Daily Prelims Notes 4 January 2021

January 4, 2021
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN

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Daily Prelims Notes 4 January 2021

By

Santosh Sir

All 6 Prelims qualified

4 CSE Mains qualified

If I can do it, you can too

Table Of Contents

1. VOLTAGE DEPENDENT ANION CHANNELS

Subject: Science & tech

Concept:

VDAC, located in the mitochondrial outer membrane, functions as gatekeeper for the entry and exit of mitochondrial metabolites, thereby controlling cross-talk between mitochondria and the rest of the cell. VDAC is also a key player in mitochondria-mediated apoptosis.
Meant to promote cell growth in general, the VDAC proteins act as gatekeepers, binding themselves to the pro cell-death proteins and inactivating them to help the cells live longer. Meant to promote cell growth in general, the VDAC proteins act as gatekeepers, binding themselves to the pro cell-death proteins and inactivating them to help the cells live longer.
VDACs are of three kinds — identified as 1, 2 and 3. All of them function as gatekeepers and ion transporters, but it is the VDAC2 that can bind with and inactivate another protein that, if left alone, can allow a cell to die.
The differences between VDAC 1,2,3 can be used to elicit VDAC-specific function, so that the cell decides whether to live or die.
VDAC2 has 11 extra amino acids compared with the other two. She removed these 11 amino acids and tested the protein and it behaved like VDAC1, which does not have these 11 extra acids.
So that it will be used to target the differences to let each VDAC do the work we desire

VDAC in Cancer Treatment

Cancer spreads in the body due to unchecked growth of diseased cells. But did you know there are some kinds of proteins that help cells, including diseased cells, die?
These death-hastening proteins, if left alone, would rampage through the body, killing even the good cells.
Special type of ‘membrane proteins’ called VDAC can be used to treat cancer.
Diseased cells die quickly by interfering it with the VDAC2 function that let the diseased cells die.

2. OPEC

Subject: International Organizations

Context:

Concept:

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad, Iraq, with the signing of an agreement in September 1960 by five countries namely Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
They were to become the Founder members of the Organization.
As of 2020, OPEC has a total of 13 Member Countries viz. Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, Angola and Venezuela are members of OPEC.
OPEC’s objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.
It is head quartered in Vienna, Austria.
OPEC membership is open to any country that is a substantial exporter of oil and which shares the ideals of the organization.

3. COMPULSORY LICENSING

Subject: Economy

Context: The central government recently published the Patent (Amendment) Rules, 2020 amending the format of a statement that patentees and licensees are required to annually submit to the Patent Office disclosing the extent to which they have commercially worked or made the patented inventions available to the public in the country

Concept:

The amendment has significantly watered down the disclosure format, and this could hamper the effectiveness of India’s compulsory licensing regime which depends on full disclosure of patent working information.

What is a Patent?

The Patents Act, 1970 was amended three times in 1999, 2002, 2005 respectively to include the concept of ‘compulsory license’ and these are given in the sections 84-92 of the Indian Patents Act, 1970.
A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, whether it is a product or a process which gives a new technical solution to a problem, and this patent is granted for a specific period to the inventor.

What are ‘compulsory licenses’ under the Patents Act?

In simple terms, compulsory licenses are authorizations given to a third-party by the Government to make, use or sell a particular product or use a particular process which has been patented, without the need of the permission of the patent owner.
The provisions regarding compulsory licenses are given in the Indian Patents Act, 1970 and in the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement at the International level.
Although this works against the patent holder, generally compulsory licenses are only considered in certain cases of national emergency, and health crisis. There are certain pre-requisite conditions which need to be fulfilled if the Government wants to grant a compulsory license in favor of someone.
Under Indian Patents Act, 1970 the provisions of ‘compulsory license’ are specifically given under Chapter XVI, and the conditions which need to be fulfilled are given is Sections 84-92 of the said Act.

Section 84

At any time after the expiration of three years from the date of the grant of a patent, any person interested may make an application to the Controller for grant of compulsory license on patent on any of the following grounds, namely:

1. That the reasonable requirements of the public with respect to the patented invention have not been satisfied, or
2. that the patented invention is not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price, or
3. that the patented invention is not worked in the territory of India.

However compulsory licenses may also be granted under ,

Section 92 A– For exports, under exceptional circumstances.

