india participates in Mission Innovation and Clean Energy Ministerial on 1st and 2nd June, 2016 in San Francisco, USA.

india participates in Mission Innovation and Clean Energy Ministerial on 1st and 2nd June, 2016 in San Francisco, USA.

Indian delegation led by Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences , Dr. Harsh Vardhan

World’s Energy Leaders to gather in San Francisco for the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial and Inaugural Mission Innovation Ministerial on June 1-2,2016. Energy Ministers from Nations with 90% of Clean Energy Investments and 75% of GHG Emissions to Focus on Advancing Clean Energy Cooperation and Implementing PRIS Agreement Commitments.

The Indian delegation led by Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister Science & Technology and Earth Sciences will be participating in the Mission Innovation and Clean Energy Ministerial along with Senior Officials from the Ministry of Science & Technology, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Ministry of Power.

1. Mission Innovation

i. MI was announced on November 30, 2015 by the leaders of 20 countries that have a shared desire to accelerate global clean energy innovation during COPE 21 in Paris in the presence of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The ‘Mission Innovation’ (MI) is an effort to accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation, including through participating countries doubling their respective clean energy research and development investment.

ii. There is a concerted effort to enhance the pace of innovation and scale of transformation through this clean energy revolution launch to meet the requirement for economic, energy security goals in timely manner.

iii. India is Founding Member of the Steering Committee and also a Member of the two sub-groups: Joint research and Capacity Building and Private Sector Engagement.

iv. During the meeting, India will be announcing its current investment and doubling Plan in Clean Energy Research. Formal announcement on new Joint collaborations with Mission Innovation Countries will also be made by the Minister.

2. Clean Energy

i. The Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is a high-level global forum to share lessons learnt and best practices, and to encourage the transition to a global clean energy economy. Initiatives are based on areas of common interest among participating

Governments and other stakeholders. The CEM is the initiative of the USA. Presently, 23 countries are members of CEM. There are 13 initiatives under CEM covering energy efficiency, clean energy supply and cross cutting areas.

ii. Since its launch in 2010, the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) has come a long way. Its various initiatives were instrumental in leading significant collaborative work amongst members in context of clean energy supply, demand side management and relevant cross cutting issues.

iii. During the 7th Clean Energy Ministerial the Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences will also launch the Global Cooling Challenge.

An unsavoury fact: India tops global slavery index

An unsavoury fact: India tops global slavery index

The report, however, says the country has made significant progress in introducing measures to tackle the problem

India has the dubious distinction of having the highest number of people in the world trapped in modern slavery with 18.35 million victims of forced labour, ranging from prostitution and begging, according to a new report, which estimated that nearly 46 million people are enslaved globally.

According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, released by Australia-based human rights group Walk Free Foundation on Tuesday, an estimated 45.8 million people, including women and children, are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world, compared to 35.8 million in 2014.

The report said India has the highest absolute numbers of people trapped in slavery with 18.35 million slaves among its 1.3 billion population, while North Korea has the highest incidence (4.37 per cent of the population) and the weakest government response to deal with it.

Five countries account for 58% of the world’s enslaved

Incidences of slavery were found in all 167 countries in the index, with Asian countries occupying the top five places.

China (3.39 million), Pakistan (2.13 million), Bangladesh (1.53 million) and Uzbekistan (1.23 million) were behind India in the list. The index said that these five countries combined accounted for almost 58 per cent of the world’s enslaved, or 26.6 million people.

Modern slavery refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot leave because of threats, violence, coercion and abuse of power or deception.

The research included over 42,000 interviews conducted in 53 languages across 25 countries, including 15 State-level surveys in India. These representative surveys covered 44 per cent of the global population.

The countries with the highest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, Cambodia, India, and Qatar.

The countries with the lowest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Belgium, the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Govt. actions and responses

The study also tracked the government actions and responses to the modern slavery and of the 161 assessed, 124 nations had criminalised human trafficking in line with the U.N. trafficking Protocol and 96 nations had developed national action plans to coordinate government response.

It noted that while India had more people enslaved than any other country, it had made significant progress in introducing measures to tackle the problem.

“It has criminalised trafficking, slavery, forced labour, child prostitution and forced marriage. The Indian government is currently tightening legislation against human trafficking, with tougher punishment for repeat offenders. It will offer victims protection and recovery support,” it said.

