Daily Current Affairs

WHO renames monkeypox as mpox, citing racism, discrimination concerns (GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)

Why in news?

• Recently, the World Health Organisation has renamed monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist.

 

Background:

• WHO was concerned by the racist and stigmatising language that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organisation to propose a way forward to change the name.
• In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the UN agency declared monkeypox's spread to be a global emergency.

 

Spread of mpox:

• To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease.
• Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and West Africa.
• Outside of Africa, nearly all cases have been in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men.

• Vaccination efforts in rich countries, along with targeted control interventions, have mostly brought the disease under control after it peaked in the summer.
• In Africa, the disease mainly affects people in contact with infected animals such as rodents and squirrels. The majority of monkeypox-related deaths have been in Africa, where there have been almost no vaccines available.

 

First named  in 1958:

• Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a pox-like disease, although they are not thought to be the disease's animal reservoir.
• Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named.

Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) in FIFA

(GS Paper 2, Science and Tech)

Why in news?

• In the opening match of the FIFA World Cup 2022 between host Qatar and Ecuador, just three minutes’ of action had passed before the first goal of the tournament was ruled out for offside.
• While such close calls being settled with the help of Video Assistant Referee (VAR) technology is largely commonplace in modern-day football.
• FIFA’s brand new Semi-Automated Offside Technology (SAOT) was responsible for the quick decision.

What is SAOT?

There are two parts to the technology;

1. a sensor inside the match ball (Adidas’s Al Rihla) that is held using suspension technology, and
2. existing tracking tools that are part of the VAR system.

 

Small in-ball device:

• Kinexon, a German company that specialises in providing sensor networks and computing solutions, has designed a small in-ball device which gives precise positional data and also detects ball movement in a three-dimensional space.
• Every time the ball is hit, data is sent in real time (at a whopping 500 frames per second) to a network of antennae installed around the playing field.

 

Hawk-Eye cameras:

• Additionally, there are 12 Hawk-Eye cameras set up around the turf that shadow both the ball and the players, with as many as 29 separate points in the human body tracked.
• The coming together of the ball sensor and the Hawk-Eye cameras is in effect SAOT, which allows for decisions that are highly accurate and quick.
• These two data sets are run through artificial intelligence software which generates automated alerts about offsides to the match officials. This replaces the manual effort taken in poring over replays for minutes on end.

 

Human intervention:

• FIFA has made it clear that SAOT is only a confirmatory tool. The final decision “always belongs to the match official; on the VAR, the video assistant referee, on the field of play, to the referee.”
• In addition, the differentiation that exists between normal offside,  where a player is flagged because of active involvement irrespective of whether he touches the ball  and ‘passive offside’ is expected to retain some subjectivity.
• A case in point was the goal scored by Ecuador against the Netherlands that was eventually disallowed; the player was in an offside position and did not touch the ball but was deemed offside for being in the goalkeeper’s line of sight and thus actively involved.

 

How accurate is the SAOT data?

• The data transmission rate from the ball (500 frames per second or 500Hz) makes the process pretty accurate. The time between two frames is two milliseconds (1/500), which is 10 times better than a standard 50Hz video that is commonly used in High Definition monitors.
• Further, to synchronise the data from the ball sensor and Hawk-Eye, a Precision Time Protocol clock is used.
• This gets down the precision to up to one-millionth of a second.

 

SARAS 3 telescope throws light on the nature of early stars and galaxies

(GS Paper 2, Science and Tech)

Why in news?

• SARAS 3, a radio telescope designed and built at the Raman Research Institute (RRI)has provided clues to the nature of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. 

About SARAS 3:

• Shaped Antenna measurement of the background Radio Spectrum 3 (SARAS) telescope, indigenously designed and built at RRI was deployed over Dandiganahalli Lake and Sharavati backwaters, located in Northern Karnataka, in early 2020.
• Using data from the telescope, astronomers and researchers have been able to determine properties of radio luminous galaxies formed just 200 million years post the Big Bang, a period known as the Cosmic Dawn.

 

Current research:

• Researchers from the RRI and from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, along with collaborators at the University of Cambridge and University of Tel Aviv, have used data from SARAS 3 to throw light on the energy output, luminosity, and masses of the first generation of galaxies that are bright in radio wavelengths.
• The results from the SARAS 3 telescope are the first time that radio observations of the averaged 21-centimetre line have been able to provide an insight into the properties of the earliest radio loud galaxies that are usually powered by supermassive black holes.
• SARAS 3 had improved the understanding of astrophysics of Cosmic Dawn by telling astronomers that less than 3% of the gaseous matter within early galaxies was converted into stars, and that the earliest galaxies that were bright in radio emission were also strong in X-rays, which heated the cosmic gas in and around the early galaxies.

Background:

• In March, the SARAS 3 team used the same data to reject claims of the detection of an anomalous 21-cm signal from Cosmic Dawn made by the EDGES radio telescope developed by researchers from Arizona State University and MIT, the U.S.