Daily Prelims Notes 21 May 2023

May 21, 2023
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Daily Prelims Notes

21 May 2023

Table Of Contents

1. Novel host-directed molecules blunt SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus

Subject :Science and Technology

Section: Bio Technology

Context: Virus can develop resistance against antivirals, while drugs that target the host cells to prevent virus infection can remain effective even when the virus evolves.

More on the News:

Indian researchers have, for the first time, been able to synthesise small molecules that can effectively halt the infection of cells by SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses by targeting the hosts.
In place of antivirals that directly target the virus in question, the team, co-led by researchers at IISER Mohali and IIT Ropar, attempted the host-directed therapy. Till date, no approved host-directed drugs are available for either SARS-CoV-2 or influenza virus.
In both cultured cells and animal studies, the small molecules that were synthesised by team at the Department of Chemistry, IIT Ropar showed over 95% efficacy in halting the infection of cells by SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.
While antivirals that target the virus become ineffective once the virus develops resistance, drugs that target the host cells to prevent the virus from infecting them, are expected to remain effective even when the virus evolves by accumulating mutations.
There is already evidence that the current FDA-approved drugs for treating SARS-CoV-2 and influenza virus infection are losing their efficacy due to the emergence of drug-resistant virus strains. In host-directed therapy, the challenge is that molecules can very often turn out to be toxic to the host cells, the reason why this approach has not been widely adopted.
The small molecules were not only effective (over 95%) against both SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses, they were not toxic to either cultured cells or mice even after prolonged exposure.
Of the 28 molecules screened, one molecule—1,3-diphenylurea derivative (DPUD) was able to block both SARS-CoV-2 and influenza virus infection by almost 100% in cells without being toxic to the cells.
These molecules carry chloride ions into the cell, thereby leading to a large accumulation of chloride inside the cell, disturbing the chloride equilibrium. When the chloride equilibrium is disturbed, some endocytic pathways become non-functional. As a result, the viruses fail to enter the cells and establish infection.
The small molecules were found to be highly effective when tested against H1N1 and H3N2 influenza virus sub-types and the SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan, Delta, and two Omicron variants of concern.

2. Ecofeminism

Subject : Environment

Section: Msc

Context: German scholar and feminist Maria Mies passed away recently. Vandana Shiva, who co-wrote the book Ecofeminism with her, speaks about Mies and their work together.

More on the News:

Maria Mies, a Marxist Feminist scholar and academic, passed away on May 16 at the age of 92.
For decades, Mies wrote extensively on how patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism have exploited women as well as nature. The German activist had a long association with India, teaching at the Goethe-Institut in Pune from 1963 to 1967 and returning to the country several times. Her PhD thesis was published in 1980 under the title Indian Women and Patriarchy.
In 1993, Mies co-wrote the important book Ecofeminism with Vandana Shiva, scientist and activist.

Ecofeminism:

Ecofeminism is a worldview that recognises that humans are part of Nature, not separate. In their interconnectedness through life, Nature and Women are Alive and Autonomous, not dead passive objects to be exploited and violated by masculine power.
Ecofeminism is a philosophical and social movement that explores the connections between the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature. It highlights the intersections between gender inequality and environmental issues, arguing that both are rooted in similar systems of domination and hierarchical thinking.

How does capitalism take away women’s control over farming?

Capitalist Patriarchy as a world view and a system of knowledge as well as organising the economy has been instituted over the last few centuries, through colonialism, fossil fuel industrialism, and the rule of violence, greed, and destruction of nature and cultures.
Capitalist Patriarchy assumes nature is dead matter, and women are passive. The unit of capitalist patriarchy is the corporation, with the first corporation created as the East India Company in 1600. The British Empire was an empire of cotton, extracting $ 45 trillion from India, leaving a trail of famines.
Corporations are a patriarchal construct, made in the image of a rich white man. Corporations work for only one objective, profits.
They introduced war chemicals as agrochemicals in agriculture. They shaped the rules of WTO, which include the Intellectual Property Rights and ownership of seeds written by Monsanto [an agrochemical company], free trade in agriculture written by Cargill, and the Sanitary and PhytoSanitary agreement written by the junk food industry — Pepsi, Coke, Nestle.
Women have been the Seed keepers and breeders, most farmers are women, all artisanal food processing was in women’s hands. The Corporations entering agriculture have displaced women from the seed sector, from agricultural production, from food processing.

How does climate change impact women disproportionately?

Climate Change is a consequence of capitalist patriarchy, the arrogance of denying that nature is living, and that women have knowledge to work and produce without fossil fuels and chemicals driving climate change.
The first impact is the denial of women’s knowledge and economies.
The second impact is the consequences of climate change in terms of increased intensity and frequency of cyclones, flooding, droughts. Women are the most vulnerable in times of climate disasters.
Women’s practices of resilience, such as conserving seeds of climate resilience, practising regenerative ecological organic agriculture, building local economies, show the path to mitigating climate impact, while building resilience to climate change.

