16 September 2015 Current Affairs in detail (1)

16 September 2015 (Current Affairs)

Contents 

• 1 Representatives of LMDCs assemble in India for preparatory talks ahead of Paris climate summit
• 2 Asiatic cheetah, tiger embryos cloned from frozen skin cells
• 3 Viruses found living in new born babies’ guts
• 4 World’s largest chain of volcanoes found in Australia
• 5 Anti-tank guided missile test-fired

Representatives of LMDCs assemble in India for preparatory talks ahead of Paris climate summit

In News:

• As the world continues to struggle to find a common ground on key issues ahead of the Paris climate summit, official representatives of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), including China, met to discuss how to push their joint negotiating stand during negotiations in the run up to the conference of parties (COP21).
• India is hosting the meeting of the LMDCs on Climate Change for the first time. Around 26 foreign delegates from 12 countries – including Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, China, Ecuador, El Salvador, Malaysia, Iran, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Venezuela – participated on the first day of the meeting.

What is COP21:

• COP21 is the climate change conference scheduled to take place in Paris in November and December 2015.
• The term ‘COP’ stands for Conference of Parties. ‘Parties’ is a reference to the (now) 196 signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, as it is called.

When did COPs start?

• The Framework Convention came into force in 1994, two years after its text was finalised at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
• Every year since 1994, the ‘parties’ to the UNFCCC have met at different venues at the end of the year to discuss a global agreement to cut emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main reason why average global temperatures have been rising.
• The Paris meeting will be the 21st in that series, hence the name ‘COP-21’.
• It was COP-3, in Kyoto, Japan, that gave rise to the Kyoto Protocol, that placed international obligations on the set of rich and industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by assigned amounts. The Kyoto Protocol, which came into effect only in 2005, has since run into trouble, with some countries, which were obliged to take emission cuts, having walked out of it. Though the Protocol continues on paper for the time being, the current negotiations at the COPs are about bringing in an agreement that will demand some kind of action from all countries, not just the rich and industrialised.
• An earlier attempt to forge such an agreement was made at COP-15 in Copenhagen in Denmark in 2009, but it failed spectacularly.

Like Minded Developing Countries:

• It is a group of developing countries who organise themselves as a block negotiators in international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, they represent more than 50% of the world’s population.
• the member countries of the Like Minded Group are Algeria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bhutan, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, The Philippines Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

News Source: TOI, Wiki, The Guardian

Asiatic cheetah, tiger embryos cloned from frozen skin cells

In News:

• Argentinian scientists have successfully produced embryos of endangered species such as Asiatic cheetah, tiger and Bengal cat using frozen skin cells, in order to preserve the planet’s biodiversity.
• The Buenos Aires zoo has a genetic data bank in which all of its species are preserved, both indigenous and exotic ones
• But the team of scientists has not been able to take the project past the embryonic stage as their agreement with the zoo mandates they must follow the ethical standards of the Latin American Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which only allows work on embryos.

What is Cloning?

• Cloning is the process by which genetically identical individuals are produced.
  
• Cloning happens in nature by the biological mechanisms of asexual reproduction in bacteria, insects and plants.
  
• Cloning can also be performed artificially by copying fragments of DNA (molecular cloning) or cells (cell cloning) or organisms.
  
• Mammals, which reproduce sexually, cannot clone naturally. Mammals inherit genetic material half each from both parents, meaning that the progeny is never an identical replica of the parent. Natural clones in mammals are confined to the production of identical twins.
• The first vertebrate to be cloned was a tadpole by Robert Briggs (USA) and Thomas King (USA) in 1952.

Cloning in animals

• Cloning of animals is based on a technique known as “somatic cell nuclear transfer”. Somatic means skin.
• Nuclear transfer involves fusing two cells together – a donor cell containing all its DNA, and egg cell with all its DNA removed.
• The two cells are fused with an electric pulse and the resulting enucleated egg is implanted in the mother.

Dolly the Sheep

• Dolly (sheep), was the first animal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell
• Dolly was born in 1996 and lived for six years
• The donor cell for Dolly was taken from a mammary gland.
• Production of a healthy clone proved that a cell from a specific part of the body could recreate a whole individual.

Cloning in plants

• Plants have been clone for a long time.
• Grafting is a form of plant cloning.
• Many horticulture plants are cloned, having been derived from a single individual.
• Examples of plant cloning include carrots, tobacco, potato, banana.

News Source: TOI, Wiki

Viruses found living in new born babies’ guts

In News:

• In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers found viruses living in the intestines of new born babies.
• Till now it was thought that only bacteria invade and colonize the baby’s gut after birth.
• This finding prompts the question—where do these viruses come from? We do not the answer yet.
• Researchers noted that some of the viruses they identified are known to infect cells of the human host, but others actually infect the bacteria.
• The kinds of viruses that infect bacteria, not human cells, were the most rich and diverse earliest in an infant’s life and then their numbers declined.
• Researchers also observed a relatively large diversity of a type of virus that infects human cells called anelloviruswhich appear to reflect a person’s immune status, with more viruses present when the immune system is weaker.

Difference between Virus & Bacteria:

• Bacteria are single-celled microorganisms that thrive in many different types of environments. Some varieties live in extremes of cold or heat. Others make their home in people’s intestines, where they help digest food. Most bacteria cause no harm to people, but there are exceptions.
• Viruses are even smaller than bacteria and require living hosts — such as people, plants or animals — to multiply. Otherwise, they can’t survive. When a virus enters your body, it invades some of your cells and takes over the cell machinery, redirecting it to produce the virus.

News Source: TOI, Wiki

World’s largest chain of volcanoes found in Australia

In News:

• The world’s longest chain of continental volcanoes created over the past 33 million years have been found in eastern Australia.
• The ancient volcanic chain is reportedly running from Cape Hillsborough on the central Queensland coast.

Geographical details:

• This volcanic chain was created over the past 33 million years, as Australia moved north-northeast over a mantle plume hotspot which scientists believe is now located in Bass Strait.
• This is nearly three times as long as the famous Yellowstone hotspot tracks on the North American continent.
• These volcanoes are named the Cosgrove hotspot track.
• Australia is actually the fastest moving continent on Earth, moving towards Indonesia at around seven centimetres per year.
• Researchers found the chain of now-extinct volcanoes in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria had all passed over the same fixed mantle plume hotspot as the Australian continental plate tracked north-northeast.

News Source: TOI, Wiki

Anti-tank guided missile test-fired

In News:

• Amogha-1, an indigenously-developed second generation, Anti-Tank Guided Missile having a range of 2.8 km, was successfully test-fired.
• This is the first-ever design and developmental effort in respect of missiles by Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad.
• Two missiles were fired and both have hit the target placed at 2.6 km and 2.8 km respectively.

News Source: The Hindu

16 September 2015 Current Affairs in detail (2)