SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS FEBRUARY 2014

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS FEBRUARY 2014

• The Union Cabinet on 28 February, approved the Mission document on the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE). This Mission was launched under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) with a budget outlay of Rs. 550 crore during the XII Five Year Plan period. The primary objective of the Mission is to develop in a time bound manner a sustainable national capacity to continuously assess the health status of the Himalayan Ecosystem and enable policy bodies in their policy-formulation functions as also to assist States in the Indian Himalayan Region with implementation of actions selected for sustainable development. The Mission shall also scientifically assess the vulnerability of the Himalayan region to climate change in all dimensions of physical, biological and socio-cultural aspects.
  
  It would lead to formulation of appropriate policy measures and a time bound action programme to sustain its ecological resilience and ensure the continued provisions of key ecosystem services. The Mission also seeks to safeguard communities in the Himalayas from the impacts of climate change through evidence based policy formulation and enhanced research and capacity. The marginalized and vulnerable communities of the Himalayan region will be the major beneficiaries of the Mission. The Mission covers all 12 Himalayan States of India in the Indian Himalayan region (IHR). These include 10 hill States that is Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, and two partial hill States namely, Assam and West Bengal. The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India has been given the responsibility to coordinate the implementation of NMSHE.A Mission Cell (NMSHE Cell) will be set up at the Climate Change Programme Division of the Department of Science and Technology. The Cell will be headed by a Mission Director.
  
• A new global monitoring system has been launched on 20 February that promises "near real time" information on deforestation around the world. Global Forest Watch (GFW) is backed by Google and over 40 business and campaigning groups. GFW is also being backed by large businesses including Nestle and Unilever. It uses information from hundreds of millions of satellite images as well as data from people on the ground. Businesses have welcomed the new database as it could help them prove that their products are sustainable. Despite greater awareness around of the world of the impacts of deforestation, the scale of forest loss since 2000 has been significant - Data from Google and the University of Maryland says the world lost 230 million hectares of trees between 2000 and 2012. One of the big problems in dealing with tree loss has been a lack of accurate information. Over the same time period as all these trees were lost, around 800,000 sq km of new forest was planted. To tackle the dearth of reliable and up to date information, the US based World Resources Institute (WRI) has lead the development of GFW, using half a billion high resolution images from Nasa's Landsat programme. The system utilizes the cloud computing power of the Google Earth Engine, the Google Maps Engine and new algorithms developed by the University of Maryland. While high resolution images of global tree loss and gain are updated annually, data on tropical forests at a resolution of 500 meters is updated monthly. The GFW technology will allow campaigners and local communities to upload information, pictures and videos from vulnerable forest areas around the world. The technology is said to be easy to use and will incorporate information showing protected areas, logging, mining and palm oil concessions and daily forest fire alerts from Nasa. The tool will be aimed at politicians and decision makers but also at indigenous groups.
  
• Scientists have found neurons that prevent mice from forming fearful memories in an area of the brain called the hippocampus. These inhibitory neurons ensure that a neutral memory of a context or location is not contaminated by an unpleasant event occurring at the same time. The team on 19 February, says their work could one day help them better understand the neural basis of conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder. The study is published in Science. Attila Losonczy, from Columbia University in New York and colleagues, were interested in how the hippocampus stores memories of a particular context and then separates this memory from a fearful event. When looking at individual neurons in the brains of mice, they found inhibitory cells - called interneurons - were crucial for fear memory formation to travel to the correct part of the brain. When mice were conditioned to express fear in a particular context, they later associated the same environment with the unpleasant event. But when scientists deactivated these inhibitor neurons, the mice no longer showed any fear. That is, the team was able to stop the mice from forming fearful memories. This highlighted the importance of the role of these interneurons on first encoding the fearful memory before it was passed onto another part of the brain. Understanding how context and fear are learned and the specific neurons involved could help scientists better help people with conditions like anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders.
  
• Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, India’s first interplanetary probe, was launched by PSLV-C25 at 1438 hours on November 5, 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. In its voyage towards Mars, the mission successfully completes 100 days on 12 February. Subsequent to six orbit raising maneuvers around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection (TMI) Manoeuvre on December 01, 2013 gave necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric Orbit. This journey, of course, is long wherein the spacecraft has to travel 680 million km out of which a travel of 190 million km is completed so far. According to ISRO, the spacecraft health is normal. The spacecraft is continuously monitored by the ground station of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), located at Byalalu, near Bangalore. Except for a 40 minute break in the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft to the ground station, data has been continuously available for all the 100 days. The propulsion system of the spacecraft is configured for TCMs and the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) Operation. The health parameters of all the payloads are normal. Presently, the spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds. After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24, 2014.
  
• Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has handed over the first “Crew Module Structural Assembly” for the “Human Spaceflight Program” to Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram of ISRO in Bangalore, recently. The first Crew Module will be further equipped with systems necessary for crew support, navigation, guidance and control systems by ISRO for experimentation in the forthcoming GSLV-MK3 launch. Earlier also HAL has contributed in the India’s space programmes such as “ISRO’s Mars Mission” by providing Satellite Structure, Propellant Tankages and supplied thirteen types of riveted structural assemblies, seven types of welded propellant tankages which include the cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks and cryogenic stage structures for GSLV D5.
  
• Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology on 4 February launched the National Cloud under ‘MeghRaj’ Initiative. The National Cloud is being implemented by NIC. In order to utilize and harness the benefits of Cloud Computing, Government of India has embarked upon an ambitious initiative – ‘GI Cloud’ which has been named as ‘MeghRaj’. The focus of this initiative is to accelerate delivery of e-services in the country while optimizing ICT spending of the Government. This will ensure optimum utilization of the infrastructure and speed up the development and deployment of eGov applications. The National Cloud will help the departments to procure ICT services on demand in the OPEX model rather than investing upfront on the CAPEX. The Cloud Services available are Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Storage as a Service (STaaS). Some of the features of the National Cloud include self service portal, multiple Cloud solutions, secured VPN access and multi location Cloud. NIC is providing Cloud services under the umbrella of ‘MeghRaj’.
  
• Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on 4 February inaugurated the Children Science Congress of 101st Session of Indian Science Congress at the University of Jammu. The theme of the Children Science Congress was “Innovations in Science and Technology for Inclusive Development”. Addressing the occasion, Dr. Kalam said that there is an obvious need to harness the creativity of our children so as to move towards an impatient India. Many of the brilliant ideas have originated out of young minds to become reality. Visualizing the world, particularly India in the coming 15 to 25 years, he said that life will be transforming along unique systems namely smart waterways, advancement in space technology, harvesting solar energy from space and genetically modified suitable medicines; modified seeds with required food value needed for human system. Emphasizing the role of education system to foster innovation, he said that the teachings should be on the concept-based using knowledge and resources to teach ideas and deep understanding.