Science & Technology: April 2022 Current Affairs | Science & Technology for UPSC CSE PDF Download

1. Autism

On 2 April, World Autism Awareness Day is observed across the world to spread awareness about Autism.

About Autism

• It is also called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
• It is a complex condition involving communication and behavioral problems.
• People with autism may have learning problems. Their skills may develop unevenly.
• Exactly why autism occurs is not clear. It can result from problems with the parts of your brain that interpret sensory input and process language.
• Autism is four times more common in boys than in girls.
• There is no cure for autism. But early treatment can make a big difference in the development of a child with autism.

2. World’s Largest Electric Cruise Ship

• The world’s largest electric cruise ship has made its maiden voyage, down the Yangtze River.
• The name of the ship is Yangtze River Three Gorges 1.
• It is a 100% electric cruise ship that has been developed and built in China.
• The cruise ship is powered by a massive 7,500 kilowatt-hour marine battery.
• The main purpose of this ship will be to ferry passengers who are going on a sightseeing tour on Yangtze River.
• On a single charge, the ship can travel around 100 kms thus saving about 530 metric tonnes of fuel.

3. Nipah virus infection (NiV)

• Scientists at Pune’s Indian Council of Medical Research were able to detect the presence of IgG antibodies against Nipah virus infection (NiV) in some bats.

About Antibody

• Antibody, also called immunoglobulin, a protective protein produced by the immune system in response to the presence of a foreign substance called antigen.
• Antibodies recognize and capture antigens to remove them from the body.

Different Types of Antibodies

• IgG - It is the main antibody in blood and it has a powerful ability to bind to bacteria and toxins, and thus it takes on an important role in the biological defense system.
• IgM - It is constructed of five units of basic Y-shaped structures and is mainly distributed to the blood.
  Produced first upon pathogen invasion by B cells, IgM has a key role in the initial immune system defense for protecting the body.
  • B cells, also known as B lymphocytes, are a type of white blood cell of the lymphocyte subtype. They function in the humoral immunity component of the adaptive immune system
• IgA - It is mainly present as monomers, but it forms dimers in secretions such as bowel fluid, nasal discharge, and saliva, to prevent bacterial invasion from a mucous membrane. It is also present in breast milk.
• IgD - It is present on the surface of B cells and it is reported to play a role in the induction of antibody production and the prevention of respiratory tract infections.
• IgE - It is believed that IgE was originally related to immunity reactions to parasites. By binding to mast cells, IgE is believed to be involved in allergies such as pollinosis.

4. Jupiter Like Protoplanet

• The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a Jupiter-like proto-planet forming through a process that researchers have described as intense and violent.

Hubble Space Telescope

• The telescope has been built by NASA in 1990, along with contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA). It looks deep into space with cameras that can see the entire optical spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet.
• It is one of the largest space telescopes which can perform versatile missions. However, with the on-going construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, HST will no longer with the largest light-vision telescope in the world

About Newly Forming Planet

• The newly formed planet captured by Hubble is called AB Aurigae b.
• It is embedded in a protoplanetary disk consisting of distinct spiral structures that revolve around a young star about 2 million years old.
• It is also about the same age as our solar system when planet formation was going on.
• It is 531 light years away from our Sun.
• It is probably about nine times the size of Jupiter and orbits its host star at a distance of 8.6 billion miles.

About Protoplanets

• These are small celestial objects that are the size of a moon or a bit bigger. They are small planets, like an even smaller version of a dwarf planet.
• These are a hypothetical eddy in a circling cloud of gas or dust that becomes a planet by condensation during the formation of the Solar System.
• Once they reach a certain size – around a kilometre – these objects are large enough to attract particles and other small objects with their gravity. They continue to get larger until they form protoplanets.

Significance of This Finding

• This discovery supports a long-debated theory called “disk instability,” which tries to explain how planets similar to Jupiter are formed. In Disk Instability theory, matter slowly moves inwards in this disc as dust particles grow to centimetre-sized pebbles.
• This has led researchers to conclude that disc instability enabled the planet to form at such a great distance from its host star.
• The discovery paves the way for future studies into the chemical composition of protoplanetary discs such as

5. AB Aurigae b

Gaofen-3 03 satellite

• It is launched by the China to a Sun-Synchronous Orbit on board a Long March-4C rocket.
• It was developed and constructed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).
• With the Gaofen satellites, China developed its own high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite constellation.
• This newly launched satellite will be networked with the already orbiting Gaofen-3 and Gaofen-3 02 satellites.
• The satellite is equipped with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Control Moment Gyros (CMGs), and a data transmission system.
• The satellite will be able to monitor with an image resolution of one meter.

Solid Fuel Ducted Ramjet (SFDR) Technology

• The DRDO successfully conducted a flight trial of the SFDR booster.

