Short-term exposure to air pollution in India kills 33,000 people annually: Study

• Recently, a first-of-its kind multi-city analysis in India that studied the health effects of short-term exposure to air pollution published in the peer-reviewed Lancet Planet Health.
• The scientists analyzed pollution and death registry data from Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla, and Varanasi.

Findings of the Lancet Study

• The researchers looked at 3.6 million deaths between 2008 and 2019 across the sample areas, and overlapped them with a detailed map of the distribution of PM 2.5, a compound of cancer-causing pollutants so small they can penetrate the bloodstream.
• Rise in Death Trolls: The death toll from India’s air pollution is elevated even in cities previously thought to have relatively clean air, underscoring how the problem extends beyond megacities such as Delhi.
• It reinforces the message that there is no safe level of exposure to air pollution, even in highly polluted regions.
• Even in the Himalayan town of Shimla, which had the cleanest air among the cities studied, 3.7% of all deaths were pollution related.
• 11.5% of Delhi’s annual deaths are attributable to air pollution, and 4.8% in Bengaluru and had 30% more exposure to daily air pollution than the average Delhi resident.
• Threatening Particles Exposure: An exposure as short as 48 hours to high levels of the particles could worsen life expectancy at a collective level, with 7.2% of all fatalities linked to PM 2.5 concentrations above the World Health Organization standard of 15 micrograms per cubic meter.
• Daily deaths totalled across the 10 cities rose by 1.42% for every 10 μg/m3 increase in the average PM2.5 exposure over a two-day period.
• Risk of Mortality: It found a “much stronger link” between air pollution and mortality than the traditional approach of correlating annual air pollution readings with mortality.
• The risk of mortality rose more quickly at lower PM2.5 levels but became constant as levels increased.
• The mortality risk is very high (2.65%) even when analyzing days with PM2.5 levels below the current Indian national air quality standard of 60 μg/m3.
• Comparison with Global Level: The variation in mortality in different cities in India mirrors findings from similar studies in other countries.
• Example: A 272-city study in China reporting a 0·22% increase, per 10 μg/m³ increase in PM2·5. However, death rates were higher in Greece (2·54%), Japan (1·42%), and Spain (1·96%), which had lower base pollution levels.
• Use of Instrumental Variable Approach: Through this approach, researchers isolate the effect of locally generated air pollution since the used instruments are linked to dispersal and transport of air pollution.
• Instrumental Variable Approach: Researchers identified three weather-related parameters — planetary boundary layer height or mixing height; wind speed; and atmospheric pressure that are directly related to variations in daily air pollution, but are unrelated to daily deaths except through air pollution changes.

Conclusion

• The sharper mortality spike in cities with lower pollution loads than more polluted cities as an example of the ‘harvesting effect’, in epidemiology. This does not mean that risk is low at higher levels, it is just that the increase in risk slows down. There is a need to address dispersed local sources of air pollution in addition to traditional fixed and line sources.

Alaska’s glaciers near irreversible tipping point, study finds

• A new study suggests that the Juneau Icefield in Alaska could reach an irreversible tipping point sooner than predicted, with its glaciers rapidly receding since 2005.
• The Icefield: The Plateau icefield spans  the United States’ Alaska and Canada’s British Columbia and comprises 1,050 glaciers in 2019, covering an area of 3,816.3 square kilometers.

The Study

• Published In: The study was published in the journal, Nature Communications.
• Aim: To determine the rates of icefield-wide shrinkage and thinning to quantify glacier change from the Little Ice Age period (a period of widespread cooling that lasted from 1303 to 1850) to recent times till 2020.
• Scope: To extend the scope of study and examine even longer-term records of icefield change, especially through previous periods of rapid climate change, such as during the last glacial-interglacial transition 19,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Key Findings of the study

Alaska’s glaciers

• Alaska’s glaciers shrinkage is five times faster than in the mid-20th century, threatening global sea levels
• Icefield extent: The reconstructed Little Ice Age revealed that the icefield covered 5,414.95 square kilometres of land, about 30 per cent larger than in 2019.
• Disappearing glaciers: Between 1770 and 2019, 108 glaciers disappeared, and 100 per cent of the glaciers mapped in 2019 had receded compared to their Little Ice Age positions.
• Shrinkage rate: The study found that glacier shrinkage from 2015 to 2019 was five times faster than between 1948 and 1979.

