News Flash (16th July 2020): Top 10 Stories Of The Day

1. Bill Gates says Indian pharma industry can make COVID-19 vaccines for entire world

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder has said that India’s pharmaceutical industry has the strength to produce COVID-19 vaccines not just for itself but also for the entire world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with the government, particularly with the Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), to help develop the Covid-19 vaccine, Bill Gates added.

2. IIT Kanpur develops SHUDH, a sanitizing device that disinfects room in 15 mins

An ultraviolet sanitizing product named SHUDH has been developed by IIT Kanpur that can disinfect a room within 15 minutes. The device is operated by a smartphone and has six UV lights of 15 watts each fixed, that can be individually controlled from a distance. The lights have the ability to rotate up to 360 degrees.

3. Twitter accounts of high-profiles like Obama, Musk, Bezos, and Joe Biden hacked

In an apparent effort to promote a Bitcoin scam, verifoed Twitter accounts of some of the United States’ prominent political and business leaders, including Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, were hacked on 15th July. US presidential candidate Joe Biden, Hollywood celebrity Kim Kardashian, rapper Kanye West, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, were among the personalities whose accounts were hacked. Bloomberg reported that after the accounts were hacked, the tweets that were tweeted from these accounts promised double money to those who could send funds via Bitcoin within 30 minutes.

4. Uttarakhand government to convert waste into electricity

The Uttarakhand government has decided to create ‘best out of waste’ by choosing to generate electricity from waste under the ‘Waste to Energy initiative ‘. As reported in the Indian Express, according to state government data, currently 900 tonnes of waste is created in the hill, every single day. The half of total waste that is generated is organic in nature while the other comprises 17 percent falls of recyclable waste, followed by 21 percent biomedical waste and 11 percent of inert nature which is building material waste. 

According to Uttarakhand Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board (UEPPCB), this waste has the potential to generate upto 5 megawatt of electricity and curb the pollution. “The state government has already drafted the policy regarding the matter and soon…CM will take a meeting on the issue to decide further course of action,” state cabinet minister, Madan Kaushik, said.

5. Zydus Cadila, 2nd COVID-19 vaccine candidate to begin human trials in India

Ahmedabad based Pharmaceutical giant Zydus Cadila said it has initiated phase 1, 2 of human trials of India’s second COVID-19 vaccine candidate ZyCoV-D. The adaptive phase I/II human trials of ZyCoV-D have commenced with the first human dosing, Zydus Cadila added. It further said that phase I/II “dose-escalation, the multi-centric study will assess the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of ZyCoV-D”.

6. Assam flood affect over 34 lakh people, claims 61 lives

Assam is battling the twin disasters of floods and coronavirus. The flood situation is deteriorating with the number of deaths going up to 61. Most of the rivers in the state are in spate, and the India Meteorological Department has predicted more rain in the coming days. Over 34 lakh people in 26 of the 33 districts in the state are affected by the devastating floods. The Brahmaputra and eight other rivers in Assam are flowing above the danger level. As per the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, 517 relief camps have been set up across 24 districts. 

7. A study predicts that over 20 nations will see their populations halve by 2100

Over 20 countries including Japan, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Portugal, South Korea and Poland will see their populations shrink by half by 2100, a study has predicted. The study has predicted that the world population could stand at 8.8 billion by 2100, 2 billion less than what the UN forecasts state. The working-age population in India will decline from 762 million in 2017 to about 580 million by 2100, the study added. On the positive side, lead author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington said, “These forecasts suggest good news for the environment, with less stress on food production systems and lower carbon emissions, as well as significant economic opportunity for parts of sub-Saharan Africa.”

8. Man points out woman on Scotch-Brite’s India logo, firm responds

Karthik Srinivasan, a communications strategy consultant, recently took to LinkedIn for perpetuating gender stereotypes, he pointed out that the logo of  Scotch-Brite brand featured an image of a woman in bindi. The company’s Marketing Head for Consumer Business responded saying, “It’s undoubtedly time to move on from regressive beliefs…you will see the logo change a few months down the line.”

9. Researchers present artificial skin with sense of touch

Researchers of National University of Singapore presented artificial skin with a sense of touch . Science and Systems 2020, which allows robots to detect touch 1,000 times faster than the human sensory nervous system. It can also identify the shape, texture, and hardness of objects 10 times faster than the blink of an eye. Researchers used it to teach a robotic hand to read Braille.

10. Researchers develop robotic camera backpack for insects to see how they view world

To understand how insects see the world, researchers have developed a tiny wireless steerable camera that can be mounted on the insect’s back. The camera is connected to a smartphone at 1-5 frames per second which helps in streaming the videos. The camera sits atop a mechanical arm that can pivot 60 degrees. The system is controlled via Bluetooth from a distance up to 120 meters away.