Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted successful flight test of ABHYAS - High-speed Expendable Aerial Target (HEAT) from Interim Test Range, Chandipur in Odisha today. The flight test was tracked by various RADARS & Electro Optic Systems and proved its performance in fully autonomous way point navigation mode.

The configuration of ABHYAS is designed on an in-line small gas turbine engine and uses indigenously developed MEMS based navigation system for its navigation and guidance. The performance of the system was as per simulations carried out and demonstrated the capability of ABHYAS to meet the mission requirement for a cost effective HEAT.

IIDEM is an advanced resource centre of learning, research, training and extension for participatory democracy and election management. The Institute has been developed in collaboration with the Government of India, United Nations, the Commonwealth and inter-governmental organisations like Sweden based International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).

Roles and functions: The Institute will be a national and international hub for exchange of good practices in election management. It works for enhancing voter education, and developing human resource for efficient conduct of free and fair elections in India. Along with this it is also set to develop mutually beneficial partnership with other countries.

Trade Impact: The biggest Chinese import sector impacted by the hike in tariffs is the $20 billion-plus category of internet modems, routers and other data transmission devices, alongside printed circuit boards used in a number of US-made products.

Furniture, lighting products, auto parts, vacuum cleaners and building materials are also faced with higher levies. The tariffs could hamper the rebound in the US economy, with consumption likely to take a hit as these tariffs would be paid by American consumers and businesses.

Impact on India: There could be a short-term impact on the stock markets over fears of the escalating trade war between the US and China. In the longer run, while a slowdown in the US economy does not augur well for emerging markets, the trade war heralds a silver lining for some countries. India is among a handful of countries that stand to benefit from the trade tensions between the world’s top two economies, the UN has said in a report.

Benefits for other countries: Countries that are expected to benefit the most from the trade war are the EU members as exports in the bloc are likely to grow by $70 billion. Japan and Canada will see exports increase by more than $20 billion each. Other countries set to benefit from the trade tensions include Australia, with 4.6 per cent export gains, Brazil (3.8) India (3.5), Philippines (3.2) and Vietnam (5), the study said.

Origin of the US-China dispute: Trump slapped heavy tariffs on imported steel and aluminium items from China in March last year, and China responded by imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars worth of American imports. The dispute escalated after Washington demanded that China reduce its $375 billion trade deficit with the US, and introduce “verifiable measures” for protection of Intellectual Property Rights, technology transfer, and more access to American goods in Chinese markets.

Why should the world be worried? In a report earlier this year, the IMF noted that the US-China trade tension was one factor that contributed to a “significantly weakened global expansion” late last year, as it cut its global growth forecast for 2019.

Also, this exacerbates the uncertainty in the global trading environment, affects global sentiment negatively, and adds to risk aversion globally. The higher tariffs could lead to the repricing of risk assets globally, tighter financing conditions, and slower growth. The trade tensions could result in an increasingly fragmented global trading framework, weakening the rules-based system that has underpinned global growth, particularly in Asia, over the past several decades.

What is MANAV : Human Atlas Initiative? It is a project funded by DBT. aims at creating a database network of all tissues in the human body from the available scientific literature.

It is a project that involves scientific skill development for annotation, science outreach along with handling big data. The programme will involve gaining better biological insights through physiological and molecular mapping, develop disease models through predictive computing and have a wholistic analysis and finally drug discovery.

Who can participate in this project? The project can be signed up by students who are in their final year graduation and above. Students from the fields of biochemistry, biotechnology, microbiology, botany, zoology, bioinformatics, health sciences, systems biologists, pharmacologists and data sciences can associate with this project. Even participants having a science background but not necessarily involved in active scientific research can be part of this network.

Why is MANAV important? So far, researchers and students have had little or no expertise in reading scientific literature and develop or build further information on the same. This platform will impart key skills to the student community to read classified scientific literature, in this case, on individual tissue-basis, and perform annotation and curation.

Since all the information generated will pass through multiple levels of reviews, it will be an Atlas or a reliable collection on human body tissues. This collated data can be useful for both future researchers and parallelly, to the clinicians and drug developers, who finally handle human bodies in disease conditions.

What are the applications of information generated through MANAV? The aim of the project remains to understand and capture the human physiology in two stages – in a normal stage and while in a disease stage. Such a database on individual tissues, once ready, can come handy in tracing the causes of a disease, understanding specific pathways and ultimately decode the body’s disease stage linked to tissues and cells. The teams will also study any potent elements or molecules that have never been used in the form of drugs, to target the specific cells or tissues.