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What extinct species came back 2022?

The year 2022 has seen quite a number of species getting reintroduced into the wild while some were discovered. Here are a few animals and birds that made to our list of animals in spotlight.

TASMANIAN TIGER

The 1930s saw the marsupial Tasmanian Tiger go extinct. Now efforts are being taken to resurrect the animal using gene-editing technology. The $15-million project hopes to reintroduce the animal to Tasmania, its native place. This attempt is expected to bring back the ecological balance in the region. Seen here is a stuffed Tasmanian tiger which was declared extinct in 1936.

SNOW CRABS

A huge collapse in the population of snow crabs was found after 11 billion snow crabs disappeared off the coast of Alaska. The crabs are disappearing in the Bering Sea and scientists believe that global warming could have resulted in the vanishing of these crabs. The sea was warmer in the previous years and this could have been the reason for the mass die-off. The decline in the numbers were noted when the survey was conducted in 2021. The survey result was confirmed this year too and it was ascertained that the crabs didn’t move to any other place, but disappeared. Their total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, from 11.7 billion in 2018.

CHEETAH

The last cheetah died in India in 1947. And over 70 years after the animal was declared extinct in India, the country launched its ambitious programme “Project Cheetah to reintroduce cheetahs into the wild. Eight cheetahs including five females and three males were introduced as they were brought in from Namibia, southern Africa to Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh. Seen here is a cheetah after being released inside a special enclosure of the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh.

IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER

For long researchers believed that the ivory-billed woodpecker got extinct. But this year, a few researchers have claimed that the very bird which was declared extinct by the U.S. government was spotted in the forests of Louisiana. The researchers have claimed its spotting based on a series of grainy pictures and observations of the bird. Once relatively common, the numbers of ivory-billed woodpeckers started dropping with habitat loss due to human intervention and hunting. It is the largest woodpecker in the U.S.

APIS KARINJODIAN

Did you know that the last time a honey bee species was discovered in India was in 1798? And now, after a gap of 224 years, a new honey bee species endemic to Western Ghats has been discovered. Named Apis Karinjodian, the species has been classified as ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). With the new addition, now we have a total of 11 species of duster honey bees in the world.

WILD BISON

The year saw the wild bison get reintroduced to the U.K. for the first time in thousands of years. The species classified as near threatened was introduced into a woodland in Kent. The bison is being reintroduced as part of the Wilder Blean project. The idea for the reintroduction of the species is to restore natural landscapes. It is also a rewilding attempt to check if the animal’s behaviour can help transform a commercial pine forest into a natural forestland.

GREAT INDIAN BUSTARD

The Great Indian Bustard (GIB) came into focus once again this year when the Supreme Court of India asked if a Project GIB on the lines of Project Tiger could be launched to protect the bird. Found mainly in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the GIB has been labelled as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The SC bench asked this whilst hearing petitions on the situation of the bird and their deaths in large numbers due to electrocution from high-transmission power lines.

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What do we know about Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee?

Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee, a professor of Geology from IIT- Kharagpur features among the top 100 influential people of 2020 by Time magazine. He is famous worldwide for his research in the field of groundwater exploration.

His team introduced a prediction model based on Artificial Intelligence for detecting arsenic in groundwater in the Gangetic delta. This feat was noted by the Jal Jeevan Mission.

A groundwater-surface water interaction is yet another one of his specializations. This work supplied important data regarding drinking water and food security to the Indian government. Dr. Abhijit Mukherjee has done ample researches on groundwater quantity and scarcity by understanding groundwater storage changes over the Indian subcontinent. This was achieved with advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence techniques.

Another significant role of Dr. Mukherjee is as head of one of South Asia’s first Urban Geo-science projects in Varanasi. He has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2020 in the field of Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences.

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What do we know about Dr. Sachchida Nand Tripathi?

You might have read in the papers some time back that the Taj Mahal was losing its white marble sheen and turning yellowish due to pollution. Dr. Sachchida Nand Tripathi, who holds the Arjun Dev Joneja Faculty Chair of Civil Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, was in the news for this study. His study helped bring about policy changes in Agra city.

This study specified that black carbon and brown carbon from the burning of trash and fuels was the main cause for discolouration. Using a novel method, the team discovered how the specks of dust on the surface reflect light and affect the colour. This study is crucial to develop strategies that address yellowing of the Taj Mahal and improves air quality.

His work in the field of Atmospheric Sciences has addressed the issues of air pollution and climate change. He has also novel approaches for low-cost sensor-based network technology which can monitor air quality in cities and Real Time Source Apportionment (RTSA). RTSA involves finding out the sources of pollution and how much they affect the environment.

