Today’s GS BYTE : Current Affairs News (Hindi)

 

New Chief Election Commissioner

Om Prakash Rawat has been appointed as the new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), succeeding incumbent Achal Kumar Jyoti to the post, the Law Ministry said on 21 January 2018. AK Joti is expected to hand over the reigns of the Election Commission to Rawat on January 23.

 

What

1. Rawat, in adherence to the rule,  has been appointed as the 22nd CECby President Ram Nath Kovind on the recommendation of central government. Also, former finance secretary Ashok Lawasa has been appointed as election commissioner.
2. As the commission consists of two commissioners besides the CEC, Sunil Arora is the second election commissioner along with Lawasa.
3. Rawat is a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre (Batch 1977).
4. Prior to his appointment as Election Commissioner of India, Rawat had retired as Secretary to the Govt. of India, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Department of Public Enterprises on December 31, 2013 on superannuation.’
5. In 1993, in his first stint at Centre, Rawat served as Director/Joint Secretary in the Defence Ministry. During this tenure, he was deputed to South Africa in May, 1994 as United Nations election observer to oversee maiden elections in the country post-apartheid.

 

News

India’s automated ocean pollution system

India is all set to have its own automated ocean pollution observation system this year which will help keep a tab on ocean pollution levels apart from offering insights on how the marine system is changing, a top scientist has said. According S S C Shenoi, director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), the system will become functional by April this year and the cost of the project is estimated to be at Rs 100 crore.

What

1. INCOIS is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Earth Sciences. The new ocean data acquisition system, called automated moorings, will do away with the present practice of collecting water samples from sea and studying their pollution levels thereafter.
2. This is for the first time India will have such kind of system. In the US you will find it. This is a very effective system in getting the data about the ocean pollution. We will use those data to understand the quality of water.
3. The new system will be foolproof. The project will begin from April once it gets a final nod from the government, it will help in monitoring the pollution level of the ocean waterand the impact of climate change.
4. There are reports that the water is becoming anoxicand it could change the marine sytem. These are suspicions and there is nothing concrete. So, this will give us a clear picture of what actually is happening and help us in the long run to take up preventive measures.
5. Anoxic waters are areas of sea waterthat are depleted of dissolved oxygen. It will also provide data that will help scientists to understand how the marine system is changing. The moored ocean buoys will be placed in coastal areas of Digha (West Bengal), Goa, Mumbai, Kochi, Vishakapatanam and Chennai

News

Indigenous malaria vaccine failed

An indigenous malaria vaccine the first and the only one to be transferred to the industry for clinical trial – has failed, prolonging the wait for a life-saving shot against the mosquito-borne disease.

Developed by researchers at Delhi-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the vaccine was transferred to Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech in May 2010 with much fanfare for the clinical trial. But since the vaccine performed poorly in the phase-1 clinical trial on 45 healthy volunteers, it was decided not to proceed further with the malaria vaccine, named Jaivac-1. Created by ICGEB scientist Chetan Chitnis and his colleague V S Chauhan with their team membersafter two decades of research, Jaivac-1 was developed against the killer malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. It was found safe in animal studies.

 

What

1. The vaccine comprises two proteins. The trial results showed one of the proteins didn’t work whereas the other did. But since the clinical vaccine was a combination of both, it couldn’t be taken to the next step because of its poor performance.
2. The phase-I clinical trial showed while one protein (name: PfEBA175-PfF2) produced immune responseand elicited growth inhibitory antibodies, the second protein (PfMSP1-19) was poorly immunogenic.
3. It was, therefore, decided not to proceed further with clinical development of Jaivac-1,” Chitnis, who now works at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
4. The open-ended conventional trial-and-error vaccine development efforts are always subject to this worry. Such efforts need to be accompanied by major efforts to gain mechanistic understanding so that they can become less trial-and-error. Chitnis’s team received nearly Rs 12 crore research funding for the malaria vaccine.
5. After the failure, ICGEB researchers tweaked Jaivac-1 by modifying the non-responsive proteinwith the addition of another protein (a peptide).
6. Named Jaivac-2, the tweaked vaccine was transferred to Zydus Cadila for producing the vaccine for toxicology studies and Phase I Clinical Trials.
7. Toxicology study was completed and an investigational new drug application is currently being submittedto the Drugs Controller General of India for permission to conduct a Phase I trial.
8. Outside the African continent, India is the only nation in the world where malaria continues to be a public health problem. Majority of the malaria cases in India are the deadly ones caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum.