GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The first two cases of the Marburg virus, a highly infectious Ebola-like disease, have been confirmed officially by Ghana after test results were verified by a Senegal laboratory.

• This outbreak is only the second time that the disease has been detected in West Africa.

About Marburg virus disease:

• According to WHO, Marburg virus disease (MVD), earlier known as Marburg haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal hemorrhagic fever.
• Marburg, like Ebola, is a filovirus; and both diseases are clinically similar.
• Rousettus fruit-bats are considered the natural hosts for Marburg virus.
• However, African green monkeys imported from Uganda were the source of the first human infection.
• It was first detected in 1967 after simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany; and in Belgrade, Serbia.
• The disease has an average fatality rate of around 50%.
  
  
  

Symptoms:

• Common symptoms of Marburg virus disease include- high fever, severe malaise, severe headache, Muscle aches and pains.
• Patients may also see severe watery diarrhoea, nausea & vomiting, abdominal pain & cramping on the third day following the contracting.
• These symptoms persist for a week.

Diagnosis 

• It can be difficult to clinically distinguish Marburg virus disease (MVD) from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, meningitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.
• Confirmation that symptoms are caused by Marburg virus infection are made using the following diagnostic methods: 
• antibody enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA); 
• antigen detection tests; 
• serum neutralization tests; 
• reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay; and 
• virus isolation by cell culture. 
• Samples collected from patients are an extreme biohazard risk and laboratory testing on non-inactivated samples need to be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.
• All biological specimens must be packaged using the triple packaging system when transported nationally and internationally. 

Treatment

• No treatment or vaccine has been developed for Marburg, yet.
• Patients are treated through rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids.

The total horticulture production in 2021-22 is estimated to be 341.63 million tonnes (MT), an increase of about 7.03 MT over 2020-21, according to the second advanced estimates of area and production of various horticultural crops.

Key observations:

• The total horticulture production in 2021-22 is an increase of 2.10% over 2020-21.
• There could be an increase in production of fruits, vegetables and honey, the cultivation of spices, flowers, aromatics, medicinal plants and plantation crops could decrease over previous year.

• Fruit production: The fruits production is estimated to be 107.10 MT compared to 102.48 MT in 2020-21.
• Vegetable production: The production of vegetables is estimated to be 204.61 MT, compared to 200.45 MT in 2020-21.
  • In the case of onion, the production is estimated to be 31.70 MT against 26.64 MT in 2020-21.
  • Potato production is expected to be 53.58 MT, compared to 56.17 MT in 2020-21 and the cultivation of tomato is expected to be 20.34 MT, compared to 21.18 MT in 2020-21.

What is Horticulture?

• Horticulture, the branch of plant agriculture dealing with garden crops, generally fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants.
• The word is derived from the Latin Hortus, “garden,” and colere, “to cultivate.”
• As a general term, it covers all forms of garden management, but in ordinary use, it refers to intensive commercial production.
• In terms of scale, horticulture falls between domestic gardening and field agriculture, though all forms of cultivation naturally have close links.
• Horticulture sector has become one of the major drivers of growth as it is more remunerative than the agricultural sector.

Important government schemes promoting horticulture

• National Horticulture Mission
• Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture’ (MIDH), a centrally sponsored scheme
• National Green Mission
• National Horticulture Board (NHB)
  • It was set up in 1984 on the basis of recommendations of the "Group on Perishable Agricultural Commodities", headed by Dr M. S. Swaminathan.
  • Headquartered at
  • The objective is to improve the integrated development of the Horticulture industry and to help in coordinating, sustaining the production and processing of fruits and vegetables.

The euro and the U.S. dollar reached parity recently, meaning one dollar could buy one euro in the foreign exchange market.

• For over two decades, it took more than one U.S. dollar to purchase one euro.

What is exchange rate?

• An exchange rate is the value of one nation's currency versus the currency of another nation or economic zone.
• Typically, exchange rates can be free-floating or fixed.
• A free-floating exchange rate rises and falls due to changes in the foreign exchange market.
• A fixed exchange rate is pegged to the value of another currency.
• The rupee’s exchange rate vis-a-vis a particular currency, say the US dollar, tells us how many rupees are required to buy a US dollar.

