Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

What : Trash Booms and Debris Booms are floating barriers design to block or exclude floating trash and debris on the water bodies. These booms are easy to deploy and generally used for demarcation of trash which helps in further processing of excavation of trash.

What was the news : Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is looking to install trash booms in  drains of Bengaluru.

Details :

• To handle the issue of stagnant waters in drains caused due to drains clogged with garbage that obstructs flow of water.
• A Germany-based social enterprise has come forward to install trash booms and trash blocks in 30 different locations in the Vrishabhavathi Valley free of cost.
• The civic body would check the efficacy of the low-tech solution before taking a call on implementing it across major choke points in the city’s stormwater drain network.
• The social enterprise, Plastic Fischer, is conducting a survey to identify 28 other locations in city for additional installations

What : Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay National Welfare Fund For Sportspersons (PDUNWFS) was set up in March, 1982 with a view to assisting outstanding Sportspersons of yesteryear, living in indigent circumstances who had brought glory to the Country in sports.

What was the news :

• The Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports (MYAS) has approved an amount of Rs 2 Lakh for Karnataka's V Tejaswini Bai, who won the Arjuna Award in 2011 and was a member of the Women’s Kabaddi team that won gold medals at the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games respectively.
• The financial assistance has been approved from the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay National Welfare Fund for the Sportspersons, under the ongoing jointly collaborated initiative from the Sports Authority of India, Indian Olympic Association and the MYAS to support ex-international athletes and coaches amid ongoing Covid-19.

Additional information :

SAI: The Sports Authority of India is the apex national sports body of India, established in 1982 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports of Government of India for the development of sport in India.

What is the news : Union Minister of Rural Development launched National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app and Area officer monitoring App recently

Details:

• The NMMS App permits taking real time attendance of workers at Mahatma Gandhi NREGS worksites along with geotagged photograph, which will increase citizen oversight of the programme besides potentially enabling processing payments faster.
• Area Officer Monitoring App facilitates them to record their findings online along with time stamped and go-coordinate tagged photograph for all the schemes of Dept of Rural Development- Mahatma Gandhi NREGS, PMAYG, PMGSY.
• This would also enable not only better record keeping of inspections by field and supervisory officials but also facilitate analysis of the findings for better programme implementation

News: Famous environment activist, Sunderlal bahuguna passed away

About SUNDERLAL BAHUGUNA

Mr. Bahuguna

• Was one of the founders of the Chipko, or hug the tree movement, in the 1970s to save Himalayan forests.
• Led the charge against the construction of big dams in the Himalayas in the 1980s.
• Was fervently opposed to the construction of the Tehri dam and sat on two long hunger strikes against the dam, which proved to be of no avail.
• Lived for decades in his Silyara ashram in Tehri Garhwal, inspired many young people by his passion for the environment. His ashram was open to young people, with whom he communicated with ease.
• Wrote about the problems of deforestation for years — drawing a link between the lack of tree cover and the drying up of springs in the Himalayas. He also led a movement of women’s groups, or mahila mandals, to enforce prohibition in Tehri Garhwal, which was then part of Uttar Pradesh.
• Dressed in khadi, sporting a flowing white beard and a jhola on his shoulder, he toured the length and breadth of India carrying his message of “save the Himalayas” to whoever would listen to him.
• Had considerable influence on Indira Gandhi & his 4,000 km Kashmir to Kohima padyatra in ‘81-‘82 to heighten public awareness, especially on forest protection, was a landmark. 

What is in news : The Reserve Bank of India’s board approved a significantly higher-than-expected surplus transfer to the government .The RBI announced a surplus transfer of ₹99,122 crore for the 9-month period from July 2020 to March 2021.

Details :

• The higher-than-expected dividend or surplus transfer to the government comes as the government is expecting a sharp sequential fall in tax collections due to the severe second wave of COVID-19 which has forced lockdowns in several States.
• This surplus likely reflects the central bank’s higher income from their open market operations as well as receipts from FX sales, with its transfer to the government’s coffers providing some cushion to the pandemic-driven shortfall in revenues

Additional information :

RBI Surplus Transfer: Why and How

RBI’s Earning:

• Returns earned on its foreign currency assets, which could be in the form of bonds and treasury bills of other central banks or top-rated securities, and deposits with other central banks.
• Interest on its holdings of local rupee-denominated government bonds or securities, and while lending to banks for very short tenures, such as overnight.
• Management commission on handling the borrowings of state governments and the central government.

