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INDEX

2.7 Brain networks and nicotine addiction ............... 8

1. SPACE............................................... 3
1.1 Enchanted Lake’ on Mars .................................. 3 3. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ........... 9
1.2 Spotting Martian clouds ..................................... 3 3.1 AI trained to hear coral's sounds of life ............. 9
1.3 Open eye’ crater on Mars................................... 4 3.2 Quantum diamond microscope ........................... 9
1.4 Double crater formation on Moon...................... 4 3.3 Regularised, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle
1.5 Signals from alien civilisations........................... 5 Evaluation (ReAl – LiFE) ............................................. 10

1.6 Peculiar cloud over the Caspian Sea ................. 5 3.4 Volcanic eruption prediction program ............. 10

2. HEALTH ............................................ 5 4. BIODIVERSITY ................................ 11

2.1 Inhaled vaccine to be more effective .................. 5 4.1 Mummified baby woolly mammoth ................... 11

2.2 Natural gas used in homes contains hazardous 4.2 The trophic levels of the prehistoric predators . 11
air pollutants .................................................................. 6 4.3 Leopard gecko .................................................. 12
2.3 Treating heart disease using mRNA transcription 4.4 Posidonia australis ........................................... 12
factors 6
2.4 Hox genes ........................................................... 7 5. OTHERS.......................................... 13
2.5 Miniproteins that prevent COVID infection ....... 8 5.1 Stone ‘Swiss Army knives’ ................................ 13
2.6 Glucose Fuel Cell ............................................... 8 5.2 Perovskite solar cells ........................................ 13

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

JUNE 2022

1. SPACE

1.1 Enchanted Lake’ on Mars

NASA has shared images of the “Enchanted Lake” on Mars, where scientists believe that the Perseverance rover
could find the first evidence of extraterrestrial life.
 The Enchanted Lake is a rocky outcrop, informally named after a landmark in an Alaskan National Park.
 Even though the feature is called Enchanted Lake, it is dry as a desert, just like the rest of the red planet.
 The image of the feature was taken near the base of the Jezero Crater’s delta which was the landing site for
Perseverance nearly four years ago.
 It provides scientists with the first close up of sedimentary rocks.
 Igneous rocks lines most of the floor of the Jezero crater.
 Igneous rocks are produced under extreme pressure. They do not provide a good environment for preserving
fossilised microscopic life
 On the other hand sedimentary rocks are formed when fine particles carried by the atmosphere or water are
deposited in layers which turn into rocks over time.
 So, sedimentary rocks may be an ideal spot to look for signs of past life.
 Scientists believe that water did exist here in the past and there is a chance that it could have harboured life
when it did.
 One of the Perseverance rover’s key objectives is the search of signs of ancient microbial life.
 It will characterise the planet’s geology and past climate to pave the way for human exploration of the planet
and will become the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (Mars’ version of soil).
 As a next step the rover will analyse and even sample one or more of the rocks in the area.

1.2 Spotting Martian clouds

NASA's citizen science platform project "Cloudspotting on Mars," invites the public to identify clouds on the red
planet.
 NASA has 16 years of Data from its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In the Martian clouds appear as
arches.
 To mark these arches NASA has organised a project called “Cloudspotting on Mars” on its citizen science
platform Zooniverse.
 It invites the public to identify clouds on the red planet so that they can more efficiently study where clouds
occur in the atmosphere.
 This information will help researchers understand the mystery about Mars’ atmosphere. Scientists want to
know
o Why Mars atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s atmosphere even though evidence suggests that
the planet used to have a much thicker atmosphere.
o The phenomenon that triggers the formation of water ice clouds. This will help us know how high
water vapour gets in the atmosphere and during which seasons.
 Billions of years ago, Mars was probably covered by lakes and rivers, suggesting that the atmosphere was
thicker at the time.
 There are many theories about how it lost its atmosphere over time.

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 One suggests that different mechanisms could be lofting water high into the atmosphere where solar radiation
breaks it into its two component elements, oxygen and hydrogen.
 Since hydrogen is light, it would just drift off into space.
 Mars has clouds of ice just like Earth, but unlike Earth, it also has clouds made of carbon dioxide, essentially,
dry ice.
 Scientists want to understand the structure of Mars’ middle atmosphere (50 to 80 kilometres above the
surface) by understanding where and how these clouds appear.

1.3 Open eye’ crater on Mars

European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express has captured the image of Aonia Terra.
 Aonia Terra is an upland region in the southern highlands of Mars.
 It is 30 km wide nestled within a landscape of winding channels.
 These channels resembles veins running through a human eye ball and are likely to have carried liquid water
across the surface of the red planet around 3.5-4 billion years ago.
 These channels are partly filled with some kind of dark material and seem to be raised above the surrounding
land in some places.
 It could be due to erosion-resistant sediment settled at the bottom of the channels when water flowed through
them.
 It could even be that the channels were filled in with lava later on in Mars’s history.
 The region around the crater reveals many different colours.
 This suggests that this region of Mars is made up of a variety of materials.
 The surface is a warm red, melting into a darker brownish-grey closer to the crater.
 Many buttes are also visible. These flat-topped towers of rock are created when land is gradually worn away by
water, wind or ice.
 A dark dune field rests on a lighter surface inside the crater. Closer inspection revealed that the crater is
apparently filled with more buttes and cone-shaped hills.
 These can be seen as evidence of many materials accumulating inside the crater in the past.

1.4 Double crater formation on Moon

A double crater rocket impact site has been detected on the Moon by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter but the
space agency hasn't identified which rocket caused it.
 Astronomers had discovered a rocket body heading towards a lunar collision on March 4 2021.
 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the resulting crater. Surprisingly, there were two craters -
an 18-metre-diameter easter crater superimposed on a 16-metre-diameter western crater.
 The unexpected double crater formation indicates that the rocket body had large masses at each end.
 Usually, a spent rocket has mass concentrated at the motor end with the rest of the rocket stage consisting of
an empty fuel tank.
 No other rocket body impacts detected so far on the Moon have created double craters.
 The maximum width of the double crater created by the mystery rocket is about 29 metres.
 Researchers at the University of Arizona’s Space Domain Awareness lab at the Lunar and Planetary
Laboratory have compared the spectrum taken with Chinese and SpaceX rockets of similar types.
 As the material makeup spectrum matches the Chinese rocket they concluded that it was caused by a Chinese
booster from a rocket launch in 2014.
 But NASA is yet to confirm the same.

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1.5 Signals from alien civilisations

China Sky Eye telescope may have detected signals from alien civilisations.
 China’s Sky Eye is extremely sensitive in the low-frequency radio band and plays a critical role in the search
for alien civilisations.
 It is the world’s largest radio telescope.
 The telescope is located in China’s southwestern Guizhou province and has a diameter of 500 meters (1,640
feet).
 The team detected two sets of suspicious signals in 2020.
 Now another suspicious signal has been detected from observation data of exoplanet targets.
 The narrow-band electromagnetic signals detected by it differ from previous signals captured.
 The extra terrestrial civilization search team co-founded by Beijing Normal University, the National
Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, Berkeley is
investigating the findings.

1.6 Peculiar cloud over the Caspian Sea

Unlike the diffused and dispersed cloud cover NASA satellite spots peculiar cloud over the Caspian Sea that had well-
defined edged, like something out a of a cartoon.
 It is normal to spot clouds over the the Caspian Sea. But NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) spotted a peculiarly-shaped cloud drifting across the water body.
 The cloud had well-defined edges resembling something from a cartoon.
 It formed a layer that spans about 100 kilometres hovering at an altitude of about 1,500 metres.
 Scientists believe it as a small stratocumulus cloud.
 Cumulus clouds are detached “heaps” of “cauliflower-shaped” clouds that are usually found during good
weather conditions.
 In stratocumulus clouds, these heaps are clumped together, forming a widespread horizontal layer of clouds.
 These clouds typically form at low altitudes, generally between 600 and 2,000 metres above the ground.
 Scientists believe that the cloud could have formed when warm, dry air encountered colder, moist air over the
Caspian. It then drifted across the sea and dissipated when it reached land.

