and have a ‘long’ repayment period (at 40 years, including a 10-year grace period).
Incidentally, a JICA loan worth Rs. 88,000 crore, on similar terms , will be used to build the Rs. 1.08 lakh crore Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project. JICA loans/assistance are being used to facilitate development of
Metro rail networks including in Delhi and the Western DFC. The MRTS in Gujarat will be ‘at grade’ (ground level) and link Ahmedabad to the Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR).
The land has been acquired and the DPR has been finalised, officials said, adding that the MRTS has been included in the JICA ‘Rolling Plan’ for the ODA loan. The Department of Economic Affairs will soon ask JICA to work on preparatory surveys for the project, they said. The length of these two MRTS projects will be 85 km each.
According to the Commerce and Industry Ministry (the nodal body for industrial corridors), the financial assistance for the DMIC project is to be in the form of grant-in-aid worth Rs. 17,500 crore as a ‘revolving fund’.
This, it said, was for the development of ‘trunk infrastructure’ in the proposed seven industrial cities in the DMIC at Rs. 2,500 crore per city on an average, subject to a ceiling of Rs. 3000 crore per city.
In September 2011, the Union Cabinet — in addition to giving approval for Rs. 17,500 crore as ‘Project Implementation Fund’ — had also okayed an additional corpus of Rs. 1000 Crore as grant-in-aid to carry out project development activities.
The funds are released to the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) formed between the Centre and the respective State Governments. Official sources said, out of all this, the total amount spent till September 2017 was around Rs. 3,500 crore.
As per the ministry, the Japanese government had announced financial support for the DMIC project to an extent of $4.5 billion in the first phase — for projects with Japanese participation through a mix of JICA and
Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) lending. Also, the JBIC currently holds 26% equity in the DMIC Development Corporation (the SPV which is the DMIC’s project development agency) aggregating to
Rs. 26 crore. The Indian government holds 49% equity in the DMICDC, while the remaining is held by HUDCO (19.9%), IIFCL (4.1%) and LIC (1%).

::International ::

Iran is in reconciliation mode with Syria and Hamas

Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in West Asia, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country’s civil war.
Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States’ Arab allies.
But when Syria tipped into civil war, Hamas broke with President Bashar al-Assad and sided with the rebels fighting to oust him. The rebels are largely Sunni Muslims, like Hamas, and scenes of Sunni civilian deaths raised an outcry across the region against Mr. Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect.
Iran, meanwhile, has been one of Assad’s strongest backers since the crisis in Syria began in 2011, pumping billions of dollars into the economy and sending advisers as well as Iranian-backed fighters to help him stay in power. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters, helping tip the war in Assad’s favour against the rebels and is now helping in the fight against the Islamic State.
The reconciliation attempt comes after Hamas elected a new leadership and its main backers — Qatar and Turkey, both strong supporters of the rebels in Syria — have sought to improve relations with Iran. Since
YehiyehSinwar took over Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip in February, the group has been rebuilding those relations.
In August, a Hamas delegation visited Tehran and took part in President Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration.
They also met with the Parliament Speaker and senior aides to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This year, Hamas officials have held three meetings with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and relations have reportedly returned to normal.

Iran test-fires medium range missile

Iran said that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.
State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran.
It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 2,000 km and can carry multiple warheads.
“As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country's defence capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,” Defence
Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement.
The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where U.S. President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a “rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos”.
Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered U.S. sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.
Iran, which fought a brutal war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s, sees missiles as a legitimate and vital part of its defence — particularly as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel import huge amounts of military hardware from the West.
Mr. Trump has threatened to bin the nuclear agreement, saying Iran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal’s restrictions are lifted in 2025.
He is due to report to the Congress on October 15 on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in U.S. interests to stick by it. If he decides that it is not, that could open the way for U.S. lawmakers to reimpose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the pact.
The other signatories to the deal — Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the EU — have all pushed for it to continue.
European support
They point out that abandoning the agreement will remove restrictions on Iran immediately rather than in eight years' time and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Tehran is meeting its commitments.
Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 km, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.

