Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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China’s melting glacier draws tourists amid climate worries

News

• Millions of people each year are drawn to Baishui’s frosty beauty on the southeastern edge of the Third Pole a region in Central Asia with the world’s third largest store of ice after Antarctica and Greenland that’s roughly the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.

Beyond News

• Third Pole glaciers are vital to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Asia’s 10 largest rivers including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, and Ganges  are fed by seasonal melting.
• Depending on how it melts, a lot of the freshwater will be leaving the region for the ocean, which will have severe impacts on water and food security.
• The glacier has lost 60% of its mass and shrunk 250 m since 1982, according to a 2018 report.
• Scientists found in 2015 that 82% of glaciers surveyed in China had retreated. They warned that the effects of glacier melting on water resources are gradually becoming “increasingly serious” for China.
• China has always had a freshwater supply problem with 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of its freshwater.

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Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

India to host global meet on maternal, child health in December: UNICEF

News

• India would be the global host for a meet of stakeholders from nearly 100 countries on issues related to maternal and child health.

Beyond News

• The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health forum will emphasise the importance of people-centred accountability bringing forward the voices and lived realities of women, children and adolescents through innovative programming and creative projects.
• The forum will be hosted by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in collaboration with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) this December.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Chile President Michelle Bachelet and chair of PMNCH will deliver the keynote addresses.
• India has made significant progress in improving maternal health and reducing child mortality.
• India has performed better than rest of world in this field and the number of under-five children dying has fallen by 30 per cent since 2012, from 1.4 million to 9,89,000.
• According to a new report by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, under-five mortality rate in India was recorded below one million in 2017 for the first time in five years.
• India will get an opportunity to present its success story in improving its maternal and child health at a world stage.
• This is the second time India is hosting the forum the first was in 2010.

Climate fund allots $1bn for poor nations

News

• N.-backed fund to help poor countries tackle climate change have approved more than $1 billion in new investments after a four-day meeting in Bahrain.

Beyond News

• The Green Climate Fund said that the meeting approved 19 new projects, including a programme to protect freshwater resources in Bahrain.
• Environmentalists had argued the Gulf nation should pay for the project itself using money it made from its vast reserves of oil and gas.
• The South Korea-based fund is considered a key vehicle for climate-related development programmes.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

NCCR develops system to estimate, predict flooding within Chennai

News

• In 2015, unprecedented and sudden floods paralysed Chennai with over 18 lakh people being displaced.
• Following this, at the behest of the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to government of India, research institutions, and IITs, got together to build a flood warning system customised for use in Chennai.

Beyond News

• Carrying the acronym C-FLOWS, which stands for Chennai FLOod Warning System, the six-module ensemble can predict flooding due to heavy rainfall, sea-level rise and increase in water levels of the three rivers Cooum, Adyar and Kosasthalaiyar  that traverse the city.
• The State government shared data such as ward boundaries, population details, infrastructure available across Tamil Nadu, which have been used in the warning system.
• Knowing the elevation at different spots, the system can predict the way the area would flood based on different scenarios that have been simulated.
• Inputs were taken from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on forecast and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), which gives the prediction for rain 10 days in advance.
• Similarly, INCOIS gives the hydrodynamic congestion such as storm surge and tide etc. Using this, the system can, two weeks ahead of the event, simulate the scenario.
• Data from IMD, NCMRWF, INCOIS and Tamil Nadu State government are brought together in an online hub along with the field data and the remote sensing data to observe the situation in real time.
• Authorised personnel can use a mobile app, which has been developed alongside, to collect data from flooded areas such as geotagged photographs and add to the database. This fifth module helps capture the ground reality and provide primary information for decision makers to plan relief and mitigation operations.
• The decision support system is an online GIS query portal which can answer questions on quantum of flooding in specific localities, flood proximity.

Air pollution weakens your bones, shows recent study

News

• Doctors suggested early diagnosis, regular exercise and healthy diet are what people should follow to avoid occurrence of the bone disease in later stages of life.

Findings

• Osteoporosis is a common problem and occurs due to decrease in bone density over time.
• It is a common disorder among elderly people. It literally means “porous bones”.
• Recent research shows pollution accelerates the process of bone deterioration.
• Air pollution has been linked to increase in worsening of bone diseases and their symptoms. Elderly people who are more frequently exposed to air pollutants from vehicular and industrial emissions experience faster bone loss and thus, higher risk of bone fractures.
• As the bones become weaker, there is a higher risk of a fracture following a fall or even a fairly minor knock.
• Osteoporosis fracture is a huge problem in the ever-increasing elderly population.

Bacteria to degrade toluene

News

• Using bacteria isolated from soil and effluents near an oil refinery, researchers have successfully degraded toluene into less-toxic byproducts.

Findings

• Toluene is one of the petrochemical wastes that get released without treatment from industries such as refineries, paint, textile, paper and rubber.
• Toluene has been reported to cause serious health problems to aquatic life, and studies point that it has genotoxic and carcinogenic effects on human beings.
• To the soil and effluent samples containing some bacteria 100 mg/L of toluene was added and incubated for four weeks.
• The bacteria were isolated from the samples, identified and studied for their toluene-degrading abilities. They isolated eight to 10 strains of bacteria and found that a particular bacteriaAcinetobacter juniishowed good degrading potential about 80% of toluene (50 ppm) in a liquid medium was degraded within 72 hours.
• Another interesting find was that when exposed to toluene, these bacteria changed their morphology to escape toxicity. Electron microscopy studies revealed that the cylindrical cells transformed into an ovoid or spherical structure.
• The researchers also examined the pathway by which the bacteria were doing the degradation and found it to be general aerobic biodegradation pathway.

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