UPSC CURRENT AFFAIRS+PIB | PRELIMS & MAINS 2020 | 23rd April

• This meant thousands of acres of fertile land across the river could not be tilled by farmers during the Monsoon.
• Border Roads Organisation conceived and planned for a permanent bridge.

ABOUT BRO :

• The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas and friendly neighboring countries.
• Officers from the Border Roads Engineering Service (BRES) and personnel from the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF) form the parent cadre of the Border Roads Organisation.
• It is also staffed by officers and troops drawn from the Indian Army’s Corps of Engineers on extra regimental employment (on Deputation).

During Peace

1. To Develop & Maintain the Operational Road Infrastructure of General Staff (GS) in the Border Areas.
2. To Contribute to the Socio-Economic Development of the Border States.

During War

1. To Develop & Maintain Roads to Keep Line of Control through in Original Sectors and Re-deployed Sectors.
2. To Execute Additional Tasks as laid down by the Govt Contributing to the War Effort.

RESEARCH FINDINGS:

• The device could synthesize metal, semiconductor, and polymer nanoparticles by continuous flow active microreactor.
• The parameters such as concentration of reactants, flow rate, agitation, reaction temperature as well as time, determined the size of nanoparticles and their distribution.
• They further derived a mathematical equation using dimensional analysis to predict process parameters accurately for achieving true monodispersity (maintaining a uniform size of nanoparticles).

CHALLENGES:

• Nanoparticles possess unique size-dependent properties, which make them useful in biomedical technology but difference in their sizes which arises due to conventional methods of synthesizing them, reduces their efficiency.
• Maintaining a uniform size of the nanoparticles is a challenge faced by the biomedical industry.
• Besides, these methods use multiple reagents, are time consuming and produce toxic by-products.

Figure a) Schematic of the microreactorFigure b) Optical image microreactor

It is observed that monodispersed silver nanoparticles show significant improvement in effectivity as an antimicrobial agent.

• Monodispersed chitosan and alginate nanoparticles display very high drug entrapment, sustained-release rate, and are biocompatible.
• They could be passively internalized in the cells due to the uniform and small size.

KEY FEATURES:

• The tool called NanoBlitz 3D has also been found to yield excellent results on a wide range of material systems, includingglass-fibre-reinforced polymer composites, dual-phase steels, softwood and shale.
• An important aspect of this technique is its high-throughput, with just a few hours of testing required for generating more than 10,000 data points that can be processed using machine learning (ML) algorithms.
• It enables the performance of a large array, typically consisting of 1000s high-speed nano-indentation tests.

This, in turn, expedites the development of high-performance novel materials under an Integrated Computational Material Engineering (ICME) approach.

Figure: (a) SEM micrograph and (b) hardness map of NiCoCrAlY region of a thermal barrier coating subjected to 5 thermal cycles at 1100^oC. (c) The mechanical phase map obtained after algorithmically identifying the different phases

BACKGROUND:

• Members of the Medical community, even as they continue to perform relentlessly round the clock and save human lives, have unfortunately become the most vulnerable victims as they have been perceived by some as carriers of the virus.
• This has led to cases of their stigmatization and ostracization and sometimes worse, acts of unwarranted violence and harassment.
• Such a situation tends to hamper the medical community from performing their duties to their optimum best and maintaining their morale, which is a critical need in this hour of national health crisis.
• While healthcare service personnel are duty bound to serve without discrimination, the cooperation and support from society is a fundamental need for them to perform their duties with confidence.
• Several States have enacted special laws to offer protection to doctors and other medical personnel in the past.
• However, Covid-19 outbreak has posed a unique situation where harassment of the healthcare workforce and others working to contain the spread of the disease has been taking place at all fronts, in various places including even cremation grounds.

FORBIDDEN RULES:

• The existing state laws do not have such a wide sweep and ambit.
• They generally do not cover harassment at home and workplace and are focused more on physical violence only.
• The penal provisions contained in these laws are not stringent enough to deter mischief mongering.

THE NEW ORDINANCE:

• In this context, the Union Cabinet in its meeting held on 22nd April 2020 has approved promulgation of an Ordinance to amend the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 to protect healthcare service personnel and property including their living/working premises against violence during epidemics.
• The Ordinance provides for making such acts of violence cognizable and non-bailable offences and for compensation for injury to healthcare service personnel or for causing damage or loss to the property in which healthcare service personnel may have a direct interest in relation to the epidemic.
• The current Ordinance is intended to ensure that during any situation akin to the current pandemic, there is zero tolerance to any form of violence against healthcare service personnel and damage to property.

PUNISHMENT :