About:

• Petroleum & Explosives Safety Organization (PESO) is an organization under Department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), Ministry of commerce & industry.
  
  
• It administers the usage of explosives & petrol stations in India.
  
  
• It is headquartered at Nagpur, Maharashtra.
  
  

About:

• This is being implemented by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), New Delhi.
  
  
• To augment the capacity of Indigenous production of Covaxin under the Mission, the Department of Biotechnology in April, 2021 provided financial support as Grant to vaccine manufacturing facilities for enhanced production capacities, which is expected to reach more than 10 crore doses per month by September, 2021.
  
  

About:

• Named Subdoluseps nilgiriensis, the reptile has a slender body of just about 7 cm and is sandy brown in colour.
  
  
• The new species is closely related to Subdoluseps pruthi found in parts of the Eastern Ghats.
  
  
• The new species was found in a dry deciduous area, showing that even the dry zones of our country are home to unrealised skink diversity.
  
  
• This species is only the third skink species discovered from mainland India in the last millennium.
  
  
• Skinks are non-venomous. They resemble snakes because of the often-inconspicuous limbs and the way they move on land. Such resemblance has led to confusion often resulting in humans killing this harmless creature.
  
  
• Subdoluseps nilgiriensis is currently considered a vulnerable species as there are potential threats from seasonal forest fires, housing constructions and brick kiln industries in the area.
  
  

About:

• The new concept, Protein–Antibody Conjugates or PACs, combines two different approaches to drug delivery.
  
  
• One is biologics, where the idea is to target a defective protein in the system by delivering proteins to it. An example of this is the case of insulin treatment. If a person is short of insulin, which is a protein, they are given a shot of this to balance the system.
  
  
• The other approach is to use antibodies for drug delivery. Antibodies are something the body produces to detect a foreign substance inside the body.
  
  
• Protein–antibody conjugates or PACs, developed by the group, which have a protein attached to the antibody, can zero in on, say, pancreatic cancer cells.
  
  
• This could have impact on incurable diseases, so-called undruggable ones like pancreatic cancer. 
  
  

About:

• Objective of the day: To promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase knowledge of the social, economic and demographic processes affecting them.
  
  
• Day of observance: 15th of May every year.
  
  
• History: The Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993.
  
  
• 2021 Theme: Families and New Technologies.
  
  

About:

• Scientists have conducted the most thorough study to date of the unique feeding behavior of northern elephant seals, focusing on the females of the species during arduous two-month post-breeding migrations in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.
  
  
• The seals were found to spend upwards of 20 hours every day - and sometimes a full 24 hours - in continuous deep-diving to feed on multitudes of small fish, rather than the larger prey favored by other deep-diving marine mammals, to gain the body fat essential for successful reproduction and insulation in the frigid depths.