About SFDR

• It is jointly developed by India and Russia.
• It is a missile propulsion system consisting of a thrust modulated ducted rocket with a low smoke nozzleless missile booster.
• Thrust modulation in the system is achieved by using a hot gas flow controller.
• SFDR-based propulsion enables the missile to intercept aerial threats at very long ranges at supersonic speeds.
• This type of propulsion system significantly increases the range with a higher average speed.
• Missiles using such a system are also capable of carrying large payloads due to the absence of oxidizer.
• Unlike solid-propellant rocket, the Ramjet takes up oxygen from the atmosphere during flight.
  • At present lot of conventional missiles uses booster or sustainer configuration with solid or liquid propellants, which have limitations against manoeuvring target.
  • This is because terminal stage of conventional missiles cannot provide enough energy to maintain their speed in order to hit targets. SDFR technology removes this drawback by exceptionally enhancing endgame manoeuvrability of missile at terminal stage when its seeker is locked onto target.

6. Axiom Mission 1

• Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) is the first all private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The mission was organized by Houston company Axiom Space.
• The company was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating the world's first commercial space station.
• It represents the culmination of NASA's efforts to foster a commercial market in low-Earth orbit.
• Also represent the beginning of a new era of space exploration that would enable more people to fly on more types of missions.
  

Microbots Into The Bloodstream

• The research aims at moving microbots into the bloodstream to deliver drugs.

About Microbots

• These microbots are called micro-swimmers
• These are made from the two-dimensional compound poly (heptazine imide) carbon nitride (aka PHI carbon nitride).
• They range in size from 1-10 micrometre, and can propel themselves when activated by bright light.

How do they swim across the blood?

• PHI carbon nitride microparticles are photocatalytic.
• Like a solar cell, the incident light is converted into electrons and holes. These charges react in the surrounding liquid.
• This reaction, combined with the particle's electric field, makes the microbots swim.

Significance

• It may allow drugs to be delivered to targeted areas inside the human body.
• It can also help introduce specific substances into lakes or oceans.
• It can be deployed in endangered natural environments to recover specific animal species or destroy harmful organisms.

7. CALM System

• The Army issued a Request for Information for the Cannister Launched Anti-Armour Loiter Ammunition (CALM) System.

About CALM System

• It is a pre-loaded canister containing loiter ammunition or a drone. Loiter munitions are a mix of a surfaceto-surface missile and a drone.
• Once fired, it can be kept aloft in the area of operation for a period of time. When a target is sighted it, can be directed to destroy the target with an explosive payload.
• Loiter ammunition consists of a camera mounted on the nose and which can be used by the operator to view the area of operation and select targets.
• These munitions also have types that can be recovered and reused in case they are not used for any strike.
• The system's top-down attack capability gives it a major advantage over targets such as tanks, which are vulnerable to any attack from the top where armour protection is weak.
• It will be used in the plains and deserts of the western parts of the country as well as in the northern highlands with elevations up to 5,000 metres.

8. 5G Vertical Engagement and Partnership Program (VEPP)

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has invited Expression of Interest (EoI) for “5G Vertical Engagement and Partnership Program (VEPP)”.

About 5G VEPP

• It is an initiative, where DoT will facilitate necessary approvals, regulatory clearances to enable use case prototyping, pilot, demo, testing in user or vertical industry premises.
• Objective: It is envisaged to build strong collaboration partnerships across 5G Use-case ecosystem stakeholders with velocity and with an exclusive emphasis to address User/Vertical Industry needs.
• DoT will facilitate, wherever possible, access to experimental spectrum, access to testbeds and necessary regulatory policies with academia, other ministries and pilots.
• It will enable closer collaboration between user verticals and 5G tech stakeholders, which can trigger a multiplier effect to try and refine 5G digital solutions in respective economic verticals.
• Technology stakeholders will work to develop and deploy prototypes and pilots for 5G use cases as per the needs of the respective ministries or industry verticals to help accelerate commercial usage and adoption by enterprises.

9. Bernardinelli-Bernstein Comet

• NASA Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed that the huge Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet is indeed the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.

About Bernardinelli-Berstein Comet

• With a nucleus diameter of at least 120 km, it is the largest Oort cloud comet known.
  1. The nucleus is called the C/2014 UN271
  2. It is believed to have originated in the Oort Cloud.
• It was discovered in November 2010 and has been falling toward the sun for over 1 million years.
• It follows a 3-million-year-long elliptical orbit and has an estimated temperature of minus 348 degrees Fahrenheit.
• It is warm enough to sublimate carbon monoxide (CO) from the surface to produce the dusty coma

About Oort Cloud

• It is a distant region of the solar system that is predicted to be the source of most comets.
• It is a theoretical spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that is believed to surround the sun at a distance of up to around 2 light year
• The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographic boundary of the Solar System and the extent of the Sun's Hill sphere.

