Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Africa’s oldest DNA found

News:

• The oldest nuclear DNA from Africa ever has been discovered in eastern Morocco, adding new clues to the world’s understanding of human history.

Beyond News:

• The Moroccan Culture Ministry announced that the Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was found at a burial site called Grotte des Pigeons near the eastern town of Taforalt.
• The sequenced DNA dates back to approximately 15,000 years ago.
• The DNA, dating to the Late Stone Age, had a genetic heritage that was in part similar to Near Eastern populations and in part related to sub-Saharan African populations, it noted.

 DNA from nine individuals from Taforalt were analysed, and we were able to recover mitochondrial data from seven of the individuals and genome-wide nuclear data from five of the individuals.

 Because of the age of the samples, at approximately 15,000 years old, and the poor preservation characteristic of the area, this is an unprecedented achievement.

• This is the second major archaeological achievements made in Morocco in a year.
• The remains push back human species’ origins by 100,000 years, and suggest that humans didn’t evolve only in East Africa.

Waking the sleeping giants

News:

• The Arctic is warming like never before.

Beyond News:

• The region experienced an alarming heatwave was last month, with temperatures around the entire Arctic region recorded at minus 8 degree Celsius about 20 degree Celsius above normal.
• A new study has found that the permafrost in the coldest northern Arctic is thawing at an unprecedented rate that it may unleash ancient carbon, worsening the problem of global warming.
• It found that the Arctic permafrost could thaw enough to become a permanent source of carbon to the atmosphere in 60 years.
• They found that if melting continues, by the year 2300, total carbon emissions from this region will be 10 times higher than the carbon emisson produced by humans through the burning of fossil fuel in 2016!

Permafrost

• Permafrost is soil that has remained frozen for years or centuries under topsoil.
• It forms in a climate where the mean annual air temperature is 0 degree Celsius or lesser and is generally characterised by long winters with little snow and short cool and dry summers.
• Such a climate exists in Siberia and a few other parts of Russia, the Tibetan Plateau, Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland, and parts of Scandinavia. Hence permafrost forms in these regions. It covers about 24 % of the exposed landmass of the Northern Hemisphere.
• Scientists estimate that the world’s permafrost holds about 1,500 billion tonnes of carbon, almost double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

39 Indians captured by IS dead: Sushma

News:

• External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj informed Rajya Sabha that,all 39 Indians who went missing in the war-torn Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014 are dead.

Beyond News:

• Making a suo motustatement in Hindi, Ms. Swaraj said that, a team of Indian and Iraqi officials found the bodies from a mass grave in Badush and DNA tests confirmed they belonged to the missing Indians.
• A total of 39 bodies were exhumed. They collected DNA samples from India sent them to Iraq. The tests were conducted in Baghdad. The samples were matching in 38 cases.

Background:

• Forty Indians from Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal  went missing in June 2014 after Mosul fell to the Islamic State.
• In 2015, one of them, Harjit Masih, managed to flee from the clutches of Islamic State and said all other Indians were killed. But the External Affairs Minister refusedto buy his claims then.
• In July last year, she said she would declare the missing persons dead until she had a concrete evidence.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Two new dog-faced bat species discovered

News:

• The dog-faced bats are a fast-flying, insectivorous species that are highly difficult to spot found in the forests of South and Central America.

Beyond News:

• Scientists have only recorded six species so far, but now an international team of scientists has succeeded in recognising two more species of these bats.
• Named Cynomops freemani  in honour of Dr. Patricia W. Freeman, a scientist who studied bats these tiny bats with a wing span of just 4 cm were found in the Canal Zone region of Panama.
• The bat is reddish-brown to dark chocolate brown in colour with silky short fur.
• The second species named Cynomops tonkigui (tonkigui means bat in Waorani,a language spoken by the natives of Ecuador) was found in the eastern Andes of Ecuador and Colombia.
• It has a dark cinnamon brown colour and is about the same size as Cynomops freemani.

Morphological analysis, acoustics data and modern DNA studies have helped identify the new species.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-04

SC/ST Atrocities Act has become a means to blackmail citizens, public servants: SC

News:

• The anti-atrocities law which protects Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from casteist slurs and discrimination has become an instrument for “blackmail” of innocent citizens and public servants, the Supreme Court observed in a judgment.

Beyond News:

• The court referred to how public administration has been threatened by the abuse of this Act. Public servants find it difficult to give adverse remarks against employees for fear that they may be charged under the Act.
• Issuing a slew of guidelines to protect public servants and private employees from arbitrary arrests under the Atrocities Act, the Supreme Court directed that public servants can only be arrested with the written permission of their appointing authority.
• In the case of private employees, the Senior Superintendent of Police concerned should allow.
• Besides this precaution, a preliminary enquiry should be conducted before the FIR is registered to check whether the case falls within the parameters of the Atrocities Act and whether if it is frivolous or motivated.

Courts significant observations:

• Supreme Court Bench said in their 89-page judgment that,the last three decades have seen complainants who belong to the marginalised sections of the society use the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 to exact “vengeance” and satisfy vested interests.
• The SC observed that, Innocent citizens are termed as accused, which is not intended by the legislature. The legislature never intended to use the Atrocities Act as an instrument to blackmail or to wreak personal vengeance.
• The court also said that,the 1989 Act penalises casteist insults and even denies anticipatory bail to the suspected offenders. Hence, the law is used to rob a person of his personal liberty merely on the unilateral word of the complainant.

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