The European Space Agency is planning a universal timekeeping system for the moon.

Timekeeping on the Moon

• The Moon has its own day and night cycle, which lasts about 29.5 Earth days.
• This means that if humans were to live on the Moon, they would need to develop their own timekeeping system.
• Currently, the time on the Moon is measured using Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), which is the same timekeeping system used on the Earth.
• However, because the Moon’s day is much longer than Earth’s day, it would be difficult to use UTC for day-to-day activities on the Moon.

Why need lunar time zone?

• The Moon is the Earth’s only natural satellite, and humans have been interested in exploring and colonizing it for many years.
• With recent advancements in space technology, there is renewed interest in lunar exploration and settlement.

Proposed Lunar Time Zone

• To address this issue, scientists and researchers have proposed creating a lunar time zone that would be based on the Moon’s day and night cycle.
• This would make it easier for lunar settlers to keep track of time and coordinate activities.

Benefits offered

• Having a lunar time zone would also make it easier for scientists and researchers to conduct experiments and collect data on the Moon.
• It would also help to prevent confusion and errors that could arise from using different timekeeping systems on Earth and the Moon.

Various challenges

• Time on Earth is precisely tracked by atomic clocks, but synchronizing time on the moon is tricky because clocks run faster there, gaining around 56 microseconds, or millionths of a second, per day.
• It would also be difficult to establish a consistent time zone for the entire Moon, given that the terrain and lighting conditions vary widely across its surface.
• Additionally, any timekeeping system on the Moon would need to be able to account for the Moon’s irregular rotation and movement.

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Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have developed a cheap paper microscope (foldscope) connected to a smartphone camera that could find wider application in a variety of research areas, and in some cases potentially replace more expensive equipment.

What is Foldscope?

• The Foldscope is a handheld microscope made mostly of paper that can be easily linked to a smartphone camera.
• It has a magnification of around 140x and can identify objects just 2 micrometres wide.
• It was first created by researchers at Stanford University in 2014.
• IISc version of Foldscope costs around Rs 400, much cheaper than that of Stanford’s one.

How is Foldscope comparable to electron microscope?

• The researchers found that Foldscope could capture the roundness and aspect ratio of an object to within 5% of those imaged by a state-of-the-art instrument called a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
• SEM costs more than Rs 50 lakh each.
• Preparing a sample for study through a Foldscope takes less than an hour, whereas the same process for an SEM was “tedious and time-consuming”.

Potential applications

• Foldscopes can be used in pharmaceuticals (to inspect drug products), environmental science (to observe pollutants), and cosmetics (to observe powders and emulsions), among other fields.
• They can also be used to study “soil particles’ morphology,” which can “help understand soil structure, nutrient availability, and plant growth” in agriculture.
• It allows for in-field soil analysis and visualisation of soil structure per Indian Standard Soil Classification System which earlier required bulky microscopes with high resolution.

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There is currently a demand-supply gap of proton beam therapy machines in India, leaving many cancer patients in a difficult situation.

What is Proton Beam Therapy?

• Proton beam therapy is a type of radiation therapy — a treatment that uses high-energy beams to treat tumors.
• Radiation therapy using X-rays has long been used to treat cancers and noncancerous (benign) tumors.
• It uses protons rather than x-rays to treat cancer. At high energy, protons can destroy cancer cells.
• It can also be combined with x-ray radiation therapy, surgery, chemotherapy, and/or immunotherapy.
• Like x-ray radiation, proton therapy is a type of external-beam radiation therapy.

How it works?

• Fundamentally, all tissue cells are made up of molecules with atoms as their building blocks.
• In the center of every atom is the nucleus. Orbiting the nucleus of the atom are negatively charged electrons.
• When energized protons pass near orbiting electrons, the positive charge of the protons attracts the negatively charged electrons, pulling them out of their orbits. This is called ionization.
• It changes the characteristics of the atom and consequentially the character of the molecule within which the atom resides.
• Because of ionization, the radiation damages molecules within the cells, especially the DNA.
• Damaging the DNA destroys specific cell functions, particularly the ability to divide or proliferate.
• While both normal and cancerous cells go through this repair process, a cancer cell’s ability to repair molecular injury is frequently inferior.
• As a result, cancer cells sustain more permanent damage and subsequent cell death than occurs in the normal cell population.

Why in news?

• There is currently a significant demand-supply gap of proton beam therapy machines in India, with only a few machines available in the country.
• This has resulted in long wait times for patients who need the treatment, and many patients are forced to travel abroad to access the treatment, which can be prohibitively expensive.

Various challenges

• Huge demand: The demand for PBT machines is also increasing, as more and more patients are being diagnosed with cancer and are seeking the latest and most effective treatments available.
• High cost: One of the major challenges in setting up PBT machines is the high cost involved, as the machines are complex and require a significant investment.
• Shortage of personnel: In addition, there is a shortage of trained personnel who can operate and maintain the machines, which further limits their availability.