Those governments taking the least action to combat modern slavery are North Korea, Iran, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Hong Kong, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.

A team from IISc. reported finding an anti-cancer compound in the tree

A team from IISc. reported finding an anti-cancer compound in the tree

Fungus to treat a dreadful disease like cancer? It is possible. Research over the years has thrown up surprises that nature has in store, one of the most remarkable being Paclitaxel (marketed as Taxol), a chemical compound from the bark of a Pacific Yew tree (Taxus brevifolia). But the difficulty in extracting the compound as well as concerns over the entire tree being cut for the purpose pushed scientists to look for alternatives.

Closer home, a team from the biochemistry lab at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has been working on identification and extraction of natural compounds of pharmaceutical value found in well-known medicinal plants and their endophytic fungi for over a decade. At first, they stumbled upon Taxol-producing endophytic fungus growing from the aseptic cuttings of the Chinese yew shrub. The team recently reported finding an anti-cancer compound (Cholestanol glucoside), isolated from an endophytic fungus in the Ashoka tree (Saraca asoca).

The potential

“The fungus has to be isolated from the plant, algae or the source. We culture the fungus and see if it has anti-cancer properties before fermenting it,” explained C. Jayabaskaran, Professor, Department of Biochemistry, IISc. The compound produced by the fungus has to be purified and undergo pre-clinical and clinical tests.

Though available in several plants and trees, Prof. Jayabaskaran said they have to be approved by the FDA. Different kinds of fungus are said to treat different types of cancer.

UPSC panel wants govt to reduce age limit for civil services exam 

 

 

A Union Public Service Commission-appointed committee is set to tell the government to reduce the upper age-limit for appearing in the examination to get into premier civil services such as the IAS and IPS.
The UPSC appointed the panel headed by former education secretary BS Baswan last August as part of an initiative by the Narendra Modi government to overhaul the civil services examination.
The government had promised to review the examination after a string of protests in 2015 against a civil service aptitude test introduced by the previous Manmohan Singh-led government in the preliminary exam.
“We feel that the entry age is on the higher side. At the same time, we realise that candidates should not be put to any unforeseen hardship. Therefore, we would prepare a road map which will give all candidates sufficient time to adapt to the new system,” Baswan said.
Over the decades, the upper age-limit for candidates from general categories has gone up from 24 years in the 1960s to 32 years for the 2014 exam.
The upper age is relaxed by five years for candidates from the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes while those from the other backward classes get a three-year relaxation. Disabled candidates get an additional 10-year cut.
Read | UPSC issues notification for civil services, IFS exams 2016
In 2012 and 2013, the proportion of successful candidates well past their 30th birthday was in the range of 6 to 11%.
A 43-year-old “grandfather”, a disabled from the scheduled caste community who had applied for age relaxation on both counts, could be the face of the panel’s argument for lowering the age in its report. Sources said the panel was trying to locate the candidate to make its point.

Baswan refused comment, saying he would let the report do the talking.
A senior government official informed that a call on the recommendation would be taken once the panel submitted its report. He, however, said the panel — which has time till August to give its report —had sounded them out about its conclusion; that reducing the entry age for candidates had to be at the heart of any exam reforms.
“I can only say that the government is very clear in its mind that it will not spring a surprise on the candidates,” the official said, referring to the previous UPA government’s last-minute decisions to change exam’s format.
It was in this context that the Baswan panel had been told to not only recommend changes but also spell out a reasonable time frame for implementation of its recommendations.
Government officials and training academies tasked to prepare successful candidates for a career in civil services have been pushing for lowering of the entry age. A common argument is that the civil servants found it difficult to adapt and internalise the core values demanded of the civil services once they were past their thirties.
But it will not be an easy decision for the government.
There have been several attempts in the past to explore the possibility of reducing the upper age. Former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had supported the proposal but had to back out after loud protests from politicians, insisting that it put rural candidates at a disadvantage.
The UPA government had even accepted the second administrative reforms commission recommendation to lower the upper limit to 26 years for general candidates. But the government ended up raising the age limit by two years, months before the 2014 general elections.
Nearly 460,000 candidates appeared for the three-stage UPSC examination in 2015, hoping to join the administrative services that continue to remain the “dream job” for many. Less than one in 400 of them made it.

‘Nightmare superbug’ found in the U.S

 

Is the discovery of a potentially serious bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort the nightmare scenario doctors have long been warning us about?

