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

1. Negative Ions In Wearables 

The Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (ANVS), Netherlands has issued a statement which has identified various negative ion wearable products with more radioactivity than is legally permitted. About Negative Ions 

• These are molecules that float in air or atmosphere and have an electric charge. 
• They are created when sunlight, radiation, air or water break down oxygen. 
• Negative ions are believed to create positive vibes and elevate the mood. They show various mental and physical health benefits, such as stress reduction, breathing, better sleep etc. 
• These ions also affect pollutants making them negatively charged and collecting them on the surfaces. 

What is Negative Ion Technology? 

• Negative ion technology embeds negative ions in personalized products and is currently being advertised as a means of maintaining health, balancing energy and improving wellness. 
• This technology is used in some silicone wristbands, quantum or scalar-energy pendants, jewellery, etc. 
• The minerals that generate these negative ions often include naturally occurring radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium. 

Concerns 

• The radiation detected in some of these products exceeds background levels. 
• The products were found to contain radioactive material and therefore continuously emit ionizing radiation, to which the wearer is exposed. 
• Prolonged wearing of products can pose health risks that include tissue and DNA damage. 
• Exposure can also cause severe harmful effects such as: Skin burns, Acute radiation sickness that causes cancer and hairfall, temporary reduction in WBC, Possible chromosomal damage, Reduction in resistance to infection. 

Efforts To Counter These Concerns

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a specific safety guide titled "Radiation Safety for Consumer Products" (2016). 
• The IAEA confirms the minimum use of radiation or radioactive substances in toys and personal jewellery or decorations. 
• India has provisions in the Atomic Energy (Radiation Protection) Rules, 2004 which are IAEA compliant. 

2. Country’s First Graphene Innovation Centre 

The state-run Digital University Kerala (DUK) along with CMET Trichur, & Tata Steel Limited set India’s first graphene R&D incubation centre in Trichur (Kerala). 

About The Centre 

• The Ministry of Electronics and IT has given approval for Rs 86.41 crore-project. Of the 86.41-crore, Union Government would provide Rs 49.18 crore and private business houses Rs 11.48 crore. The state government would provide the basic infrastructure for the project. The Centre would help attract investors to develop graphene products.
• The centre aims to be an anchor point to promote start-ups, commercial research & to bridge the gap between Graphene academic research and industrial application. 
• The centre will also develop the skilled manpower by anchoring Ph.D. and master students through Digital University, with an applied research focus in the areas of electronics product design, sensors, and energy applications
  

3. dApps 

• Decentralised applications or dApps are programmes that allow people to interact with one another without the need for third parties. For example, BitTorrent, Tor, and Popcorn Time are applications that run on computers that are part of a P2P network, whereby multiple participants are consuming content, feeding or seeding content, or simultaneously performing both functions. 
• They give the personal freedom to interact with a peer without being held accountable for it.
• They exist and run on a blockchain network or peer-to-peer (P2P) network of computers. DApps use smart contracts to complete the transaction between two anonymous parties
• These smart contracts are open-source pieces of code created by a decentralized authority, and no individual authority controls them. 
• dApps can be developed for a variety of purposes including gaming, finance, and social media.
• dApps are advantageous because, rather than relying on the competence and trustworthiness of third parties, they enforce contracts and agreements using solid code and a layer of computers. 
• Drawbacks include the potential inability to scale, challenges in developing a user interface, and difficulties in making code modifications. 

4. Ultra-long-period Magnetar 

• Scientists have detected an incredibly dense star and suspect it might be a type of exotic astrophysical object whose existence has been only hypothesised until now. 
• It was spotted using Murchison Widefield Array telescope in outback Western Australia. 
• It may be the first known example of what is called an ultra-long period magnetar.
  (i) A magnetar with a very long pulsation period is known as an ultra-long period magnetar
  (ii) For roughly 30 to 60 seconds, every 18.18 minutes, it pulses brightly, one of the most luminous objects in the low-frequency radio sky.
• It is located at about 4,000 light-years away.
• Objects turning on and off in the Universe aren’t new to astronomers. Astronomers call such objects as “transients”.

