Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Concerns on Totten Glacier

News

• More of a giant France-sized glacier in Antarctica is floating on the ocean than previously thought, scientists have said, raising fears it could melt faster as the climate warms and have a dramatic impact on rising sea-levels.

Beyond News

• The Totten Glacier is one of the fastest-flowing and largest glaciers in Antarctica with scientists keen to keep a close eye on how it melts given the enormous amount of water it could potentially unleash.
• Using artificially created seismic waves that help scientists see through the ice, researchers have discovered that more of the Totten Glacier floats on the ocean .
• The portion of the glacier resting on water rather than rock increases, accelerating the pace of disintegration.
• From the air, the contours of Totten Glacier are invisible because the entire Antarctic continent is covered by a seamless, kilometres-thick blanket of snow and ice.
• Totten Glacier contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about three mt if it all melted.
• Since the 1900s the global sea-level has risen by around 20 cm and by the end of the century it’s projected to rise by up to one metre or more, but this is subject to high uncertainty which is why studying glaciers such as the Totten is important.

Glaciers

• Glaciers are huge bodies of dense ice that slowly move down valleys, mountains and slopes under their own weight over many centuries, sculpting the earth below as they go.
• They hold the vast majority of Earth’s fresh water and are the main contributor to rising sea levels when they melt.

According to NASA monitoring, between 2002 and 2016, Antarctica lost 125 gigatonnes of ice per year, causing sea levels worldwide to rise by 0.35 mm annually.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

India joins Europe’s satellite data sharing pool

News

• India joined Europe’s mega global arrangement of sharing data from Earth observation satellites, called Copernicus.

Beyond News

• Data from a band of Indian remote sensing satellites will be available to the European Copernicus programme while designated Indian institutional users will in return get to access free data from Europe’s six Sentinel satellites and those of other space agencies that are part of the programme, at their cost.
• Under this arrangement, the European Commission intends to provide India with free, full and open access to the data from the Copernicus Sentinel family of satellites using high bandwidth connections.
• Reciprocally the Department of Space will provide the Copernicus programme and its participating states with a free, full and open access to the data from ISRO’s land, ocean and atmospheric series of civilian satellites (Oceansat-2, Megha-Tropiques, Scatsat-1, SARAL, INSAT-3D, INSAT-3DR) with the exception of commercial high-resolution satellites data.
• The arrangement includes technical assistance for setting up high bandwidth connections with ISRO sites, mirror servers, data storage and archival facilities.

Uses

• The space-based information will be used for forecasting disasters, providing emergency response and rescue of people during disasters; to glean land, ocean data; and for issues of security, agriculture, climate change and atmosphere, according to a statement issued by the European Commission.
• The multi-billion-euro Copernicus is Europe’s system for monitoring the Earth using satellite data. It is coordinated and managed by the EC.

Wide range

• The free and open data policy is said to have a wide range of applications that can attract users in Europe and outside.
• The Copernicus emergency response mapping system was activated on at least two Indian occasions during the 2014 floods in Andhra Pradesh in October 2014 and after the 2013 storm in Odisha.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

AI helps locate 6,000 new craters on Moon

News

• Scientists have mapped 6,000 new craters on the Moon with the help of a newly developed technique based on artificial intelligence (AI).

Beyond News

• By comparison, the technique developed can generalise very well to unseen lunar patches, and even other cratered bodies like Mercury.
• It’s the first time they have an algorithm that can detect craters really well for not only parts of the Moon, but also areas of Mercury.
• In order to determine its accuracy, the researchers first trained the neural network on a large data set covering two thirds of the Moon, and then tested their trained network on the remaining third of the Moon.
• It worked so well that it was able to identify twice as many craters as traditional manual counting. In fact, it was able to identify about 6,000 previously unidentified craters on the Moon.
• The data used by the algorithms was taken from elevation maps gathered from orbiting satellites.

Importance

• Knowing the size and location of craters on bodies like the Moon is important because it offers a window into the history of our solar system.
• By studying impact craters of all shapes, sizes and ages, researchers can better understand the distribution of material and the physics that occurred in the early stages of our solar system.
• Since the Moon lacks an atmosphere, plate tectonics and water, there is little erosion and as a result some impact craters as old as four billion years are visible.
• The ages of large craters can also be determined by counting how many small craters are found inside it.

143 species spotted in bird survey

News

• A recent bird survey organised by the Forest Department and the Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology in the South Wayanad Forest Division has recorded 143 species.

Beyond News

• Six species of raptors, belonging to Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, were discovered on the mountain ranges of the region.
• Seven species of pigeons, eight species of woodpeckers, four species of drongos, six species of bulbuls, and nine species of babblers were recorded during the survey.
• Banasura Chilappan(Montecincla jerdoni), one of the most endangered forest birds of the country, was spotted in the Shola forests above an altitude of 1,800 m.
• Global distribution of the species is restricted to three mountain ranges of Wayanad, that too an area of less than 50 sq km.
• Fourteen species of migratory birds seven species of warblers belonging to Phylloscopus and Acrocephalus genus and seven species of migratory flycatchers, including Rusty-tailed flycatcher  were observed during the survey.

Forest fire threat

• Every year, forest fires, mostly man-made, devastate a large tract of grassland on the mountain ranges.
• Close to 100 hectares of grassland was ravaged in a recent forest fire in the area this year. Such incidence highlight the need for conservation on a war footing to protect the fragile mountain region.

New protein ‘mat’ can soak up pollution

News

• In a breakthrough, scientists have created novel protein mats that can soak up and trap chemical pollution.

Beyond News

• Despite years of effort to stabilise proteins outside of their native environments, scientists have made limited progress in combining proteins with synthetic components without compromising protein activity.
• The study, shows a path toward exploiting the power of proteins outside of the cell by demonstrating a unique way to keep proteins active in synthetic environments.
• Proteins are usually unstable outside their native environments. To function properly, proteins must fold into a specific structure, often with the help of other proteins.
• To overcome this challenge, researchers analysed trends in protein sequences and surfaces to see if they could develop a synthetic polymer that provides all the things that a protein would need to keep its structure and function.
• This opens the door to the creation of larger mats that could soak up toxic chemicals in places like war zones.

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