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

1. Param Porul Super Computer

Context:

PARAM PORUL, a state-of-the-art Supercomputer was inaugurated at NIT Tiruchirappalli recently.

• It has been established under Phase 2 of the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).

How many Super Computers have been installed in the country so far?
As per the ministry of science and technology’s annual year-end review: 

• Under the National Super-Computer Mission (NSM), four new Supercomputers have been installed since July 2021 at IIT-Hyderabad, NABI- Mohali, CDAC-Bengaluru and IIT Kanpur. 

What is the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM)?

It is being implemented and steered jointly by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

• Implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru

Focus of the mission:

• The Mission envisages empowering 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.
• These supercomputers will also be networked on the National Supercomputing grid over the National Knowledge Network (NKN). The NKN is another programme of the government which connects academic institutions and R&D labs over a high speed network.
• The Mission includes development of highly professional High Performance Computing (HPC) aware human resource for meeting challenges of development of these applications.

Achievements:

• The first supercomputer assembled indigenously, called Param Shivay, was installed in IIT (BHU).
• Similar systems Param Shakti and Param Brahma were installed at IIT-Kharagpur and IISER, Pune. They are equipped with applications from domains like Weather and Climate, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Bioinformatics, and Material science.

Insta Curious
India has developed an indigenous server (Rudra), which can meet the High-Performance Computing (HPC) requirements of all governments and PSUs.

• This is the first time that a server system was made in India, along with the full software stack developed by C-DAC. 

To read more information on this topic:

• Programmes & Policies Related to ICT

2. First Indigenous mRNA Vaccine Technology

Why in News?
Council of Scientific & Industrial Research - Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB) has announced the success of ‘proof of principle’ of the first indigenous Messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology.

• This is different from the mRNA vaccine being developed by Gennova Bio based on self-replicating RNA.
• According to the researcher, the technology is ready to be transferred to any interested company to take it to the next step of performing human trials and bringing the vaccine to market with regulatory Approval.
  

What is mRNA Vaccine Technology? 

 About:

•  mRNA vaccines use mRNA to teach our cells how to make a protein or a protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.
• The researchers developed indigenous potential mRNA vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2.
• It is based on the Moderna model, but has been built with the information available in the open and indigenous technology and materials.

Efficacy:

• “Robust immune response” has been observed against the Covid-19 spike protein in mice upon administration of two doses of the mRNA.
• The anti-spike antibodies generated were found to be more than 90% efficient in preventing the human ACE2 receptor binding to the coronavirus 
  • Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2), known as ACEH (ACE homolog), is an integral membrane protein.
  • ACE-2 serves as the receptor for the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
  • It provides the entry point for the coronavirus to hook into and infect a wide range of human cells. 

Significance

• The indigenous grown mRNA vaccine platform holds promise to deal with other infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis, Dengue fever, Malaria, Chickungunya, Rare Genetic diseases and others.
  • The vaccines can be used for covering a panCovid-19 vaccine with different variants. With that, vaccines can be developed for other Diseases

What are Different Types of vaccines?

Indigenously Developed Vaccines:

• ZyCoV-D: Designed and developed by Zydus (a pharmaceutical company) with support from the DBT.
• Covaxin: Developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the ICMR

Globally Developed Vaccines

• Covishield: Name given to an Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine candidate which is technically referred to as AZD1222 or ChAdOx 1 nCoV-19.
• Sputnik V: The first vaccine to be officially registered and has been developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute in collaboration with Russia’s defence ministry.

How are mRNA Vaccines Different From Traditional Vaccines?

• Vaccines work by training the body to recognise and respond to the proteins produced by disease-causing organisms, such as a virus or bacteria.
• Traditional vaccines are made up of small or inactivated doses of the whole disease-causing organism, or the proteins that it produces, which are introduced into the body to provoke the immune system into mounting a response.
• mRNA vaccines tricks the body into producing some of the viral proteins itself.
• They work by using mRNA, or messenger RNA, which is the molecule that essentially puts DNA instructions into action. Inside a cell, mRNA is used as a template to build a protein.

What are the Advantages of Using mRNA Based Vaccines?

• mRNA vaccines are considered safe as mRNA is noninfectious, non-integrating in nature, and degraded by standard cellular mechanisms.
• They are highly efficacious because of their inherent capability of being translatable into the protein structure inside the cell cytoplasm.
• Additionally, mRNA vaccines are fully synthetic and do not require a host for growth, e.g., eggs or bacteria. Therefore, they can be quickly manufactured inexpensively to ensure their “availability” and “accessibility” for mass vaccination on a sustainable basis.

To read more information on this topic:

• Department of Biotechnology
• Diseases & Their Classification

3. W BOSON

Context:

• Researchers have announced that they have made a precise measurement of the mass of the so-called W boson.