3. Forests have limited carbon sequestration potential

Subject :Environment

Section: Climate change

More on the News:

Researchers have investigated the natural limits to additional carbon accumulation in the biomass of forests in the hypothetical absence of all direct human forest management activities.
Under current climatic conditions and the removal of all forest management activities, existing forests could increase biomass by 44.1 petagrams of carbon. This represents 15% more carbon, which would only offset about four years of carbon dioxide under current emission rates.

Carbon sequestration:

Carbon sequestration refers to the process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and preventing it from being released back into the atmosphere. It plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and stabilizing the carbon cycle.
Carbon sequestration is the long-term storage of carbon in various reservoirs, such as forests, soil, oceans, and geological formations, to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Natural ecosystems, such as forests, wetlands, and oceans, act as important carbon sinks by absorbing and storing carbon through processes like photosynthesis and biological activity. Preserving and restoring these ecosystems is crucial for enhancing carbon sequestration.
Planting new forests (afforestation) or restoring degraded forests (reforestation) can significantly increase carbon sequestration. Trees absorb CO2 through photosynthesis, storing carbon in their biomass and in the soil.
Agricultural practices and land management techniques that enhance soil health, such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry, and cover cropping, can increase soil organic carbon and sequester significant amounts of carbon.
Blue carbon refers to the carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems, such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes. Protecting and restoring these habitats is important for preserving their carbon sequestration capacity.
Carbon capture and storage technologies involve capturing CO2 emissions from power plants, industrial facilities, and other sources, and then storing it in underground geological formations, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers.
Direct air capture is a technology that directly removes CO2 from the atmosphere using specialized machines. The captured CO2 can be stored underground or used for various purposes, such as enhanced oil recovery or the production of synthetic fuels.

Carbon sink: https://optimizeias.com/meeting-carbon-sink-target/

4. Fear of large predators drives mesopredators to safer areas

Subject: Environment

Section: Biodiversity

More on the News:

Medium-sized carnivorous species — mesopredators like coyotes or bobcats — tend to move into human-dominated areas to avoid predation by larger carnivores, a phenomenon also known as the “human shield” effect.
But this places the safety-seeking species at considerably greater risk for mortality due to human activities. The findings (Science) describe a “paradox of the lethal human shield” for mesopredators, which has been linked to increased wildlife survival rates in some instances.

Mesopredators:

Mesopredators are a group of animals that occupy the middle level in the food chain, between top predators and their prey. They are typically medium-sized carnivores that feed on smaller animals but are themselves preyed upon by larger predators.
Mesopredators are carnivorous animals that are not at the top of the food chain but also not at the bottom. They play an important role in regulating the populations of their prey species and can have cascading effects on ecosystem dynamics.
Some examples of mesopredators include foxes, raccoons, coyotes, skunks, and small-to-medium-sized wildcats like bobcats and lynxes. These animals typically have a diverse diet and may feed on a variety of small mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates.
Mesopredators help control the populations of their prey species, preventing them from overpopulating and exerting excessive pressure on their food resources. By regulating prey populations, mesopredators indirectly influence the abundance and distribution of other species in the ecosystem.
In some cases, when the population of top predators declines or is removed from an ecosystem, mesopredators can experience a population increase and become more dominant. This phenomenon is known as mesopredator release and can have significant ecological consequences.
Mesopredators can come into conflict with humans, particularly in human-dominated landscapes. They may prey on livestock or become a nuisance in urban areas. Balancing the needs of human communities and the conservation of mesopredators is an important aspect of wildlife management.

5. WHO Launches Global Network to Detect Infectious Disease Threat

Subject : International Events

Section: International Events

Concept :

The World Health Organization has launched a global network to help swiftly detect the threat from infectious diseases, like COVID-19, and share the information to prevent their spread.

About International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN):

The International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN) is a global network of pathogen genomic actors.
It is hosted by the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.
Its aim isto accelerate progress on the deployment of pathogen genomics and improve public health decision-making.
By strengthening the pathogen genomic surveillance ecosystem, the IPSN enables faster detection of new pathogens and the enhanced tracking of the spread and evolution of diseases.
This in turn can drive better public health responses.
The IPSN supports ongoing disease surveillance and will help detect and fully characterize new disease threats before they become epidemics or pandemics.
Vision/Mission Behind IPSN
A world where every country has equitable access to sustained capacity for genomic sequencing and analytics as part of its public health surveillance system.

