Daily Current Affairs : 4th January 2024

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Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

  1. NCDC Survey on Anti microbial Resistance
  2. Upskilling for Rural Youth
  3. Upcoming moon mission
  4. Facts for Prelims – Short selling, NSIL , GSAT 20 

1 . NCDC Survey on Anti microbial Resistance

Context: 55% of patients given antibiotics only as a preventive measure, says survey. 

About NCDC

  • The NCDC is the nodal agency for India’s national programme on AMR containment, of which one of the key components is the surveillance of antibiotic usage. 
  • To achieve this goal, it has established the National Antibiotic Consumption Network (NAC-NET) through which network sites compile data on antibiotic consumption in their respective health facilities and send it to the NCDC. 
  • It is set under the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health.  

Findings of the survey 

  • The survey conducted by NCDC stated that Over half of the almost 10,000 patients surveyed recently were given antibiotics to prevent infection, rather than to treat it, amid growing concerns about the rise in resistance to antibiotics. 
  • As much as 94% of the patients surveyed were given antibiotics before the confirmation of a definitive medical diagnosis of the precise cause of infection. 
  • Of the 11,588 admissions and 9,652 eligible patients, 72% were prescribed antibiotics. Of them, only 45% were prescribed antibiotics for therapeutic indications, meant to treat infection or disease. 
  • The remaining 55% were prescribed the drugs for prophylactic indications, meant to prevent the occurrence or spread of an infection. 
  • Only 6% were prescribed antibiotics after a confirmed diagnosis of the specific bacterium causing their illness, called definitive therapy. 
  • The remaining 94% were on empirical therapy, based on the doctor’s clinical experience in assessing the likely cause of an illness. 
  • one of the main drivers for the development of antibiotic resistance is the excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics. 
  • It noted wide variations between hospitals, with some prescribing antibiotics to 37% of the patients, while the prevalence was 100% in other institutes. 
  • Overall, there were 12,342 antibiotic prescriptions, with 86.5% of these prescribed through the parenteral route, meaning that they were not taken orally. 

2 . Upskilling for Rural Youth

Context: At a group discussion held by Life Skills Collaborative, most of the rural youth when questioned about their aspirations for the future said they preferred staying in their village. 

What is main source of rural income? 

  • Farming is the main source of rural livelihoods, with children from many rural families supplementing their family’s income by working on family-owned farms. But the rural economy is experiencing a major occupational shift with more farmers quitting agriculture to join non-farming jobs, hinting at an agrarian crisis. 
  • The National Sample Survey Office data recorded 34 million farmers leaving their farms and transitioning to other sectors such as construction during 2004-05 and 2011-12. This highlights the need for not only making agriculture an aspiring vocation among rural youth, but also creating alternative employment opportunities. 

How can migration be controlled? 

  • To control migration of these youth to urban areas in search of meaningful employment, it becomes imperative to provide vocational training to students to imbibe relevant rural skills in them so that they can secure a living where they currently live. 
  • During discussions at schools, it was found that most students’ educational/employment aspirations were limited to choices that were available within the vicinity of their villages.  
  • Upskilling opportunities similar to what the Delhi government is trying to achieve with the ‘Skills On Wheel’ initiative must be brought to students’ doorsteps. 

What is the current vocational education opportunity? 

  • The current vocational education landscape in rural India is interspersed with Industrial Training Institutes to upskill rural populations, but with little to no placement opportunities. 
  • Presently, rural education scarcely focuses on skill development, a blow to the majority of youth who reportedly rely on schools to learn life skills. 
  • The LSC Voices 2023 survey — of 15,856 young people across 11 districts — revealed that two thirds of youth aged between 19 and 22 had never taken any kind of vocational training with only 5% of them enrolled in these courses. 
  •  If learning is infused with rural life skills in schools, rural education will have the potential to nurture a generation capable of thriving. 

How can education be improved? 

  • Effective rural education should be tailored such that technical as well as life skills, needed to empower youth in these areas, become accessible to them through formal education. 
  • There are many ways this could be done, as educational evidence from other developing economies suggests such as Mexico’s tele-schools and Bhutan’s well-being-infused curriculum. 
  • The tele-schools provide lessons on subject matters as well as values, thereby providing a much higher level of access to value-based secondary education for remote areas where secondary schools are scarce. 
  • This has shown to have trickling benefits in the local economy with improved attitudes and increased aspirations among children and parents. 
  • Organisations such as NIIT Foundation and Pratham Institute are working with children in rural areas to provide upskilling opportunities. 
  • Hybrid life skilling programs are offered both by NIIT in collaboration with UNICEF through its self-learning platform, and Pratham, which offers courses in both industry-specific skills (such as in healthcare, electrical, construction) and life skills. By offering rural populations skills in fields like agricultural mechanisation, pollution monitoring, nursing and digital technologies via e-learning, rural India can boost employability in both traditional and non-traditional trades, leading to a vibrant economy. 

