5th Nov Daily current affairs for UPSC Civil Service Exam

Reversing Antimicrobial Resistance

• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria use the efflux pumps to expel antibiotics from the intracellular environment>
• It thus prevents antibiotics from reaching the target thus helping the bacteria to survive.
• IIT Roorkee have been able to reverse drug resistance by using a small molecule screened from a synthetic library of 8,000 molecules.
• The molecule restores the efficacy of fluoroquinolone-group of antibiotics by inhibiting the proton gradient which drives the efflux pump.

Rattan

• Rattan is the name for roughly 600 species of old world climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae.
• The climbing habit is associated with the characteristics of its flexible woody stem, derived typically from a secondary growth.
• It makes rattan a liana rather than a true wood.
• Generally, raw rattan is processed into several products to be used as materials in furniture making.[
• Scientists have discovered that non-protected areas near the Agastyamalai Biosphere Reserve, Silent Valley-Mukurthi National Parks and Coorg-Wayanad in the Western Ghats are hotspots of rattan or cane species.
• Urgent conservation attention in the face of threats including habitat loss and excessive harvesting would be critical here.

Superhydrophobic Cotton

• Superhydrophobic i.e extremely water repelling medical cotton has been developed by a team of researchers at IIT Guwahati.
• It removed up to 95% of oil-spill of different densities i.e both light and heavy oils repetitively at least 100 times using
• The efficiency of absorption is very high i.e one gram of the superhydrophobic cotton absorbs 20 grams of either heavy or light oils.
• The absorbed oil can be recovered through physical compression.

Most Threatened Ape

• Scientists have so far recognized six living species of great ape aside from humans.
• They are Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos.
• But researchers have now made the list into seven, based on a collection of evidence showing that an isolated population of orangutans living in Sumatra is actually its own unique species.
• They've named the new species the Tapanuli orang-utan.
• But there are only about 800 Tapanuli orangutans left.
• This makes this newly discovered species among the most threatened great ape species in the world.

Ozone Hole

• NOAA and NASA collaborate to monitor the growth and recovery of the ozone hole every year.
• Measurements from satellites this year showed the hole in Earth's ozone layer that forms over Antarctica was the smallest observed since 1988.
• The polar stratospheric cloud formation and persistence of these clouds are important first steps leading to the chlorine- and bromine-catalyzed reactions that destroy ozone.
• The smaller ozone hole in 2017 was strongly influenced by an unstable and warmer Antarctic vortex -- the stratospheric low pressure system that rotates clockwise in the atmosphere above Antarctica.
• This helped minimize polar stratospheric cloud formation in the lower stratosphere.