Dr. Tripathi is the Coordinator of the National Knowledge Network devised under the National Clean Air Program, and is a member of its Steering Committee and Monitoring Committee. Further, he is a member of the Executive Council, Climate Change Program, Department of Science and Technology.

The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award and the J C Bose National Fellowship are both feathers in his cap. He is an elected Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and National Academy of Sciences of India (NASI). He also worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre as a senior fellow.

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Who is Prof. Shiraz Naval Minwalla?

Meet the $100,000 prize winner of the New Horizon Prize in Physics, Prof. Shiraz Naval Minwalla. He is a theoretical physicist who works with string theory and quantum field theory. He is noted for connecting the equations of fluid dynamics and Einstein’s equations of relativity.

He hails from Mumbai. After completing his Masters in Physics from IIT-Kanpur, he went to Princeton University, U.S.A. for his PhD. He was a junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and then served as assistant professor for five years. After that he joined the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.

He won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 2011 and Infosys Prize in Physical sciences in 2013. He also got the TWAS prize in 2016.

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Why is Soumen Basak famous?

Soumen Basak is an immunologist and virologist at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. He heads the Systems Immunology laboratory there.

He is known for his studies on NF- kappaB, a molecule that controls the activity of a gene.

Dr. Basak did his M.Sc. and PhD in Biochemistry from Calcutta University. He went on to the University of California, San Diego for post-doctoral studies.

He was awarded the National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2018 and won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in biological sciences the next year.

Dr. Basak is a fellow of all three Indian Science Academies, namely the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

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What do we know about Kanishka Biswas?

Have you ever noticed that all electric appliances generate heat energy? Do we need to waste electrical energy as heat? Kanishka Biswas, who is an associate professor in the New Chemistry Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, and his team have come up with a novel compound called silver copper telluride(Ag Cu te) which converts waste heat into electricity. Usually, 65 per cent of electrical energy is wasted as heat energy. Silver copper telluride can be used in automobile industry and power plants where much of the energy is wasted as heat.

Kanishka Biswas is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), U.K. He has bagged many prestigious awards and prominent among them is the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, which he won for Chemical Sciences in 2021.

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What are the contributions of Prof. Ashoke Sen?

We meet another theoretical physicist who works on string theory. Prof. Ashoke Sen is a distinguished professor at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad. He is also interested in black hole entropy. We have already seen black holes. Now, entropy is the measure of disorder in a system. Dr. Sen applied string theory to black hole entropy. He studied at IIT-Kanpur and got a doctorate from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, U.S.A.

He has authored and co-authored many important papers on string field theory. Prof. Sen holds the position of Honorary Fellow in the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar. He is also a Morning- star visiting professor at MIT and a distinguished professor at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study.

Prof. Sen was one of the nine winners of the first Fundamental Physics prize started by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner – each of the winners getting $ 3 million. This is twice the amount of the Nobel prize. He was nominated as a Fellow of the Royal Society, won the Padma Shri and was a recipient of the Bhatnagar Award in 1994.

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Why is Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju well known in his field?

Gautam Radhakrishna Desiraju is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad. He is regarded as one of the founders of Crystal Engineering.

Have you heard of Crystal Engineering? It is designing molecular solids with specific properties. This is done by making use of the interactions between molecules.

Crystal Engineering has developed greatly and Desiraju played a crucial role in this. Now 200 independent research groups in Crystal Engineering exist worldwide.

He has also researched into the non-conventional hydrogen bond, also known as the weak hydrogen bond. These bonds have distinct roles and guide molecular associations. Earlier they were dismissed to be of no significance. Now these bonds are used to understand biomolecules and to create drugs.

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Who is Dr. Anil Bhardwaj?

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj has made significant contributions as an astrophysicist. He serves as the Director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, which is a unit of the Department of Space, of the Government of India.

Dr. Anil Bhardwaj received his M.Sc from Lucknow University and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. He joined ISRO as a scientist at the Space Physics Laboratory (SPL) of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Trivandrum. He rose to become the Director of SPL.

SPL’s research in planetary science was initiated by Dr. Bhardwaj, and he contributed greatly in developing planetary science programs in ISRO. He acted as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the SARA (Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer) experiment on Chandrayaan-1, India’s first Lunar mission. The new findings changed our understanding on the interaction of solar wind with the Moon.

He has played a key role in many space missions of ISRO. He got the ISRO Team Achievement Award for Chandrayaan-1. He has also won the most coveted Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (2007) and the Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2016).

Dr. Bhardwaj was the editor- in-chief of Advances in Geosciences for seven years, and was among the editors of the European journal Planetary and Space Science, the Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India and Current Science, a journal published by Current Science Association and Indian Academy of Sciences.

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