Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Toxic air is causing malnutrition in trees

News

• Besides affecting human health, air pollution is also causing malnutrition in trees by harming a fungi that is important for providing mineral nutrients to tree roots.

Findings

• Mycorrhizal fungi is hosted by the trees in their roots to receive nutrients from the soil. These fungi provide essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from soil in exchange for carbon from the tree.
• This plant-fungal symbiotic relationship is crucial for the health of the tree.
• High levels of the nutrition elements like nitrogen and phosphorus in the mycorrhizae changes them to act as pollutants rather than nutrients, the findings showed.
• The signs of malnutrition can be seen in the form of discoloured leaves and excessive falling of leaves.
• The study, examined 40,000 roots from 13,000 soil samples at 137 forest sites in 20 European countries for a period of 10 years to determine the fungi’s tolerance to pollution.
• The researchers noted that ecosystem changes can negatively affect tree health.
• The researchers suggested that the results should be used to design new studies into the link between pollution, soil, mycorrhizae, and tree growth.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Centre cannot guarantee power supply to all villages, says official

News

• State-level distribution companies should ensure power availability; Centre can only connect villages and households to grid, says senior Power Ministry bureaucrat.

Beyond News

• The Centre has claimed 100% electrification of all villages and 83% of all households across the country. It has said that all households will be electrified by the year end.
• In some cases, the electrification infrastructure such as cables and transformers were stolen days after they were installed, leaving the target village unelectrified in reality but connected on paper.
• In other cases, electricity was supplied for just a few hours a day.
• Despite the government pegging India as a power surplus nation, almost every State in the country reels under power cuts, especially during peak summer.
• This, according to power sector analysts, is because discoms are still very inefficient, with the costs they incur in the transmission far outweighing revenue. Government data show discoms across the country, on an average, lose ₹0.22 a unit of electricity supplied.
• However, the Power Ministry has claimed that this situation is improving rapidly under the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), with Power Minister recently saying that discom losses have drastically reduced to ₹17,352 crore in 2017-18 from ₹51,096 crore in the previous year.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Biodegradable plastic

News

• Scientists have successfully synthesised a polymer that is typically produced by bacteria, algae and other microorganisms, an advance that may lead to renewable and biodegradable plastics.

Beyond News

• The compound called bacterial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) – or P3HB – shows early promise as a substitute for petroleum plastics in major industrial uses.
• P3HB is a biomaterial, typically produced by bacteria, algae and other microorganisms, and is used in some biomedical applications.
• Its high production costs and limited volumes render the material impractical in more widespread commodity applications, however.
• Researchers used a starting material called succinate, an ester form of succinic acid.
• This acid is produced via fermentation of glucose and is first on the U.S. Department of Energy’s list of top 12 biomass-derived compounds best positioned to replace petroleum-derived chemicals.
• The new chemical synthesis route produces P3HB that’s similar in performance to bacterial P3HB, but their route is faster and offers potential for larger-scale, cost-effective production for commodity plastic applications.
• This new route is enabled by a class of powerful new catalysts they have designed and synthesised.

BSF roped in to check wildlife smuggling

News

• In a first, the Border Security Force (BSF) has signed a memorandum of understating with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to check trans-border smuggling of wildlife in the country.

Beyond News

• As part of the agreement signed last week, WCS, a Bengaluru-based NGO, will help in capacity building of the troops deployed along the border and help them identify the wildlife that are smuggled.
• NGO will also come up with a 24-hour helpline which the forces can use to get more information about the wildlife seized.
• There are also plans for starting a mobile application for identification of wildlife by the personnel.
• The first capacity building programme will be held in Kolkata.

Supermassive stars amid globular clusters

News

• Astronomers have proposed a new theory that attempts to explain the existence of peculiar chemical elements in ancient clusters of stars called globular clusters.

Beyond News

• Globular clusters are ancient compact clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars clumped tightly together via gravity which were formed 11-13 billion years ago, just a few cosmic moments after the Big Bang.
• Around 150 of these clusters have been spotted sitting at the outer regions of the Milky Way.
• The researchers wanted to know why the stars found in these clusters have different chemical elements than others found in open clusters.
• The elements and their particular ratio could not have been produced within the stars themselves. The researchers believe it requires a temperature 10 times hotter than that of the stars while they were forming.
• A team of astronomers believe that it could be seen in supermassive stars, having a mass that is tens of thousands of times more than the mass of the Sun.
• The study advances the idea that supermassive stars may have come around at the same time as the globular clusters were starting to form.
• During the early years of the Universe, globular clusters were filled with dense hot gas that would later cool to form the cluster’s huge number of stars.
• As the stars accumulated more material, the researchers believe they became so big and so close to one another that some of them would collide to form a supermassive star.
• The supermassive star would then reach temperatures high enough to be able to produce heavy elements and other chemicals that can now be observed in stars in globular clusters.

Chennai Corpn. to restore 104 waterbodies

News

• As the Chennai Corporation is set to begin work on preparation of detailed project reports on eco-restoration of 104 waterbodies in various neighbourhoods of the city, hundreds of encroachments in such areas will not be cleared as of now.

Beyond News

• According to estimates, buildings have come up on more than 75% of the area of waterbodies in most of the neighbourhoods.
• The encroachments on the waterbodies range from one acre to 10 acres.
• The civic body is planning to begin restoration of all the 206 waterbodies before the onset of the monsoon.
• Some of the 53 slums have not yet allowed the officials to evict them for the Cooum eco-restoration project.
• In the first two phases of the eco-restoration project, only waterbodies without encroachments have been taken up due to opposition from encroachers.
• The civic body has been reluctant to take up restoration of waterbodies because of the large number of encroachments, which caused a delay in eco-restoration of at least 104 waterbodies.
• Detailed project report for eco-restoration of 104 waterbodies will begin shortly.

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