PESTEL

  Virology   is the  scientific study  of  virus – submicroscopic, parasitic organisms of genetic material contained in a protein coat  – and virus-like agents. It focuses on the following aspects of viruses: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit  host cell    for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy .  Virology is   a subfield of microbiology . The identification of the causative agent of tobacco mosaic disease (TMV) as a novel pathogen  by  martinus beijerinck (1898) is now acknowledged as being the official begining of the field of virology as a descipline  distinct from bacteriology .He realized the source was neither a bacterial nor a fungal infection , but something complet...

Unlock India’s food processing potential Smart financing alternatives such as peer-to-peer (P2P) lending hold potential for micro-food processors as can be observed by the United Kingdom Government-owned British Business Bank (akin to India’s MUDRA Bank, or Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency Bank) which has helped more than 1,18,000 small businesses get access to more than U.S.$17.88 billion (https://bit.ly/3Aziz4T). Access to working capital has in theory been addressed by the Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS), a platform for facilitating the financing/discounting of trade receivables of MSMEs through multiple financiers.    However, the platform requires considerable scaling-up and simultaneous enforcement of stringent measures for corporates to comply with. Integrating the TReDS platform with the Goods and Service Tax Network’s e-invoicing portal will make TReDS more attractive and give relief to financiers. A sustainable food ecosystem Wi...

Remembering the Holocaust Marked by the United Nations each year on the 27th of January, International Holocaust Remembrance Day provides an opportunity to recount the atrocities of the Holocaust that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews. The day marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 1945. The aphorism for Holocaust remembrance remains unchanged: Never Again. A turning point in history, the Holocaust is one of the most visible acts of violence and discrimination. Yet, lessons of the past seem to fade in the mists of time. Are those who do not remember the past condemned to repeat it? Holocaust distortion and denial As the Holocaust recedes in time, the forces of antisemitism, racial and religious intolerance, and discrimination and hate speech pose new challenges to global civilisational values, thereby running the risk of repetition of the crimes of the past. Holocaust ...

The Dravidian model of public health The recent Supreme Court judgement upholding the constitutionality of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) in National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)‘s All-India Quota (AIQ) seats for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses is a landmark in the history of social justice in the country. “The propriety of actions and dedication to public service should also be seen as markers of merit, which cannot be assessed in a competitive examination,” observed the bench comprising Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice A.S. Bopanna.  In the light of these crucial observations, it is high time that we demystify the narrow definitions of merit. “Merit should be socially contextualised and reconceptualised as an instrument that advances social goods like equality that we as a society value,” the apex court said. In this regard, the practices followed by Tamil Nadu, where the notion of merit has taken into acco...

  Central Asia summit Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold the first India-Central Asia summit on Thursday, in a videoconference with five Presidents from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Government officials said the major areas of focus for the conference would be trade and connectivity, building development partnerships and enhancing cultural and people-to-people contacts, but it is clear that a number of global and regional developments will also form a large part of the discussions, set to begin around 4.30 p.m IST. During the conference, the countries are expected to propose ways to increase trade between India and the region, which is only about $2 billion at present, most of which comes from energy imports from Kazakhstan. India extended a $1 billion Line of Credit (LOC) for development projects in the areas of energy, healthcare, connectivity, IT, and agriculture in 2020 and proposes to increase the number of educational oppor...

  The ‘racial profiling’ of the Chakmas and Hajongs The Chakmas and Hajongs are migrants from the Chittagong Hill Tracts of erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. They were settled in relief camps in the southern and south-eastern parts of Arunachal Pradesh as they were displaced by the Kaptai dam on the Karnaphuli River in the 1960s. In November 2021, a letter was issued for a “special census” to be conducted in all the Chakma- and Hajong-inhabited areas from December 11-31. Chakma organisations said the census was nothing but racial profiling of the two communities and violated Article 14 of the Constitution of India and Article 1 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified by India. Chief Minister Pema Khandu said his Government was serious about rehabilitating the Chakma-Hajongs to other States. However, the Supreme Court had in January 1996 prohibited any move to evict or expel the Chakma-Hajongs and directe...