2. HEALTH

2.1 Inhaled vaccine to be more effective

Researchers from the McMaster University, Toronto are conducting human trials of a more effective inhaled
vaccine.
 Before COVID-19 pandemic efforts were being made to develop a new inhaled form of vaccine delivery against
tuberculosis.
 Earlier research of a next-generation COVID-19 inhaled vaccine in animals suggests that it will last longer, will
be more effective and stand up well to future variants of the virus.
 The new process delivers the vaccine directly to the mucosal surface of the airways. This means less waste and
more benefit, lower costs and reduced side-effects.
 The requirement is as little as 1% of what is currently being used in the present vaccines.
 With new variants, mutations occur in the spike protein on the outside of the virus.
 This makes the current vaccines less effective because they target only the spike protein.
 However, other proteins inside the virus stay the same.

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 The new multivalent vaccine targets multiple viral proteins (both the spike protein on the surface and also the
proteins inside the virus) making it effective against multiple variants.
 Human trials of these new inhaled vaccines are being conducted now.
 The phase one clinical study is evaluating safety of the vaccine, as well as testing for evidence of immune
responses in blood and the lungs.
 If the new inhaled vaccine is safe and effective as anticipated, the payoffs can be huge in terms of human
health, medical costs and better quality of life overall, especially for vulnerable populations in low and middle
income countries.

2.2 Natural gas used in homes contains hazardous air pollutants

A hazard identification study on air pollutants present in unburned natural gas was conducted in Great Boston. The
findings of the research reveal potential health risks involved therein.
 The natural gas used in homes contains varying levels of volatile organic chemicals.
 When leaked it is toxic and can form secondary health-damaging pollutants such as particulate matter and
ozone.
 Natural gas is a major source of methane that's driving climate change.
 21 out of the 296 chemical compounds detected in natural gas are designated as hazardous air pollutants.
 This includes EPA, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, and hexane.
 The Concentrations of these hazardous air pollutants in natural gas varies depending on location and time of
year. Their concentration is high during winter.
 When the odorant concentration is low small leaks becomes undetectable by smell. Leaks containing about 20
parts per million methane may not have enough odorant for people to detect them.
 Even such a small amounts of hazardous air pollutants could impact indoor air quality because natural gas is
used by appliances in close proximity to people.
 To prevent the adverse effects of such pollutants following policy actions are required.
 Natural Gas companies should measure and report the composition of natural gas, specifically differentiating
non-methane volatile organic compounds such as benzene and toluene.
 Gas utility providers should routinely measure and report natural gas odorant content to customers similar to
informational postings often produced by interstate gas pipeline companies.
 State regulations should mandate the direct measurement of leaked, unburned natural gas in ambient air to be
included in emissions inventories and to better determine public health risks.
 A performance standard for gas stoves and ventilation hoods has to be set to limit air pollutant emissions.
 Home inspectors and contractors should perform natural gas-appliance leak detection surveys.
 Odorization of natural gas should meet much lower detection levels than the current 1/5th the lower explosion
limit (detectable at ~1% methane).
 People must take preventive measures to safeguard themselves from such indoor pollution. This includes
o Performing a leak detection survey from a licensed plumber or heating, ventilation, and air
conditioning (HVAC) contractor.
o Increasing ventilation.
o Reducing the sources of indoor pollution.