How is the exchange rate determined?

• The price of any currency in a market economy is determined by supply and demand.
• The supply of a country’s currency in the foreign exchange market is determined by various factors such as central bank policy and the local demand for imports and foreign assets.
• The demand for a country’s currency, on the other hand, is determined by factors such as central bank policy and the foreign demand for exports and domestic assets.

Why has the euro fallen against the U.S. dollar? 

• The divergence in the monetary policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank is the primary reason behind the euro’s significant depreciation against the U.S. dollar.
  • The U.S. Federal Reserve responded to the rising prices by raising the interest rates this year in order to slow down U.S. money supply growth. 
  • The ECB has been far less aggressive in tightening policy even though the inflation rate is as high as 22% in some European countries.
    • This has caused the value of the euro to slide against the dollar as currency traders witness, or at least expect, the supply of euros in the market rising relative to the supply of dollars.
• Another chief concern in Europe is energy prices.
• • After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies imposed a broad array of sanctions and restrictions on Russian oil and natural gas.
  • That's driven up prices, and Europeans have been hit especially hard.

Recently at the Digital India Week 2022, PM noted that, India wants to become a chipmaker from a chip taker. Investment is rapidly increasing in India to increase production of semiconductors.

What are semiconductors?

• Semiconductors are crystalline or amorphous solids that have electrical conductivity opposite at temperatures to those of metal, higher electrical resistance than typical resistant materials, but still of much lower resistance than insulators.
• There are two basic groups or classifications that can be used to define the different semiconductor types:
• Intrinsic material: An intrinsic type of semiconductor material made to be very pure chemically.
• Extrinsic material: Extrinsic types of semiconductor are those where a small amount of impurity has been added to the basic intrinsic material.

Why semiconductors are critical?

• Semiconductors, also known as microchips, integrated circuits, and processors — are embedded in all electrical and electronic devices. Most devices comprise an ecosystem of chips controlling different functions.
• Chips are integral to just about everything electronic: smartphones, cars, trains, washing machines, traffic lights, computers at the stock exchange, fighter jets.

Manufacturing of semi-conductors in India:

• The Union Cabinet in December, 2021 has cleared the Semicon India Programme with a financial outlay of INR 76,000 crore for the development of semiconductors and display manufacturing ecosystems over the next six years.
• A specialised and dedicated “India Semiconductor Mission (ISM)” has been set up within Digital India Corporation to drive India’s strategies for developing semiconductors and display ecosystem.
• The scheme has been aimed at making India a global electronics hub as a shortage of microchips hurts industrial production.
  
  
  

Need of Promoting Indigenous Semiconductor Industry

• Employment: Promotion of semiconductor industry will create highly skilled employment opportunities and help India harness its demographic dividend.
• Reducing Imports Dependency: As the demand increases, electronics imports are expected to overtake crude oil as India’s largest import commodity.
• Disruption in Global Supply Chains: Pandemic induced lockdown and restriction followed by Russia-Ukraine war has led to the shortage of semiconducting devices. It has a cascading effect on other industries as well leading to slowdown in many sectors of the economy.
• Promoting Make in India: Indigenous manufacturing of semiconductor devices will give push to the Make in India program and will help in attracting investment.
• Atmanirbhar Bharat: Local semiconductor manufacturing will pave the way for India’s technological leadership in areas of strategic importance and economic self-reliance.
• National Security: India imports most of electronic components used in its communication and critical systems. There is a risk of programming backdoors in the manufacturing process and thus hampering national security and sovereignty of India.
• Capital intensive: Semiconductor manufacturing is a highly capital-intensive industry which needs developed ecosystem to thrive.
• Shortage of process engineers: Despite having large talent pool of chip designers, Indialacks process engineers who can run a front-end chip factory.
• Dominance of Few Countries: Taiwan and South Korea dominated the semiconductor manufacturing space. 75% of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity is concentrated in East Asia and China. Any disruption in supply chain due to conflict or restriction poses many challenges for the importing country.
• Pursuing Western Companies: India needs to attract foreign investment to built-up chip fab capacity by overcoming the intense competition from other countries.

