PIB Analysis : 11th June

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PIB Analysis for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

  1. IFLOWS-Mumbai
  2. BIN-19 and UV SPOT 
  3. Reverse transcription nested PCR (RT-nPCR) test
  4. Nature Index

1 . IFLOWS-Mumbai

Context : FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM FOR MUMBAI “IFLOWS-Mumbai” to be launched on June 12, 2020

Background

  • In a bid to aid in the mitigation activities of the flood prone city, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, Govt of Maharashtra approached the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) to develop an Integrated Flood Warning System for Mumbai referred to as, IFLOWS-Mumbai. 
  • MoES initiated the development of IFLOWS-Mumbai in July 2019 using the in-house expertise available within the Ministry of Earth Sciences in close coordination with Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.
  • IFLOWS-Mumbai is developed as a state of art Integrated Flood Warning system for Mumbai to enhance the resilience of the city of Mumbai by providing early warning for flooding specially during high rainfall events and cyclones.

About I-FLOWS

  • I-FLOWS is built on a modular structure and comprises of seven modules, namely Data Assimilation, Flood, Inundation, Vulnerability, Risk, Dissemination Module and Decision Support System.  
  • The system incorporates weather models from National Centre for medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), India Meteorological Department (IMD), field data from the rain gauge network stations setup by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM),Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and IMD, thematic layers on land use, infrastructure etc provided by MCGM.
  • Based on inputs from weather models, Hydrologic models are used to transform rainfall into runoff and provides inflow inputs into the riversystems. 
  • Hydraulic models are used to solve equations of fluid motion to replicate the movement of water to assess flooding in the study area.  
  • Since, Mumbai is an island city with its connectivity to sea, hydrodynamic models and storm surge model are used to calculate the tide and storm surge impacts on the city.
  • The system has provisions to capture the urban drainage within the city and predict the areas of flooding, which will be incorporated in the final system. 
  • The data on river bathymetry was collected in all rivers namely Mithi, Dahisar, Oshiwara, Poisar, Ulhas, lakes and creeks by NCCR in association with MCGM and IMD, Mumbai.
  • The land topography, land use, infrastructure, population etc., was provided by MCGM and it was integrated into a Decision Support System to accurately estimate flood levels at ward level using thematic layers in GIS.
  • A web GIS based decision supports system is build to calculate the vulnerability and risk of elements exposed to flood.

2 . BIN-19 and UV SPOT 

Context : VST Mobility Solutions, a Startup headquartered at Cochin, has launched an automated mask disposal machine as part of efforts to develop products helping to combat the Covid-19. The disposal device, named BIN-19, developed Chitra UV based face mask disposal bin technology from the Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), Trivandrum an institute of national importance under Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, was formally launched by Ernakulam District Collector S. Suhas by installing a unit at his office, the administrative headquarters of the district.

About BIN -19

  • The IoT-based BIN-19 (Internet of Things) is used for collecting and disinfecting Used Face-Mask.
  • The device has been subjected to a series of successful microbiological tests by Sree Chitra Lab. Sree Chitra is one of the testing agency for UV based devices in the country as per the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
  • The used masks dropped inside a container of the bin will be first disinfected by a process. The disinfected masks will be transferred to another container inside the Bin.
  • The person dropping the mask can sanitize her hands with the help of the automatic sanitizer dispenser attached to the Bin-19.
  • There is no need to touch or operate any switches in the Bin to do all these. All functions are automated in the hands-free equipment for the safety of users and health workers.
  • The IoT Features of BIN-19 are Auto Sanitizer Dispenser ( remotely alerts if it’s empty), Mobile Application to navigate/find Bin-19, Web Portal for Status Alerts, Power ON/OFF alerts, Box open alerts.

About UV SPOT

  • VSL Mobility Solutions has also launched, UV SPOT, a UV light-based multipurpose disinfector, another product in its Covid-19 combat portfolio.
  • It is a multipurpose disinfector device with ultraviolet disinfection lamps. VST Mobility Solutions said that with internal reflective surfaces and UVC Lamp, the device disinfects a board range of microorganisms.
  • The device is mainly used for disposing of the contaminated or used face-mask and for reusing the UVC stable metallic products. This device is proven under a microbiological test conducted by Sree Chitra Lab.

3 . Reverse transcription nested PCR (RT-nPCR) test.

Context : The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended only reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) test for novel coronavirus testing. Researchers at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) have developed a new low-cost and low-tech required test for SARS-CoV-2 testing. This test is known as reverse transcription nested PCR (RT-nPCR) test.

About PCR (RT-nPCR) test.

  • This test does not require real-time quantitative RT-qPCR.
  • The RT-nPCR developed by the CCMB research team has shown  comparable performance to the standard RT-qPCR test.
  • The nested PCR (RT-nPCR) approach does not depend on RT-qPCR but uses standard RT-PCR as part of an endpoint assay.

Efficiency

  • In the course of comparing the results of both tests, researchers found that the standard RT-qPCR test can have low detection efficiency (less than 50%) in a real testing scenario, which may be due to low viral representation in many samples.
  • This finding brought home the importance of monitoring detection efficiency directly in test environments.
  • Tested an RT-nPCR protocol comprising a multiplex primary RT-PCR for amplification of four SARS-CoV-2 amplicons and a control human amplicon followed by a secondary nested PCR for individual amplicons.
  • Also examined the use of RT-nPCR in pooled testing and in direct amplification without RNA isolation
  • The RNA isolated from nasopharyngealswab samples that had been previously tested using one of the two RT-qPCR tests was examined using RT-nPCR and the results were compared.
  • It was found that taking both standard RT-qPCR tests together, the RT-nPCR test was able to identify 90% of the detected samples as positive by RT-qPCR. It also detected 13% samples as positive among samples that were negative by the standard RT-qPCR test (likely false negatives).
  • Based on the experimentally measured false negative rate by RT-nPCR tests from this study, it was estimated that as many as 50% of positive samples may escape detection in single pass testing by RT-qPCR in an actual testing scenario.

4 . Nature Index

Context : Three of the autonomous institutions of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India have found their place among top 30 Indian Institutions including universities, IITs, IISERs, and Research Institutions and Labs as per Nature Index 2020 ratings based on the research published in the top journals, a measure of research quality. 

Institutes in Nature Index

  • These are the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata at 7th position, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore at 14th position and S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata at 30th position.
  • Globally the top-rated Indian institutions in this list are Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a group of 39 institutions at the 160th position and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore at the 184th position.

About Nature Index

  • The Nature Index is a database of author affiliation information collated from research articles published in an independently selected group of 82 high-quality science journals. The database is compiled by Nature Research.
  • The Nature Index provides a close to real-time proxy of high-quality research output and collaboration at the institutional, national and regional level.
  • The Nature Index is updated monthly, and a 12-month rolling window (1 April 2019 – 31 March 2020) of data is openly available at www.natureindex.com under a Creative Commons non-commercial license.
  • The Nature Index also releases annual tables of country- and institution-level calendar-year output back to 2015, and retains an archive of the annual tables released in previous years.

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