2.3 Treating heart disease using mRNA transcription factors

Researchers from the University of Houston have discovered a first-of-its-kind technology that not only repairs
heart muscle cells in mice but also regenerates them following a heart attack, or myocardial infarction.
 When heart muscle cells die the contracting ability of the heart will be lost resulting in heart attack.
 Generally Less than 1% of adult cardiac muscle cells can regenerate. To save such persons heart muscle cells
must be replicated.

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 Two mutated transcription factors, Stemin and YAP5SA, work in tandem to increase the replication of
cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, isolated from mouse hearts.
 They dedifferentiate the cardiomyocyte into a more stem cell-like state so that they can regenerate and
proliferate.
 Stemin turns on stem cell-like properties from cardiomyocytes. Meanwhile, YAP5SA works by promoting
organ growth that causes the myocytes to replicate even more.
 Notably, myocyte nuclei replicated at least 15-fold in 24 hours following heart injections that delivered those
transcription factors.
 The cardiac myocytes multiplied quickly within a day, while hearts over the next month were repaired to near
normal cardiac pumping function with little scarring.
 To deliver the mutated transcription factors to heart muscle cells researchers from the University of Houston
have developed a new technology that uses synthetic messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA).
 Gene therapies vs mRNA-based delivery - Gene therapies delivered to cells by viral vectors raise several
biosafety concerns because they cannot be easily stopped.
 On the other hand mRNA-based delivery turns over quickly and disappears.
 The finding has the potential to become a powerful clinical strategy for treating heart disease in humans
 Mutated transcription factors - Mutated transcription factors are proteins that control the conversion of
DNA into RNA.
 Correct regulation of gene expression is essential both to normal development and to the correct functioning
of the adult organism.
 Such regulation is usually achieved at the level of DNA transcription a process that controls which genes are
transcribed into RNA by the enzyme RNA polymerase.

2.4 Hox genes

Researchers from the New York University have created artificial Hox genes using new synthetic DNA technology.
 Nearly all animals, from humans to birds to fish have anterior-posterior axis (a line that runs from head to
tail).
 Hox genes play a key role during embryonic development. They act as architects, determining the plan for
where cells go along the axis, as well as what body parts they make up.
 They ensure that organs and tissues develop in the right place, forming the thorax or placing wings in the
correct anatomical positions.
 Hox genes are challenging to study. They are tightly organized in clusters. They are found only in piece of DNA
with no other genes surrounding them.
 And while many parts of the genome have repetitive elements Hox clusters have no such repeats.
 These factors make them unique but difficult to study with conventional gene editing without affecting
neighbouring Hox genes.
 In such a case creating artificial Hox genes will help scientists better study them, rather than relying on gene
editing.
 The creation of synthetic DNA and artificial Hox genes paves the way for future research on animal
development and human diseases.
 Different species have different structures and shapes, a lot of which depends on how Hox clusters get
expressed.
 For instance, a snake is a long thorax with no limbs, while a skate has no thorax and is just limbs.
 A better understanding of Hox clusters may help us to understand how these systems get adapted and
modified to make different animals.
 This will also help us in understanding diseases.

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2.5 Miniproteins that prevent COVID infection

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore have designed a new class of artificial peptides or
miniproteins that they say can render viruses like SARS-CoV-2 inactive.
 The miniproteins developed will block virus entry into our cells. It will also clump virus particles together and
reduce its ability to infect people.
 The team used the approach of lock and key to design these miniproteins.
 Generally a protein-protein interaction is often like that of a lock and a key.
 The spike protein is a complex of three identical polypeptides. Each of these polypeptides contains a Receptor
Binding Domain (RBD). The RBD binds to the ACE2 receptor on the host cell surface, facilitating viral entry
into the cell.
 The mini protein hampers the infection by preventing the 'key' from binding to the 'lock'.
 These miniproteins are helical, hairpin-shaped peptides. They are capable of pairing up with another of its
kind, forming a dimer.
 The miniprotein will bind to the spike protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and blocks it from
entering and infecting the human cells.
 Each dimer has two ‘faces’ to interact with two target molecules. The two faces would bind to two separate
target proteins locking all four in a complex and blocking the targets’ action.
 This binding was also characterised by cryo-electron microscopy and other biophysical methods.
 The hypothesis was tested by using one of the miniproteins called SIH-5 to target the interaction between the
spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and ACE2 protein in human cells.
 SIH-5 mini-protein was designed for blocking the binding of RBD to human ACE2.
 The mini protein has been tested for toxicity and is found to be safe.
 The researchers also noted that this lab-made miniprotein could inhibit other protein-protein interactions as
well.