Section 92A– In case of national emergency, extreme urgency of public non-commercial use by notification of the Central Government

Section 92 A (1) – To a country which has insufficient or no manufacturing power in the pharmaceutical sector to address public health.

4. LITHIUM TRIANGLE

Subject: Economy

Context : India, through a newly-floated state-owned company, inked a pact with an Argentine firm mid-last year to jointly prospect lithium in the South American country that has the third largest reserves of the silver-white alkali metal — a crucial building block of the lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

Concept:

The new company, Khanij Bidesh India Ltd — incorporated in August, 2019 by three state-owned companies, NALCO, Hindustan Copper and Mineral Exploration Ltd, with a specific mandate to acquire strategic mineral assets such as lithium and cobalt abroad — is also learnt to be exploring options in Chile and Bolivia, two other top lithium-producing countries.

Lithium Triangle

Lithium Triangle is an intersection of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, known for high quality salt flats.
Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Salar de Atacama in Chile and Salar de Arizaro in Argentina contains over 45%of known global lithium reserves.
Beneath Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat lies the world’s greatest lithium deposits.
Bolivia, one of South America’s poorest countries, envisions development by harvesting lithium on an industrial scale from underground saltwater brines.
It can be mined from rock or processed from brine.
Lithium dissolved in underground saline aquifers called “brine”, pumped to surface by wells and then allowed to evaporate in vast knee-deep ponds.

About Lithium

Lithium is a chemical element with symbol Li and atomic number 3.
It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal.
Under standard conditions, it is the lightest metal and the lightest solid element.
Lithium is highly reactive and flammable, and is stored in mineral oil.
It never occurs freely in nature, but only in (usually ionic) compounds, such as pegmatitic minerals, which were once the main source of lithium.
Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines.
Lithium metal is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride.

Applications

Lithium and its compounds have several industrial applications, including heat-resistant glass and ceramics, lithium grease lubricants, flux additives for iron, steel and aluminium production, lithium batteries, and lithium-ion batteries.
It works with other elements, drugs, enzymes, hormones, vitamins, and growth factors in the body in many different ways. People use it for medicine.
Lithium salts have proven to be useful as a mood-stabilizing drug in the treatment of bipolar disorder in humans.

5. WESTERN DISTURBANCE

Subject : Geography

Context : Rain lashed Delhi and NCR on Sunday morning, leading to a drop in day temperatures amidst strong winds and thunderstorm.

Concept :

According to IMD , the effect of the western disturbance over the region is expected to start waning and only light rain is expected during the day, after which the sky is expected to clear, paving the way for another spell of fog in the mornings.

Western Disturbances

Western Disturbances are low pressure systems, embedded in western winds (westerlies) that flow from west to the east.
It is a term coined by an Indian Meteorologist for the weather phenomenon which is propagated from the West.
Western Disturbances begin is a low pressure system that originates in the Mid- latitude region near the Atlantic ocean and Europe.
The low pressure typically forms over the Mediterranean Sea and travels over Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan before entering India loaded with moisture.
These moisture laden western disturbances eventually come up against the himalayas and get blocked, as a consequence, the moisture gets trapped and precipitation is shared in the form of snow and rain over Northwest India and sometimes, other parts of North India.
An average of 4-5 western disturbances form during the winter season and the rainfall distribution and amount varies with every western disturbance.
The word ‘Western’ refers to the direction from which they originate with regard to India.
The word ‘disturbance’ is used because the air within the low pressure systems tends to be unstable or disturbed.
Sometimes, when western disturbances become more intense in the Indian Region, they can extend even upto 15 degree north, resulting into rainfall upto north Maharashtra, Gujarat and the entire Madhya Pradesh to the south.

Impact

Western Disturbances are the cause of the most winter and pre-monsoon season rainfall across North-West India. This phenomenon is usually associated with cloudy sky, higher night temperatures and unusual rain. It is estimated that India gets close to 5-10% of its total annual rainfall from western disturbances.
In winter, western winds bring moderate to heavy rain in low lying areas and heavy snow to mountainous areas of the Indian subcontinent.
India is a rain dependent country and while the south west monsoon covers most of India, parts of North India don’t get much rain from it. These regions depend upon snow and rain from western disturbance during winter season from November to March.
Precipitation during the winter season has great importance in agriculture particularly for rabi crops including wheat, which is one of the most important Indian crops.
They start declining after winter. During the summer months of April and May, they move across North India and at times help in the activation of monsoon in certain parts of northwest India.
During the monsoon season, western disturbances may occasionally cause dense clouding and heavy precipitation.
Weak western disturbances are associated with crop failure and water problems across north India.
Strong western disturbances can help residents, farmers and governments avoid many of the problems associated with water scarcity.