5. Second Earth Trojan Asteroid - 2020 XL5 

• Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a second Earth Trojan. 
• Trojan asteroids are those asteroids that share a common orbit with a planet in solar system.
• They can do so because they tend to be present at one of the stable Lagrange Points in the Earth-Sun system. 
• The trojan was detected in 2020 and is named 2020 XL5. 
• The asteroid was discovered by Pan-STARRS S1 telescope survey (Hawaii) and is estimated to be about 1.18 km wide. 
• It is a near-earth asteroid (NEO) that is expected to stay in orbit for the next 4,000 years before deviating away. 
• First known Earth Trojan asteroid was 2010 TK7, just about 0.3 km wide, and discovered in 2010. 
• Both earth trojans have been discovered in the L4 point. It is the 4th Earth – sun Lagrange point. A Lagrange point is a location in space where the combined gravitational forces of two large bodies, such as Earth and sun or Earth and moon, equal the centrifugal force felt by a much smaller third body. The interaction of the forces creates a point of equilibrium where a spacecraft may be "parked" to make observations 

6. Kavach 

Union Finance Minister announced in the budget, that as a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat, 2,000 km of rail network will be brought under the world-class technology ‘Kavach’. About Kavach 

• It is an anti-collision device (ACD) network.
• It is a Made-in-India technology designed to help Indian Railways achieve goal of zero accidents. 
• Kavach implementation will bring train movement to a halt automatically when it notices another train on the same line within a prescribed distance. 
• The technology uses microprocessors, global positioning system and radio communication. The anti – collision devices are mounted on the trains. The devices receive inputs from the satellite. They communicate with each other through modems. 

7. Chandrayaan-3 

India is planning to execute the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August 2022. About Chandrayaan-3 

• It is the third Moon mission of ISRO to explore the unchartered south pole of the celestial body. 
• It will be a mission repeat of Chandrayaan-2 but will only include a lander and rover similar to that of Chandrayaan-2. 
• It will communicate to earth via an orbiter from Chandrayaan 2. It will not have its own orbiter.
• The subsequent failure of the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2 led to the pursuit of another mission to demonstrate the landing capabilities needed for the Lunar Polar Exploration Mission proposed in partnership with Japan for 2024 

8. India Inks Interim Agreement With SKAO 

India inked an interim agreement to confirm its commitment to work on the mega science project Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO). 

About This Agreement

• It will be valid for one year. 
• India was represented by TIFR – National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA). 
• This move will facilitate India to make its first monetary contribution towards the construction phase of SKA. About Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) 
• Started in 1990s, and headquartered in UK, SKA is an intergovernmental radio telescope project. 
• At the moment, organisations from ten countries are a part of the SKAO. These include Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Netherlands and UK. 
• Proposed to be the largest radio telescope in the world, it will be located in Africa and Australia. 
• The telescope will operate across a wide range of frequencies. Its size will make it 50 times more sensitive as compared to any other radio instrument. It will require very high-performance central computing engines as well as long-haul links. 
• If it is built as planned, it would be able to survey the sky about ten thousand times faster than before. 

Objectives of SKA 

• To study the gravitational waves in order to test the theories proposed by Albert Einstein. 
• Studying the universe and its evolution, the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism. 
• Dark energy and evolution of galaxies. 
• The SKAO also hopes to look for signs of life in outer space, while mapping hundreds of millions of galaxies. SKAO is likely to be operational by the end of this decade. 
• India is a participating country in the setting up of world’s largest radio telescope. However, it is yet to receive central government’s approval to become a Member Country. 
• It would explore the possibility of detecting technologically-active civilizations elsewhere in our galaxy and understanding where gravitational waves come from. 

9. Param Pravega 

Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru has commissioned one of the most powerful supercomputers, called “Param Pravega” in India. 

About Supercomputer Param Pravega 

• It is part of High-Performance Computing class of systems. 
• It has been designed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). 
• A majority of the components used to build this system have been manufactured and assembled within India. 
• It has a supercomputing capacity of 3.3 petaflops (measure of a computer’s processing speed; 1 petaflop equals a quadrillion or 1,015 operations per second). 
• The supercomputer has been commissioned in the institution under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). Significance 
• It will help faculty members and students in carrying major R&D activities. 
• It will help them in developing platforms for genomics and drug discovery, establishing flood warning & prediction systems, studying urban environmental issues, as well as optimising telecom networks.

