The second wave of Corona
and the high increase in the no. of persons affected is showing some States in
poor light but they are still trying to play the blame-game without caring to
do any administration. Sad is the state of affairs.
'Not Wave, But
Tsunami': Delhi HC Censured Kejriwal Govt Over Oxygen Crisis in National
Capital. The Delhi High Court said on
Saturday that if any official at the central, state or local administration was
obstructing in the picking up or supply of oxygen, then “we will hang that
man". The observation by a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli
came during hearing of a plea by Maharaja Agrasen Hospital over shortage of
oxygen for seriously-ill covid patients.
Have you read
or heard of – ‘Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier’ a French nobleman and chemist who was central
to the 18th-century chemical revolution. At the height of the French Revolution, he was
charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and was guillotined.
The much sought and spoken
about ‘OXYGEN’ is a chemical element with the
symbol O
and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the
periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily
forms oxides with most elements as well as with other compounds. After hydrogen
and helium, oxygen is the third-most abundant element in the universe by mass. Oxygen
is continuously replenished in Earth's atmosphere by photosynthesis, which uses
the energy of sunlight to produce oxygen from water and carbon dioxide. Oxygen was isolated by Michael Sendivogius
before 1604, but it is commonly believed that the element was discovered independently
by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, in 1773 or earlier, and Joseph Priestley
in Wiltshire, in 1774. Priority is often given for Priestley because his work
was published first. Common uses of
oxygen include production of steel, plastics and textiles, brazing, welding and
cutting of steels and other metals, rocket propellant, oxygen therapy, and life
support systems in aircraft, submarines, spaceflight and diving.
Amid surge
in COVID-19 infections, Centre on Sunday directed the states to ensure that the
use of liquid oxygen is not allowed for any non-medical purpose, PTI reported.
It also asked oxygen plants to maximise production and make oxygen available to
it for medical use only with immediate effect, amid COVID surge. “Entire stock
of liquid oxygen should be used for medical purposes, no exception to any
industry,” said Central government. The first Oxygen Express
train for Delhi carrying around 70 tonnes of the public health commodity will
depart from Jindal Steel Works plant in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh on Sunday night,
a senior Railway official said. The train will reach Delhi with four tankers by
Monday night, Railway Board Chairman Suneet Sharma said. He said that the
railways has planned to transport medical oxygen from Angul, Kalingnagar,
Rourkela and Raigarh to Delhi-NCR region, which is grappling with acute oxygen
shortage amid rising Covid cases. The Delhi government has been asked to get
road tankers ready to obtain the oxygen, he added.
Addressing the press on
Sunday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who had earlier held the view that ‘lockdown
is unnecessary’ announced that the lockdown in the National Capital would be
extended by another week in view of a rising number of coronavirus cases. “The
corona situation had worsened, which is why we started a 6-day lockdown last
week, which ends tomorrow morning. With cases rising at a rapid rate, it was
necessary for us to start a lockdown,” he said. “It was a weapon we wielded to
fight the pandemic. Given that cases are still rising, we have consulted with
the people of Delhi and decided to extend the lockdown by one more week.”
The PM CARES Fund has
given in-principle approval for allocation of funds for the installation of 551
dedicated Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Medical Oxygen Generation Plants
inside public health facilities to address the oxygen crisis across the
country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed that these plants should be
made functional as soon as possible. He said that these plants will serve as a
major boost to oxygen availability at the district level.
Away on
space, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) is a
technology demonstration on the NASA Mars 2020 rover Perseverance investigating
the production of oxygen on Mars. On April 20, 2021, MOXIE produced oxygen from
carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere by using solid oxide electrolysis.
This was the first experimental extraction of a natural resource from another
planet for human use. The technology may be scaled up for use in a human
mission to the planet to provide breathable oxygen, oxidiser, and propellant;
water may also be produced by combining the produced oxygen with hydrogen. The
experiment was a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the Haystack Observatory, the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, and other institutions.
Oxygen
production was first achieved on April 20, 2021 in Jezero Crater, producing
5.37 grams per hour (0.189 oz/h) of oxygen, equivalent to what an astronaut on
Mars would need to breathe for roughly 10 minutes. MOXIE is planned to isolate oxygen a further
nine more times over the course of approximately two Earth years, or one
Martian year, in three stages.
The man
mentioned at the Antoine Lavoisier is credited with naming Oxygen. He is widely
considered in popular literature as the "father of modern chemistry".
It is generally accepted that Lavoisier's great accomplishments in chemistry
stem largely from his changing the science from a qualitative to a quantitative
one. Lavoisier is most noted for his discovery of the role oxygen plays in
combustion. He recognized and named oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783), and
opposed the phlogiston theory. Lavoisier helped construct the metric system,
wrote the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical
nomenclature. He predicted the existence of silicon (1787) and discovered that,
although matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same.
Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an
administrator of the Ferme générale. The Ferme générale was one of the most
hated components of the Ancien Régime because of the profits it took at the
expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the
violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities
enabled him to fund his scientific research. At the height of the French
Revolution, he was charged with tax fraud and selling adulterated tobacco, and
was guillotined.
Interesting !
25.4.2021.
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