2.6 Glucose Fuel Cell

Engineers at MIT and the Technical University of Munich have designed a new type of glucose fuel cell.
 This fuel cell can convert the glucose in your blood into electricity so that medical implants and other in-body
sensors can be powered without using batteries.
 The cell is just 400 nanometres thick. (Thinner than a sheet of paper). It can withstand temperatures up to
600 degrees Celsius making it highly durable.
 One square centimetre of fuel cell can generate about 80 milliwatts of electricity.
 This is the highest power density of any glucose fuel cell to date.
 Current in-body implants like pacemakers or brain implants have silicon chip that needs to be powered.
Generally the batteries are bulky and has low energy density.
 Also, there is a chance of a patient dying during a battery replacement surgery.
 Fuel cells can be a better alternative for this.
 This could also be used to power up sensors and devices that would automatically deploy medication.
 The new glucose fuel cell is yet to get FDA (US Food and Drugs Administration) approval.

2.7 Brain networks and nicotine addiction

A study of patients who quit smoking spontaneously reveals brain networks that are associated with alcohol and
other forms of addiction.
 Psychoactive drugs are substances that cause an alteration in mental processes, such as perception,
consciousness, cognition and mood or emotions. It includes alcohol and nicotine.
 Not all psychoactive drugs are addictive and lead to “substance use disorders”.

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 They affect 8-10% of adult population and are a leading cause of death.
 Hence understanding how to treat addictions and substance use disorders is necessary.
 India is the second largest consumer of tobacco. According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (2016-17)
nearly 29% of India’s adult population (15 years and above), use tobacco in some form or the other.
 About 8 million people annually die because of tobacco use.
 Present treatment for substance use disorder is inadequate and does not look promising in the long term.
 New methods of treatment try modulating specific parts of the brain which are believed to be implicated in
addiction.
 By studying different brain scans researchers have found that “people who incurred brain lesions after an
accident spontaneously quit smoking without experiencing craving or relapse”.
 Researchers have also mapped out the brain networks associated with addiction.
 Though lesions associated with remission occurred in many different places in the brain, these can be mapped
to a specific brain network.
 This network was reproducible in the case of other substances of abuse, in independent groups of people with
lesions.
 These included people with reduced risk of alcohol addiction and case reports of lesions that disrupted
addiction to substances other than nicotine.
 Further studies needs to be done to ascertain the side effects of such modulation and therapy.

3. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

3.1 AI trained to hear coral's sounds of life

An AI system is developed to determine the health of coral reefs by listening to its sounds.
 Coral reefs are under stress from human-driven carbon emissions that have warmed ocean surfaces by 0.13
degrees every decade and increased their acidity by 30% since the industrial era.
 About 14% of the world's coral on reefs was lost between 2009 and 2018,
 While they cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, coral reefs support more than 25% of marine biodiversity,
including turtles, fish and lobsters.
 A team of scientists have recorded the sounds of coral reefs underwater off islands in central Indonesia. The
reefs sounded like a campfire.
 Hundreds of such audio clips were used to train a computer programme to monitor the health of a coral reef
by listening to it.
 A healthy reef has a complex "crackling, campfire” like sound because of all the creatures living on and in it,
while a degraded reef sounds more desolate.
 The artificial intelligence (AI) system parses data points such as the frequency and loudness of the sound from
the audio clips.
 Using these data points the computer can determine whether the reef is healthy or degraded with at least 92%
accuracy.
 The scientists hope this new AI system will help conservation groups around the world to track reef health
more efficiently.