 Researchers from Kerala have identified two new species of fungi from the genus Ganoderma that are associated with coconut stem rot. They have also genotyped the two fungi species, named Ganoderma keralense and G. pseudoapplanatum and identified genetic biomarkers. The DNA barcodes have been made publicly available in DNA sequence repositories so that future studies can use it for early detection of the pathogen. The research was published in the journal Mycologia. Basal stem rot The butt rot or basal stem rot of coconut is known by several names in different parts of India: Ganoderma wilt (Andhra Pradesh), Anaberoga (Karnataka) and Thanjavur wilt (Tamil Nadu), to mention a few. The infection begins at the roots, but symptoms include discolouration and rotting of stem and leaves. In the later stages, flowering and nut set decreases and finally the coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) dies. A reddish brown oozing is seen. This oozing has been reported only in India. Once inf...

Over a year ago, alert press reporters found a device hanging around Congress M.P. Shashi Tharoor’s neck. Was it a GPS device, Translator or a small dictionary? He tweeted that it was “An air purifier (negative ioniser).” Its sellers claim that the device emits two million healthy negative ions per sec from the black brush on its top. These ions may impinge on pollutants, make them negatively charged and get them collected on surfaces of tables, windows, bed etc. Whether it helps to reduce pollution in real life, or not needs scientific validation. Is copious emission of negative ions from it a red flag? On December 16, 2021, the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS), Netherland issued a statement identifying ten products such as (Magnetix Magnetic necklace, Magnetix Sport boost bracelet, Smiley Kids bracelet, Athletic necklace among others) as containing more radioactivity than legally permitted. The agency cautioned the public against using “Quant...

 Mr. Biden has made restoring the importance of the U.S.-Japanese relationship a priority since taking office exactly a year ago, following his predecessor Donald Trump’s questioning the benefit of even longstanding U.S. alliances in both Asia and Europe. After the meeting, which took place by video link, Mr. Biden tweeted that it was “an honour to meet with Prime Minister Kishida to further strengthen the U.S.-Japan Alliance — the cornerstone of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific and around the world,” using an alternative name for the Asia-Pacific region. A U.S. official said Mr. Biden and Mr. Kishida expressed concern over China “intimidating” its neighbours. “The two leaders resolved to push back against the People's Republic of China (PRC)’s attempts to change the status quo in the East China Sea and South China Sea” and also “underscored the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the White House readout said.

  The Antrix-Devas saga may be the most high-profile case of a technology deal gone sour in India, but little has changed in India to incentivise high-technology deals involving private and public companies and prevent similar occurrences in the future. The Supreme Court upheld a decision by the National Company Law Tribunal to disband Devas Multimedia, though this is not necessarily the end to the dispute. International courts have given verdicts favouring the private consortium seeking compensation from Antrix for cancelling a 2005 deal to lease satellite spectrum to the company to offer multimedia services. The deal was cancelled in 2011 by Antrix, a public company and marketing arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation, on grounds of “national security”. Clarity lacking Though there have been several space missions and the government has announced steps to have greater collaboration with the private sector, experts say nothing rules out the reoccurrence of a s...

 The Kerala Bird Atlas (KBA), the first-of-its-kind State-level bird atlas in India, has created solid baseline data about the distribution and abundance of bird species across all major habitats, giving an impetus to futuristic studies. Conducted as a citizen science-driven exercise with the participation of over 1,000 volunteers of the birdwatching community, the KBA has been prepared based on systematic surveys held twice over 60 days a year during the wet (July to September) and dry (January to March) seasons between 2015 and 2020. The KBA accounts for nearly three lakh records of 361 species, including 94 very rare species, 103 rare species, 110 common species, 44 very common species, and 10 most abundant species. “The KBA offers authentic, consistent and comparable data through random sampling from the geographical terrain split into nearly 4,000 grids. We are in the process of bringing out papers on interesting trends based on a scientific analysis of solid dat...

