Jalpaiguri disaster: Tornadoes a symptom of warming & anomalous wind patterns

About Tornado:

• It is a land-based vertical column of violently rotating air that forms from a thunderstorm to the ground. It can have wind speeds in the range of 105-322 km/h. The tornado over the sea is called waterspouts.
• The rotating column is physically connected to the cloud base or wall cloud and is often visible as a cloud-filled "condensation funnel". If the air is dry enough, the tornado may only appear as a swirl of dirt on the ground without a visible connection to the cloud above.
• Formation: Any collision of warm, moist air with dry, cool air in the presence of a low pressure system like a trough causes thunderstorms and tornadoes.
• Geographical distribution:
• It occurs most commonly on continents in the mid-latitudes (between 20 and 60 degrees north and south), where they are frequently associated with thunderstorms that develop in regions where cold polar air meets warm tropical air.
• They are the most common in the United States, Argentina and Bangladesh.
• The Enhanced Fujita scale is used to measure tornado strength. It is used to assign tornado a ''rating'' based on estimated wind speeds and related damage.

Mother of Dragons comet visible in the skies. All you need to know

About Mother of Dragons comet:

• It is officially known as Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. It is a ‘Halley-type’ comet with an orbital period of roughly 71 years and a nucleus approximately 30 km wide.
• Composition: It is composed of ice, dust and rocky material. When it approaches the Sun, heat causes the ice inside the comet to turn from solid to gas.
• It is classified as a Jupiter-family comet, meaning its orbit is influenced by Jupiter''s gravitational pull.
• It typically reaches perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) around the orbit of Mars and can become visible to observers on Earth during its close approach. Its closest approach to Earth will occur in June 2024.

Key facts about Comets:

• Comets are ancient cosmic icebergs. They are roughly 4.6 billion years old and formed at the same time as the Sun, Earth and the other planets.
• They are made of dust and ice, which partly goes from solid to gas when the comet is warmed by the Sun.

Punnett square: A genetics puzzle

About Punnett square:

• It is named after British geneticist Reginald Punnett.
• How does it work?
• Along the top and side of the grid, the possible genetic traits of one parent on one side and the other parent on the other side is listed.
• Then, you fill in the squares by combining the traits from each parent. Each square effectively represents a possible combination of traits that their offspring could inherit.
• It’s a simple way to visualise the probabilities of different traits showing up in the offspring.
• Applications:
• They are commonly used in biology to understand inheritance patterns, like when you learn about dominant and recessive genes in school.
• It is a useful tool that helps predict the variations and probabilities resulting from cross-breeding.
• It can also be used to understand the genetic traits in the offspring of animals, including humans.
• Researchers typically use them together with Mendelian inheritance.

Swell waves inundate coastal areas in southern, central Kerala

About Swell waves:

• A swell is the formation of long wavelength waves on the surface of the seas. These are composed of a series of surface gravity waves.
• Formation:
• They occur not due to the local winds, but rather due to distant storms like hurricanes or even long periods of fierce gale winds.
• During such storms, huge energy transfer takes place from the air into the water, leading to the formation of very high waves.
• Features:
• Swells have a narrower range of frequencies and directions than locally generated wind waves, because swell waves have dispersed from their generation area, taking on a more defined shape and direction.
• These waves can propagate in directions that differ from the direction of the wind, in contrast to a wind sea.
• Their wavelengths may rarely exceed more than 150 m. Occasionally, swells which are longer than 700 m occur as a result of the most severe storms.
• It occurs without precursors or any kind of local wind activity and as a result.
• In India early warning systems like the Swell Surge Forecast System launched by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in 2020 — gives forewaring seven days in advance.

Bengaluru’s C-CAMP develops platform for studying single cells cost-effectively

About OptiDrop Platform:

• It is an innovative microfluidic chip-based platform that simplifies and reduces the cost of studying single cells. It employs a novel approach that enables precise and cost-effective analysis of single cells encapsulated in droplets.
• The platform’s unique features include live data visualisation, a smaller data footprint, and a ‘closed’ system design that prevents external contamination.
• This research was supported by the Biotechnology Industry Research Council (BIRAC), the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
• Applications:
• This cutting-edge technology has potential applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, agriculture and animal health.
• It helps in studying the impact on individual cells during a drug screen, environment control (water contamination counter), detection and sorting of CAR-T cells in immuno-oncotherapeutics, selection of CRISPR-modified single cells and selection of high-efficiency clones in single-cell genomics

What is C-CAMP?

• It is an initiative supported by the Department of Biotechnology and has been a catalyst of cutting-edge research and innovation in the life sciences since 2009.
• It is mandated to promote entrepreneurship and innovation. It has created and fostered an entrepreneur-friendly culture in and around the Academic/Research environment through its involvement in Seed Funding Schemes for Startups.