10. Lroot Server

• Rajasthan has become the 1st State in the country to get the Lroot server.

About Lroot server

• It has been installed by the state government in association with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
• With this ICANN root server, Rajasthan is no longer dependent on any root server for the domain name system.
• After this arrangement, if there is a problem in internet connectivity due to any technical fault or natural calamity in the whole of Asia or India, it will continue to run in Rajasthan without any interruption.
• It will enable it to provide digital services and implement e-governance with seamless connectivity.
• Also, the new facility will strengthen infrastructure and help improve the security of Internet-based operations.
• The new server’s installation will also benefit the general public as well as the industry with better load management and lower round trip time latency between the users and servers ICANN
• It is a US-based not-for-profit public-benefit corporation.
• It manages the maintenance of namespaces and numerical spaces which enable secure and stable operation of the internet.
• ICANN performs the technical maintenance of IP Address pools and Domain Name Servers (DNS).
• Its role is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers.

11. Perseverance Rover

• It is a Mars rover designed to explore the crater Jezero on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It landed on mars in February 2021
• It addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key questions about the potential for life on Mars.
• Perseverance is the most advanced, most expensive and most sophisticated mobile laboratory sent to Mars.
• It is different from previous missions because it is capable of drilling and collecting core samples, and setting them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars.
• Power Source: A Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG) which converts heat from radioactive decay of Plutonium Dioxide into electricity.
• The rover carried Ingenuity, the first ever helicopter to fly on Mars.

12. Blue Straggler Stars

Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru conducted a study on the aberrant behaviour of Blue Straggler Stars.
The researchers made use of the observations by the UVIT instrument (Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope) of Astrosat, India’s first science observatory in space.

About Blue Straggler Stars

• It is a class of stars on open or globular clusters that stand out as they are bigger and bluer than the rest of the stars.
• These stars tend to be strongly concentrated toward the centre of the cluster.
• These stars are seen in clusters and sometimes alone.

Formation of Blue Straggler

• Half of the blue stragglers are formed through mass transfer from a close binary companion star, 1/3rd are likely formed through collisions of 2 stars, and the remaining through interactions of more than 2 stars.
• A bunch of stars born at the same time from the same cloud form a star cluster.
• As time passes, each star evolves differently depending on its mass.
• The most massive and bright stars evolve and move off the main sequence creating a bend in their track, known as the turnoff.
• Stars above this bend or brighter and hotter stars are not expected in a cluster, as they leave the main sequence to become red giants.
• But in 1953, Allan Sandage found that some stars seem to be hotter than the turnoff of the parent cluster.
• Initially, these blue stars still straggling above the turnoff were not part of these clusters. However, later studies confirmed that these stars are indeed cluster members, and they were termed Blue Stragglers.

13. Angel Wing

• NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recorded an image of two merging galaxies that appear to be shaped like wings and have been nicknamed Angel Wing.

Galaxy Mergers Effects

• Galaxy mergers can occur when two (or more) galaxies collide. They are the most violent type of galaxy interaction. The gravitational interactions between galaxies and the friction between the gas and dust have major effects on the galaxies involved. The exact effects of such mergers depend on a wide variety of parameters such as collision angles, speeds, and relative size/composition, and are currently an extremely active area of research.
• The orbits get tighter and narrower until they merge into a larger galaxy.
• The Milky Way has undergone a series of mergers, some of which give it its current shape.
• This type of galactic events makes a significant contribution to evolution and upbringing Galaxies and stars.
• In addition, they can also affect the extent of supermassive black holes.

14. Hepatitis B

• Many countries including the US and UK reported mysterious cases of a few children being diagnosed with Hepatitis B.

About Hepatitis B

• It is an infection in the liver which happens because of the Hepatitis B virus or HBV.
• The virus usually spreads through blood, semen or other body fluids.
• A vaccine can prevent hepatitis B, but there's no cure if you have the condition.
• When it is acute, the virus lasts a small time and doesn’t always necessarily need treatments.
• Although it can get serious and lead to life-threatening diseases like organ scarring, liver failure and even cancer. The most common symptoms are jaundice, fever, fatigue that lasts for weeks or even months, vomiting, loss of appetite, and pain in joints or belly.
• World Hepatitis Day is observed on July 28 every year.
• In 2016, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the resolution that viral hepatitis should be eliminated by 2030.

15. GAGAN

• IndiGo becomes first airline to use indigenous navigation system GAGAN.
• India's Aviation Sector Regulator issued a mandate for all aircraft registered in India after July 1, 2021, to be fitted with GAGAN equipment.

