Target Prelims 2024: Day 2
1. POEM Platform:
ISRO successfully launched the PSLV Orbital Experimental Module or ‘POEM’.
• It is a platform that will help perform in-orbit scientific experiments during the 4th stage of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
• The PSLV is a four-stage rocket where the first three spent stages fall back into the ocean, and the final
stage (PS4) after launching the satellite into orbit ends up as space junk.
• With the help of the POEM, in PSLV-C53 mission, the PS4 stage would orbit the earth as a stabilized platform to perform experiments.
• It will derive its power from solar panels mounted around the PS4 tank, and a Li-Ion battery.
• It has a dedicated Navigation Guidance and Control (NGC) system for attitude stabilization, which stands for controlling
the orientation of any aerospace vehicle within permitted limits.
2. Zoonotic Diseases:
• It is a disease or infection that can be transmitted naturally from vertebrate animals to humans or from humans to vertebrate animals.
• More than 60% of human pathogens are zoonotic in origin. This includes a wide variety of bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, parasites, and other pathogens.
• Some of the common zoonotic diseases are Rabies, Ebola, Swine flu, Zika & Ebola viruses, plague, dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and Covid-19.
Factors Influencing Relevance of Zoonoses:
• Ecological changes in man's environment
• Handling animal by-products and wastes
• Increased movements of man - It expose the people to contaminated food and water leading to diseases
like amoebiasis, salmonellosis, shigellosis, etc.
• Increased trade in animal products .
3. Cervavac: The Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) granted market authorisation for the Quadrivalent Human
Papillomavirus vaccine (qHPV), Cervavac. Presently India is fully dependent on foreign manufacturers for the
HPV vaccine.
About Cervavac:
• It is the country’s first qHP vaccine manufactured by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII).
• The vaccine protects women against cervical cancer.
• The vaccine can be administered to those in the 9 -26 age group.
About HPV
• It is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.
• More than 90% of the infected population eventually clears the infection.
• Cervical cancer is by far the most common HPV-related disease.
• Cervical cancer in India is the 2nd most frequent cancer among women.
4. Project 17A:
• It is a follow-on of the P17 Frigates (Shivalik Class) with improved stealth features, advanced weapons
and sensors and platform management systems.
• Total of 7 ships are under construction under this project.
• The ships are Nilgiri, Himgiri, Udayagiri, Dunagiri, Taragiri, Vindhyagiri and Mahendragiri, which are
named after the mountain ranges in India.
. Dunagiri is the 4th warship of Project 17A that has been launched & named after a mountain range in the state of Uttarakhand.
5.Alpha Fold:
• AlphaFold is an artificial intelligence program developed by Alphabet's/Google's DeepMind which performs
predictions of protein structure.
• The Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) consortium is an open, community-based effort to generate the first
complete assembly of a human genome.