IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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One in three girls from poor households has never attended school: UNICEF

News

• According to a UNICEF paper released, poverty, gender discrimination, disability, ethnic origin or language of instruction, physical distance from school and poor infrastructure are the major obstacles that prevent children from impoverished families from accessing quality education.

Addressing the learning crisis

• The UNICEF launched its study “Addressing the learning crisis” at the Education World Forum as world leaders prepare to convene the World Economic Forum in Davos.
• The study says that exclusion of the poorest children from education is a key driver of a global learning crisis.

Highest out-of-school ratio

• Analyzing the data from 42 countries, the UNICEF  finds that education for children from the richest 20% of households are allocated nearly double the amount of education funding than children from the poorest 20% of households.
• Disparities in education spending are particularly high in ten African countries, with four times as much funding allocated to the richest children compared with the poorest.
• Guinea and the Central African Republic are the countries with some of the world’s highest rates of out-of-school children, with the richest children benefiting more from the public education funds than the poorest children.
• Barbados, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and Sweden are the only countries included in the paper that distribute education funding equally between the richest and poorest households.
• According to the World Bank, more than half of children living in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple story by the end of primary school.

Prioritization of funds

• The UNICEF study urges the governments to distribute funds to ensure that children from the poorest 20% of households benefit from at least 20% of education funding.
• Prioritization of public funding for lower levels of education and a gradual increase of allocations to higher levels has also been recommended.
• Children who complete pre-primary learn better, are more likely to stay in school and contribute more to their economies and societies when they reach adulthood. Allocating at least 10 per cent of national education budgets will help achieve universal access.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

US regulator doubled warnings to Indian drugmakers last year

News

• The US Food and Drug Administration more than doubled the number of warning letters to Indian drug makers in 2019, another sign that the world’s biggest market for generic medicines is cracking down on its largest single supplier.

Largest single supplier

• The sanctions may delay about 18 per cent of new products Indian companies were planning to introduce in the US, according to a report from Crisil Ltd, the local unit of S&P Global Ratings. This may slow the industry’s sales growth to about 10 per cent in this financial year and next from 16 per cent last year.
• Large players are banking heavily on successful launch of complex generic products – these filings have risen to about 25 per cent of the overall new product pipeline from nearly zero three years ago.
• A substantial delay in resolution of regulatory issues and/or heightened scrutiny could derail the US growth story.
• The FDA has been under pressure to clamp down on the generic drug industry after the carcinogen NDMA was found in multiple versions of the blood-pressure medicine valsartan in 2018.
• Crisil compared the number of warnings between January-October 2019 with the same period a year earlier. A warning letter bars new products from the affected facility.
• India saw a similar surge of FDA regulatory actions in 2015 after Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, then the nation’s biggest drugmaker, was found to be manipulating data.
• While the FDA’s current concerns focus on issues like cleanliness and should be easier to resolve, estimates that remediation efforts could shave as much as 1.5 per cent off the industry’s operating profit margin.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Explained: What is Xenobot?

News

• Scientists in the United States have created the world’s first “living machines” tiny robots built from the cells of the African clawed frog, that can move around on their own.

World’s first living machines

• They have named the millimetre-wide robots “xenobots” after the species of aquatic frog found across sub-Saharan Africa from Nigeria and Sudan to South Africa, Xenopus laevis.
• Scientists have repurposed living cells scraped from frog embryos and assembled them into entirely new life-forms.
• The xenobots “can move toward a target, perhaps pick up a payload (like a medicine that needs to be carried to a specific place inside a patient) and heal themselves after being cut.
• The new creatures were designed on a supercomputer at the university, and then assembled and tested by biologists at Tufts University.
• While humans have been manipulating organisms for their benefit since at least the dawn of agriculture, and genetic editing has created a few artificial organisms in recent years, the latest research is a breakthrough because it designs, for the first time ever, “completely biological machines from the ground up”.

ISRO successfully completes three orbit raising manoeuvres of GSAT-30

News

• The ISRO said it has successfully completed the three orbit-raising manoeuvres of communication satellite GSAT-30, which was launched on January 17 onboard Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana.

GSAT-30

• The space agency said the cumulative duration of operation of the propulsion system for these manoeuvres was two hours and 29 minutes.
• Due to these manoeuvres, the ISRO succeeded in placing the satellite in an orbit close to its operational orbit.
• The satellite solar panels and antennas have been deployed and the satellite is placed in an orbit with a perigee (nearest point from Earth) of 35,826 km and an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 35,913 km with an inclination of 0.11 degree, which is very close to its operational orbit.
• With a mission life of 15 years, GSAT-30 is an operational communication satellite for DTH, television uplink and VSAT services.
• The ISRO has said the communication payload of GSAT-30 is specifically designed and optimised to maximise the number of transponders on the spacecraft bus.
• GSAT-30 will provide DTH television services, connectivity to VSATs for ATM, stock-exchange, television uplinking and teleport services, Digital Satellite News Gathering (DSNG) and e-governance applications. The satellite will also be used for bulk data transfer for a host of emerging telecommunication applications.

Key components of K-4 missile designed, developed in Pune

News

• The nuclear capable submarine-launched ballistic missile, K-4, which was successfully test-fired, had some of its key components designed and developed at the three facilities of Pune-headquartered Armament and Combat Engineering (ACE) cluster of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

K-4

• • The K-4, which is an intermediate-range missile with maximum range of 3,500 kilometres, has been designed to arm the Arihant Class submarines of the Indian Navy. The missile is part of the K series of the missile, which are Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) named after Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.
  • The testing of various stages of development of the missile started in 2010 and the developed missile has been test-fired successfully in 2014 and 2016. The test further validated the capabilities of the missile to carry nuclear warheads.
  • The three facilities of the ACE cluster of the DRDO that contributed to the development of the missile are High Energy Material Research Laboratory (HEMRL) and Research and Development Establishment (Engineers), also known as R&DE (Engrs) in Pune, and Advanced Centre for Energetic Materials (ACEM) in Nashik.
  • The high energy and motor systems of the missile have been designed, developed and made by HEMRL and ACEM. The launch system of the missile has been developed by the R&DE (Engrs).
  • The HEMRL, which works in technologies relating to high explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics, has developed propellants and motor systems for almost all the missiles, including Prithvi, versions of the Agni, Akash, and Nag, all developed by the DRDO till now.
  • For K-4, the facility has contributed in design and development of the stage separators, the three motors powering various stages of the missile, the gas generator, the low thrust boosters and some more systems.
  • Some of these systems have been produced by ACEM, which is a facility that processes composite propellants for various DRDO programmes.
  • The Naval Systems Group of the facility has developed the launch system of the K-4 missile.
  • The capability of the hypersonic missile of being able to be launched from a submarine platform will certainly be a key strategic addition to the naval might. But what makes the system even more effective is its high accuracy and the maneuverability.
  • The development of K series missiles is one of the ways DRDO pays tribute to Dr Kalam.

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