Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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115,000-year-old bone tools unearthed in China

News

• The toolmaking techniques mastered by prehistoric humans in China were more sophisticated than previously thought, suggests an analysis of 115,000-year-old bone tools discovered in the country.

Beyond News

• Marks found on the excavated bone fragments show that our ancestors living in China in the early Late Pleistocene were already familiar with the mechanical properties of bone and knew how to use them to make tools out of carved stone.
• These artefacts represent the first instance of the use of bone as raw material to modify stone tools found at an East Asian early Late Pleistocene site.
• Until now, the oldest bone tools discovered in China dated back 35,000 years and consisted of assegai (spear) points.
• Prior to this discovery, research into the technical behaviour of humans inhabiting China during this period was almost solely based on the study of tools carved from stone.
• The seven bone fragments analysed by Doyon and his colleagues were excavated between 2005 and 2015 at the Lingjing site in central China’s Henan province.
• The artifacts were found buried at a depth of roughly 10 metres.
• The bone fragments were dated using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a method widely used by geologists for dating the sediment layers in which tools are found.
• The researchers identified three types of bone retouchers, known as soft hammers, that were used to modify stone tools.

The researchers have not yet determined which hominid species the users of these prehistoric tools belonged to, although they do know that they lived during the same period as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

Indian Immunologicals unveils Pentavalent vaccine

News

• Indian Immunologicals Ltd. (IIL) has launched Vaxtar 5, a pentavalent vaccine for children.
• Pentavalentcombines five different vaccines in a single vial. It protects against five diseases: diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).Pentavalent vaccine is a successor to the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) vaccine.

Beyond News

• Developed with the company’s research and development expertise, it will be made at the IIL’s vaccine manufacturing facility in Hyderabad for retail market as well as the national Universal Immunisation Programme implemented by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
• The vaccine is available in single and multidose presentations.
• The Ministry, which had introduced pentavalent vaccine four years ago, procures about 85 to 90 million doses annually and is in the process of scaling up the use across the country.
• In a recent tender floated by the Ministry for pentavalent vaccine, IIL emerged as the most competitive bidder.
• A wholly owned subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board, the company had launched several other human vaccines in the past decade and supplying its Hepatitis B, DPT (Triple Antigen) and TT (Tetanus Toxoid) vaccines to UIP.
• It is also working on hexavalent vaccine which includes inactivated polio antigen.

Trade-an agenda of Tokyo talks

News

• India and Japan will discuss cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in the first high-level meeting since the Quadrilateral and iron out growing worries over bilateral trade as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj meets Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono in Tokyo.

Beyond News

• The two sides are meeting for the ninth India-Japan Strategic Dialogue, instituted in 2007 as an annual dialogue held alternately in Delhi and Tokyo.
• Among the discussions will be the next steps in the Quadrilateral engagement between India-Japan-US-Australia, a project initiated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007, which was revived in 2017, with a meeting of officials of all four countries.
• Swaraj and Mr. Kono are expected to discuss actions required to keep a “free and open Indo-Pacific” as well as developing joint connectivity projects in Asia and Africa.
• Japan’s development agency JICA provided India with soft loans of more than US$23.36 billion at minimal rates, becoming the biggest donor partner, while India is JICA’s largest recipient since 2008, with its biggest investment in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project.
• However concerns over declining trade also hang over the engagement, with Indian exports to Japan having halved in the four years from $6.81 billion in 2013-14 to $3.85 billion in 2016-17, while the trade deficit more than doubled in that period.

Indus Commission talks today

News

• India and Pakistan will go ahead with talks on the Indus Waters Treaty despite an upsurge in tensions over LoC crossfire and allegations of harassment of diplomats in Delhi and Islamabad, Ministry of External Affairs sources confirmed.

Beyond News

• This is the 114th meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) take place in New Delhi to hold technical deliberations on various issues.
• India’s Indus water commissioner P.K. Saxena, technical experts and a representative of the Ministry of External Affairs will meet with a six-member delegation from Pakistan, led by Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah.
• The last meeting of the PIC had been held in Islamabad in March 2017, a significant move at the time as it came after the “surgical strikes” by India across the Line of Control, and the government’s announcement that it would reconsider its position on the 1960 treaty with Pakistan after terrorist attacks in Uri.
• While the government kept its treaty commitments to meet, it has been exploring ways to utilise its share of the Indus waters more efficiently and to the maximum permissible.
• Ahead of the PIC meeting , Minister for Water resources Nitin Gadkari announced that three dams would be built in Uttarakhand to further that effort.
• Minister for Water resources said that,water from (share of) rivers was going into Pakistan. They are making detailed project reports to stop that from happening and water will be given to Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Haryana.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

GSLV successfully places communication satellite GSAT-6A in orbit

News

• India’s latest communication satellite GSAT-6A was launched onboard Geosynchronous rocket GSLV-F08 from the spaceport at Sriharikota and successfully placed in the designated orbit, in yet another achievement for the ISRO.

Beyond News

• The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F08), fitted with indigenously developed cryogenic third stage, injected the satellite into orbit about 18 minutes after its lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.
• The satellite would provide a thrust to mobile communication through multi-beam coverage facility.
• This marks the 12th flight of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle GSLV-F08 and sixth flight with indigenous Cryogenic upper stage.
• GSAT-6A, is similar to GSAT-6, a high power S-band communication satellite built on I-2K satellite bus with a mission life of about ten years, the ISRO said.

Scientists puzzled by exotic distant galaxy lacking dark matter

News

• Astronomers have detected for the first time a galaxy that is devoid of dark matter, the plentiful but enigmatic material that does not emit light or energy and had been considered a fundamental part of all galaxies including our own Milky Way.

Beyond News

• The discovery, announced on March 28, is forcing scientists to rethink their ideas about the formation of galaxies.
• Paradoxically, the discovery of a galaxy without dark matter may actually confirm that the stuff actually exists by contradicting hypotheses advanced by dark matter doubters.
• The galaxy, called NGC1052-DF2 and located about 65 million light years away from Earth, also appears to be devoid of gas and is relatively sparsely populated by stars.
• It is about the same size as the Milky Way, but has roughly 250 times fewer stars: 400 million compared to the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars. It is classified as an ultra-diffuse galaxy, a kind first recognized in 2015.
• Dark matter, which is invisible, is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe’s combined mass and energy and about 80 percent of its total mass, but has not been directly observed.
• Scientists believe it exists based on gravitational effects it seems to exert on galaxies. The universe’s ordinary matter includes things like gas, stars, black holes and planets, not to mention shoes, umbrellas, platypuses and whatever else you might see on Earth.
• The scientists spotted NGC1052-DF2 using the Dragonfly Telephoto Array, a telescope in New Mexico.

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