Glacier volume loss:

1. 1770 to 2013: Glacier volume loss was 0.4 cubic kilometres per year.
2. 1948 –1979: Glacier volume loss increased to 1.0 cubic kilometres per year
3. 1979 – 2000: Glacier volume loss rose to 3.7 cubic kilometres per year
4. 2000 to 2010: Glacier volume loss rate witnessed a slight decrease to 3.1 cubic kilometres per year
5. 2010 to 2020: Glacier volume loss again increased two times to 5.9 cubic kilometres per year

• Temperatures rise: The temperature in the Alaskan region remained relatively stable from 1990 to 2005, as did icefield thinning and area loss. However, from 2010 to 2020, the region experienced another temperature rise which rose by 1.39°C at Juneau Airport from 1941 to 2020.
• Reason: The temperature rise is due to a shift to predominantly positive values in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from 1976 bringing increased precipitation and warmer temperatures to Alaska and Juneau.
• Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO): It is a long-term ocean fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean, which alternates between warm and cool phases approximately every 20 to 30 years.
• Contribution in global Sea level rise: With around 25 per cent of global glacier ice loss coming from Alaskan glaciers, The large icefields here contain enough glacial ice to raise global sea levels by 46.4 millimetres if melted.
• Ice loss: The Alaskan glaciers have lost about 66.7 billion tonnes of ice each year and at this rate, all Alaskan ice could disappear in about 250 years.

Reasons

• Plateau Icefields: Alaskan icefields are particularly vulnerable to increased melting due to its predominantly flat, plateau landscape of its icefields. Ice loss happens across the whole surface affecting a much greater area as the climate warms.
• Rising Equilibrium Line Altitude: One significant factor in glacier volume loss is the rising Equilibrium Line Altitude.  The melt is now occurring on the plateau itself, the snowline is on the plateau itself in particularly warm summers (The flat plateau area was previously above the ELA, with snow remaining year-round)
• Because the plateau is very flat, a small rise in the ELA exposes a much greater area to melt, accelerating icefield mass loss.
• Equilibrium Line Altitude is the zone on a glacier where snow and ice accumulation balance out with loss over a year. As summers lengthen and winters shorten, and temperatures rise, the height at which snow remains all year round is increasing.

Several high-street banks have either stopped or slowed down opening sole proprietorship and individual current accounts of firms that are less than a year old amid suspicion that they could be ''money mules'' for laundering and digital frauds.

Money Mule:

• A money mule is someone who transfers or moves illegally acquired money on behalf of someone else.
• Criminals recruit money mules to help launder proceeds derived from online scams and frauds or crimes like human trafficking and drug trafficking.
• Money mules add layers of distance between crime victims and criminals, which makes it harder for law enforcement to accurately trace money trails.
• Money mules can move funds in various ways, including through bank accounts, cashier’s checks, virtual currency, prepaid debit cards, or money service businesses.
• Criminals will often use fake job adverts, or create social media posts about opportunities to make money quickly, in order to recruit potential money mules.
• Some money mules know they are supporting criminal enterprises; others are unaware that they are helping criminals’ profit.
• Money mules often receive a commission for their service, or they might provide assistance because they believe they have a trusting relationship with the individual who is asking for help.
• When such frauds are reported, the money mule becomes the target of police investigations.
• Even if money mules are not directly involved in the crimes that generate the money, they are accomplices, as they launder the proceeds of such crimes.

Using artificial intelligence, researchers have found potential cancer drivers hidden in so-called ''junk'' regions of DNA.

Junk DNA:

• In genetics, the term junk DNA refers to regions of DNA that are noncoding.
• DNA contains instructions (coding) that are used to create proteins in the cell.
• However, the amount of DNA contained inside each cell is vast, and not all of the genetic sequences present within a DNA molecule actually code for a protein.
• Some of this noncoding DNA is used to produce non-coding RNA components such as transfer RNA, regulatory RNA and ribosomal RNA.
• However, other DNA regions are not transcribed into proteins, nor are they used to produce RNA molecules, and their function is unknown. These are known as junk regions of DNA.
• The proportion of coding versus noncoding DNA varies significantly between species.
• In the human genome, for example, almost all (98%) of the DNA is noncoding, while in bacteria, only 2% of the genetic material does not code for anything.
• However, over the years, researchers have found evidence to suggest that junk DNA may provide some form of functional activity.
• Some lines of evidence suggest that fragments of what were originally non-functional DNA have undergone the process of exaptation throughout evolution.
• Exaptation refers to the acquisition of a function through means other than natural selection.