About National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) 

• The mission was announced in 2015 to connect national academic and R&D institutions with a grid of more than 70 high-performance computing facilities. 
• The NSM is jointly operated by Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), and is implemented by C-DAC and IISc. 
• Under NSM, 10 supercomputer systems have been established so far in India with a cumulative computing power of 17 petaflops. 

Top 500 List Of Most Powerful Supercomputers In The World

• Japanese supercomputer Fugaku (442 petaflops) and IBM’s Summit (148.8 petaflops) are the two most powerful supercomputers in the world 
• Chinese Sunway TaihuLight is number 4 on the list (93 petaflops) India’s Super Computers 
• PARAM-Siddhi AI (6.5 petaflops), has been ranked 63rd . 
• Pratyush, used for weather forecasting at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, is ranked 78th . 
• Mihir (146th) 

10. ATLAS 

The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) has become first survey capable of searching entire dark sky for near-Earth objects, every 24 hours. 

About ATLAS

• It is essential for tracking of asteroids and debris that could be on a collision course with Earth. 
• It now comprises of four telescopes. 
• It began as an array of just two telescopes in Hawaii (became fully operational in 2017), but has now expanded to include two more telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere giving it a full view of the sky. 
• It is operated from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. 
• So far, ATLAS system has discovered more than 700 Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) & 66 comets. 
• The University of Hawai’i ATLAS is funded through a grant from the Near-Earth Object Observations Program administered by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). 

11. New Record In Creating Energy From Nuclear Fusion 

Scientists in United Kingdom have achieved a new milestone in producing nuclear fusion energy. About new record 

• A team at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility near Oxford generated 59 mega-joules of sustained energy during an experiment in December, more than doubling a 1997 record. 
• The energy was produced in a machine called a tokamak, a doughnut-shaped apparatus. 
• A tokamak is a machine that confines a plasma using magnetic fields in a donut shape that scientists call a torus. 
• Deuterium and tritium, which are isotopes of hydrogen, were heated to temperatures 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun to create plasma 

About Nuclear Fusion 

• Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together, or “fuse,” to form a single heavier nucleus. 
• During this process, matter is not conserved because some of the mass of the fusing nuclei is converted to energy, which is released. 
• Every star in the universe, including the sun, is alive due to nuclear fusion. 
• On Earth, it is achieved by combining two isotopes of Hydrogen i.e deuterium and tritium. 
• A kg of fusion fuel contains about 10 million times as much energy as a kg of coal, oil or gas.
  

12. Geomagnetic Storm 

Starlink’s 40 satellites were hit by geomagnetic storm that originated from the Sun. Starlink is a SpaceX project to build a broadband network with a cluster of orbiting spacecraft. 

About Geomagnetic Storm 

• Solar storms are magnetic plasma ejected at great speed from the solar surface. They occur during the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots (‘dark’ regions on the Sun that are cooler than surrounding photosphere) and can last for few minutes or hours. 
• A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding Earth. These storms result from variations in the solar wind that produces major changes in the currents, plasmas and fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. Effect on Earth
• Not all solar flares reach Earth, but solar flares/storms, Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs), high-speed solar winds, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that come close can impact space weather in near-Earth space and the upper atmosphere 
• Solar storms can hit operations of space-dependent services like global positioning systems (GPS), radio & satellite communications, aircraft flights and power grids. 
• Geomagnetic storms interfere with high-frequency radio communications and GPS navigation systems. 
• Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), with ejectiles loaded with matter travelling at millions of miles an hour, can potentially create disturbances in the magnetosphere, the protective shield surrounding the Earth. 
• Astronauts on spacewalks face health risks from possible exposure to solar radiation outside the Earth’s protective atmosphere. 

Predicting Solar Storms 

• Solar physicists and other scientists use computer models to predict solar storms and solar activities in general. 
• Current models are capable of predicting a storm’s time of arrival and its speed. But the storm’s structure or orientation still cannot be predicted. 

13. ISRO Decommissioned INSAT-4B 

• ISRO has successfully decommissioned its communication satellite Insat-4B after over 14 years of service. 
• INSAT-4B has undergone post mission disposal (PMD) at the end of its life followed by decommissioning to comply with the UN and INTER Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) recommended space debris mitigation guidelines. 
• As per IADC space debris mitigation guidelines, at its end-of-life, a geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) object should be raised to a nearly circular orbit well above the GEO belt to prevent its orbit from coming back into the GEO protected region within 100 years of re-orbiting. 

14. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) 

Indian Army has implemented the RFID tagging of its ammunition stock for safe and better management. 

About RIFD

• RFID tagging is an ID system that uses for identification and tracking purposes.
• It uses radio waves to communicate between two objects: a reader and a tag. 
• RFID communication is similar to two-way radio communication in the sense that information is transmitted or received via a radio wave at a specific frequency.

Significance Of This Step 

• This effort will make the storage and use of ammunition by the soldiers safer and will provide greater satisfaction to the field army 
• The implementation will increase efficiency in all technical activities carried out in ammunition depots and reduce the cost of carrying inventory. 
• Implementation of RFID solutions for ammunition asset visibility will lead to a major leap forward in ammunition management and tracking capability. 

Tool to Find Habitable Planets 

Astronomers from Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have developed a new approach by which they can identify potentially habitable planets with a high probability. 

About New Method

• The AI-based method, named Multi-Stage Memetic Binary Tree Anomaly Identifier (MSMBTAI), is based on a novel multi-stage memetic algorithm (MSMA). 
• MSMA uses the generic notion of a meme, which is an idea or knowledge that gets transferred from one person to another by imitation. 
• The algorithm can act as a quick screening tool for evaluating habitability perspectives from observed properties. 
• The method is based on the postulate that Earth is an anomaly. Earth being the only habitable planet among various planets is known as an anomaly. 
• The study identified a few planets which exhibit similar anomalous characteristics as Earth via the proposed technique, which shows reasonably good results. 
• According to the study, there are 60 potentially habitable planets out of about 5,000 confirmed. 

16. MUSE & HelioSwarm 

NASA has selected two science missions namely Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) and HelioSwarm to help improve our understanding of the dynamics of Sun, the Sun-Earth connection, and the constantly changing space environment

17. CoEs In Carbon Capture and Utilization 

Currently, two National Centres of Excellence (NCoEs) in Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) are being established in India. 

• The two centers are being set up with support from Department of Science & Technology. 
• First center will be (NCoE-CCU) at IIT Bombay. 
• The second will be National Centre in Carbon Capture and Utilization (NCCCU) at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.

Significance

• These CoEs will facilitate capturing & mapping of current R&D 
• It will also help in innovation activities in the domain.
• It also develops networks of researchers, industries and stakeholders with coordination and synergy between partnering groups and organizations. 
• The Center will act as a multidisciplinary, long-term research, design development, collaborative and capacity-building hubs for cutting edge research and application-oriented initiatives. 

18. EOS-04 Mission 

• ISRO successfully placed its earth observation satellite EOS-4 and two small satellites (INSPIREsat-1 and INS2TD) into the intended orbit by the PSLV-C52 rocket. 
• This launch was the 54th flight of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket, and the 23rd of its most powerful XL-version that has six strap-on boosters. 

About EOS-04 

• It is a radar imaging satellite capable of providing high-quality images under all weather conditions. It will be placed in a sun synchronous polar orbit. 
• It can be used to capture images for agriculture, forestry, flood mapping, soil moisture and hydrology. The satellite has a mission life of 10 years. 
• It will complement the data from Resourcesat, Cartosat and RISAT-2B series of satellites that are already in orbit. 
• In fact, it would replace the RISAT-1 (launched in 2012) which has been non-functional for the last few years. RISATs use synthetic aperture radars to produce high-resolution images. One big advantage that radar imaging has over optical instruments is that it is unaffected by weather, cloud, fog, or the lack of sunlight. 
• The first of these newly named satellites, EOS-01, launched in November 2020, is in orbit right now. EOS-02, a micro-satellite to be flown on a new launch vehicle called SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle) is yet to be launched, while launch of EOS-03 had ended in a failure in August, 2021.
  

19. Lassa Fever 

Lassa fever has been detected in UK. The cases are linked to travel to West African countries.

