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THE SOCIAL ISSUES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

1. INDIA HAD THE HIGHEST MORTALITY OF ANY COUNTRY DURING PANDEMIC: LANCET STUDY

THE CONTEXT: According to the new study published by the Lancet, as many as 4.07 million people in India are estimated to have died during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

THE EXPLANATION:

• This analysis attempted, for the first time, to estimate excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.
• It has determined that 18.2 million people in 191 countries have died since March 2020 – versus 5.94 million officially recorded deaths.
• Overall, it suggests that India had the highest mortality of any country during the pandemic.
• This is eight times more than the number of COVID-19 deaths India has officially registered. Even now, the official toll is only 0.5 million.
• The second worst-hit country is reportedly the US, with 1.13 million deaths in 24 months – 1.14-times more than its officially recorded deaths. Five more countries had excess deaths exceeding 0.5 million in this period: Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
• These seven countries together account for more than half of all excess deaths due to COVID-19 in the 191 countries.

State-wise scenarios

• According to the analysis, eight states in India had mortality rates exceeding 200 deaths per 100,000 people. Only 50 other countries in the world, of the 191, had worse mortality during the pandemic. These states were Uttarakhand, Manipur, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka (in descending order).
• On the other hand, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Goa had excess mortality rates lower than the global average – of 120.6 per 100,000 people.
• In terms of the absolute number of estimated deaths, Maharashtra topped the chart in India with 0.6 million. Bihar came second with 0.3 million.
• Also the study noted, “the magnitude of disease burden might have changed for many causes of death during the pandemic period due to both direct effects of lockdowns and the resulting economic turmoil”.

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

2. EXPLAINED: WHAT IS XENOTRANSPLANTATION?

THE CONTEXT: In a landmark surgery in January 2022, doctors replaced the heart of a 57-year-old patient with the heart of a genetically altered pig. However, the patient died two months after the operation

THE EXPLANATION:

The experimental procedure was done after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted emergency authorization for it on December 31, 2021. The patient had been ruled ineligible for a conventional heart transplant or an artificial heart by major transplant centres.

WHAT IS XENOTRANSPLANATATION?

• According to the FDA, xenotransplantation is “any procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation or infusion into a human recipient of either (a) live cells, tissues, or organs from a nonhuman animal source, or (b) human body fluids, cells, tissues or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal cells, tissues or organs”.
• Xenotransplantation is seen as an alternative to the clinical transplantation of human organs whose demand around the world exceeds supply by a long distance.

The First Instance,

Xenotransplantation involving the heart was first tried in humans in the 1980s. A well-known case was that of an American baby, Stephanie Fae Beauclair, better known as Baby Fae, who was born with a congenital heart defect, and who received a baboon heart in 1984.

Why the heart of a pig?

• Pig heart valves have been used for replacing damaged valves in humans for over 50 years. There are several advantages to using the domesticated or farmed pig as the donor animal for xenotransplantation.
• The pig’s anatomical and physiological parameters are similar to that of humans, and the breeding of pigs in farms is widespread and cost-effective. Also, many varieties of pig breeds are farmed, which provides an opportunity for the size of the harvested organs to be matched with the specific needs of the human recipient.

3. “THE PARAM GANGA”-A PETASCALE SUPERCOMPUTER

THE CONTEXT: National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has deployed PARAM Ganga, a supercomputer at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 petaflops.

THE EXPLANATION:

• The availability of such a supercomputer will accelerate the research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of science and engineering with a focus to provide computational power to the user community of IIT Roorkee and neighbouring academic institutions.
• The system is designed and commissioned by C-DAC under phase-2 of the build approach of the NSM. Substantial components utilized to build this system are manufactured and assembled within India along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, which is a step towards the Make in India initiative of the government.
• C-DAC has been entrusted the responsibility to design, development, deployment and commissioning of the supercomputing systems under the build approach of Mission. The Mission plans to build and deploy 24 facilities with cumulative compute power of more than 64 Petaflops.

National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)

• The Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutions spread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing grid comprising of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities.
• The four major pillars of the NSM, namely, Infrastructure, Applications, R&D, HRD, have been functioning efficiently to realize the goal of developing indigenous supercomputing eco system of the nation.
• The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has progressed significantly.

Value Addition:

What are Super Computers?

A supercomputer is the fastest computer in the world that can process a significant amount of data very quickly. The computing Performance of a “supercomputer” is measured very high as compared to a general purpose computer. The computing Performance of a supercomputer is measured in FLOPS (that is floating-point operations per second) instead of MIPS. The supercomputer consists of tens of thousands of processors which can perform billions and trillions of calculations per second, or you can say that supercomputers can deliver up to nearly a hundred quadrillions of FLOPS.

Applications:

Common applications for supercomputers include testing mathematical models for complex physical phenomena or designs, such as climate and weather, evolution of the cosmos, nuclear weapons and reactors, new chemical compounds (especially for pharmaceutical purposes), and cryptology.