What did the researchers find? Why is it significant?

They stated that the W boson is slightly heavier than that predicted by the so-called Standard Model of particle physics.

• This result is highly significant because this implies the incompleteness of the standard model description.

What is the standard model description?

The Standard Model of Particle Physics is scientists’ current best theory to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe. It explains how particles called quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and leptons (which include electrons) make up all known matter.

• The Standard Model explains three of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force.

Why is the standard model believed to be incomplete?

• It gives a unified picture of only three of the four fundamental forces of nature. It totally omits gravity.
• The model does not include a description of dark matter particles. So far these have been detected only through their gravitational pull on surrounding matter.

What is W Boson?

Discovered in 1983, the W boson is a fundamental particle. Together with the Z boson, it is responsible for the weak force. The W boson, which is electrically charged, changes the very make-up of particles. It switches protons into neutrons, and vice versa, through the weak force, triggering nuclear fusion and letting stars burn. In contrast to the photon, which is massless, the W bosons are quite massive, so the weak force they mediate is very short ranged.

4. Gaganyaan Mission

Context

What you need to know about the HS200?

• The booster engine is part of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MkIII (GSLV Mk III) rocket that will carry Indian astronauts to space.
• It is the world’s second largest operational booster using solid propellants.

About Gaganyaan

• Formal announcement of the Gaganyaan programme was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day address on  August 15, 2018.
• The mission is expected to be launched in 2023.

Under the Gaganyaan schedule:

• Three flights will be sent into orbit.
• There will be two unmanned flights and one human spaceflight.
• The Orbital Module will have three Indian astronauts, including a woman. It will circle Earth at a low-earth-orbit at an altitude of 300-400 km from earth for 5-7 days. With this launch, India will become the fourth nation in the world to launch a Human Spaceflight Mission after the USA, Russia and China.

Objectives
The objective of the Gaganyaan programme is to demonstrate the capability to send humans to low earth orbit on board an Indian launch vehicle and bring them back to earth safely.

Preparation and launch:

• Four Indian astronaut-candidates have already undergone generic space flight training in Russia as part of the Gaganyaan programme.
• ISRO’s heavy-lift launcher GSLV Mk III has been identified for the mission. 

To read more information on this topic:

• Important missions of ISRO at a glance

5. Air Independent Propulsion Technology

Why in News?

Recently, France’s Naval Group declined the bid for the P-75I Project, citing it does not use AIP (Air-Independent Propulsion) Technology yet.

• Around 10 countries have developed or are close to building AIP technology, and almost 20 nations have AIP submarines.

What is AIP?

 About

• AIP is a technology for conventional non-nuclear submarines.
• Submarines are essentially of two types: conventional and nuclear.
• The conventional submarines use diesel-electric engines, which require them to surface almost daily to get atmospheric oxygen for fuel combustion.
• If fitted with an AIP system, the submarine will need to take in oxygen only once a week.
• The indigenously developed AIP, which is one of the key missions of the Naval Materials Research Laboratory (NMRL - DRDO), is considered one of the ambitious projects of the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) for the Navy.

Fuel Cell Based AIP system

• In a fuel cell based AIP, an electrolytic fuel cell releases energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen, with only water as the waste product ensuring less marine pollution.
• The cells are highly efficient, and do not have moving parts, thus ensuring that the submarine has a low acoustic emission of sound.

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages of AIP?

 Advantages

• AIP has a force multiplier effect on lethality of a diesel electric submarine as it enhances the submerged endurance of the boat several fold. 
• Fuel cell-based AIP has merits in performance compared to other technologies.
• AIP technology allows a conventional submarine to remain submerged for much longer than ordinary diesel-electric submarines.
  • All conventional submarines have to surface to run their generators that recharge the batteries that allow the boat to function under water.
  • However, the more frequently a submarine surfaces, the higher the chances of it being detected.
  • AIP allows a submarine to remain submerged for more than a fortnight, compared to two to three days for diesel-electric boats.

Disadvantages

• Installing AIP increases the length and weight of the boats, requires pressurised liquid oxygen (LOX) storage on-board and supply for all three technologies.
• MESMA (Autonomous Submarine Energy Module) and the Stirling engine have some acoustic noise from moving parts; and the submarine’s unit cost increases by around 10%.

What submarines does India have now?

• India has 16 conventional diesel-electric submarines, which are classified as SSKs. After the last two Kalvari Class subs are commissioned under P-75, this number will go up to 18.
• India also has two nuclear ballistic submarines, classified SSBN (Submersible Ship Ballistic Missile Nuclear).

To read more information on this topic:

• Defence Technology in India
• Artillery System in India
• Indian Military Aircrafts & Helicopters