About Lassa Fever 

• It is a viral haemorrhagic fever that is primarily transmitted to humans via contact with Matomys rats. It is found in West Africa and was first discovered in 1969 in Lassa, Nigeria. 
• The death rate associated with this disease is low, at around 1%. But the death rate is higher for certain individuals, such as pregnant women in their 3rd trimester. 
• A person can become infected if they come in contact with items of food that is contaminated with the urine or faeces of an infected rat (zoonotic disease). 
• It can also be spread, though rarely, if a person comes in contact with a sick person’s infected bodily fluids or through mucous membranes such as the eyes, nose or the mouth 

20. Origami Metamaterials 

Researchers from IIT Madras have developed a material called Origami metamaterials. 

About Origami Metamaterial

• These are made by joining panels along their edges to form 'creases' about which the structure locally 'folds. These combine the Japanese art of paper folding (origami) and the existing material of choice and fold it to obtain desired properties. 
• When a material is crushed or stretched along a particular direction, it undergoes a modification in the perpendicular, or lateral direction. 
• Poisson ratio: The ratio between the deformation along the force and the deformation in a direction lateral to the force. The Poisson ratio can be positive or negative. 
• In order to be useful, materials need to maintain a constant Poisson ratio when they crumble under pressure. However, they are prone not to do so, and the Poisson ratio varies as they deform. New developed origami metamaterials show a constant value of Poisson Ratio when subjected to stress. 
• It can crumple rather than tear & also take the impact and absorb the shock. 

About Metamaterial 

• A metamaterial is any material that is engineered to possess a property not found in naturally occurring materials. 
• They are made up of a combination of several elements made from composite materials such as metal and plastic.
• They are typically arranged in a repeating pattern, on a scale that is smaller than the wavelength of the event they affect. 
• It derives their properties not from the properties of the base materials, but from their newly designed structures. 
• Apart from their artificial origin, metamaterials are characterized because they have unusual electromagnetic properties, coming from their structure and arrangement and not from their composition. 
• This is similar to what happens with graphite, diamond and graphene, since they are all made of carbon, but due to their structure, they have very different properties. 
• One of the properties that can vary the metamaterials can be, for example, that the material has a negative refractive index making them of great importance in optics and electromagnetism applications. 
• Other Potential Applications include medical devices, remote aerospace operations, sensor detectors, solar power management, crowd control, radomes, antenna lenses, and even earthquake protection. 

21. Doxxing 

Meta’s oversight board has suggested Facebook and Instagram to make strict doxxing rules.

About Doxxing 

• Doxxing is publishing others' personal information on the internet with a malicious intent that can reveal the person's real identity. 

Why Need For Regulation

• It is used to shame or punish people who would rather stay anonymous, because of their controversial beliefs or other types of non-mainstream activity. 
• It can lead to harassment, cyber-attacks, emotional distress and stalking etc. 

22. Stem Cell Transplant Can Cure HIV

Researchers reported that the patient got cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant. 

About New Approach

• Researchers use umbilical cord blood, because it contains stem cells. 
• It is taken from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS. 
• The new approach may make the treatment available to more people without the need for antiretroviral therapy. 
• However, researchers said that the method is too risky to be suitable for most people diagnosed with HIV. 

About Stem Cell Transplant 

• A stem cell transplant is also called a bone marrow transplant or, more specifically, a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. 
• It is a medical treatment that replaces your bone marrow with healthy cells. 
• The replacement cells can either come from your own body or from a donor. 
• Transplantation can be used to treat certain types of cancer, such as leukemia, myeloma, and lymphoma, and other blood and immune system diseases that affect the bone marrow. 

Why HIV Is Difficult To Cure 

• HIV maintains a permanent presence in the human body because soon after an infection, the virus binds its genetic code into long-lived immune cells that will enter a resting state. 
• Anti-retroviral only work on replicating cells, so HIV can remain under the radar (unnoticed) of such medications in resting cells for long periods, sometimes even years. 
• Absent in any HIV treatment, such cells could restart their engines at any time and repopulate the body with huge amounts of virus. 

About Stem Cells 

• These are special cells that can make copies of themselves and change into many different kinds of cells that the body needs. 
• There are several kinds of stem cells & are found in different parts of the body at different times. 
• Bone marrow is soft, spongy tissue in the body that contains hematopoietic stem cells
  (i)  Cancer and cancer treatment can damage the hematopoietic stem cells
  (ii)  Hematopoietic stem cells are stem cells that turn into blood cells.