Daily Current Affairs : 25th April

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Echidnas
2. Insight Lander
3. Malaria Vaccine
4. e-waybill
5. Facts for Prelims – Tiangong, LIBOR, Narasimham Committee

1 . Echidnas

Context : In yet another attempt to find an alternative to bacteria-resistant antibiotics, scientists at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research – Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CSIR-CCMB) have found out that milk of an egg-laying mammal contains a novel anti-microbial protein that keeps its young ones safe from infections.

About Echidnas

• Echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters, are unique egg-laying mammals found only in Australia and New Guinea.
• Echidnas and the platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes
  IUCN Status – Least Concern
• Their young ones hatch from eggs at a very early stage of development and depend completely on their mother’s milk.
• But the mammary glands of the female echidnas are devoid of nipples, forcing the young ones to lick milk from the mother’s body surface and potentially making them vulnerable to micro-organisms.
• Echidnas and the platypus are the only egg-laying mammals, known as monotremes
• IUCN Status – Least Concern

About the Findings

• A research team found out that the milk of the echidna has a protein that can puncture the cell membranes of multiple bacterial species, thus destroying the source of infection.
• The scientist said that the protein could be used as an alternative to antibiotics. The research team has found out ways to produce the protein in large quantities using E. coli
• Scientists pointed out that there is a rise of superbugs due to the indiscriminate use of antibiotics by the animal husbandry industry to raise healthy livestock. These superbugs can cause mastitis, an infection of the mammary gland, in lactating dairy animals. Team has been able to show that the protein from echidna milk is effective against mastitis-causing bacteria.

Importance

• These studies give us novel approaches to fighting infectious diseases taking clues from nature.
• They are the best way forward in this emerging scenario of increased infectious disease burden and resistance to current treatments

2 . Insight Lander

Context : NASA’s InSight lander has picked up a gentle rumble at Mars, believed to be the first marsquake ever detected.

About the Findings

• InSight lander have detected the first signals suggesting seismic activity on the red planet, a major discovery that extends the field of seismology to a new world beyond the Earth and the moon.
• Rather than the movement of tectonic plates, which generates quakes on Earth, scientists believe Martian tremors are generated by the cooling and contraction of the planet. Over time, the contraction builds up stress until it is strong enough to break the crust, causing a quake, according to InSight scientists.

About Insight Lander

• InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.
• Studying Mars’ interior structure answers key questions about the early formation of rocky planets in our inner solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars – more than 4 billion years ago, as well as rocky exoplanets. InSight also measures tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars today.
• The InSight mission seeks to uncover how a rocky body forms and evolves to become a planet by investigating the interior structure and composition of Mars. The mission will also determine the rate of Martian tectonic activity and meteorite impacts.

Science Objectives of Mission

• Formation & Evolution: Understand the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets through investigation of the interior structure and processes of Mars.
• Tectonic Activity: Determine the present level of tectonic activity and meteorite impact rate on Mars.

Instruments

• Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure, is a round, dome-shaped instrument that sits on the Martian surface and takes the “pulse” or seismic vibrations of Mars
• Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe, HP³ for short, burrows down to almost 16 feet (five meters) into Mars’ surface, it measures the heat coming from Mars’ interior to reveal how much heat is flowing out of the body of the planet, and what the source of the heat is.
• InSight’s Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, RISE, precisely tracks the location of the lander to determine just how much Mars’ North Pole wobbles as it orbits the sun. These observations will provide detailed information on the size of Mars’ iron-rich core. They will help determine whether the core is liquid, and which other elements, besides iron, may be present.

3 . Malaria Vaccine

Context : The World Health Organisation issued a statement Tuesday welcoming a pilot project in Malawi of administering a malaria vaccine to children below the age of 2 years. A total 3,60,000 children across three African countries — Malawi, Ghana and Kenya — will be covered every year with the vaccine.

About Malaria

• Malaria is a potentially life-threatening parasitic disease caused by the parasites Plasmodium viviax (P.vivax), Plasmodium falciparum (P.falciparum), Plasmodium malariae (P.malariae), and Plasmodium ovale (P.ovale), transmitted by the female Anopheles mosquito.
• Malaria, according to the WHO, remains one of the world’s leading killers, claiming the life of one child every two minutes. Children under the age of 5 are at greatest risk from its life-threatening complications.

