DAILY NEWS ANALYSIS

A recent study published in the Lancet noted overall decrease in child marriage in India except 4 States.

What are the key findings of the Lancet report?

• India – 1 in 5 girls are still married below legal marriage age
• Skewed achievements – Some States have achieved dramatic decreases while other states like West Bengal have struggled.
• Bihar (16.7%), West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra accounted for more than half of the total headcount burden of child marriages in girls.
• West Bengal – It has the largest absolute increase in headcount representing an increase of 32.3% in headcount with over 5,00,000 more girls getting married as children.

What is situation of child marriage in West Bengal?

• Statistics – The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5)carried out in 2019-20, points out that the women aged 20-24 years who were married before the age of 18 years remains one of the highest in the country at 41.6% same as NFHS- 4.
• The all-India figure of women aged 20-24 years getting married before they turn 18 is pegged at 23.3%.
• Policy interventions – 2 schemes were introduced to curb child marriages situations in the state.
  • Rupashree Prakalpa – A cash incentive scheme for marriage of girls who are above legal marriage age in India.
  • Kanyashree Prakalpa - A conditional cash transfer scheme aimed at incentivising the schooling of all teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 18, and simultaneously discouraging child marriage.

• Challenges – Cash incentives and existing laws have failed to check child marriages in West Bengal.
• Poverty forces the family to continue with the custom of child marriage.
  • Murshidabad, economically poorer district of the State, has one of the highest numbers of child marriages.
• A significant population of the State go out to work (migration) in other States and they don’t want to leave unmarried daughters at home.
• Despite high literacy, the incidence of child marriage is also disproportionately high in some districts.
  • For example, the Purba Medinipur district with over 88% literacy rate has the highest incidence of child marriage of more than 57.6% as per NFHS- 5.
• Certain families avail cash benefits of both the schemes to organise marriage of girls, sometimes soon after cashing in on the school scheme.
• Lower number of cases registered under Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, 2006 due to the lack of awareness.
  • In 2021, West Bengal registered only 105 cases whereas States like Assam with smaller population and lesser instances of child marriage registered more cases in the past 5 years.

The Prohibition of Child Marriage (Amendment) Bill, 2021 introduced in Parliament in 2021 for raising the age of marriage of women to 21 years to bring it on par with the men has been referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee.

Bio-Imaging Bank

AI can help detect cancer and India’s biggest cancer treatment hospital is utilizing it.

Bio imaging

• It is an optical form of biosensing used to create non-invasive, visual representations of biological processes in cells, tissues, and anatomy for more accurate diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

Biosensing is a detection of target molecules based on the principles used by a living system such as an immune system.

• Aim - Bioimaging aims to interfere as little as possible with life processes.
• Uses - Moreover, it is often used to gain information on the 3-D structure of the observed specimen from the outside, i.e. without physical interference.
• Bioimaging also includes methods visualizing biological material that has been fixed for observation.

The Bank

• Background - By established a ‘Bio-Imaging Bank’ for cancer, hospitals are utilizing deep learning to craft a cancer-specific tailored algorithm that aids in early-stage cancer detection.
• Goal - To create a robust repository encompassing radiology and pathology images, intricately linked with clinical information, outcome data, treatment specifics, and additional metadata.
• Design - This comprehensive resource is strategically designed for the training, validation, and rigorous testing of AI algorithms.
• Fund - The project is funded by the Department of Biotechnology, in collaboration with IIT-Bombay, RGCIRC-New Delhi, AIIMS-New Delhi, and PGIMER-Chandigarh.
• Method - Segmenting and annotating images, outlining tumours, identifying different features, and annotating them as malignant, inflammatory, or edematous.
• Biopsy results, histopathology, immunohistochemistry reports, and genomic sequences are correlated with images and clinical data to develop diverse algorithms.

Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) has already added the data of 60,000 patients into the biobank over the previous year, started using AI to reduce radiation exposure for paediatric patients undergoing CT scans.

SVAMITVA Scheme wins Best Innovation Award for Innovation Sandbox presentation during Public Policy Dialogues–2024 at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

Initiative by - It is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, State Panchayati Raj Departments, State Revenue Departments and Survey of India.

Launch - It is a Central Sector Scheme, launched in the year 2021.

Aim - It is a scheme for mapping the land parcels in rural inhabited areas using drone technology and Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS).

