Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Egypt unveils ancient tomb and sarcophagi

News

• Egyptian authorities unveiled a well-preserved mummy of a woman inside a previously unopened coffin in Luxor in southern Egypt dating back to more than 3,000 years.

Beyond News

• The sarcophagus, an ancient coffin, was one of two found earlier this month by a French-led mission in the northern area of El-Asasef, a necropolis on the western bank of the Nile. The first one had been opened earlier and examined by Egyptian antiquities officials.
• One sarcophagus was rishi-style, which dates back to the 17th dynasty, while the other sarcophagus was from the 18th dynasty.
• The Eighteenth Dynasty dates back to the 13th century BC, a period noted for some of the most well known Pharaohs, including Tutankhamen and Ramses II.
• The tomb contained five coloured masks and some 1,000 Ushabti statutes — the miniature figurine of servants to serve the dead in the afterlife.
• Three-hundred meters of rubble were removed over five months to uncover the tomb, which contained coloured ceiling paintings depicting the owner and his family.
• The tomb, which also contains mummies, skeletons and skulls, dates back to the middle-kingdom almost 4,000 years ago, but was reused during the late period.

4,000-year-old termite mounds found

News

• Researchers have found a vast array of regularly spaced termite mounds in Brazil, which are about 4,000 years old and cover an area the size of Great Britain.

  Beyond News

• They are the result of the insects’ slow and steady excavation of a network of interconnected underground tunnels.
• The termites’ activities over thousands of years has resulted in huge quantities of soil deposited in about 200 million cone-shaped mounds, each about 2.5 metres tall and 9 metres across.
• These mounds were formed by a single termite species that excavated a massive network of tunnels to allow them to access dead leaves to eat safely and directly from the forest floor.
• The amount of soil excavated is over 10 cubic kilometers, equivalent to 4,000 great pyramids of Giza, and represents one of the biggest structures built by a single insect species.
• The mounds are extremely old – up to 4,000 years, similar to the ages of the pyramids.
• The mounds are largely hidden from view in the fully deciduous, semiarid, thorny-scrub caatinga forests unique to northeastern Brazil.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

To resign is a right of the employee: SC

News

• To resign is a right of an employee and he cannot be forced to continue, the Supreme Court has said in a recent order.

Beyond News

• An employee cannot be compelled to serve in case he is not willing “until and unless there is some stipulation in the rules or in the terms of appointment or disciplinary proceedings is pending or contemplated which is sought to be avoided by resigning from the services.”
• A Bench made the observations while allowing the appeal of a former Air India engineer, who was refused his dues by the Central government carrier.

HIV infected children likely to suffer cognitive impairment: study

News

• Children infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) have to endure a significant adverse impact on their neurodevelopment and cognitive functioning, a new study has revealed.

Findings

• Analysing resting state functional MRIs the study, reveals that HIV-infected children have lower neuropsychological test scores thus reflecting reduced memory span, attention deficit and decreased visual-motor coordination among other conditions.
• Study highlighted significant fluctuations in regions of the brain that are associated with auditory, language, sensory and motor functional networks of HIV infected children.
• Decline of mental processes has been commonly observed in HIV infected adults. The common condition we see in adult patients is dementia, which broadly refers to a decline in memory or thinking skills and encephalopathy, a condition that affects the structure or function of the brain.
• The researchers assessed 26 perinatally HIV infected children being treated under the National AIDS Control Programme in eastern Uttar Pradesh and 20 non-infected children from the same region. The mean age of the children was 10 years.
• The study concluded that all HIV infected children had lower neuropsychological test scores as compared to the control group.
• The HIV infected children in the study were also found to have significantly decreased Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF) and Functional connectivity (FC) in multiple brain regions that are related to cognition.
• HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system and is known to affect almost every organ in the human body.
• Nearly 60,000 children in India are currently taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) for HIV. Doctors treating these children commonly observe slackened physical as well as mental growth.
• The virus is present in patient’s bloodstream and thus gets lodged in every part of the body. It affects the brain, heart, kidney, liver etc., leaving the patient extremely immuno-compromised.
• The key to achieving overall growth in HIV infected children is a good diet, 100% medicine compliance and regular physical activity. This ensures that their viral load is low and CD-4 (immune cells) count is high. However, a large majority of children fail to achieve this.

U.S. fires tear gas into Mexico to repel migrants, closes border gate

 News

• S. authorities shut the country’s busiest border crossing and fired tear gas into Mexico to repel Central American migrants approaching the border after U.S. President vowed the asylum-seekers would not easily enter the country.

Beyond News

• Traffic in both directions was suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana, disrupting trade at the most heavily trafficked land border in the Western Hemisphere. Pedestrian crossings and Mexico-bound vehicle traffic later resumed after being halted for several hours.
• S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped the migrants with a volley of canisters emitting large clouds of gas as U.S. and Mexican government helicopters clattered overhead.
• The Mexican government said it had retaken control of the border crossing after nearly 500 migrants tried to cross the U.S. border “in a violent manner,” and vowed to immediately deport Central Americans who attempt to enter the United States illegally.
• Mexico will deport about 500 migrants who tried to “violently” and “illegally” cross the U.S. border, according to the Mexican Interior Ministry in a statement.
• Trump has deployed military forces to the border to support the Border Patrol and threatened to close the entire southern border.
• Military police were sent to the border crossing and military engineers moved barricades as part of the enforcement.
• An average of 70,000 vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians cross from Mexico to the United States at San Ysidro each day, according to the U.S. General Services Administration.
• S. and Mexican negotiators met to discuss a plan to keep the Central Americans in Mexico while their asylum claims are heard. Normally, asylum-seekers announce their intention on arriving at U.S. ports of entry or after crossing the border illegally.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

ESA s Mars Express sends new images of Martian landscape

News

• The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express has imaged a part of the Martian landscape, a region at the boundary of the northern and southern hemisphere which is rocky and fragmented, that once formed the Red Planet’s flood plains.

Beyond News

• The region, a furrowed, rock-filled escarpment known as Nili Fossae sits at the boundary of the northern and southern hemisphere.
• It is an impressive example of past activity on the planet and shows signs of where flowing wind, water and ice once moved material from place to place, carving out distinctive patterns and land forms as it did so.
• Despite Mars’ reputation as a dry, arid world today, water is believed to have played a key role in sculpting Nili Fossae via ongoing erosion.
• Nili Fossae is filled with rocky valleys, small hills, and clusters of flat-topped land forms (known as mesas in geological terms), with some chunks of crustal rock appearing to be depressed down into the surface creating a number of ditch like features known as graben.
• Further, the image also showed the higher-altitude terrain of Nili Fossae.

145 stranded pilot whales die in New Zealand

News

• About 145 pilot whales died in New Zealandafter being stranded during the weekend on Stewart Island in the extreme south of the country.

Beyond News

• A hiker alerted authorities night about the situation of the whales, who were stranded in Mason Bay in two separate groups about two kilometers apart.
• Half of the whales were dead when rescuers arrived and the condition of the rest, by the time they were found, was so bad it was decided to euthanise them.
• Pilot whales, also called long-finned pilot whale, are a specimen with a bulging forehead and a robust body that can reach between six and seven meters in length, Xinhua news agency reported.
• Marine mammals are frequently stranded on New Zealand’s coasts and the average number of operations carried out by environmental officials is about 85 per year, most of them to save these animals individually.
• The reasons why whales and dolphins can become stranded have not been clarified, although it is attributed to diseases, navigation errors, sudden changes in tides, being chased by predators or extreme weather conditions.

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