::Economy ::

Textile exports may be hit by lower duty drawback rate

The sharp reduction drawback rates announced by the government for textile and clothing products may slow down exports of these goods, according to the industry.
The drawback rate announced for garments is 2% as against 7.7% earlier. In the case of made-ups, it was 7.3% and has been reduced to 2% now.
The Excise and Service Tax components have been subsumed under the Goods and Services Tax and only the basic Customs Duty is refunded under the drawback scheme. This was on expected lines. But, the reduction in drawback rates is steep and the GST system is not working as expected, said industry sources. There is a delay in refund of the input tax under GST.
Annual textile exports have been stagnant for the last three years at about $37 billion. The reduction in drawback rates will become another contributing factor to slow down exports, said sources.
The government should extend the transitional provision for duty drawback and Rebate of State Levies (ROSL) till the end of March next year, said industry representatives.\
Currently, the ROSL scheme provides for refund of State levies on export goods for garments and made-ups.
However, the scheme does not cover the embedded State levies, such as electricity tax and market cess, from fibre to made-ups, he said.

Interest rates, rupee hurting growth

Lower interest rates, better exchange rate management and a demand push are imperative to cope with the present economic slowdown that has been led by a slump in the manufacturing sector, a top government official said, hinting that the Reserve Bank of India needed to align its monetary policy to push growth as inflation targets are well under control, despite a spike last month.
The remarks assume significance in the backdrop of growth slowing to 5.7% in the first quarter, with the slowdown blamed on the lingering effects of demonetisation and de-stocking by producers ahead of the Goods and Services Tax regime’s roll-out in July.
Industry bodies have indicated that a turnaround is only likely in the second half of this year.
Once the effect of demonetisation and GST wears off, we should expect to see those sectors picking up. But those sectors have also been affected by the appreciation of the currency. So it’s a combination of one-off factors — demonetisation, GST plus the appreciation of the currency.
Pointing to the central bank’s heavy interventions in the foreign exchange market over the last three months to prevent excessive appreciation of the rupee, the official said that the real competitiveness of the currency has improved a little bit because the Chinese yuan has also been strengthening against the U.S. dollar.
The Centre’s reservations on the monetary policy adopted by the central bank were articulated in the Economic Survey’s second volume released in August, where it was pointed out that the RBI’s inflation projections have been over-estimated by at least one percentage point for six of the 14 previous quarters and actual inflation had been below target for over ten months (till August).
The Survey had said there was room for a 50 basis points to 100 basis points cut in policy rates by the RBI.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ::

Treating oral cancer without surgery may be possible in the near future

Researchers in Mumbai have moved a step closer to treating surface tumours such as oral, breast and cervical cancer and other tumours such melanoma and colon cancer through photothermal ablation using gold-polymer nanoparticles and near infrared light.
The researchers from Mumbai’s Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Tata Memorial Centre have synthesised hybrid polymer-gold nanoparticles as photothermal agent to ablate solid tumours.
The near infrared light heats up the nanoparticles and the heated nanoparticles, in turn, can kill the cancer cells. Unlike other agents tried out by others, the hybrid nanoparticles used by the Mumbai team has no toxicity, is biodegradable and gets cleared from the body through urine.
The team led by Prof. Rohit Srivastava from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at IIT Bombay and Dr. Abhijit De from the Molecular Functional Imaging Lab at ACTREC, Tata Memorial Centre used a thermoresponsive polymer (poly(N-vinyl caprolactam)) nanoshell which can be loaded with an anticancer drug. The polymer nanoshell is coated with gold nanoparticles.
Besides killing the cancer cells through thermal ablation, the polymer degrades at about 43 degree C and releases the drug to completely kill the tumour. Cancer cells get killed above 42 degree C.
The gold nanoparticle coating is important. In its absence the temperature of the polymer does not rise to 43 degree C when we shine near infrared light. The polymer shrinks and disintegrates when ablated and releases the drug efficiently.
Studies carried out using breast cancer cell lines have been very encouraging. Preliminary studies on mice for breast cancer photoablation have also shown promising results. The cancer cells (cell lines and in animals) were killed using heat alone; no anticancer drug was used.
Unlike surgery, the thermal ablation procedure takes very less time. Once the nanoparticles are injected at the site of the tumour, one has to wait for 15-30 minutes for the nanoparticles to settle and spread in the cancer cells before shining the laser for 3-5 minutes.
Deep-seated tumour can also be treated with photoablation using catheter that can carry light. Right now the cable that delivers the laser is thicker. “Once we miniature it then can reach deeper tumours,” says Dr. De.
The hybrid nanoparticles can be injected into the blood and need not be injected directly into the tumour. The nanoparticles are able to reach the tumour cells through enhanced permeability and retention effect.
Since the hybrid nanoparticles absorb light and can automatically reach the cancer cells when injected into blood, they can also be used as a contrast medium. Unlike the conventionally used iodine contrast medium for CT scan, the nanoparticles produce better contrast due to higher absorption coefficient (due to higher electron density) and at one-fifth the concentration.
Also, the gold nanoparticles get accumulated in tumour cells and so the contrast increases with time. Additionally, the gold nanoparticles have longer half-life and circulate in the body for a longer time and so imaging can be done for a longer time.

