New protocols for managing disasters                                                                      

Human body mapping— how cells, tissues react when in a disease stage           

Assam produces an orchid link to the Orient                                                            

Post-Fani, Naveen seeks special category status                                                    

QR code option may be must for shops                                                                    

New protocols for managing disasters

GS PAPER - 03 DISASTER MANAGEMENT - Disaster and disaster management.

Context :

• The Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) has updated standard operating procedures (SOP) and adopted new protocols for disaster management in the State.

More about the news:

• The State government has approved KSDMA’s updated ‘Orange book of disaster management — Kerala — SOP and emergency support functions plan’ and a new, separate document, ‘Monsoon preparedness and emergency response plan.

• The revision is meant to enhance the capacity of government departments to handle emergencies effectively.

• Named so for its orange-coloured outer cover, the orange book was earlier known as the ‘Handbook on disaster management — Volume 2, emergency operations centres and emergency support functions plan.’ It describes incidence response mechanisms to be adopted at the State, district and taluk level.

• Containing information on emergency response assets available across the State, the orange book explains the SOP for rainfall, flood, cyclone, tsunami, high waves (swell waves, storm surges, ‘kallakadal’), landslip, petrochemical accidents and even mishaps caused by space debris (meteorites, falling spacecraft parts, etc.).

Monsoon preparedness and emergency response plan:

• The ‘‘Monsoon preparedness and emergency response plan’ is season-specific.

• It is meant to be strictly complied with by government departments, central agencies and district disaster management authorities during the south-west and north-east monsoon seasons (June to December).

• Earlier, directives on monsoon preparedness were issued in the form of government circulars.

• According to KSDMA, no single document spelt out the roles and responsibilities of individual government departments.

• The new document, published in Malayalam, lists the roles of the State emergency operations centre, central agencies, district disaster management authorities, and 29 departments.

• It was said that this plan would be updated every year after receiving the first Long Range Forecast of the India Meteorological Department.

                                                                                                                            Source :- The Hindu

Human body mapping— how cells, tissues react when in a disease stage

GS PAPER - 03 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology

Context :

• Department of Biotechnology (DBT) working under ministry of science and technology has recently launched human tissue mapping project called MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative.

MANAV: Human Atlas Initiative :

• It has been launched to improve understanding on human physiology. 

• Objective of this initiative is to map every single tissue of human body to find out deepest information and roles of tissues and cells linked to a variety of ailments.

• This project is funded by Department of Biotechnology (DBT) that would make a database network of all human body tissues.

Objectives:

• Physiological and molecular mapping for better biological insight,

• Develop disease models through predictive computing,

• Major Objective of the initiative is to find out and capture human physiology in two stages – normal stage and disease stage,

• At final stage, overall analysis and medicine discovery.

Who can Join ?

• The project can be signed up by students who are in their final year graduation and above. Students from the fields of biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology, botany, zoology, bioinformatics, health sciences, systems biologists, pharmacologists and data sciences can associate with this project.

• Even participants having a science background but not necessarily involved in active scientific research can be part of this network.

Significance of MANAV :

• So far, researchers and students have had little or no expertise in reading scientific literature and develop or build further information on the same.

• This platform will impart key skills to the student community to read classified scientific literature, in this case, on individual tissue-basis, and perform annotation and curation.

• Since all the information generated will pass through multiple levels of reviews, it will be an Atlas or a reliable collection on human body tissues.

• This collated data can be useful for both future researchers and parallelly, to the clinicians and drug developers, who finally handle human bodies in disease conditions.

                                                                                                                                                          Source :- Indian Express

Assam produces an orchid link to the Orient

GS PAPER - 03 ENVIRONMENT - Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Context :

• A forest officer has spotted new species orchid in Assam’s forests.

The Parasitic Bloom:

• The newly found orchid is India’s one of its smallest orchids in terms of size and duration of bloom to be recorded botanically.

• The orchid is known as Lecanorchis taiwaniana. It is a mycoheterotroph- a plant which gets all or part of its food from parasitism upon fungi rather than from photosynthesis.

  • The orchid had been earlier discovered earlier in Japan, Taiwan, and Laos. It is found to have a maximum height of 40 cm and a blossoming period of five-six days.

• The orchid as it appeared close to the nigricans species while bearing 90% similarity with the taiwaniana species named after Taiwan.

• India has around 1300 species of orchids. About 800 species of orchids are found in North-east India, 300 species are found in the Western Ghats and 200 in the northwestern Himalayas.

More about the news:

• The forest official has also published the two-volume Medicinal Plants and Mushrooms of India with special reference to Assam. It contains information on 1,400 medicinal plants and mushrooms, including Costus pictus and Ophiorrhiza mungos.

• Costus pictus is the insulin plant used in treating diabetes mellitus. Ophiorrhiza mungos or Indian snake root is used in treating cancer because of the alkaloid Camptothecin present in it.

                                                                                                                                                          Source :- The Hindu

Post-Fani, Naveen seeks special category status

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE -  issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure, devolution of powers and finances up to local levels and challenges therein.

Context :

• Odisha Chief Minister has demanded special category status from the Centre for his disaster-prone State, saying it faces natural calamities almost every year.

Need :

• Cyclone Fani ravaged the coastal districts killing 41 people, special category status was the need of the hour due to the massive loss to infrastructure which may stall growth of the State.

• The demand was raised stating that the assistance that the state gets from the Centre is mostly for temporary restoration of infrastructure. And a lot has to be spent from State’s own funds to work for the long-term.

• Since, the last five years State had Phailin, Hudhud, Titli and now Fani. In addition to this, the state experiences massive floods.

                                                                                                                                    Source :- The Hindu

QR code option may be must for shops

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance- applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.

Context :

• The Central government is looking to mandate a QR code-based payment option using Unified Payments Interface (UPI) at all shops and establishments with consumers opting for this method of payment eligible for GST benefits along with shopkeepers.

QR code-based payment option:

• The measure is intended to promote digital payments as the preferred option.

• The plan seeks to bring about behavioural change by introducing the UPI payments for B2C transactions

• QR codes may also be introduced on invoices in the medium-to-long-term.

                                                                                                                     Source:- Times of India 

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