6. CONJUGATE VACCINES

Subject : Science & tech

Concept :

A conjugate vaccine is a type of vaccine which combines a weak antigen with a strong antigen as a carrier so that the immune system has a stronger response to the weak antigen.
Vaccines are used to prevent diseases by invoking an immune response to an antigen, the foreign part of a bacteria or virus that the immune system recognizes.
This is usually accomplished with an attenuated or dead version of a pathogenic bacterium or virus in the vaccine, so that the immune system can recognize the antigen later in life.
Many vaccines contain a single antigen that the body will recognize.
However, the antigen of some pathogenic bacteria does not elicit a strong response from the immune system, so a vaccination against this weak antigen would not protect the person later in life. In this case, a conjugate vaccine is used in order to invoke an immune system response against the weak antigen. In a conjugate vaccine, the weak antigen is covalently attached to a strong antigen, thereby eliciting a stronger immunological response to the weak antigen. Most commonly, the weak antigen is a polysaccharide that is attached to strong protein antigen. However, protein and protein/protein conjugates have also been developed.

Approved conjugate vaccines

The most commonly used conjugate vaccine is the Hib conjugate vaccine. Other pathogens that are combined in a conjugate vaccine to increase an immune response are Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis, both of which are conjugated to protein carriers like those used in the Hib conjugate vaccine
Another conjugate vaccine is typhoid conjugate vaccine which may be more effective and prevents typhoid fever in many children under the age of five years.
Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) prevents pneumococcal disease. The vaccine is a mix of several bacteria of the pneumococci family, which are known to cause pneumonia.

7. DEVELOPMENT FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Subject :Economy

Context : In her last Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to set up DFIs for promoting infrastructure funding.

Concept :

About 7,000 projects were identified under the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) with projected investment of a whopping ₹111-lakh crore during 2020-25.
The proposed DFI would play a key developmental role, apart from providing conventional innovative financial mechanisms.

DFI

Development finance institutions or development finance companies are organizations owned by the government or charitable institution to provide funds for low-capital projects or where their borrowers are unable to get it from commercial lenders.
Types of Finance provided are – Medium (1 – 5 years) and Long term ( >5 years).

Classification

The Development Finance Institutions can be classified into four categories:
National Development Banks Ex: IDBI, SIDBI, ICICI, IFCI, IRBI, IDFC
Sector specific financial institutions Ex: TFCI, EXIM Bank, NABARD, HDFC, NHB
Investment Institutions Ex: LIC, GIC and UTI
State level institutions Ex: State Finance Corporations and SIDCs.

Reasons for Decline

After 2000-2001, the prominence of development banking has started to decline as many firms from development banking had quit post liberalization
DFIs suffered huge NPAs, with many sliding to actual or near unviable status. It was also noted that (Desai-1999) the DFIs had failed in several crucial areas.
They financed industrial groups rather than new entrepreneurs, diluted the standard of scrutiny of proposals, had weak project/ implementation monitoring skills, etc. The report also noted that DFIs had inherited a bureaucratic attitude, which prevented a comprehensive achievement of their founding objectives.
This state of affairs confronted the two Narasimham Committee on Financial Sector Reforms in the 1990s which noted that the DFIs may not be viable, since these institutions were raising funds at the current market rates and lending to businesses with long gestation and often high risk of failure with high credit cost.

8. EFFICACY RATE IN VACCINES

Subject :Science& tech

Context: Different pharmaceutical companies are now coming out with the success stories of their potential vaccines, and the efficacy rates of these vaccines are reported to be high – 70%, 90%, 95%, and so on.

Concept:

‘Vaccine efficacy’ is defined to measure whether the vaccine is able to prevent the disease significantly or not, and if so, to what extent.
Vaccines are usually approved on the basis of results from three stages of clinical trials. The trials aim to assess short-term safety, ability to generate an immune response, and efficacy

How Efficacy is calculated?