Untreated effluentsinto water bodies is leading to emergence of multi drug resistance bacteria

Thanks to discharge of untreated effluents from pharmaceutical companies in Hyderabad, water bodies in and around the Patencheru-Bollaram Industrial area are contaminated with antibiotics and antifungal agents leading to the emergence of multidrug-resistant bacteria.
The bacteria from these water bodies have been found to produce enzymes such as extended spectrum beta-lactamases and carbapenemases which can protect them from antibiotics such as penicillin, cephalosporins, cephamycins, and carbapenems.
The study was carried out by scientists from Leipzig University, Germany along with a Hyderabad-based NGO Gamana. The results were published in the journal Infection .
The Patencheru-Bollaram Industrial area, 32 km outside Hyderabad is a growing hub with over 100 industries and more than 30 pharmaceutical manufacturing companies.
Samples were collected from different water bodies — rivers, lakes, ground water, and water from sewage treatment plant to name a few — in the vicinity of the companies as well as from locations far away from the industrial area.
All the 16 samples collected from the vicinity of the industrial area and 10 of 12 samples collected from distant locations were contaminated with antifungals and/or antibiotics.
The antifungal agent fluconazole was detected in 13 samples and one particular sewer in the vicinity of the industrial area showed levels as high as 20 times greater than therapeutically desired levels in blood in patients.
According to the scientists, this is the highest concentration of any drug ever measured in the environment.
The other antiinfectives found in the waters included antifungal medicine voriconazole, medications for bacterial infections such as moxifloxacin, linezolid, levofloxacin, clarithromycin, ciprofloxacin, ampicillin, doxycycline, trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole.
The bacterial isolates from the different samples were tested for drug resistance. Except two samples taken from tap water away from the industrial area, the remaining samples showed bacteria containing drug-resistant genes.
Carbapenemase-producingenterobacteria and non-fermenting bacteria such as Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas species were found in more than 95% of all water samples collected. This finding further confirms previous studies that there is a strong association between drug pollution and presence of multidrug-resistant bacteria.
Despite the Supreme Court demanding last year that the industries in the Patencheru-Bollaram area should treat wastewater and reuse it, “massive violations” have been the norm.
The ground water in this area is yellow. The villagers who live around this estate have many skin problems. Though there is a water treatment plant nearby, it is not really of use. Despite decades of campaigning by local NGOs the pollution has not been reduced. In 2009, the national pollution index classified this industrial area as ‘critically polluted.