About GAGAN

• GAGAN is an acronym for GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation.
• It is an inter-operable Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) jointly developed by ISRO and Airport Authority of India (AAI).
• India is the 4th nation after the US, Europe and Japan to have SBAS.
• GAGAN is the first SBAS system in the world to serve the equatorial region.

Features of GAGAN

• It provides the best possible navigational services over Indian FIR (Flight Information Region) with the capability of expanding to neighbouring FIRs.
• Its primary objective is to establish, deploy and certify SBAS for the security of civil aviation applications for the Indian airspace.
• It plays an important role in protecting life applications in transportation, sensitive commercial applications and liability-critical applications requiring legal course.
• Services Offered: Aviation, Forest management, Railways signalling, Scientific Research for Atmospheric Studies, Natural Resource and Land Management, Location based services, Mobile, Tourism.
• Coverage Area: GAGAN GEO footprint expands from Africa to Australia and GAGAN system has capability to cater 45 reference stations for expansion to neighbouring countries.

GAGAN-based LPV Instrument Approach Procedures

Many airports including the ones under Regional Connectivity Scheme are being surveyed for the development of GAGAN-based LPV Instrument Approach Procedures.

• LPV (Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance) is a Satellite Based Procedure which has been used by aircraft for landing purposes.
• LPV approaches make aircraft possible to land at airports not equipped with expensive Instrument Landing Systems, which includes many small regional and local airports.
• Lowering the decision height up to 250 ft provides a substantial operational benefit in poor weather and low visibility conditions.
• Thus, any airport which would require higher visibility minima will be able to accept aircraft benefiting remote airports which are devoid of precision approach capability equipment

16. XE Variant of the Coronavirus

Why in News
Recently, a 50-year-old woman in Mumbai, may have been infected with the newly-discovered ‘XE’ variant of the coronavirus.

• XE is a sub-variant of Omicron, which caused the third wave of Covid-19, which had not been found in India until now.
• So far, there is no indication that it is more dangerous than other variants.

What is the XE Variant of Coronavirus?

• The Omicron variant, which is responsible for over 90% of the infections detected in 2022, has two prominent sub-variants, called BA.1 and BA.2.
• The XE variant is what is called a ‘recombinant’. This means it contains the mutations found in BA.1 as well as BA.2 varieties of Omicron.
  € Recombinant variants are not uncommon.
  € For example, variants that contain the characteristic mutations of Delta and Omicron have also been identified.
  • This was first discovered in the United Kingdom in January 2022, and so far more than 600 samples of XE have been found in different countries.
  • In fact, variants that contain the characteristic mutations of Delta and Omicron have also been identified.

Is there a Threat from XE?

• As of now, there is no evidence to show that the XE variant is significantly different from the other varieties of Omicron.
• However, this variant is noticed to be about 10% more transmissible than the dominant BA.2 variant. € In India, it was the BA.2 that was the most dominant during the third wave.
• Nevertheless, a fresh wave of infections in India can never be ruled out, considering that the virus has not been eliminated, and is also undergoing mutations.

How are New Variants Formed?

• When a virus multiplies it doesn’t always manage to produce an exact copy of itself.
• This means that, over time, the virus may start to differ slightly in terms of its genetic sequence.
  
• Any changes to the viral genetic sequence during this process is known as a Mutation.
• Viruses with new mutations are sometimes called Variants. Variants can differ by one or multiple mutations.
• When a new variant has different functional properties to the original virus and becomes established in a population, it is sometimes referred to as a New Strain of the virus.

  € All strains are variants, but not all variants are strains.

17. Colour Blindness

Why in News

• Recently, the Supreme Court has directed the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) not to exclude candidates suffering from colour blindness from its courses on film making and editing and asked it to make changes to its curriculum instead.

What is Colour Blindness?

• About: Colour blindness is the inability to see colours in the normal way. Colour blind individuals often cannot distinguish between certain colours — usually greens and reds, and sometimes blues as well.  It is also known as colour deficiency.
  
•  Anatomy: Two types of cells in the retina detect light:
  1. Rods: These help in distinguishing between light and dark.
  2. Cones: These help in detecting colour.
      There are three types of cones that see colour — red, green, and blue — and our brains use the information from these cells to perceive colour.

€ Colour blindness can be the result of the absence of one or more of these cone cells, or their failure to work properly.

• Different Kinds: Colour blindness may be of different kinds and degrees.
  In a situation where all three cone cells are present but one of them is malfunctioning, mild colour blindness may occur.
  Mildly colour blind people often see all colours properly only when the light is good.
  In the most severe kind of colour blindness, vision is black-and-white, that is, everything appears as a shade of grey. This is not very common.
• Causes:
  Congenital Colour Blindness: Most colour blind people are born with the condition (congenital colour blindness). Congenital colour vision deficiencies are usually passed on genetically.

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