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It is usually the sightings of the Chinese military’s latest warships, and the occasional submarine, that attract the most attention in the crystal clear waters off this tropical island in the South China Sea.
Less noticed are the departures of the Explorer 2, a green-and-white vessel that might pass for an unremarkable trawler.
Departing from Sanya’s Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE), the vessel has made increasingly frequent forays into some of the least explored parts of the world’s oceans, carrying with it one of the most advanced deep-sea submersibles, as well as China’s ambitions to dominate the still evolving, yet highly competitive, field of deep sea exploration.
So important is the IDSSE’s mission to Beijing that when the manned submersible Fendouzhe, or Striver, plunged to a then record depth of more than 10,000 metres in 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter to the institute, pointing out that “the success of the Fendouzhe marks China’s ability to enter the world’s deepest oceans to carry out scientific exploration and research, and reflects the nation’s comprehensive strength in marine high technology fields”.
Researchers at the IDSSE say their main mission is understanding what lies at the depths of little understood ocean trenches.
The work of deep sea research does, however, also carry the promise of unlocking untold commercial riches, given the growing global interest into deep sea exploration of mineral resources. Copper, gold, minerals and rare earth elements remain untapped on the sea bed.
Scientific research is also important in determining how resources can be exploited without damaging ocean environments.
From the ecological perspective, it will be helpful to monitor long-term changes to mining areas, how long it takes to recover, and so on.
In December 2021, the Striver explored the Mariana Trench, the world’s deepest. At the Kermadec Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the submersible created several firsts, observing for the first time anemones at a depth of 8,880 metres and fish feeding on shark remains at 9,900 metres.
News
Australia, Japan PMs to visit India ahead of Quad summit (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Prime Ministers of Australia and Japan will visit India in March in what is being interpreted as a warming of ties ahead of the Quad leaders’ summit in Australia.
The Office of the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that he will start his March 8-to-11 tour of India from Ahmedabad, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join him at the fourth Test match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy coinciding with Holi. Japanese media has reported that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will reach Delhi on March 19.
It is underpinned by our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, which underscores a joint commitment to working together to enhance our defence, economic and technological interests,” who came to power last May when he had travelled to Tokyo to participate in the Quad leaders’ summit hours after being elected to the office after defeating Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
A shared passion for cricket is a hallmark of our long-standing friendship, a relationship that has been enriched by generations of Indian-Australians.
The visit is being viewed as an expression of political will to growing bilateral trade, security and people-to-people contacts that received a major boost when the India Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement came into force in last December.
Mr. Albanese will spend a day in Mumbai before starting the official part of the visit here. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the Australian leader will be accompanied by Senator Don Farrell, Minister for Trade and Tourism, and Madeleine King, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, and senior officials and a high-level business delegation.
Assam’s ancient moidams meet UNESCO technical requirements for heritage centre (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
Assam’s pyramid-like structures known as moidams or maidams have met all the technical requirements of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre.
Charaideo in eastern Assam has more than 90 moidams, the mound-burial system of the Ahoms who ruled large swathes of the present-day State and beyond for some 600 years until the advent of the British in the 1820s.
With great pride, happy to share a landmark achievement in our endeavour to get World Heritage Site status for Charaideo Maidams.
The maidams have met all technical requirements of the UNESCO Secretariat. My gratitude once again to Hon PM Shri @narendramodi ji for the nomination.
He attached a letter from Lazare Eloundou Assamo, Director of the World Heritage Centre’s cultural sector, to Vishal V. Sharma, the Permanent Delegate of India to UNESCO.
The nomination of Moidams – the mound-burial system of the Ahom Dynasty met all of the technical requirements outlined in the Operational Guidelines concerning completeness check of nominations to the World Heritage List.
It is important to recall that the technical completeness of a nomination does not imply that the site concerned is of Outstanding Universal Value and would necessarily be inscribed on the World Heritage List.
With overfishing, great seahorses bolt from Coromandel (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Extensive fishing off the Coromandel coast could be forcing the great seahorse to migrate laboriously toward Odisha.
Fishing is less intense in the Bay of Bengal off the Odisha coastline.
However, the shallow coastal ecosystem of the eastern Indian State may not be the new comfort zone for the fish with a horse-like head, a study published in the latest issue.
The study was based on a specimen of a juvenile great seahorse, or Hippocampus kelloggi, caught in a ring net and collected from the Ariyapalli fish landing centre in Odisha’s Ganjam district.