RBI’s Expenditure: Printing of currency notes and on staff, besides the commission it gives to banks for undertaking transactions on behalf of the government across the country, and to primary dealers, including banks, for underwriting some of these borrowings.

Surplus Transfer:

• RBI transfers the surplus – that is, the excess of income over expenditure – to the government, in accordance with Section 47 (Allocation of Surplus Profits) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.
• A technical Committee of the RBI Board headed by Y H Malegam (2013), which reviewed the adequacy of reserves and surplus distribution policy, recommended a higher transfer to the government.

What was the news : The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recorded 119.3mm of rain in the capital on Wednesday, which is the highest-ever 24-hour mark for the month of May.

Reason : Convergence of Cyclone and Western disturbance

Details:

• Cyclone Tauktae, one of the strongest cyclones to have been recorded in the Arabian Sea, weakened and its remnants moved in the north-northeast direction from the Gujarat coast towards Delhi.
• Western Disturbance, which is a weather pattern associated with non-monsoon showers, was moving towards Delhi from the Western Himalayan Region.
• The convergence of these two phenomena caused widespread rain in the capital
• The fact that it happened in May, which is generally a dry month and has not recorded more than 27mm of rain in total since at least 2011 except in 2014 when it touched 100.2mm.
• The average amount of rainfall expected in May in the capital is 31.5mm
• It is also rare for a cyclone to make its impact felt in Delhi, and more so at the same time when a Western Disturbance is active.

What is WESTERN DISTURBANCE:

• It is an extratropical storm originating in the Mediterranean region that brings sudden winter rain to the north-western parts of the Indian sub-continent. It is a non-monsoonal precipitation pattern driven by the westerlies.
• Extratropical storms are a global phenomenon with moisture usually carried in the upper atmosphere, unlike their tropical counterparts where the moisture is carried in the lower atmosphere. In the case of the Indian subcontinent, moisture is sometimes shed as rain when the storm system encounters the Himalayas.
• Western Disturbance originates in the Mediterranean Sea as extra-tropical cyclones. A high-pressure area over Ukraine and neighbourhood consolidates, causing the intrusion of cold air from Polar Regions towards an area of relatively warmer air with high moisture. This generates favourable conditions for cyclogenesis in the upper atmosphere, which promotes the formation of an eastward-moving extratropical depression. They gradually travel across the middle-east from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to enter the Indian sub-continent.

Note : Please read about Cyclone Tauktae from previous articles

What is in news : ECMO requirements rise due to Covid-19

What is ECMO: They act as an artificial heart and pair of artificial lungs outside the body (thus ‘extracorporeal’), which removes carbon dioxide from the patient’s blood and adds oxygen to it

Details :

• Originally developed in the 1960s to support newborns and infants with respiratory distress syndrome and cardiac abnormalities, ECMO has been widely adapted for use in adults only over the last five years.
• The ECMO machine works by inserting a plastic tube into a large vein and/or artery through the neck, chest or groin of the patient. This tube allows the patient’s blood to flow out into an oxygenator, or artificial lung.
• The oxygenator adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from the blood, before a pump sends this blood back into the patient through a different tube, at the same frequency and force as that of the patient’s heart.

How does ECMO work for Covid-19 patients:

• In instances of COVID all five lobes of the lung are damaged, they can’t properly exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. As carbon dioxide levels in the body increase, so does the respiratory rate, as the brain tells the body to breathe more to rid itself of this carbon dioxide. However, since the lungs are damaged and are unable to so, this carbon dioxide remains in the blood, and turns it acidic.
• When a patient is brought into hospital to be put on ECMO support, a right ventricular support device (RVAD) and oxygenator within the ECMO machine are used. The RVAD is placed inside the patient through the tube that goes into the patient’s neck, down through the right atrium and right ventricle of the heart and into the pulmonary artery.
• This allows for blood to be taken out of the right atrium and sent to the ECMO machine. There, it’s filtered, temperature-modulated and oxygenated, and the carbon dioxide is removed. This blood then re-enters the body through a tube placed in the pulmonary artery.
• For Covid-19 patients, this accomplishes two things.

