Current Affairs - Points to Ponder for GS Mains

What can India do for the modernization of Ayurveda?

Read the following for the above topic:

1. Institutionalization of Ayurvedic training.
2. Pharmaceuticalisation of drug production.
3. Professionalisation of medical practice as well as biomedicalisation.
4. Creolisation of Ayurvedic knowledge and therapeutics.
5. There is a need to study various traditional medical practices prevalent in different regions so that the system can make a significant contribution.
6. Indian traditions related to medicine have distinct regional and socio-cultural histories which have produced distinct regional Ayurvedic practices.

• Recently, the government has added more laboratories to the INSACOG (Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genome Sequencing Consortia). In India, scientists are not worried about the origin of the mutation so much; they are more interested to find out to what extent the virus can mutate and the focus of research will be on which variant is causing what and how can the transmission be efficiently handled.
• According to GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data), UK, microbiologists and genome sequencing specialists have found that the B.1.617 strain is a combination of 15 mutations and its sub variant like B1.617.2 is responsible for the second wave of the pandemic in India.

Study the following points for the above topic:

1. How genome sequencing works, research institutions in India like INSACOG, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), working parameters, nodal ministry and previous research.
2. Know variant names and key characteristics.

Read the following for the above topic:

1. Cyberspace has been called the fifth domain after land, air, water and space. India has no single rule for protection from cyber-attacks in all five domains across all activities -military, economic, commercial, political and cultural.
2. Recently a cyber-attack shutdown the electric grid of Mumbai. The New York Times reported it was China’s cyber-attack. China could not only fight with India in the Himalayan region but across all our activities, viz. geopolitical, economic, commercial, military, political, cultural and social also.
3. Rogue nations and well organised digital terrorist hacker groups steal data, IP, R&D and innovation work and pry into diplomatic and strategic plans.
4. To strengthen cyberspace operations, India needs to technologically advance with 5G technology and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Read the following for the above topic:

• 2-DG drug and its functionality, about the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) and its previous research.

You need to study the following points for the above topic:

• What is mutation and how the process of mutation works.
• Mechanism in RNA viruses.
• Coronavirus spike protein.