The authors of the study are Anil Kumar Behera and Biswajit Mahari of Berhampur University’s Department of Marine Sciences, and Amrit Kumar Mishra of Bombay Natural History Society’s Department of Marine Conservation.
There are 46 species of seahorses reported worldwide. The coastal ecosystems of India house nine out of 12 species found in the Indo-Pacific, one of the hotspots of seahorse populations that are distributed across diverse ecosystems such as seagrass, mangroves, macroalgal beds, and coral reefs.
These nine species are distributed along the coasts of eight States and five Union Territories from Gujarat to Odisha, apart from Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The population of the great seahorse, which is among the eight species tagged ‘vulnerable’, is declining due to its overexploitation for traditional Chinese medicines and as an ornamental fish, combined with general destructive fishing and fisheries bycatch, the study said.
World
UN nuclear head meets with Iranians amid enrichment concerns (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog was meeting with officials in Iran on Saturday, days after it was revealed that the country had enriched particles of uranium to near weapons-grade. The reports had raised fresh alarm over its long-disputed nuclear programme.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, declined to comment on his discussions during a press conference with the head of Iran’s nuclear programme, saying the delegation’s work was still ongoing.
It’s an atmosphere of work, of honesty and cooperation. He later met with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and was expected to speak with reporters upon his return to Vienna.
Earlier this week, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), through a report, had said that uranium particles enriched up to 83.7% — just short of weapons-grade — were found in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site.
Science & Tech
Scrub typhus: combination therapy can save more lives (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Scrub typhus — a life-threatening infection caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi bacteria — is a major public health threat in South and Southeast Asia.
As per estimates, nearly one million cases are reported from South and Southeast Asia with 10% mortality. India is one of the hotspots with at least 25% of the disease burden; in CMC Vellore alone, 500-1,000 patients are treated each year, of which 250-300 have severe disease.
A seroprevalence study undertaken about five years ago in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, by researchers at the CMC Vellore showed over 30% antibody positivity for the bacteria in the community, indicating that they were exposed to the pathogen.
What makes scrub typhus a major public health threat is the very high mortality rate in patients with severe disease despite diagnosis and treatment.
In a study published by CMC Vellore researchers in 2014,the mortality in patients with severe scrub typhus disease with multi-organ dysfunction was 24%.
Till date, monotherapies using eitherdoxycycline or azithromycin was the commonly used treatment.A trial carried out now in seven centres in India where patients were randomly assigned to receive acombination therapy of both doxycycline and azithromycin showed faster resolution of complications compared with two other arms where patients were given monotherapy of either doxycycline or azithromycin.
The trial enrolled nearly 800 patients (265 in the doxycycline group, 263 in the azithromycin group, and 266 in the combination-therapy group).
Low-cost paper microscope’s wider application in research (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have reported that a cheap microscope connected to a smartphone camera could find wider application in many areas, and in some cases potentially replace more expensive equipment.
The Foldscope is a handheld microscope made mostly of paper that can be connected to a smartphone camera. It has a magnification of around 140x and can identify objects just 2 micrometres wide.
The researchers found that foldscopes could capture the roundness and aspect ratio of an object to within 5% of those captured by state-of-the-art instruments called scanning electron microscopes (SEM), which cost more than ₹50 lakh each.
They also report that based on their findings, foldscopes can be used in pharmaceuticals (to inspect drug products), environmental science (pollutants), and cosmetics (powders and emulsions), among other areas.
P. Anbazhagan, Associate Professor in IISc’s Department of Civil Engineering and the corresponding author of the study paper, said in an email that foldscopes can be used to study “soil particles’ morphology”, which can “help understand soil structure, nutrient availability, and plant growth” in agriculture.
The paper was published in the journalCurrent Scienceon February 25, co-authored by Dr. Anbazhagan and his former PhD student, Kunjari Mog. Their focus was on the shape of soil grains.
India’s soil classification scheme doesn’t include grain shape because, according to Dr. Anbazhagan, measuring it accurately is “complex” and due to “the limited availability of affordable image capturing instruments”.
The scheme classifies soil based on size, consistency, and susceptibility to deformation. Yet, shape matters because it influences how much water some soil can hold and how the soil responds to physical stresses.
The classification schemes work around the difficulties of assessing shape by using other measures. Dr. Anbazhagan and Dr. Mog studied whether a foldscope could bridge this gap.