4. SCIENTISTS DEVELOP ENERGY-EFFICIENT HYDROGEN PRODUCTION BY UREA ELECTROLYSIS

THE CONTEXT: Indian Scientists have designed an electrocatalyst system for energy-efficient hydrogen production with the help of electrolysis of urea. The urea electrolysis is helpful towards urea-based waste treatment with low-cost hydrogen production. This can be utilized for energy production towards our country’s benefits.

THE EXPLANATION:

Hydrogen Production by Urea electrolysis

• The energy requirement for production of hydrogen through water electrolysis can be reduced by 70 % through urea electrolysis.
• The energy-intensive counterpart of water splitting, oxygen evolution, can be replaced with urea oxidation in urea electrolysis. The low-cost, earth-abundant Ni-based catalysts are widely applied for this process.
• The main challenge associated with urea oxidation is retaining the prolonged activity of the catalyst as the strong adsorption of the reactive intermediate (COx) on the active site, referred to as catalyst poisoning, causes activity loss.

Methodology:

• The scientists have explored electrocatalysts and shown that surface defective NiO and Ni2O3 systems having more Ni3+ ions are more efficient electrocatalysts than conventional NiO. They have used high-energy electron beams to produce surface defective unsaturated Ni sites in NiO (e-NiO).
• The study reveals that e-NiO prefers direct mechanism of urea electro-oxidation due to strong adsorption of urea molecule, whereas NiO favors indirect mechanism with low activity. Further, the prominent electrocatalyst poison COx could be removed by adjusting the molar ratio of KOH and Urea with improved kinetics.

What is the significance of the production of hydrogen by Urea electrolysis?

India is one of the top countries in urea production, and it produced 244.55 LMT of urea during 2019-20. The nitrogenous fertilizer industries generate a high concentration of ammonia and urea as effluents. Hence, this can be utilized for energy production towards our country’s benefits.

THE PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE

5. NARI SHAKTI PURASKAR’ – 2020 AND 2021

THE CONTEXT: The President of India, has conferred the ‘Nari Shakti Puraskar’ for the years 2020 and 2021, on the occasion of International Women’s Day on March 08, 2022, at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

THE EXPLANATION:

Overall, 29 women have been conferred the award for the years 2020 and 2021 in recognition of their outstanding and exceptional work towards the empowerment of women, especially the vulnerable and marginalised. There was a total of 28 awards which included 14 awards each for the years 2020 and 2021. The award ceremony for the year 2020 could not be held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Value Addition:

• Every single Nari Shakti Puraskar is disturbed among the deserving individuals and institutions on 08th March every year. The announcement of the award is made by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
• Nari Shakti Awards 2022 is distributed in six institutional categories: Rani Lakshmi Bai Award, Rani GaidinliuZeliang Award, Mata Jijabai Award, Kannagi Devi Award, Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Award & Rani Rudramma Devi Awards and two individual categories: For courage and bravery & For making outstanding contributions to women’s endeavour, community work, or making a difference, or women’s empowerment.
• It is the highest civilian award for women, which is given to deserving women because of their good deeds in the field of women empowerment.

6. EXERCISE “DHARMA GUARDIAN”-INDIA AND JAPAN

THE CONTEXT: Exercise Dharma Guardian, an annual exercise between Indian Army and Japanese Ground Self Defence Force, concluded at Belgaum with a focus on counter-terrorism operations and disruptive technologies between two key partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

THE EXPLANATION: 

• Dharma Guardian is an annual military exercise that is being conducted in India since 2018.
• It has covered a vast spectrum – from cross training and combat conditioning in the field environment to sports and cultural exchanges. The contingents from the two armies jointly attended demonstrations at the firing ranges and also participated in various tactical exercises. Both contingents shared their expertise on contemporary subjects of counter-terrorism operations, as also on exploiting disruptive technologies such as drone and anti-drone weapons.

Other Joint Exercises with Japan

• SHINYUU Maitri: This is a bilateral exercise conducted between the Japanese Air Self Defence Force (JASDF) and the Indian Air Force.
• JIMEX: It is a bilateral maritime exercise held between Japan and India.
• Sahayog-Kaijin: A joint bilateral exercise between the Japan Coast Guard and the Indian Coast Guard.

THE PRELIMS PRACTICE QUESTIONS

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY 11^TH MARCH  2022

Q1. Consider the following statements:

1. Assertion (A): Craters on the moon are of a more permanent nature than that of Earth.
2. Reason (R): There is absence of atmosphere and plate tectonics on(in) the moon whereas both are present on(in) Earth.

Select the correct answer from the following:

a) A is true, but R is false.

b) A is false, but R is true.

c) A is true and R is the correct explanation of A.

d) Both a and R are not correct.

ANSWER FOR 10^th MARCH 2022

Answer: D

Explanation:

• Please refer to given map-