3 . Upcoming moon mission

Context: The year 2023 proved to be an important one for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the lunar south pole region, and 2024 is shaping up to be another exciting year for space exploration. 

Upcoming moon missions: 

Artemis II launch: 

  • The Artemis programme, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to go back to the moon. 
  •  It will send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. 
  • It also includes plans for a longer-term, sustained presence in space that will prepare NASA for eventually sending people even farther — to Mars. 
  • Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with four astronauts planned to be on board during the 10-day mission. 
  • The mission builds upon Artemis I, which sent an uncrewed capsule into orbit around the moon in late 2022. 
  • Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon before returning them home. 
  • It is currently planned for launch as early as November 2024. 
  • But there is a chance it will get pushed back to 2025, depending on whether all the necessary gear, such as spacesuits and oxygen equipment, is ready. 

VIPER: 

  • VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a robot the size of a golf cart that NASA will use to explore the moon’s south pole in late 2024. 
  • Originally scheduled for launch in 2023, NASA pushed the mission back to complete more tests on the lander system, which Astrobotic, a private company, developed as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. 
  • This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that easily vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These materials could provide resources for future human exploration on the moon. 
  • The VIPER robot will rely on batteries, heat pipes and radiators throughout its 100-day mission, as it navigates everything from the extreme heat of lunar daylight when temperatures can reach 224 degrees Fahrenheit (107 degrees Celsius) to the moon’s frigid shadowed regions that can reach a mind-boggling -240 C. 
  • VIPER’s launch and delivery to the lunar surface is scheduled for November 2024. 

Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1: 

  • Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the moon. 
  • It will orbit the moon, measuring the temperature of the surface and mapping out the locations of water molecules across the globe. 
  • The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for a mid-2024 launch, is Lunar Trailblazer’s ride. 
  • PRIME-1 will drill into the moon — it’s a test run for the kind of drill that VIPER will use. But its launch date will likely depend on whether earlier launches go on time. 
  • An earlier Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the same landing partner was pushed back to February 2024 at the earliest, and further delays could push back PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer. 

JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration 

  • The JAXA MMX mission concept to study Phobos and Deimos, Mars’ moons. 
  • The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency has a robotic mission in development called the Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, planned for launch around September 2024. 
  • The mission’s main science objective is to determine the origin of Mars’ moons. 
  • Scientists aren’t sure whether Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that Mars captured into orbit with its gravity or if they formed out of debris that was already in orbit around Mars. 
  • The spacecraft will spend three years around Mars conducting science operations to observe Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also land on Phobos’ surface and collect a sample before returning to Earth. 

4 . Facts for Prelims

Short selling

  • It refers to the sale of a security or financial instrument that the seller has borrowed. 
  • The short seller believes that the borrowed security’s price will decline, enabling it to be bought back at a lower price for a profit. 
  • To sell short, the security must first be borrowed on margin and then sold in the market, to be bought back at a later date. 

 NSIL

  • NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), incorporated in 2019 (under the Companies Act, 2013) is a wholly owned Government of India company, under the administrative control of Department of Space (DOS). 
  • NSIL is the commercial arm of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) with the primary responsibility of enabling Indian industries to take up high technology space related activities and is also responsible for promotion and commercial exploitation of the products and services emanating from the Indian space programme. 
  • The major business areas of NSIL include: Production of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) through industry; Production and marketing of space-based services, including launch services and space-based applications like transponder leasing, remote sensing and mission support services; Building of Satellites (both Communication and Earth Observation) as per user requirements; Transfer of technology developed by ISRO centres/ units and constituent institutions of Dept. of Space; Marketing spin off technologies and products/ services emanating out of ISRO activities and Consultancy services. 

GSAT 20

  • GSAT-20 craft is a high-capacity communication satellite that is meant to offer broadband services, including In-flight and Maritime Connectivity (IFMC) services.
  • Nestled in an orbit that’s almost 36,000 kms above the earth, GSAT-20’s services would cover the entire Indian mainland and also the Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep archipelagos. 
  • According to NSIL, GSAT-20 (renamed as GSAT-N2) is a high-throughput satellite that operates in the Ka-band of the spectrum. Bulk of the 48 Gbps capacity on-board the satellite had been secured by Indian service providers.

Cyber kidnapping

  • Cyber kidnapping refers to a crime where the ‘kidnappers’ convince their victim to hide, and then contact their loved ones for ransom. 
  • The victim is also made to send pictures that make it look like they are being held captive, showing them bound or gagged. 
  • These are then shared with the family. 
  • Both parties believe their loved ones will be harmed if they don’t do as the kidnappers ask. 
  • The ‘kidnappers’, though not physically present, monitor the victim online through video-call platforms. 

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