3.2 Quantum diamond microscope

Researchers from IIT Mumbai and Kharagpur have built a microscope that can image magnetic fields that change
over milliseconds.
 Signals in nature exhibit a range of frequencies.
o Magnetism in geological rock samples remains constant over months.

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o Magnetic nanoparticle aggregation inside living cells takes place in minutes

o Action in neurons takes place in milliseconds
o Atomic spins in complex molecules takes only microseconds.
 The ideal frame rate to capture a changing magnetic field is one that captures data at twice the frequency of
the changing field.
 For the first time researchers from IIT Mumbai and Kharagpur have built a microscope that can image
magnetic fields within microscopic two-dimensional samples that change over milliseconds.
 Earlier reported magnetic field imaging frame rates were close to 1-10 minutes per frame.
 The new microscope has a frame rate is about 50-200 frames per second.
 The key aspect of this microscope is a “nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centre” in a diamond crystal.
 Such NV centres act as pseudo atoms with electronic states that are sensitive to the fields and gradients
around them (magnetic fields, temperature, electric field and strain).
 The fluorescence emitted from these NV centres encodes the magnetic field information.
 During the measurement of ultra-small magnetic fields, the change in the fluorescence levels is extremely
small and therefore, limits the imaging frame rate and degrades the signal-to-noise ratio of the measurement.
 To overcome this limitation, the researchers employed a “lock-in detection scheme.
 It selects light fluctuations of a small frequency range, rejecting others, and thereby improving the sensitivity
to small changes in fluorescence.
 This has a huge potential for scientific applications, such as in measuring biological activity of neurons and
dynamics of vortices in superconductors.

3.3 Regularised, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle Evaluation (ReAl – LiFE)

Researchers at IISc. develop algorithm to study connectivity in brain.
 Researchers at Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) have developed a new graphic processing unit (GPU) based
machine learning algorithm called Regularised, Accelerated, Linear Fascicle Evaluation (ReAl – LiFE).
 In humans, from diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) is used to infer white matter patterns.
 Through it, scientists can track the movement of molecules to create a comprehensive map of connectome,
which is a network of fibers across the brain.
 This technique requires a lot of computation which can be carried out in an efficient manner through GPUs.
 A similar algorithm called LiFE (Linear Fascicle Evaluation) was developed earlier to carry out optimization,
but since it worked on traditional CPUs, the computation was time-consuming.
 This (ReAl – LiFE) can analyze extensive data generated from dMRI at a speed 150 times higher than a regular
desktop computer or existing state-of-the-art algorithms.
 The new algorithm has cut down the computational effort in several ways like removing redundant
connections and redesigning it to work on specialized electronic chips.
 This will help in better understanding and prediction the connectivity between different regions of human
brain.
 Using the algorithm researchers tried to study the wiring of different parts of the brain which helps in
performing various computations.
 This algorithm will also have various applications in the field of health, including disease diagnosis and
behavioral studies.

3.4 Volcanic eruption prediction program

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a new volcanic forecasting modelling program that runs on
the university’s Blue Waters and iForge supercomputers.
 The model was able to successfully predict the eruption of Sierra Negra volcano in Ecuador in June 2018 with
an error margin of just one day.

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 It was initially developed on an iMac computer.

 The model had already successfully recreated the eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 2008.
 The prediction is based on the strength of the rocks that contain the magma chamber.
 The model forecasted that Sierra Negra’s magma chamber would become very unstable sometime between
June 25 and July 5 and would possibly result in a mechanical failure and subsequent eruption.
 However Sierra Negra is a “well-behaved volcano”. It has showed signs of failure like groundswelling, gas
release and increased seismic activity before eruptions in the past.
 This made Sierra Negra an ideal test case for the model.
 But not all volcanoes follow such patterns. This makes forecasting eruptions one of the greatest challenges in
volcanology.
 However the recent prediction shows the power of incorporating high-performance supercomputers into
research.
 The advantage of the supercomputer-powered model is its ability to continuously assimilate multidisciplinary,
real-time data and process it rapidly to provide a daily forecast.