Tiger census will commence at Bandipur on Saturday and at Nagarahole on Sunday as part of the All-India Tiger and Mega Herbivore Estimation. This is part of the nation-wide enumeration that is held once in four years and is the fifth such exercise being taken up — the earlier ones being held in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018. The authorities at Bandipur have divided the 912.04 sq km national park into three blocks to carry out the enumeration. While the enumeration exercise will be held in block 1 from January 22 to 27, it will be held in block 2 from January 28 to February 2 and the tiger count exercise in block 3 will be taken up from February 3 to 8. HOW TO DETECT This year’s enumeration exercise entails the use of MSTRIPES (Monitoring System for Tigers Intensive Protection and Ecological Status) app and apart from the tiger counts, the exercise will also throw up data on mega herbivores, including elephants and gaurs. The use of apps ensures that the data is not only digitised...

 Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi opposing the proposed amendments to the Indian Administrative Service (Cadre) Rules 1954. The proposed amendments will give overriding powers to the Union government to post All India Services (AIS) officers such as the IAS, the Indian Police Service and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS) to Central Ministries and departments without the State government’s nod. Mr. Baghel and Mr. Gehlot are second in line after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to convey their opposition against the proposed amendments to Mr. Modi. Sense of ‘instability’ Mr. Baghel said the amendments could be misused and “a sense of instability and ambiguity is likely to arise among the officers of the All India Services, who are posted at various important posts in various districts and also at the State level.” He said the proposed amendment granted the Centra...

  Judicial Activism has had manifold impact on the political system. Judicial activism :   It can be defined as a  philosophy of judicial decision making where by judges allow their personal views regarding a public policy instead of constitutionalism . Judicial activism: Positives Upholds Constitutional morality : An important case which employed this concept in an innovative manner was the Naz Foundation Case which used the concept of constitutional morality to strike down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and decriminalize homosexuality. Executive lacks Political gumption: Justice Chandrachud view in the Sabarimala judgment, he held that women should be allowed entry in the Sabarimala temple against popularly held religious beliefs. To protect fundamental rights : Triple Talaq in 2017 was banned as being ultra vires to fundamental rights of Muslim women. This legislation would not have been accepted if it had come from the executive or through the Parliament. Ex: ...

A Bill that could alter the mediation landscape The Chief Justice of India (CJI), N.V. Ramana, while speaking at the India-Singapore Mediation Summit in July 2021  had said that mediation should be made mandatory as a first step in dispute resolution and that a law should be framed in this regard. The context was the huge pendency of cases in India. In his speech called “Mediation for everyone: Realizing mediation’s potential in India”, he emphasised the point that a movement needs to be launched to popularise mediation as it was a cheaper and faster dispute resolution mechanism. Months later in December 2021, the CJI, while addressing the Curtain Raiser and Stakeholders’ Conclave of International Arbitration and Mediation Centre (IAMC) at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad, said that courts should be the last resort for dispute resolution; therefore, one should explore the options of alternate dispute resolution. Expressed in these laws In I...

 CNN News18   on December 27, Dr. R.S. Sharma, CEO of the National Health Authority and Chairperson of the Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (Co-WIN) said both Zydus’s vaccine (ZyCoV-D) and Covaxin will be available for vaccination and children will have an option to choose between the two vaccines depending on availability... For reasons not known, the health ministry has not only declined to use Zydus vaccine in adolescents but has not even recognised the emergency use approval granted to ZyCoV-D by saying Covaxin is the only vaccine that has an EUL. Incidentally, emergency use listing or EUL is a term used by the WHO and not by Indian authorities or the drug regulator. 

  Neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain connect by means of junctions known as synapses through which they transmit signals. Recent work by researchers at the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, has thrown light on what stimulates these synapses to form. There are two types of synapses – chemical and electrical. In chemical synapses, there is a space of about 20 nanometres between two neurons, and the way they communicate is this: One neuron converts electrical signal into chemical signals and this chemical is released into the synaptic space and the receiving neuron converts the chemical signal back into an electrical signal. As far as the electrical synapse goes, this is not the way it operates. In these synapses, the two neurons have a physical connection and the conversion of electrical to chemical need not occur, and they communicate directly. Electrical synapses are like a physical wire, communication is faster but they are also fewer in number. N...