Military researchers in the United States have identified the first patient, in the U.S., to be infected with bacteria that are resistant to an antibiotic that was the last resort against drug-resistant germs.

The patient is well now, but the case raises the spectre of superbugs that could cause untreatable infections, because the bacteria can easily transmit their resistance to other germs that are already resistant to additional antibiotics. The resistance can spread because it arises from loose genetic material that bacteria typically share with one another.

“Think of a puzzle,” said Dr. Beth Bell, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “You need lots of different pieces to get a result that is resistant to everything. This is the last piece of that puzzle, unfortunately, in the United States. We have that genetic element that would allow for bacteria that are resistant to every antibiotic.”

Colistin resistant

The bacteria are resistant to a drug called colistin, an old antibiotic that in the U.S. is held in reserve to treat especially dangerous infections that are resistant to a class of drugs called carbapenems. If carbapenem-resistant bacteria, called CRE, also pick up resistance to colistin, they will be unstoppable.

“This is huge,” said Dr. Lance Price, a researcher at George Washington University. “We are one step away from CRE strains that cannot be treated with antibiotics. We now have all the pieces in place for it to be untreatable.”

The gene for resistance to colistin was first found in China, where the drug is used in pig and poultry farming. Researchers reported its discovery there in November. It has also been found in the intestine of one pig in the U.S. CRE is still relatively rare, causing just 600 deaths a year, but by 2013, researchers had identified it in health care facilities in 44 states. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, often calls it the “nightmare superbug,” because it is resistant to all but one antibiotic — colistin.

“We risk being in a post-antiobitic world,” he said during a gathering for journalists in Washington on Thursday. “That wouldn’t just be urinary tract infections or pneumonia — that could be for the 6,00,000 patients a year who need cancer treatment.”

He added: “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients.”

The colistin resistance in the U.S. came to light when a 49-year-old woman, who Dr. Bell said was “connected to the military”, was treated for a urinary infection at a military clinic in Pennsylvania. Because her urine culture had unusual results, the sample was sent to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which identified the drug resistance. The bacteria, though resistant to colistin and some other antibiotics, were not resistant to carbapenems. Doctors there published a report on the case in a medical journal.

Patrick McGann, a scientist at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and lead author of the paper, said researchers had only started analysing samples a few weeks ago. They tested samples from six patients, and one of them was the woman’s.

Dr. Bell said researchers did not know how the patient contracted the resistant bacteria. The microbes have been found in people in Asia and Europe, but the patient had not travelled during the past five months. It is possible that she contracted the bacteria from food, or from contact with someone else who was infected, she said.

Public health workers will interview the woman and will probably test her family members and other close contacts for the bacteria, Dr. Bell said.

Infectious disease doctors have long warned that overuse of antibiotics in people and in animals put human health at risk by reducing the power of the drugs, some of modern medicine’s most prized jewels. About two million Americans fall ill from antibiotic-resistant bacteria every year and at least 23,000 die from those infections. The Obama administration has elevated the issue, laying out a strategy for how to bring the problem under control. CRE germs usually strike people receiving medical care in hospitals or nursing homes, including patients on breathing machines or dependent on catheters. Healthy people are rarely, if ever, affected. But the bugs attack broadly, and the infections they cause are not limited to people with severely compromised immune systems. CRE was believed to be the cause of infections from improperly cleaned medical scopes that led to the death of two people at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California last year.

The Department of Defense, in a blog post about the discovery of the gene in the United States, said it gives “a new clue into the antibiotic resistance landscape.”

But the gene is rare: The blog pointed out that federal health researchers had searched for the gene in 44,000 samples of Salmonella and 9,000 samples of E. coli/Shigella, taken from people and retail meat, and did not find it. — New York Times News Service

 

A big boost for public health

Unlike polio and smallpox, the risk of maternal and neonatal tetanus will always exist. Tetanus spores are always a part of the environment. Thus ‘elimination’ must be seen as an enduring pursuit.

Maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT) is no longer a major public health problem in the World Health Organisation (WHO) South-East Asia region. The WHO South-East Asia Region has eliminated MNT as a major public health problem.As immunisation coverage and access to maternal and newborn health care has increased, the number of mothers and newborns suffering agonising deaths on account of the disease has declined to below one in every 1,000 live births at the district level. This is a major achievement.