Required measures

• Supporting startups: India has a huge talentof entrepreneurial engineers and hand-holding of Indian engineers by the government can produce large payoffs.
• Budgetary support: Semiconductor manufacturing is a capital intensive process and will require government’s support to reach its full potential.
• Focus on back-end of manufacturing: Semiconductor foundries accounts for 65% of industry capital expenditure but only 25% of the value addition. Therefore, to lower the risks of investment, India should especially look at back-end of manufacturing such as assembly, packaging and testing. Once it stabilises and an ecosystem develops, front-end of manufacturing will follow.
• Cooperation of states: Semiconductor industry requires stable power, large quantities of pure water and land. These are state subjects, and state governments’ proactive cooperation is needed to create the right climate for easy implementation of semiconductor projects.
• Transport logistics: Roads, railway and air connectivity to the site are also critical.

Extreme heat has engulfed parts of Western Europe, with wildfires raging in France and Spain, a worsening drought in Portugal, and the third hottest day on record in the UK recently.

• France experienced its hottest May on record, with record highs in some cities.
  • In June, France was blistered again, by a spring heat wave that also affected Spain, Italy and other countries.
  • Then, in July, Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe suffered during a spell of extreme heat.
• Now temperatures across Europe are soaring yet again from Spain to the British Isles and spreading east.
  
  

Why Europe is becoming a heatwave hotspot?

• Global warming plays a role, as it does in heat waves around the world, because temperatures are on average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) higher than they were in the late 19th century, before emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases became widespread. So extreme heat takes off from a higher starting point.
• Wildfires stoked by the heat are burning in many countries, and much of the continent is in the throes of a lengthy drought.
  • Other factors, some involving the circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean, that may make Europe a heat wave hot spot:
• The current scorching temperatures that reached into England and Wales recently were caused in part by a region of upper level low-pressure air that has been stalled off the coast of Portugal for days.
  • It’s known as a “cutoff low” in the parlance of atmospheric scientists, because it was cut off from a river of westerly winds, the mid-latitude jet stream, which circles the planet at high altitudes.
• Low-pressure zones tend to draw air toward them.
  • In this case, the low-pressure zone has been steadily drawing air from North Africa toward it and into Europe.
  • It’s pumping hot air northward.
• Heat waves in Europe had increased in frequency and intensity over the past four decades, and linked the increase at least in part to changes in the jet stream.
• The researchers found that many European heat waves occurred when the jet stream had temporarily split in two, leaving an area of weak winds and high pressure air between the two branches that are conducive to the build-up of extreme heat.
• There are also indications that changes in one of the world’s major ocean currents, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, may affect Europe’s climate.

Google Doodle celebrated the 113th birthday of famous Indian poet Balamani Amma, known as the grandmother of Malayalam literature.

About Balamani Amma:

• Balamani Amma, the grandmother of Malayalam literature, was born on 19 July 1909 in Thrissur district.
• She continues to be known as the ‘amma’ (mother) and ‘muthassi’ (grandmother), of Malayalam poetry.
• Balamani Amma never received any formal education.
  • She was taught at home by her uncle Nalappat Narayana Menon, who was also a famous Malayali poet.
• Balamani Amma was also the mother of Kamala Das.
  • Kamala Das was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1984.
• She passed away in 2004 and was cremated with full state honours.

Work:

• Her first poem, titled Kooppukai, was published in
• Her most famous works include Amma (1934), Muthassi (1962), and Mazhuvinte Katha (The Story of the Axe) (1966).

Recognition:

• Amma was the recipient of various awards and honours like the
  • Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian honour, in 1987;
  • the Sahitya Akademi Award for Muthassi in 1965;
  • the Saraswati Samman for Nivedyam in 1995
• The Kochi International Book Fair gives a cash prize for writers in her name, the Balamani Amma Award.