Way Forward

• The government and private sector need to invest more in setting up and maintaining the machines. This could include-

1. Offering tax incentives and subsidies to private healthcare providers who invest in PBT machines
2. Providing training and education to personnel who can operate and maintain the machines
3. Setting up more public hospitals that offer proton beam therapy, which would help to make the treatment more accessible and affordable to patients who need it

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Central idea: Organ-on-a-chip technology has emerged as a new laboratory setup that scientists are using instead of animals to test new drugs.

What is Organ-on-a-Chip?

• Organ-on-a-chip is a microfluidic device that aims to mimic the structure and function of specific human organs or tissues in vitro.
• It is a small, transparent chip made of biocompatible materials such as silicon, glass, or polymers, and contains tiny channels lined with living cells.
• The living cells are derived from human tissues and can be cultured to replicate the microenvironment of the specific organ being modelled.

How does Organ-on-a-Chip work?

• Microfluidic channels simulation: Each organ-on-a-chip contains a complex network of microfluidic channels and chambers that can simulate the mechanical and chemical environment of a specific organ.
• Mimics the blood flow: The microfluidic channels can mimic the flow of blood and air, while the living cells provide a realistic environment for drug testing and disease modelling.

Potential applications of organ-on-a-chip

• Organ-on-a-chip technology has numerous potential applications, including drug development, disease modelling, and toxicity testing.
• By replicating the structure and function of human organs, researchers can study how organs interact with drugs and other compounds.
• This could lead to the development of more effective and personalized treatments for a variety of diseases.
• Additionally, organ-on-a-chip technology provides a more ethical and effective approach to testing drugs and other compounds, reducing the reliance on animal testing.

Examples of Organ-on-a-Chip

Several examples of organ-on-a-chip technology have been developed, including-

• Lung-on-a-chip mimics the air-blood interface in the lungs
• Heart-on-a-chip mimics the mechanical and electrical properties of the heart
• Liver-on-a-chip replicates the metabolic activity of the liver
• Brain-on-a-chip models the blood-brain barrier and neural activity in the brain

Future prospects

• Organ-on-a-chip technology is a promising and rapidly evolving field that offers numerous advantages over traditional drug development and testing methods.
• It provides a more ethical and effective approach to testing drugs and other compounds, reducing the reliance on animal testing.
• Furthermore, it has the potential to revolutionize the field of drug development by enabling more personalized and effective treatments for a variety of diseases.

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National Science Day is commemorated on Feb 28 every year to commemorate the bird anniversary of Sir CV Raman.

National Science Day

• In 1986, the Government of India, under then PM Rajiv Gandhi, designated February 28 as National Science Day to commemorate the announcement of the discovery of the “Raman Effect”.
• The Raman Effect was the discovery which won physicist Sir CV Raman his Nobel Prize in 1930.

Who was CV Raman?

• Raman conducted his Nobel-prize-winning research at IACS, Calcutta.
• While he was educated entirely in India, Raman travelled to London for the first time in 1921, where his reputation in the study of optics and acoustics was known to physicists such as JJ Thomson and Lord Rutherford.
• The Raman Effect won scientist Sir CV Raman the Nobel Prize for physics in 1930.
• It was also designated as an International Historic Chemical Landmark jointly by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS).
• His speciality was the study of vibrations and sounds of stringed instruments such as the Indian veena and tambura, and Indian percussion instruments such as the tabla and mridangam.

The Raman Effect

• In 1928, Raman discovered that when a stream of light passes through a liquid, a fraction of the light scattered by the liquid is of a different colour.
• While Raman was returning from London in a 15-day voyage, he started thinking about the colour of the deep blue Mediterranean.
• He wasn’t convinced by the explanation that the colour of the sea was blue due to the reflection of the sky.
• As the ship docked in Bombay, he sent a letter to the editor of the journal Nature, in which he penned down his thoughts on this.
• Subsequently, Raman was able to show that the blue colour of the water was due to the scattering of the sunlight by water molecules.
• By this time he was obsessed with the phenomenon of light scattering.

Observing the effect

• The Raman Effect is when the change in the energy of the light is affected by the vibrations of the molecule or material under observation, leading to a change in its wavelength.
• Significantly, it notes that the Raman effect is “very weak” — this is because when the object in question is small (smaller than a few nanometres), the light will pass through it undisturbed.
• But a few times in a billion, light waves may interact with the particle. This could also explain why it was not discovered before.
• In general, when light interacts with an object, it can either be reflected, refracted or transmitted.
• One of the things that scientists look at when light is scattered is if the particle it interacts with is able to change its energy.

Real-life applications

• Raman spectroscopy is used in many varied fields – in fact, any application where non-destructive, microscopic, chemical analysis and imaging is required.
• Whether the goal is qualitative or quantitative data, Raman analysis can provide key information easily and quickly.
• It can be used to rapidly characterize the chemical composition and structure of a sample, whether solid, liquid, gas, gel, slurry or powder.

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