4. BIODIVERSITY

4.1 Mummified baby woolly mammoth

Canadian gold miners find rare mummified baby woolly mammoth.
 Miners in the Klondike gold fields of Canada have discovered a mummified remains of a near complete baby
woolly mammoth.
 It was discovered during excavation through permafrost Canada's Yukon Territory, which borders the U.S.
state of Alaska.
 Yukon has a world-renowned fossil record of Ice Age animals, but mummified remains with skin and hair are
rarely unearthed.
 The discovery marks the first near complete and best-preserved mummified woolly mammoth found in North
America.
 The mammoth retained its skin and hair. It is named as calf Nun cho ga which means "big baby animal".
 The animal is believed to be female and would have died during the ice age more than 30,000 years ago.
 Woolly mammoths roamed this region alongside wild horses, cave lions and giant steppe bison.
 A partial mammoth calf, named Effie, was found in 1948 at a gold mine in Alaska's interior.
 A 42,000-year-old mummified infant woolly mammoth, known as Lyuba, was also discovered in Siberia in
2007. Lyuba and Nun cho ga are roughly the same size.

4.2 The trophic levels of the prehistoric predators

A team of Princeton researchers has now discovered that Megalodon and some of its ancestors were at the very
highest rung of the prehistoric food chain.
 Megatooth sharks get their name from their massive teeth. The group includes Megalodon, the largest shark
that ever lived, as well as several related species.
 Blue whales, whale sharks, even elephants are filter feeders or herbivores and not predators.
 But Megalodon and the other megatooth sharks were genuinely enormous carnivores that ate other predators.
 The nitrogen time machine - To reach their conclusions about the prehistoric marine food web
researchers have used a novel technique to measure the nitrogen isotopes in the sharks' teeth.
 More the nitrogen-15 an organism has, the higher is its trophic level

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 Scientists have never before been able to measure the tiny amounts of nitrogen preserved in the enamel layer
of these extinct predators' teeth.
 A few plants, algae and other species at the bottom of the food web turn nitrogen from the air or water into
nitrogen in their tissues.
 Organisms that eat them then incorporate that nitrogen into their own bodies.
 They preferentially excrete more of nitrogen's lighter isotope, N-14, than its heavier cousin, N-15.
 In other words, N-15 builds up, relative to N-14, as you climb up the food chain.
 Researchers have used this approach on creatures 10-15 thousand years old. But there hasn't been enough
nitrogen left in older animals to measure, until now.
 This is because sharks don't have bones. Their skeletons are made of cartilage. Soft tissue like muscles and
skin are hardly ever preserved.
 But sharks have teeth. Teeth are more easily preserved than bones because they are encased in enamel, a rock-
hard material that is virtually immune to most decomposing bacteria.
 Within the teeth, there is a tiny amount of organic matter that was used to build the enamel of the teeth. The
organic matter also gets trapped within that enamel.

4.3 Leopard gecko

India's relic forests reveal a new species of leopard gecko.
 Researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore and Madras Crocodile Bank Trust
have identified a new Leopard Gecko species in a water tank in Vishakhapatnam.
 Geckos are small carnivorous lizards common in the hill forests.
 Until now the new species has been considered a southern population of East Indian Leopard Gecko.
 But a phylogenetic study has provided enough distinctions to represent it as a new species.
 Phylogenetic is the study of evolutionary relationships among biological entities – often species, individuals or
genes.
 The new species has been named as Painted Leopard Gecko.
 With this new addition, the gecko genus Eublepharis now contains 7 species.
 The Brahmani River, which runs through the Eastern Ghats, separates it geographically from the East Indian
Leopard Gecko, with which it shares a lot of similar traits.
 The new species is nocturnal and lives in dry evergreen forests mixed with scrub and meadows. It is widely
distributed in Odisha and northern Andhra Pradesh.
 It looks for food by licking surfaces as it moves.
 IUCN conservation status is Near Threatened.
 The species is collected for the pet trade and even now may be smuggled illegally.

