Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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A struggle to stay cool as earth warms

News

• India is among the nine most populous countries where people are at risk from lack of access to cooling as global warming continues to threaten health and climate, according to a study of a UN-led initiative.

Findings

• Policy makers should immediately measure gaps in access to cooling in their respective countries, as an evidence base for more proactive and integrated policy-making.
• The study is the first ever report to quantify the growing risks and assess the opportunities of the global cooling challenge.
• There are over 1.1 billion people globally who face immediate risks from lack of access to cooling.
• Cooling underpins the ability of millions to escape poverty, to keep our children healthy, vaccines stable, food nutritious, and our economies productive.
• Access to cooling is now a fundamental issue of equity, and as temperatures hit record levels, this could also mean the difference between life or death for some.

Nine countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have the biggest population, are facing significant cooling risks, the study said. The countries are India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Mozambique and Sudan.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

WCD ministry set to move cabinet to make child marriages invalid

News

• The Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministry is set to move the cabinet to make all child marriages invalid, a senior ministry official said.

Beyond News

• The proposal of the ministry, if approved, would amend the law that allows child marriages to continue, despite an October 2017 Supreme Court rulingthat “sexual intercourse with a minor wife amounts to rape, as under no circumstance can a child below 18 years give consent, express or implied, for sexual intercourse”.
• Currently, child marriages are valid in India, but can be annulled if a case is filed in a district court by either of the two contracting parties within two years of becoming an adult, or through a guardian in case of minors.
• The ministry seeks to amend section 3 of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, under which a child marriage is only voidable at the option of the contracting parties.
• The legal age for marriage in India is 18 for a woman and 21 for a man.
• According to a study based on Census 2011, there are 2.3 crore child brides in the country.
• The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16 also showed that 26.8 per cent women were married off before they turned 18.
• The World Health Organisation, in a report dealing with the issue of child brides, found that though 11 per cent of the births worldwide are among adolescents, they account for 23 per cent of the overall burden of diseases. Therefore, a child bride is more than doubly prone to health problems than a grown up woman, the apex court had said last year, expressing dismay over the alarming number of child brides in the country.

India still lags behind in routine immunization programme: WHO-UNICEF report

News

• In 2017, an estimated 19.9 million infants worldwide were not reached with routine services such as three doses of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP vaccine).

IN A NUTSHELL

• Global measles mortality has declined by 84%
• More children are being immunized worldwide than ever before.
• Uptake of new and underused vaccines is increasing.
• An additional 1.5 million deaths could be avoided, however if global immunization coverage improves.

Beyond News

• Around 60 per cent of these children live in 10 countries — Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.
• This according to the most recent World Health Organisation and UNICEF immunization estimates released this week.
• The report further noted that global vaccination coverage the proportion of the world’s children who receive recommended vaccines  has remained the same over the past few years. It added that since 2015, the percentage of children who received their full course of three dose diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP3) routine immunizations is sustained at 85 per cent (116.2 million infants).
• Although global immunization coverage with DTP3 remains at 85 per cent, it is important to highlight that an additional 4.6 million infants have been vaccinated globally in 2017 compared to 2010, due to global population growth.
• The report highlighted that more concerted efforts needed to reach universal immunization coverage.
• As per the figures released an estimated 20 million additional children need to be vaccinated with DTP3; 45 million additional children need to be vaccinated with a second dose of measles vaccine and 76 million more children need to be vaccinated with 3 doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.
• Meanwhile, newly available vaccines are being added as part of the life-saving vaccination package such as those to protect against meningitis, malaria and even Ebola.
• Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract, and can cause cervical cancer, other types of cancer, and genital warts in both men and women. In 2017, the HPV vaccine was introduced in 80 countries.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

IMF cuts India growth forecast for 2018 by a notch to 7.3%

News

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected a growth rate of 7.3% in 2018 and 7.5% in 2019 for India as against 6.7% in 2017, making it the fastest growing country among major economies.

Beyond News

• However, the latest growth rate projection for India is slightly less 1 percentage point in 2018 and 0.3 percentage points in 2019  than its April projections.
• India’s growth rate is expected to rise from 6.7% in 2017 to 7.3% in 2018 and 7.5% in 2019, as drags from the currency exchange initiative and the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax fade, said the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) update.
• The projection is 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points lower for 2018 and 2019, respectively, than in the April WEO, reflecting negative effects of higher oil prices on domestic demand and faster than-anticipated monetary policy tightening due to higher expected inflation.
• Despite this slight downgrade in its projections, India continues to outperform China, IMF’s WEO update figures reflect. Growth in China is projected to moderate from 6.9% in 2017 to 6.6% in 2018 and 6.4% in 2019, as regulatory tightening of the financial sector takes hold and external demand softens, the report said.
• The IMF said global growth is projected to reach 3.9% in 2018 and 2019, in line with the forecast of the April 2018 WEO.

Dolphin population declines

News

• The population of the endangered Gangetic river dolphin has declined at the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary (VGDS), India’s only sanctuary for its national aquatic animal.

Beyond News

• A survey found that the number of dolphins in the sanctuary had declined to 154 from 207 in 2015.
• 2015 onwards they see a declining trend of dolphin population. They are still analysing the exact reasons but the movement of big cargo vessels in the river and dredging activities have impacted the number of dolphins.
• Last year, dolphin experts had warned that due to their effective blindness, and dependence on echolocation, the Gangetic dolphins would suffer from the noise pollution created by large ship propellers, and by dredging.

Plants may soon create own fertilizer from thin air: study

News

• The researchers engineered a bacteria that uses photosynthesis to create oxygen during the day, and at night, uses nitrogen to create chlorophyll for photosynthesis.

Beyond News

• The research, could eliminate the use of some human-made fertilizer, which has a high environmental cost.
• This discovery could have a revolutionary effect on agriculture and the health of the planet.
• Washington University’s Pakrasi lab based its research on the fact that, although there are no plants that can fix nitrogen from the air, there is a subset of cyanobacteria that is able to do so.
• The bacteria used in this research, Cyanothece, is able to fix nitrogen because it has a circadian rhythm.
• Cyanothecephotosynthesise during the day, converting sunlight to the chemical energy they use as fuel, and fix nitrogen at night, after removing most of the oxygen created during photosynthesis through respiration, researchers said.

The research team took the genes from Cyanothece, responsible for this day-night mechanism, and put them into another type of cyanobacteria,  Synechocystis, to coax it into fixing nitrogen from the air too

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