Influenza virus might have marine origin with fish as early host (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
A new study posted as a preprint (which is yet to be peer-reviewed) in bioRxiv has found that the order Articulavirales, which includes the influenza viruses, first emerged in aquatic ecosystems, and fish might have been the earliest hosts of influenza virus.
The study found that invertebrates rather than fish might have likely been among the first hosts of influenza virus.
The study found that influenza viruses can infect all classes of fish, and Siberian sturgeon (Acipenser baerii) may have served as early, if not the first, hosts of influenza virus before it spilled over into mammals.
Besides aquatic origin, the researchers say that the orderArticulavirales may have persisted since about 640 million years ago when corals branched off to form other members ofArticulaviralesinother animals.
As per Nature Newsreport, Mary Petrone, a virologist at the University of Sydney, Australiaand the first author of the preprint, analysed the RNA from two coral species and foundevidence of infection with the viruses.
The discovery of the virus in corals gave the first hint that theinfluenza viruses might have been born at sea. A 2018 identification of a distant relative of influenza in hagfishonly strengthened the possibility of a marine origin of the virus.
Having found the virus in two coral species, the researchers turned their attention to Siberian sturgeon, and surprisingly found evidence of the virus in sturgeon fish.
Phylogenetic analysis of the three polymerase segments revealed that the sturgeon-associated virus consistently falls within the influenza clade but is basal to all known influenza viruses.
FAQ
Why are index makers attracting attention from SEBI? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Following a report by U.S.-based Hindenburg Research levelling several allegations against the Adani group, global index providers like MSCI are reviewing some of these stocks’ inclusion in its indices that are replicated by many foreign portfolio managers.
India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE), on the other hand, has announced that five Adani group firms’ stocks will be added to 14 different indices administered by a subsidiary called NSE Indices, while retaining Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports and SEZ in the Nifty 50.
With thousands of stocks traded in stock markets around the world and their prices often moving in different directions, most observers assess a market’s general trajectory amid these individual price swings by looking at broader benchmark indices.
For instance, the Sensex represents the 30 largest and most actively traded stocks on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
While economists and governments look at market indices’ movements as a barometer of the confidence levels in the economy, individual investors and fund managers use them as a gauge to compare their own portfolios’ performance.
Mutual funds and portfolio managers often pitch to prospective investors that their investment strategies have outperformed the Sensex or other relevant benchmarks.
For retail investors, selecting single stocks or mutual fund schemes has always been a challenge. In 1976, American fund industry veteran and Vanguard Group founder John Bogle sought to address this by launching the world’s first index fund.
His idea was simple: if you can’t find the needle in a haystack, buy the whole haystack! And this could be achieved at much lower costs than those charged by fund managers actively trading portfolios, as it was a “passive” approach of buying the index and holding.
Now, such low-cost passive index funds and similarly structured exchange traded funds (that can be traded intra-day like a stock) manage trillions of dollars globally.
Why is the tribal panel upset with Environment Ministry over forest rights? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
After the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) invoked its constitutional power to requisition detailed Forest Rights Act implementation reports from the Supreme Court, the Registrar has ordered the release of documents to the NCST.
The ST Commission is caught in a row with the Union Environment Ministry over the Forest Conservation Rules (FCR), 2022.
The row is over the potential violation of provisions enshrined in the Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 dubbed the Forest Rights Act (FRA).
The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in June 2022, notified the Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022, which prescribed the mechanism for the diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes.
These amended rules have omitted a clause (present in 2014 and 2017 Rules) that explicitly required any proposal to mandatorily have the consent of local tribespeople and other traditional forest dwellers (OTFDs) of the area, before proceeding for Stage 1 clearance.
The FCR, 2022 has allowed entities to go for the consent of locals, after Stage 1 or even after Stage 2 clearance. According to the FRA, 2006, in case of a dispute over forest land, precedence has to be given to the rights of STs and OTFDs, over any other party.
In September, 2022, NCST Chairperson Harsh Chouhan shot off a letter to Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav, highlighting the potential consequences of FCR, 2022, recommending that they be put on hold and the previous Rules, which provided for the consent clause, be strengthened.
The ST panel argued that the previous versions of the Rules provided a legal space for “ensuring completion of the processes for recognition and vesting of rights under the FRA in areas where forests are being diverted.”