4.4 Posidonia australis

Researchers from The University of Western Australia (UWA) and Flinders University have discovered the largest
plant in the world.
 Using genetic testing, scientists have determined that a large underwater meadow in the shallow waters of the
World Heritage Area of Shark Bay in Western Australia is a single plant.
 It is believed to have spread from a single seedling over at least 4,500 years.
 The seagrass covers about 200 sq km.
 The discovery was made when the researchers were pondering upon the genetic diversity of the seagrass
meadows in Shark Bay Area.
 Researchers collected shoots from across the bay and examined 18,000 genetic markers to create a
"fingerprint" from each sample.

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 They had aimed to discover how many plants made up the meadow.
 However the results pointed out that they were not different plants. They were exactly same plants with the
same genetic fingerprint expanding over 180kms.
 The plant has twice as many chromosomes as its oceanic relatives have, making it a “polyploid.”
 It appears to be really resilient, experiencing a wide range of temperatures and salinities plus extreme high
light conditions.
 Usually, this would be highly stressful for most plants, but the giant plant seems to thrive in these conditions.

5. OTHERS

5.1 Stone ‘Swiss Army knives’

Stone Swiss Army knives show early humans had long-distance social networks.
 Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the world — from the ice sheets to the
deserts, rainforests to savannahs.
 Around 65,000 years ago our ancestors largely migrated out of Africa and began to spread across the world.
 Archaeologists think the development of social networks and the ability to share knowledge between different
groups was the key to this success.
 This is evident from stone Swiss Army Knives discovered by Archaeologists.
 It is a multi-functional tool belonging to Howiesons Poort period around 65,000 years ago. Archaeologists call
these sharp, multipurpose tools “backed artefacts”.
 These stone blades were often glued to handles to make complex tools such as spears, knives, saws, scrapers
and drills.
 While the making of the stone blade was not particularly difficult binding it to the handle involves complex
glue and adhesive recipes.
 These knives are not unique to Africa. They were made to a very similar template across thousands of
kilometres and multiple environmental niches.
 Previously it was thought people made these multifunctional blades in response to various environmental
stresses.
 If their proliferation was simply a functional response to changing conditions, then we should see differences
in different environmental niches.
 But what we see is similarity in production numbers and artefact shape across great distances and different
environmental zones.
 This means the increase in production was only partly due to a socially mediated response to changing
environmental conditions.
 It was the strengthening long-distance social ties that facilitated access to scarce, perhaps unpredictable
resources (like complex glues) that actually facilitated the increase in production.
 This proves the hypothesis that social connections existed more than 60,000 years ago.

5.2 Perovskite solar cells

Researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major
milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology.
 Perovskites are semiconductors with a special crystal structure that makes them well suited for solar cell
technology.
 They can be manufactured at room temperature, using much less energy than silicon, making them cheaper
and more sustainable to produce.
 Silicon is stiff and opaque whereas perovskites can be made flexible and transparent extending solar power
well beyond the iconic panels that populate hillsides and rooftops.

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 But unlike silicon, perovskites are notoriously fragile. Perovskite solar cells (PSC) created earlier lasted only
minutes.
 However the new devices developed by researchers are much durable and highly efficient.
 The projected lifetime of the new device represents a five-fold increase over the previous record.
 As a result these PSC has the potential to push solar cell technology beyond the limits of silicon.
 A number of designs are being worked on to improve the durability as well.

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