China withdraw resolution against AUKUS at IAEA (GS Paper 2, International Relation)

Why in news?

• Recently, the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was held in Vienna from 26-30 September 2022.
• China tried to get a resolution passed against the AUKUS pact.
• India’s deft diplomacy forced China to withdraw its resolution against the AUKUS.

Key Highlights:

• China argued that this initiative was in violation of its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It also criticized the role of the IAEA in this regard.
• India took an objective view of the initiative, recognising the soundness of the technical evaluation by the IAEA.
• India’s considered role helped many smaller countries take a clear stand on the Chinese proposal. Realizing that its resolution would not get majority support, China withdrew its draft resolution.

 

What is AUKUS?

• AUKUS is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States in the Indo-Pacific.
• It aims at providing nuclear submarines to Australia.
• Australia is now set to join an elite group of only six countries; India, the US, the UK, France, Russia and China that operate nuclear-powered submarines.
• It will also be the only country to have such submarines without having a civilian nuclear power industry.

 

Swachh Survekshan Awards 2022

(GS Paper 2, Governance)

Why in news?

• India celebrated 8 years of Swachh Bharat Mission and the first anniversary of SBM-Urban 2.0 recently.
• President Droupadi Murmu felicitated the awardees of the cleanest States and cities at the award ceremony of Azadi@75 Swachh Survekshan 2022, hosted as part of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 by Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) at Talkatora Stadium, New Delhi.

 

Top Performers:

• Indore, the city of lakes and palaces, adjudged the Cleanest City title for the sixth consecutive year, in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category, while Surat was adjudged the second cleanest city, for the second time in a row.  Navi Mumbai bagged the third spot. 
• In the population category of ‘less than 1 lakh’, Panchgani and Karad  from Maharashtra bagged the first and third positions respectively, while Patan from Chhattisgarh bagged the second position.
• Tirupati received the best city award in Safai Mitra Suraksha.
• In to the survey, Maharashtra's Deolali was adjudged the country's cleanest Cantonment Board.
• Shivamogga in Karnataka received the fast mover city award.
• Indore further cemented its position by emerging as India’s first 7-star Garbage Free city, while Surat, Bhopal, Mysuru, Navi Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam, and Tirupati earned 5-star Garbage Free certifications.

 

Ganga towns:

• Haridwar was adjudged the cleanest Ganga town in the category of more than 1 lakh population, followed by Varanasi and Rishikesh.
• Bijnor was ranked the first among Ganga towns with fewer than one lakh population followed by Kannauj and Garhmukhteshwar respectively.

 

States:

• The State awards saw a few surprises. Madhya Pradesh emerged as the ‘Cleanest State’ in the category of “more than 100 Urban Local Bodies”, relegating Chhattisgarh, the Cleanest State of the previous 3 years, to second place. Maharashtra emerged as third cleanest State. 
• Similarly, Tripura emerged as the Cleanest State award in the “less than 100 ULBs category”, dislodging Jharkhand, which had won in the last 2 consecutive years.
• Jharkhand and Uttarakhand received the second and third spots respectively.

 

Overall performance:

• In all, 22 States and 5 UTs received awards, of whom 8 States received more than 10 awards each.
• 8 States and 5 UTs have shown improvements ranging between 5 – 25% in their overall ground level performance over last year. Of them, 4 out the 8 North Eastern states have shown significant improvement in the overall performance over the last year.
• Moreover, 10 Cantonment Boards (against 7 CBs last year) and 2 Ganga towns received awards.
• A heartening feature of the awards was that smaller cities with population of less than 25,000 have performed admirably in the survey, with 40 of them received awards.

 

Garbage Free India:

• The vision of a Garbage Free India under SBM-U 2.0 was given further impetus by announcing the results of 7-star and 5-star rated cities under the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities.
• The revised Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities was launched in 2021 to holistically evaluate cities across solid waste management parameters.

 

Background:

• The 7th edition of Swachh Survekshan was conducted to study the progress of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) and rank the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) based on various cleanliness and sanitation parameters.
• The Survekshan has evolved from being an assessment of 73 cities in 2016 to covering 4,354 cities this year.

 

Medicinal fungi may be suitable for identifying novel drugs

(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)

Why in news?

• Recently, an analytical study of medicinal fungi carried out by researchers from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai (IMSc) shows that some chemicals they secrete may find use as novel drugs.

 

Details:

• They used a database, MeFSAT (Medicinal Fungi Secondary Metabolites And Therapeutics), which compiles information on 184 medicinal fungi, including mushrooms.
• The researchers analysed the structure of 1,830 secondary metabolites of medicinal fungi.

Secondary metabolites:

• Secondary metabolites are chemical compounds that fungi produce when they are stressed. These are not strictly essential and hence the name ‘secondary’. They enhance the fungus’ ability to survive.
• Cordycepin, a secondary metabolite produced by Cordyceps species of fungus, is known to have anti-tumour properties.

 

Diverse structures:

• In their analysis, the researchers found that the secondary metabolites were structurally distant from existing drugs. Also, their ‘scaffolding’ or core chemical composition was different from known drugs.
• About 94% of the chemical scaffolds identified in secondary metabolites of medicinal fungi were not present in approved drugs. As for the complete chemical structure, the secondary metabolites were quite dissimilar to the approved drugs.
• This alone cannot tell that there are metabolites in fungi that can be used as drugs. However, the secondary metabolites of medicinal fungi have molecular properties, which are important for drug likeness, similar to approved drugs.
• This makes the secondary metabolites of the medicinal fungi suitable for identifying novel drugs with hitherto unknown chemical scaffolds.

 

Used in medicine:

• Medicinal fungi belongs to two taxonomic divisions namely, basidiomycota and ascomycota. Mushrooms belong to the basidiomycota division.
• An example is Agaricus bisporus, the button mushroom, which can be consumed. Fungi belonging to the ascomycota division are generally not mushrooms.
• Among these are Isaria cicadae and Shiraia bambusicola which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

 

What’s next?

• They plan to map the scaffolds to their biological targets, which will further pave the way for identifying potential lead molecules for drug discovery.