Phase III trial, which is often the most elaborate one, investigates the efficacy of the vaccine under trial – usually in comparison to a placebo, which maybe a similar-looking injection having no medical effect.
In a phase III trial, often thousands of people are given the vaccine or a placebo, and then these people are monitored over several months to see whether the people receiving the vaccine get infected at a lower rate than people who get the placebo, on average.
Thus, the performance of the vaccinated group is compared to that of the unvaccinated group.
Vaccine efficacy is expressed as a proportionate reduction in disease attack rate, AR, between the unvaccinated, (ARU) and vaccinated, ( ARV) groups under the phase III trial.
The ratio of ARV to ARU is called the risk ratio,(RR). A lower value of RR clearly indicates better performance of the potential vaccine.
When both the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups have, more or less, equal number of individuals, RR is the simple ratio of the number of infected in the vaccine group to that in the placebo group.
And, one minus RR, expressed in percentage, is called the “Vaccine Efficacy”.

9. COVAXIN and COVISHIELD

Subject: Science & tech

Context: The Central Drugs and Standards Committee (CDSCO) on Sunday formally approved the COVID-19 vaccines by Bharat Biotech and the Serum Institute of India (SII).

Concept :

This allows the vaccines — Covishield by SII and based on the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine, and Covaxin by Bharat Biotech — to be offered to healthcare workers and frontline workers in India.
The Health Ministry had said that 3 crore such personnel, considered at the highest risk for COVID-19, would be given the vaccine for free. It isn’t yet known which vaccine will be made available to these personnel though officials said roll-outs could begin in less than a fortnight.

COVAXIN

COVAXIN is an inactivated vaccine, created from a strain of the infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus, that has shown promise in preclinical studies, demonstrating extensive safety and effective immune responses.
COVAXIN has been developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Virology (NIV).
The SARS-CoV-2 strain was isolated in NIV, Pune and transferred to Bharat Biotech. The indigenous, inactivated vaccine will be developed and manufactured by Bharat Biotech’s BSL-3 (Bio-Safety Level 3) High Containment facility located in Genome Valley, Hyderabad, India.
Human clinical trials of the experimental COVID-19 are scheduled to start across the country in July 2020.
Bharat Biotech’s track record in developing Vero cell culture platform technologies has been proven in several vaccines for polio, rabies, rotavirus, Japanese Encephalitis, Chikungunya and Zika.

COVISHIELD

The COVISHIELD the vaccine is developed by the University of Oxford and the British Pharmaceutical major Astra Zeneca. In India, the vaccine is to be made and marketed by Pune Serum Institute of India.
It is technically referred to as AZD1222 or ChAdOx 1 nCoV-19.
The COVISHIELD vaccine uses harmless virus to transport genetic material in order to trigger the immune response to the COVID-19 virus.
The COVISHIELD trials in India were conducted by the Serum Institute of India
It is already being tested in the UK, South Africa and Brazil, where participants are being administered two doses nearly a month apart.

10. TRANSFAT

Subject : Health

Context : The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has capped the amount of trans fatty acids (TFA) in oils and fats to 3% for 2021 and 2% by 2022 from the current permissible limit of 5% through an amendment to the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restriction on Sales) Regulations.

Concept:

Trans fatty acids (TFAs) or Trans fats are the most harmful type of fats which can have much more adverse effects on our body than any other dietary constituent.
These fats are largely produced artificially but a small amount also occurs naturally. Thus in our diet, these may be present as Artificial TFAs and/ or Natural TFAs.
Artificial TFAs are formed when hydrogen is made to react with the oil to produce fats resembling pure ghee/butter.
In our diet the major sources of artificial TFAs are the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (PHVO)/ vanaspati / margarine while the natural TFAs are present in meats and dairy products, though in small amounts.
WHO recommendation: Limited to less than 1% of total energy intake. It has called for the total elimination of TFAs in global food supply by 2023.

Harmful effects:

TFAs pose a higher risk of heart disease than saturated fats. While saturated fats raise total cholesterol levels, TFAs not only raise total cholesterol levels but also reduce the good cholesterol (HDL), which helps to protect us against heart disease.
Trans fats consumption increases the risk of developing heart disease and stroke.
It is also associated with a higher risk of developing obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, infertility, certain types of cancers and can also lead to compromised fetal development causing harm to the yet to be born baby.