Need for an International Surveillance Network for Pathogens

COVID-19 highlighted the critical role pathogen genomics plays when responding to pandemic threats.
As pointed out by the WHO that without the rapid sequencing of the SARS CoV-2 virus, vaccines would not have been as effective and would not have become available as quickly.
New and more transmissible variants of the virus would also not have been identified as quickly.
WHO said that genomics lies at the heart of effective epidemic and pandemic preparedness and response.
While the pandemic spurred countries to scale up their genomics capacity, the agency warned that many still lack effective systems for collecting and analysing samples.
The IPSN would help address such challenges.

6. No immunity for president as a contract party

Subject : Polity

Section: Executive

Concept :

The Supreme Court of India held that immunity cannot be claimed by the government from the application of law to a contract only because one of the parties to it is the President of India.
It was also ruled that the adjudicator should be “impartial and independent”.

Other details of the Case:

The pistol maker Glock Asia-Pacific Limited filed a petition against the Union for the appointment of an arbitrator to a dispute regarding a tender.
The agreement enabled the Home Secretary to appoint an officer in the Ministry of Law to be the sole arbitrator.
The SC held that the agreement was a clear violation of Section 12(5) of the Arbitration Act.
According to the provision, a person in a prior relationship with any party to the arbitration in terms of the employee, consultant, advisor, etc would be ineligible to become an arbitrator.
The apex Court held that Article 299 of the Constitution (contracts made by the Union or State in the name of the President or Governor) does not enable the government to break the statutory law.

Article 299 of Indian Constitution

All contracts made in the exercise of the executive power of the Union or of a State shall be expressed to be made by the President, or by the Governor of the State, as the case may be, and all such contracts and all assurances of property made in the exercise of that power shall be executed on behalf of the President or the Governor by such persons and in such manner as he may direct or authorize.
Neither the President nor the Governor shall be personally liable in respect of any contract or assurance made or executed for the purposes of this Constitution, or for the purposes of any enactment relating to the Government of India heretofore in force, nor shall any person making or executing any such contract or assurance on behalf of any of them be personally liable in respect thereof.

7. Calcium 41 in radiometric dating

Subject: Science and technology

Section: Nuclear technology

Concept :

Recent study shows that Calcium-41 can be used the same way as Carbon-14 in carbon dating, but with several advantages.

Radio Carbon Dating

Carbon-14 – Radiocarbon (Carbon 14) is an isotope of the element carbon that is unstable and weakly radioactive [The stable isotopes are carbon 12 and carbon 13]
It has a half-life of 5,700 years, so the technique can’t determine the age of objects older than around 50,000 years.
Radiocarbon dating – It is a method that provides objective age estimates for carbon-based materials that originated from living organisms.
Plants and animals assimilate Carbon 14 from carbon dioxide throughout their lifetimes.
When they die, they stop exchanging carbon with the biosphere and their carbon 14 content then starts to decrease at a rate determined by the law of radioactive decay.
An age could be estimated by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in the sample.
There are 3 principal techniques used to measure carbon 14 content of any given sample.
Gas proportional counting
Liquid scintillation counting
Accelerator mass spectrometry (Advanced method)
The method was developed 1940s by Willard Libby, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to this work in 1960.
The issue with carbon dating was to detect carbon-14 atoms, which occur once in around 1012 carbon atoms.

Calcium-41

Calcium-41 is a rare long-lived radio-isotope of Calcium that has a half-life of 99,400 years.
Calcium-41 is called a cosmogenic nuclide, because it is produced when cosmic rays from space smash into calcium atoms in the soil in a fission reaction, called spallation.
It is found in the earth’s crust, opening the door to dating fossilized bones and rock.
The issue is Calcium-41 is rarer, occurring once in around 1015 Calcium atoms.

How can the issue of detecting C-14 and CA-41 be resolved?

Atom Trap Trace Analysis (ATTA) – Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China pitched a technique called atom-trap trace analysis (ATTA) to spot these atoms.
ATTA is both extremely sensitive and selective, and is based on the laser manipulation and detection of neutral atoms.
Procedure –
A sample is vaporised in an oven.
The atoms in the vapour are laser-cooled and loaded into a cage made of light and magnetic fields.
In ATTA, a laser’s frequency is tuned such that it imparts the same energy as required for an electron transition in Calcium-41.
The electrons absorb and release this energy, revealing the presence of their atoms.
Significance –
It can spot one calcium-41 atom in every 10 16 calcium atoms with 12% precision in seawater.
ATTA also avoids potassium-41 atoms, which are similar to calcium-41 atoms but lack the same electron transition.
It can also be modified to study isotopes of some noble gases that have defied techniques developed for carbon-14, such as argon-39, krypton-81, and krypton-85.

What are the applications of ATTA and Calcium-41?

Opens the possibility of extension to other metal isotopes
To study how long rocks has been covered by ice
Open avenues for exploring Earth-science applications.