About the Vaccine

• The vaccine is being called RTS,S. RTS,S vaccine has been developed by GSK — the company is donating about 10 million doses of the product for the pilot.
• It was created in 1987 by GSK, and was subsequently developed with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• In 2014, the vaccine cleared phase III clinical trials which certified that it was both effective and safe for use in humans.
• According to a description from PATH’s Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), “RTS,S aims to trigger the immune system to defend against the first stages of malaria when the Plasmodium falciparum parasite enters the human host’s bloodstream through a mosquito bite and infects liver cells.
• The vaccine is designed to prevent the parasite from infecting the liver, where it can mature, multiply, re-enter the bloodstream, and infect red blood cells, which can lead to disease symptoms”.
• In clinical trials, the vaccine was found to prevent approximately 4 in 10 malaria cases, including 3 in 10 cases of life-threatening severe malaria.

4 . E waybill

Context : The Finance Ministry has introduced changes in the e-way bill system, including auto calculation of distance based on PIN codes for generation of e-way bill and blocking generation of multiple bills on one invoice, as it seeks to crack down on GST evaders.

What is e way bill

• e-way bill is a document required to be carried by a person in charge of the conveyance carrying any consignment of goods of value exceeding fifty thousand rupees as mandated by the Government in terms of Section 68 of the Goods and Services Tax Act read with Rule 138 of the rules framed thereunder.
• It is generated from the GST Common Portal for eWay bill system by the registered persons or transporters who cause movement of goods of consignment before commencement of such movement.

What is e-way bill?

• The E-way bill, short form for electronic way bill, is a document to be generated online under the GST system, when goods of the value of more than ₹50,000 are shipped inter-State or intra-State. The E-way bill must be raised before the goods are shipped and should include details of the goods, their consignor, recipient and transporter.
• The transporter has to carry the invoice and the copy of E-way bill as support documents for the movement of goods. He can also carry the E-way bill number, mapped to an RFID (radio frequency identification device).
• GST laws flexibly allow any of the parties to a transaction — the consignor or the recipient — to generate the E-way bill, provided they are registered. Whether goods are transported on one’s own or hired conveyance, by air, rail or road, the E-way bill has to be generated. Where the goods are handed over to a transporter for conveyance by road and neither the consignor nor the consignee has generated the E-way Bill, the transporter becomes liable to generate it.
• When the consignor or transporter generates the E-way bill, the recipient for the consignment has to either accept or reject it on the portal. If no action is taken by the recipient in 72 hours, it shall be taken as accepted.

Why is it important?

• One of the key arguments in favour of GST was its ability to unify India as a market and do away with bothersome inter-State check-posts. Data from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, tells us that a typical truck in India spends 20 per cent of its time in inter-state check points. This varies from 20-30 minutes in some States such as Rajasthan and Maharashtra, but goes upto to two hours in Bihar or Jharkhand.
• Both the GST levy and the E-way bill were expected to root out such transit delays, while at the same time plugging tax evasion. Every E-way bill generated by a sender or buyer of goods is to be automatically updated in the outward sales return (GSTR1) of the supplier, leaving little scope for tax evasions on shipments. In the previous tax regime, tax officials had to manually cross-check the way bill with the tax returns filed, to verify if all the consignments came within the tax net.

5 . Facts for Prelims

Tiangong

• Tiangong is a space station program of the People’s Republic of China, with the goal of creating a modular space station
• The program began in 1992 as Project 921-2. As of January 2013, China moved forward on a large multiphase construction program that will lead to a large space station around 2020

LIBOR

• LIBOR, the acronym for London Interbank Offer Rate, is the global reference rate for unsecured short-term borrowing in the interbank market.
• It acts as a benchmark for short-term interest rates. It is used for pricing of interest rate swaps, currency rate swaps as well as mortgages. It is an indicator of the health of the financial system and provides an idea of the trajectory of impending policy rates of central banks. 
• LIBOR is administered by the Intercontinental Exchange or ICE. It is computed for five currencies with seven different maturities ranging from overnight to a year. The five currencies for which LIBOR is computed are Swiss franc, euro, pound sterling, Japanese yen and US dollar.  

Narasimham Committee

• Government of India (GOI) has set up various committees with the task of analysing India’s banking sector and recommending legislation and regulations to make it more effective, competitive and efficient.
• Two such expert Committees were set up under the chairmanship of M. Narasimham. They submitted their recommendations in the 1990s in reports widely known as the Narasimham Committee-I (1991) report and the Narasimham Committee-II (1998) Report.
• These recommendations not only helped unleash the potential of banking in India, they are also recognised as a factor towards minimising the impact of global financial crisis starting in 2007
• Recently Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has exited the National Housing Bank (NHB) and the National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Nabard), by selling its entire stake to government
• The move is part of ending the cross-holding in regulatory institutions and follows the recommendation of second Narasimham committee report of October 2001 and the RBI’s own discussion paper on the same entitled ‘Harmonising the role and operations of development financial institutions and banks.’ The Narasimham panel had said RBI could not own those entities which are regulated by it.