Cancer drug resistance is reversed by IGIB researchers

Resistance to anticancer drugs is a major problem in oncology affecting a large number of cancer patients. Now, researchers at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), New Delhi have found a way to make cancer cells that are resistant to two commonly used anticancer drugs doxorubicin and topotecanto once again become sensitive to the drugs.
Improving or regaining the sensitivity of existing anticancer drugs is a quicker way to address the problem of cancer drug resistance than developing new drugs. The results were published in the journal Scientific Reports .
Chemotherapeutic drugs like doxorubicin and topotecan act by inducing DNA damage. Once the DNA damage gets induced it leads to the activation of an important protein called p21, which gets produced in larger quantities.
The p21 protein helps stop the growth of cells and triggers senescence or apoptosis in cancer cells thereby killing them. However, in many drug-resistant cancer cells the production of p21 is compromised, thereby preventing the destruction of cancer cells even in the presence of these drugs.
That search led the team to the p21 protein and they found that the promoter of p21 protein has a TRF2 binding site. The TRF2 specifically binds to a DNA structure called G-quadruplex (G4) which is present in the p21 promoter.
Once they found that TRF2 binds to the p21 promoter, they wanted to know if it also controls how p21 mRNA is made [mRNA produces the p21 protein]. And that led to the basic finding that TRF2 is a repressor and inhibits the expression of p21 mRNA in multiple cell types.
Once the researchers understood the mechanism by which the TRF2 binds to p21, they used small molecules that were available (from other researchers) to disrupt the binding of TRF2 to the p21 promoter site.
When the small molecules are given along with the anticancer drug doxorubicin there is increased amount of p21 produced and cancer cells that were unresponsive to doxorubicin once again become sensitive to the drug.
The researchers used fibrosarcoma and breast cancer cell lines to test the combination of small molecules and doxorubicin in reversing cancer drug resistance.
Since existing small molecules were used for the study, the researchers do not rule out the possibility of the small molecules binding to other G4 sites in the genome. So the focus of the team is to design specific small molecules that bind only to the G4 site in the p21 promoter.

Butterfly physiology is shaped by Indian Monsoon

Timing is everything, especially when you live for just three months and have to undertake a 350 km journey: female Milkweed butterflies wait till their gruelling migrations — from one side of the Indian peninsula to the other — are over, to invest in reproductive tissues for birth.
The Indian monsoon, which prompts these species to migrate to drier areas, shapes the physiology of the female butterflies more than they do to males, reveals a study published in Oikos .
India's Milkweed butterflies undertake a fascinating yearly migration. In April-June, just before the onset of India's intensive southwest monsoon, millions of these butterflies migrate from the wet Western Ghats to the relatively drier eastern plains and hills, across distances of 350-500 km.
After migration, they 'swarm' in large numbers: hanging around each other and roosting on plants. They then mate, lay eggs and die. The next generation of butterflies flee from the northeast monsoon that now hits the eastern plains and they migrate to the Western Ghats just as the southwest monsoon retreats from there.
Scientist Dr. KrushnameghKunte and his student VaishaliBhaumik of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru measured the thorax and abdomens of 934 individuals of ten Milkweed migratory and non-migratory butterfly species and examined 3,734 individuals across Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh to see how they invest physiologically in flight versus reproduction, during and after their migration.
They found that male butterflies across species – whether migratory or not — did not differ in their physiological investments. But the bodies of female migratory butterflies changed drastically: they invested significantly in abdominal tissue in the reproductive phase after migration, without decreasing investment in flight muscles.
“Our results suggest that female butterflies have more to lose if they do not invest optimally in flight over reproduction during migration. A hiker wouldn’t carry an unnecessarily heavy burden during her trek, and neither would a butterfly,” says the lead author Bhaumik.

NASA spacecraft traveling to an asteroid veered towards earth

An unmanned NASA spacecraft travelling to a distant asteroid, veered towards Earth, for a gravitational slingshot manoeuvre that will better aim it towards the sun-orbiting space rock, Bennu, the U.S. space agency said.
The gravity boost took place about halfway through the two-year journey of the spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security — Regolith Explorer).\
The mission launched last year from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its goal is to collect a sample from Bennu in 2018, and return it to Earth for further study in 2023.
Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson, described the gravity-assist as “a clever way to move the spacecraft onto Bennu’s orbital plane, using Earth’s own gravity instead of expending fuel.”
The spacecraft zipped over Antarctica at a distance of 17,000 kilometres, using Earth’s gravity to shift its trajectory so it can eventually meet up with Bennu.
Bennu is a primitive, carbon-rich asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth, billions of years ago.
The asteroid’s orbit around the sun is tilted six degrees in comparison to that of the earth. During the gravity assist, OSIRIS-REx swung through a region of space that contains earth-orbiting satellites, but emerged intact.
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Manipuri script over 3500 years old stages a comeback

