Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Indians top list of ‘overstayers’ in U.K.

News

• India accounts for the largest number of individuals staying in the U.K. illegally, and the number of those subjected to forced returns to India has fallen by 50% in three years, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office has said.

Beyond News

• The problem of “visa overstayers” was highlighted by the department in its submission to a British parliamentary committee’s “Global Britain and India’ inquiry into post-Brexit relations with India.
• The focus on overstayers is significant, suggesting that there is little sign of change on an issue that has overshadowed bilateral relationships.
• Tensions came to a head earlier this year when Britain’s Trade Secretary Liam Fox linked the decision on excluding Indians from a relaxation of student visa requirements to cooperation between the two countries on the return of illegal migrants, including India’s failure to sign an MOU with the U.K. on the issue during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit in April.
• Backing his concerns, the think tank Chatham House, in its submission to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry, pointed to Britain’s visa regime for Indians as one of the key impediments to its relationship and highlighted U.K.’s emphasis on overstayers.
• In its submission, the U.K.-India Business Council warned that Britain’s stance on immigration had been characterised in India as a “directly hostile message” that suggested Indian citizens were not welcome to the U.K. any more.
• Citing the decision to exclude India from the relaxation of student visa process, it said that it was a step in the wrong direction. The Council called for India to be included on the list of countries with reduced student visa application procedures, and the reintroduction of the ability to work for two years after graduation.
• However, on the issue of visas, the Foreign Office submission highlighted what it saw as key achievements on visas to Indian nationals. These included Britain having more visa centres in India than any other country in the world, Britain issuing more skilled worker visas to India than all other countries in the world combined and the fact that 90% of Indian nationals, who applied for a visa, were successful.

Land pooling policy gets Centre’s nod

News

• The Centre has given its final nod to Delhi’s land pooling policy.No major changes had been made to the policy.

Beyond News

• The DDA in September had approved the policy, by which the Capital is set to get 17 lakh houses, including 5 lakh houses for the economically weaker sections.
• The FAR had been reduced keeping in mind the availability of resources and services required for the development of a particular land.
• With the approval of the land pooling policy in the Capital, landowners having land of any size can participate in the policy. However, the minimum area required for taking up the development is two hectares.
• Under the policy, an integrated sector-based planning approach will be followed, a sector of 250 to 300 hectares of land will be eligible to be developed once a minimum of 70% contiguous land within a sector is assembled.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Major mission to sequence genes of Indians planned

News

• India is planning a major mission to sequence the genes of a “large” group of Indians akin to projects in the United Kingdom, China, Japan and Australia  and use this to improve health as well as buck a global trend of designing ‘personalised medicine.’

Beyond News

• This was among the key decisions taken at the 1st Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (STIAC) in its first meeting .
• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Department of Biotechnology would be closely associated with the project.
• Ever since the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 2009 announced that it had sequenced the genome of an Indian, then making India one of six countries to achieve such a feat, several research labs have analysed genes from Indians for disease susceptibility. However, no compendium of genes that differentiate Indian populations from, say Caucasian or African genomes exist.
• A group of Indian scientists and companies are involved with a 100k Genome Asia project, led out of the National Technological University (NTU), Singapore, to sequence the whole genomes of 100k Asians, including 50,000 Indians.
• Key programmes, such as a Deep Ocean Mission, to facilitate ocean science and technologies to help with India’s strategic interests and an Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing missions were also discussed.

Remove encroachments from waterbodies: HC

News

• The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court observed that unless encroachments were removed from waterbodies the State would not be able to save them.

Beyond News

• A Divsision Bench observed that waterbodies had to be saved for future generations.
• It observed that measures had to be initiated on a war footing to restore the waterbodies.
• Trees along the banks could be allowed to remain as they curbed soil erosion. The judges added that though they were concerned about the trees, the issue of encroachments had to be addressed.

Pollution control body records 554 violations in NCR

News

• Open storage and dumping of construction and demolition waste and general dumping of waste constituted over half the violations in the National Capital Region (NCR), observed the Central Pollution Control Board in a series of inspections between September 15 and October 7.

Beyond News

• Traffic congestion and road-dust suspension typically considered major reasons for the region’s pollution problem contributed only 12% of the violations.
• There were 554 violations in total, revealed data compiled by the organisation of which Delhi posted the maximum number of violations (287) followed by Faridabad (135).
• The apex central organisation, tasked with regulating pollution, conducted these inspections ahead of the winter where pollution levels typically spike from a combination of adverse weather, pollution from harvest stubble, industrial and several other man-made sources.
• While a dip in air quality in October and November in the NCR is par for the course, the Centre has announced a slew of measures from providing highly subsidised threshing equipment to farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to discourage them from burning stubble.
• This is reportedly responsible for 20% of the pollution load in the winters.
• Other steps include a ban on brick kilns that do not employ ‘zig-zag technology’, the Supreme Court ban on the use of pet coke and, stricter monitoring of sulphur oxides and nitrous oxide emissions from industrial boilers.

Of mice and men: scientists develop babies from same-sex mice pairs

News

• A team of researchers has produced viable offspring from same-sex pairs of mice, using a novel technology that involves stem cells altered to remove certain genes.

Findings

• While the applications of the research are largely theoretical for now, they could include improving existing cloning methods for mammals and even eventually fertility treatments for same-sex couples.
• The study, is the first time the method has been successfully implemented, though previous research has looked at other ways to produce babies from same-sex pairs.
• But while the team was able to produce viable babies from female pairs of mice, whose offspring went on to have their own progeny, the mice produced from male pairs fared less well.
• They survived only 48 hours after birth, despite a complicated process of gene manipulation intended to eliminate abnormalities resulting from the same-sex reproductive process.
• This field of research treads on tricky ethical ground, with previous studies involving genetic editing and novel methods of reproduction prompting fears about the implications if similar processes were eventually applied to humans.
• During the reproduction process, mammals mostly inherit two sets of each gene, one from their mother and one from their father.
• But a small subset of genes, known as “imprinted” genes, are inherited from only one parent. For these genes, the set produced by the other parent is effectively inactive, having been “shut off” when it is transmitted.
• If this “shutting off” process does not function correctly, the offspring could suffer from abnormalities or even die.
• Mixing genetic material from same-sex couples runs the risk of the babies receiving two sets of “imprinted” genes.
• So the study used haploid embryonic stem cells, which resemble “primordial germ cells, the precursors of eggs and sperm.
• They then altered the genetic makeup of the cells, deleting “imprinting regions” to effectively mimic the “shutting off” process in normal reproduction.

Record fast radio bursts detected from deep space

News

• Australian researchers said they have detected a record number of radio waves from space, including the closest and fastest one that may help understand the matter between galaxies.
• Researchers found 20 fast radio bursts in a year, almost doubling the number detected worldwide since they were discovered in 2007.

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