• Scientists have found that nanoparticles of selenium, an essential micronutrient, can be used as an antibacterial agent. 

• Scientists found that selenium nanoparticles, owing to their unique structure and properties, may be more effective than antibiotics as they have a larger surface area and therefore can be more in contact with the external environment.

• Selenium is found naturally in wheat, eggs, cheese, nuts and sea food. It is an antioxidant and immunity booster.

 

 

• Indian Medical Association has said Karnataka Antibiotics and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (KAPL) neither has the experience nor the capacity to handle Oxytocin production.

• The Delhi high court had quashed the Centre’s December 14, 2018 notification, which had banned its sale by private manufacturers and retail chemists, saying the sale was allowed. 

• Essentially, this meant that only KAPL could produce the drug as there is no other public sector enterprise doing so. However, Delhi high court quashed the amended order too. The central government moved Supreme Court against the Delhi high court order.

• KAPL has said bulk production of the drug would take three-four years. This would put lives of many pregnant women at risk as it would lead to acute shortages.

• With the ban, the government did not adequately weigh in the danger of its order to the users of oxytocin, nor consider the deleterious effect of possible restricted supply if manufacture is confined to one unit on pregnant women and young mothers.

• Strict control on illegal imports of the drug: Most of the veterinary use comes from illegal import of oxytocin from neighbouring countries. The misuse could be prevented through strict control in sale and end use of the drug especially prevention through clandestine channels.

• Oxytocin has also been dubbed the hug hormone, cuddle chemical, moral molecule, and the bliss hormone due to its effects on behavior, including its role in love and in female reproductive biological functions in reproduction.

• Oxytocin is a hormone that is made in the brain, in the hypothalamus. It is transported to, and secreted by, the pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain.

• It acts both as a hormone and as a brain neurotransmitter.

• The release of oxytocin by the pituitary gland acts to regulate two female reproductive functions: Childbirth and Breast-feeding.

• Misuse in diary industry: Oxytocin is a naturally-occurring hormone that causes uterine contractions during labour and helps new mothers lactate. However, the drug is misused in the dairy industry where livestock is injected with Oxytocin to make them release milk at a time convenient to farmers.

• Oxytocin is also used to increase the size of vegetables such as pumpkins, watermelons, eggplants, gourds, and cucumbers.

 

• Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a dwarf galaxy in a globular cluster which is only 30 million light-years away.

• The researchers determined that this galaxy — nicknamed Bedin 1, after discovery team leader L. R. Bedin of the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova in Italy — is a “spheroidal dwarf” just 3,000 light-years wide.

• The Hubble Space Telescope is a large telescope in space. NASA launched Hubble in 1990.

• It was built by the United States space agency NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency.

• Hubble is the only telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts.

• Expanding the frontiers of the visible Universe, the Hubble Space Telescope looks deep into space with cameras that can see across the entire optical spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet.

 

 

• The HSFC, the hub of ISRO’s future manned missions, was inaugurated at ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru.

• HSFC shall be responsible for the implementation of Gaganyaan project — which involves mission planning, development of engineering systems for crew survival in space, crew selection and training and also pursue activities for sustained human space flight missions.

 

 

• To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the organisation of the periodic table, UNESCO has launched the International Year Of The Periodic Table.

• Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleev published the first periodic such table in 1869.

• The table organizes all chemical elements by the number of protons in a given atom and other properties.

• There are seven rows, called periods, and 18 columns, called groups, in the table.

• Elements in the same group share similar properties. Those in the same period have the same number of atomic orbitals.

• Most elements on the table are metals divided into six broad categories – alkali metals, alkaline earths, basic metals, transition metals, lanthanides and actinides. They are located on the left, separated from the non-metals on the right by a zig-zag line.

• Lanthanides and actinides, often called “inner transition metals”, are commonly hived off as a separate section under the main table as including all 30 – including Uranium – would make the table too wide.

• The table is a useful tool for people to derive relationships between the different properties of the elements. It can also help predict the properties of new elements that have yet to be discovered or created.

 

• NASA`s Opportunity rover has completed 15 years of its touchdown on the surface of Mars. 

• The US space agency said it has travelled 45 kilometres and logged its 5,000th Martian day back in February 2018. John Callas, project manager for Opportunity, however, said that at present the agency does not know the rover`s status. 

• The six-wheeler rover had landed in a region of Mars called Meridiani Planum on January 24, 2004. 

• The solar-powered rover went silent since a global dust storm in June last year. 

• However, Opportunity`s mission continues, in a phase where mission engineers at NASA laboratories are sending commands to as well as listening for signals from the rover.

 

 

• In a significant find in the global spread of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria, scientists have found a “superbug” gene — first detected in over a decade back — in one of the last “pristine” places on Earth that is some 12,870 km away.

• Soil samples taken in Svalbard — a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole — have now confirmed the spread of blaNDM-1 (called New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase-1) into the High Arctic. Carried in the gut of animals and people, blaNDM-1 and other ARGs were found in Arctic soils that were likely spread through the faecal matter of birds, other wildlife and human visitors to the area.

• Basically, superbugs are becoming more powerful and widespread than ever. Medical experts are afraid that we’re one step away from deadly, untreatable infections, since the mcr-1 E.coli is resistant to that last-resort antibiotic Colistin. Antibiotic-resistance is passed relatively easily from one bacteria to the next, since it is transmitted by way of loose genetic material that most bacteria have in common.

• The World Health Organization (WHO) is afraid of a post-antibiotic world, where loads of bacteria are superbugs. Already, infections like tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and pneumonia are becoming harder to treat with typical antibiotics.