1. One, it takes the load off the right side of the heart, as it is essentially bypassed.
2. And two, by increasing the level of oxygen going into the lungs, it decreases pulmonary vascular resistance and reduces the pressure it takes to push blood through the lungs.

• ECMO has also been shown to successfully reduce the chances of a cytokine storm — in which the patient’s immune system turns on itself — which can cause a severe inflammatory response and multiple organ failure.
• What risks are involved in the ECMO procedure:
• A major complication that might arise is bleeding. Because of the blood thinning medication that patients need while on ECMO, they can start bleeding at different places in their body.
• Also, patients who are on ECMO sometimes do not get enough blood flow to their kidneys. This can cause their kidneys to stop working, a condition known as acute renal failure.
• Infection is a very real and major threat. Tubes from the ECMO machine go from outside the patient’s body directly into their bloodstream. This makes the patient extremely vulnerable to germs entering the body.

When : May 21 every year

Why : The main goal of the day is to promote sustainable production of tea and increase awareness in fighting poverty and hunger.

History :

The International Tea Day is being celebrated since 2005 in major tea producing countries of the world namely Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania. It aims to draw the attention of citizens, governments about the impact of global tea trade.

Intergovernmental Group on Tea

The Intergovernmental Group of Tea operating under Food and Agriculture Organization proposed the concept of International Tea Day in 2015.

Sustainable Development Goals

The tea production helps to achieve the following goals

• Goal 1: Reduce Poverty
• Goal 2: Fight Hunger
• Goal 5: Empowerment of Women
• Goal 15: Sustainable use of Terrestrial Ecosystems

Significance

• Tea Production is sensitive to climate changes. Tea can be produced only in agro-ecological conditions. There are very limited countries that produce tea.
• Therefore, the tea producing countries must integrate the climate challenges along with their tea production.

India

India is the second largest tea producing country after China. Also, India is the largest consumer of tea in the world. India consumes around 30% of global tea output.

Motto

The International Tea Day is celebrated on the motto, “Harnessing Benefits for all From Field to Cup”. This is not the theme of the day. This is the motto under which the day is celebrated every year.

What is Vaccine Tourism?

• Vaccine tourism is an emerging trend in countries where vaccines are in short supply, or where certain groups are still restricted from being inoculated.
• Though there is no official definition of vaccine tourism, as per reports any travel/trip taken with a goal to get vaccinated can be dubbed as vaccine tourism.
• Currently, it is not illegal to travel to a foreign country to get vaccinated if air travel is allowed. In January, Florida made it mandatory for those seeking a vaccine to produce a proof of local residency.
• On the other hand, the New York City recently announced a plan to use "vaccine tourism" to increase footfalls in the city, offering one shot jabs to all outsiders who are from the US.

What is Vaccine Passport?

Sometimes, vaccine tourism is confused with vaccine passport, which is a more regulated practice gaining currency around the world. Recently, Seychelles announced that only vaccinated visitors from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who have completed two weeks after their second dose are permitted to travel to and enter the island nation, with proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

• New York State has started "VAX AND SCRATCH" programme to incentivise people to take vaccine, on doing so they would get a lottery ticket.
• Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), a laboratory of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has developed an antibody detection-based kit 'DIPCOVAN', the DIPAS-VDx COVID-19 IgG Antibody Microwell ELISA for sero-surveillance.

WHAT IS A WAVE IN AN EPIDEMIC?

There is no textbook definition of what constitutes a wave in an epidemic. The term is used generically to describe the rising and declining trends of infections over a prolonged period of time. The growth curve resembles the shape of a wave. Historically, the term wave used to refer to the seasonality of the disease. Several viral infections are seasonal in nature, and they recur after fixed time intervals. Infections rise and then come down, only to rise again after some time