Latest News
4th May 2021
R21/Matrix M: Malaria Vaccine Candidate
Recently, a malaria vaccine candidate ‘R21/Matrix M’ has shown promise in phase 2b clinical trials, with high efficacy at 77%.
SpaceX Nighttime Splashdown
Recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX marked the successful completion of its Crew-1 mission for NASA after landing after successfully landing in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
Recently, a malaria vaccine candidate ‘R21/Matrix M’ has shown promise in phase 2b clinical trials, with high efficacy at 77%.
- The previous version ‘RTS-S’ is a vaccine candidate against malaria that has been in development for more than 30 years.
- It is being developed by Walter Reed Institute of Research, GlaxoSmithKline and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
- It is designed to stop the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite from entering the liver and preventing the subsequent deadly blood stages.
- It targets the liver stage protein of the Plasmodium falciparum life cycle.
- The RTS-S is the first, and to date the only, vaccine to reduce malaria in children.
- The new vaccine candidate, called R21/Matrix M, is a modified version of RTS-S.
- It has been developed by scientists at University of Oxford, the same location where the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was developed.
- It was the first to reach WHO’s goal of at least 75% efficacy.
SpaceX Nighttime Splashdown
Recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX marked the successful completion of its Crew-1 mission for NASA after landing after successfully landing in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
- In May 2020, NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 test flight lifted off for the ISS carrying two astronauts and splashed down on the Gulf of Mexico.
- The aim of this test flight was to see if SpaceX capsules could be used on a regular basis to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.
- The Crew-1 was launched in November as the first of six crewed missions between NASA and SpaceX after the success of Demo-2.
- The Crew-1 team members joined members of Expedition 64 and conducted microgravity studies at the ISS.
- The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
- The objective of Commercial Crew Program is to make access to space easier in terms of its cost, so that cargo and crew can be easily transported to and from the ISS.
- It was the first operational flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS.
- The goals of the mission are the same as that of Expedition 1 that lifted off 20 years ago.
- The mission aims to deliver new science hardware and experiments that they will carry with them to space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
- An experiment aboard the Crew Dragon is a student-designed experiment titled, "Genes in Space-7" that aims to understand how spaceflight affects brain function.
- The mission will enable scientists to understand the physical interactions of liquid, rocks and microorganisms, experiment on the role of microgravity on human health etc.
- The last US mission to land astronauts to land on water in the dark was the historic Apollo 8.
- It was the first human spaceflight to reach and orbit the Moon in 1968.
- The spacecraft spent six days in space before splashing into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii before dawn.
- The advantage of landing in dark is avoiding disturbance from private boats, a safety risk.
- It is an ancient popular traditional folk theatrical performance of Assam.
- The string puppetry of Assam is called Putola Nach and is performed in three areas with distinct characteristics.
- The Putola Nach is also called Putola bhaona due to its ancient link (16th century)with bhaona theatre.
- These areas were Barpeta-Nalbari in western Assam, Kalaigaon in northern Assamand Majuli “island” in eastern Assam.
- In Lower Assam, the form is known as Putala-Bhoariya and influenced by the popular folk form Bhoariya.
- In Kalaigaon of Darrang district, the puppeteers use Bangla, Assamese and Karbi songs in their performances and borrow largely from the mobile theatre of Assam (Bhraymaman).
- It is seen that the puppets of different areas of Assam are divided into khel-dhemalir Putola (playfull puppets), dhormo khongkrantiyo Putola (religious puppets) and nrittor Putola (dancing puppets) etc.
- The scholar critics pull the history of Putola Naach (puppetry) to the society of the Stone Age people of pre-historic era.
- It mentioned in the manuscript of Kothagurucharitra that on the twenty second day after the birth of Sankardev, his father Kusumbor Bhuya arranged Saya Putola performance.
- It was launched at the Paris One Planet Summit on December 2017.
- It is a group of central banks and supervisors willing to share best practices and contribute to the development of environment and climate risk management in the financial sector.
- The Network defines and promotes best practices to be implemented within and outside of the Membership of the NGFS and conducts or commissions analytical work on green finance.
- Its aims to analyse the consequences of climate change for the financial system and redirect global financial flows in order to enable low-carbon economic growth.
- The RBI expects to benefit from the membership of NGFS by learning from and contributing to global efforts on green finance.
- The NGFS’s purpose is to help strengthening the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.
- The NGFS aims to enhance the role of the financial system to manage risks and to mobilize capital for green and low-carbon investments.
- Ether, the token transacted on the ethereum blockchain, rose 3% on the Bitstamp exchange to $3,144.81.
- It reflects improvements to the ethereum blockchain and a growing shift towards decentralised finance (DeFi).
- The DeFi refers to transactions outside traditional banking for which the ethereum blockchain is a crucial platform.
- The launch of ether exchange-traded funds in Canada and surging demand for ether wallets to transact non-fungible tokens such as digital art have also pushed up the price.
- The surging DeFi volumes continue to push ethereum prices higher as investors gain confidence in crypto and see ethereum as a safe second-place asset.
- Ethereum is the community-run technology powering the cryptocurrency, ether (ETH) and thousands of decentralized applications.
- It is open access to digital money and data-friendly services for everyone.
- It's the world's programmable blockchain.
- It enables Smart Contracts and Distributed Applications (DApps) to be built and run without any downtime, fraud, control, or interference from a third party.
- Ethereum is the name of the network or underlying blockchain technology which acts more as a platform that developers can build apps on.
- The transactions on the Ethereum network may contain executable code, while data affixed to Bitcoin network transactions are generally only for keeping notes.
- The Bitcoin and Ethereum networks are different with respect to their overall aims.
- The Bitcoin was created as an alternative to national currencies and thus aspires to be a medium of exchange and a store of value.
- The Ethereum was intended as a platform to facilitate immutable, programmatic contracts, and applications via its own currency.
- The primary purpose of ether is not to establish itself as an alternative monetary system, but rather to facilitate and monetize the operation of the Ethereum smart contract and decentralized application (dapp) platform.
POSTED ON 04-05-2021 BY ADMIN
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General Studies
Political Science and International Relations
Some Reference Essays
List of previous year essay topics (1997-2019)
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