• To provide an integrated property validation solution for rural India.

SVAMITVA Property Cards - They facilitate monetization of properties, enabling bank loans and comprehensive village-level planning.

Purpose - The SVAMITVA Scheme stands out as a groundbreaking initiative that harnesses innovation and new technologies to transform the landscape of land ownership in rural India.

• Target - The scheme has target year of completion of its implementation as 2024–25.

Coverage Area - The scheme has been saturated with generation of property cards of all inhabited villages of Haryana, Uttarakhand, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Goa.

Shark & ray meat (elasmobranch meat) consumption no longer restricted to India’s tribal & coastal peoples.

• Elasmobranch is a subclass of the Class Chondrichthyes: Cartilaginous Fishes, which consists of sharks, rays, skates, and chimaeras.

The rise in demand for elasmobranch meat could lead to more unsustainable fishing of shark species.

Difference - The other subclass of cartilaginous fish, the Holocephali, consists of Chimaeras, ratfish (Genus Chimaera) and elephantfish (Genus Callorhynchus).

• The main differences between these two subclasses are the structure of their gills and how they grow in the embryo.
• Holocephali has four-gill slits with a gill cover (an operculum); while Elasmobranchs have five to seven, external gill slits with no gill cover.
• The term Elasmobranch actually means naked gill.
• In addition, in the Holocephali the upper jaw is fused to the skull, unlike in the Elasmobranchii.

Features - A skeleton made of cartilage; No swim bladders; Five to seven pairs of gills opening individually to the exterior; Rigid dorsal fins; Rough skin made up of small dermal denticles.

• Elasmobranch skin is made of tiny, hard, tooth-like placoid scales called denticles.
• Elasmobranchs are renowned for their highly tuned senses, which make them incredibly successful in their environment.
• Many Elasmobranchs can sense electrical impulses of other animals but not generate their own special fields, as they possess sensory organs called the Ampullae of Lorenzini.
• Females have no obvious external reproductive structures, whilst males have two extensions of the pelvic fin known as claspers.

India has banned the live finning of sharks and the export of fins of all shark and ray species and ten species are completely protected from any fishing and trade.

Researchers at the Indian Institutes of Technology Madras and Mandi have metabolically engineered plant cells to increase production of anti-cancer drug camptothecin (CPT).

Nathapodytes nimmoniana

• Nathapodytes nimmoniana is an endangered medicinal plant widely distributed throughout the Western Ghats of India.
• The plant contains camptothecin (CPT) which is renowned anticancer drugs.
• Though, CPT found in many plant species but maximum amount of CPT has been reported from N. nimmoniana.
• Due to very good source of CPT, this plant has been explored for its Phytochemical, Biotechnological and Pharmacological aspects.
• The plant has been overharvested, pushing it to the endangered list.
• The International Union for Conservation of Nature has red-listed the plant as in the past decade alone there has been a 20% decline in the plant’s population.

The Chinese variety of the plant used to extract the cell is listed as critically endangered.

Camptothecin (CPT)

• Camptothecin (CPT) was discovered from plant extracts more than 60 years ago.
• Since then, only two CPT analogs (irinotecan and topotecan) have been approved for cancer treatment.
• Camptothecin (CPT) class of compounds has been demonstrated to be effective against a broad spectrum of tumors.
• The allopathic medicine is produced using Nathapodytes nimmoniana.
• Camptothecin is majorly produced in southeast Asian region, with the plant being largely found only in China and India.

• Cyber kidnapping is a type of cybercrime where attackers gain unauthorized access to computer systems or data and then demand ransom.
• In cyber kidnapping, online attackers target victims and force them into isolating themselves to demand ransom from their families.

They monitor the victims through video chat and use pictures captured by them in isolated conditions to extort money from their families.

• Starlink is a satellite internet network operated by SpaceX, an American aerospace company.
• It provides coverage to over 70 countries and aims to provide high-speed internet coverage to every part of the world.

It also aims to provide global mobile phone service after 2023.

• The Earth reached its perihelion, or the closest point in its orbit around the Sun recently.

Perihelion occurs in early January, about 2 weeks after the Winter Solstice.

• The Earth reached its perihelion, or the closest point in its orbit around the Sun recently.

Perihelion occurs in early January, about 2 weeks after the Winter Solstice.