In 1989, when the fight against neonatal tetanus (and, consequently, maternal tetanus) began, tetanus toxins were claiming the lives of approximately 7,87,000 newborns across the world. Unhygienic conditions during delivery and inadequate umbilical cord care saw to it that these toxins could infect mother and child, causing muscle spasms, lockjaw, and often death.

With recent elimination successes in India and Indonesia, the South-East Asia region has reached a milestone.

Though elimination took longer than expected, it is a victory that must be savoured. At the same time, however, it is a victory that is by no means final.

Unlike the situation with diseases such as polio and smallpox, the risk of MNT will always exist. Tetanus spores are always a permanent part of the environment, meaning public health setbacks could once again compromise mothers and their newborns. In relation to MNT, “elimination” must be seen as an enduring pursuit.

Strengthening measures that facilitated elimination in the first instance can best guarantee the ongoing safety of mothers and their newborns.

Innovative strategies

Sustaining and enhancing access to quality maternal and newborn health care is critical. By providing expectant mothers the ability to access quality antenatal and safe-birthing services, health systems throughout the region diminish the risk of tetanus infection, as well as other potentially lethal complications. Though countries in the region have made important gains have been made in the region, the momentum must be accelerated. There must be innovative strategies deployed to reach those ‘unreached’, such as increased training of skilled birth attendants at community-level facilities, or providing cash transfers to every mother who has an institutional delivery, for example.

Immunisation coverage must be maintained and enhanced. Expectant mothers must receive the necessary tetanus toxoid vaccine, or combination vaccine, as a matter of priority and at the appropriate stages of pregnancy.

As Indonesia’s campaign to vaccinate brides-to-be demonstrates that positive initiatives need not be confined to the pregnancy or neonatal periods. Just as newborns receive tetanus immunisations as part of their routine immunisation schedule, children must receive booster doses as and when appropriate. A good place for this to happen is at school. Despite the region’s newly validated status, health authorities must ensure that preventing maternal and neonatal tetanus remains prominent on the list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and that opportunities to immunise against tetanus are grasped.

Effective engagement with communities is essential. Communities that have difficulties accessing care or which lack experience doing so must be further encouraged to avail themselves of the benefits maternal and newborn health care brings. Messages related to tetanus immunisation and safe-birthing must remain integrated with other outreach activities, and disseminated among the most vulnerable. Harmful traditional practices should be discouraged, while at the same time continuing to build relationships that promote trust, respect and inclusiveness.

A positive experience with health care providers can have far-ranging effect, not only for an individual but also a community.

Tracking progress

A robust and effective surveillance system is vital to tracking progress in these key areas. After all, the failure of any one of them can mean the death of a mother or newborn through tetanus infection. By closely monitoring incidences ofMNT, authorities can evaluate the impact of their efforts, and, if found lacking, better calibrate them in future. In-depth knowledge of the causes of every case of maternal or neonatal tetanus, combined with a resolve to ensure it is not repeated, can be the only appropriate response. However great the recent achievement is, it remains unacceptable that any woman or child should suffer the devastating disease.

Along with conducting routine vaccine-preventable disease surveillance, WHO is committed to realising the unfinished Millennium Development Goal agenda as it relates to maternal and newborn health, which will in turn help allay tetanus’s menace. Efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage — a priority area of WHO in the South-East Asia region — will similarly enhance health equity, ensuring that tetanus’s tendency to prey on the most vulnerable is rebuffed. It is no coincidence that the first countries in the region to eliminate the problem also had the strongest health systems.

That MNT has been eliminated as a major public health problem in the South-East Asia region is reason to celebrate.

Newborns across the region are now safer from the disease than at any other time in history, but we must not be misled by our successes.

Maternal and neonatal tetanus remains a burden, and could make a comeback in significant numbers in future. By enhancing the reach and quality of maternal and newborn health care, increasing immuniSation coverage, leveraging greater community buy-in, and ensuring detailed surveillance, we can avert this possibility.

 

High-speed Spanish Talgo train begins trial run in U.P.

Besides reducing travel time, Talgo’s lighter trains consume 30 per cent less energy.

The trial of Spanish train Talgo, the lighter and faster vehicle whose speed goes up to 115 kms per hour, was conducted between Bareilly and Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh as part of the Railways’ strategy to increase the speed of trains.

“It was a smooth ride,” said a senior railway official after nine Talgo coaches were hauled by a 4,500 HP diesel engine on the 90-km line for the first trial run.