The Manipuri script, over 3,500 years old by some accounts and edged out by a Bengali import, is on a revival course, with street signs, newspapers, literature and even records of Assembly proceedings adopting it.
The script was lost to the speakers of the language when ShantidasGosai, a Hindu missionary, spread Vaishnavism in the region in 1709, during the reign of Pamheiba. The King, who assumed the name GaribNiwaz, decreed its replacement with that of Bengali.
Books and other written materials in Manipuri were then incinerated. But many of his subjects opposed the imposition and continued to follow dual religions, Vaishnava and Sanamahi. They also preserved the Manipuri script.
June 20 marked a milestone in the revival efforts, when college teachers completed a 10-day reorientation programme.
Manipur’s Education Minister T. Radheshyam said, “It is a must for college and university teachers to be well-acquainted with the Manipuri script. In due course, it will be taught at the university level.” Necessary teaching resources were readily available, he noted.
Pursuing the restoration plan is Meelal, a registered body with 24 organisations that took off on August 18, 2003. It has been at the forefront of the campaign. Meelal has kept a hawk eye on the use of non-Manipuri words in writing and social media, and in open air theatre, a widely enjoyed form of entertainment.
There are campaigns led by Meelal for teaching of the Manipuri script in schools and colleges, doing away with Bengali-script textbooks. It organises free classes for the young and the old.
Manipuri belongs to the Tibeto-Burmese branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and has no use for several Bengali letters, some of which its speakers are unable to pronounce correctly.
Writers are known to use Bengali letters whimsically, with the result that writers use different spellings for several words. Personalised spellings imposed by university professors on the research scholars have aggravated the linguistic problem.
Occasionally, activists have used extreme methods to advance the cause. Signboards without the Manipuri script were defaced with tar. A plaque at a city flyover was vandalised and the government library in Imphal, which housed a considerable number of Bengali books, was burned down one night by unidentified protesters.
Thanks to the revivalist moves, Manipuri language newspapers have to publish at least one news item in the traditional script on their front pages.
Hoardings, billboards and other material for public events must also be in the script. Organisers have had to tender public apologies if this requirement was defied or ‘forgotten’. Also, vehicle owners must display their registration numbers in the Manipuri script.
The plan to return to the old has faced rough weather. Litigation and objections by some groups prompted the government to drag its feet over the reintroduction. The State government accepted the 27-alphabet script in 1980, but some groups claimed that the 18-letter, 27-letter or 36-letter alphabets were the ‘genuine’ ones.
While it is also called ‘Meitei,’ the late Lt. Col. HaobamBhuban, a former Minister, demanded that it be called the Manipuri script for three reasons: it is the one used for the royal chronicle of the kings of the land, King Gambhir signed the Jeeree Agreement of April 18, 1833 in it, and most importantly, in 1979 the Manipur Assembly, under the leadership of YangmashoShaiza, of the Tangkhul tribe, approved the 27-letter Manipuri alphabet.”
The State language is also spoken by Manipuris in several places, including Assam, Tripura and other northeastern States, and Bangladesh and Myanmar.
The results of the campaigning are visible. It is no accident that many public signboards no longer have the Bengali script. Widely published newspapers that have not gone Manipuri, likePoknapham,SangaiExpressandHueiyenLanpao, are losing younger readers. Since 2006, students have been taught in the Manipuri script, creating a new generation of educated Manipuris.
Publishers with a longer-term view of the market began printing newspapers in the Manipuri tradition, and in English. Many organisations, including those supporting insurgency, use Roman in lieu of the Bengali script for their press releases. Most writers have stopped using the Bengali script, while others have rewritten their old books using the traditional alphabet.
In another move that has received a big welcome, Manipur Speaker Y. Khemchand recently announced that one copy of the State Assembly proceedings would be recorded in the Manipuri script.