Category: Science and Technology Current Affairs

Drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG): The DCGI has granted emergency use approval to DRDO’s 2-DG drug for treatment in moderate to severe cases of Covid-19.2-DG helps in the faster recovery of hospitalized patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence. The drug 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) has been developed by DRDO’s Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) in collaboration […]

COVID BEEP: Union Minister of Atomic Energy, Dr Jitendra Singh recalled the launch of COVID BEEP in June 2020 to supplement the Country’s COVID infrastructure to fight the pandemic. The COVID BEEP system has been developed by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in collaboration with IIT Hyderabad and ESIC Medical College Hyderabad. It was […]

5G Trial: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has given permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology. This formally leaves out Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE from the 5G race in India. About the Trials: In the initial phase, these trials will be for 6 months, […]

A report Titled ‘State Of Working India 2021: One Year Of Covid­19: A report titled ‘State of Working India 2021: One Year of Covid­19’ brought out annually by Azim Premji University’s Centre for Sustainable Employment, Bengaluru has been released. The report covers the period March 2020 to December 2020, dwells on the impact of one […]

Support For Waiving Intellectual Property (IP) Protection For Covid-19 Vaccines: The United States has announced the support for waiving Intellectual Property (IP) protection for Covid-19 vaccines. The decision is a breakthrough in India and South Africa’s attempts to get World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to agree to such a waiver to fight the pandemic […]

5G Technology: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India approved permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology. The applicant TSPs include Bharti Airtel Ltd., Reliance JioInfocomm Ltd., Vodafone Idea Ltd., and MTNL. The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of 6 […]

SUTRA Model: Scientists from the IITs of Kanpur and Hyderabad have applied the ‘Susceptible, Undetected, Tested (positive), and Removed Approach’ (SUTRA) model to predict the COVID graph in India. The model uses three main parameters to predict the course of the pandemic. The first is called beta, or contact rate, which measures how many people […]

Parker Solar Probe: During a brief swing by Venus, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe detected a natural radio signal that revealed the spacecraft had flown through the planet’s upper atmosphere. This was the first direct measurement of the Venusian atmosphere in nearly 30 years. Findings: Like Earth, Venus sports an electrically charged layer of gas at […]

R21/Matrix M: A malaria vaccine candidate has shown promise in phase 2b clinical trials, with high efficacy at 77%. The results of the trial were published recently in preprints with The Lancet. The new vaccine candidate, called R21/Matrix M, is a modified version of RTS, S — another candidate against malaria that has been in […]

Ebola Outbreak: The Democratic Republic of Congo declared the end of an Ebola outbreak that infected 12 people in the eastern province of North Kivu and killed six of them. The outbreak was contained using Merck’s Ebola vaccine, which was given to more than 1,600 of the patients’ contacts and contacts of contacts. The cases […]