More than 20,000 persons (including close to 6,000 children) were reported missing in Delhi each year in the 2017-2023 period with the exception of 2020 | Photo Credit: Karma Bhutia The National Human Rights Commission on Monday issued notices to the Delhi government, Chief Secretary, Commissioner of Police seeking a detailed report on missing person … Read more
US President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on October 7, 2025. | Photo Credit: JIM WATSON On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to stop the opening of the new bridge, costing $4.6 billion and connecting Windsor in Canada and … Read more
States such as Rajasthan, Tripura, and Jharkhand saw less than 40% of the candidates placed. | Photo Credit: VectorMine Less than half of the students trained under the PM-DAKSH scheme between 2021 and 2024 were placed, as per data released in the Lok Sabha on February 3. Under the Scheme, training institutes are required to … Read more
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands as they attend a joint press conference at the White House on February 13, 2025. | Photo Credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign visits between 2021 and 2025 incurred a total expenditure of ₹462.58 crores, according to government data. Spanning 43 … Read more
In settings where rapid, affordable diagnostics are unavailable, antibiotics often substitute for testing instead of complementing it. | Photo Credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko/Unsplash Charles Darwin’s central insight wasn’t just that species evolve but that they can’t but adapt in the presence of selection pressures. In practical terms, organisms don’t choose to change: they respond to the … Read more
Did the 2026-27 Union Budget live up to India’s science ambitions and scientists’ expectations? The views vary depending on what specific sectors have received and the initiatives announced, and they’re not all rosy. Here are comments from seven leading scientists from around India, including heads of key departments, institutes, and a leading State university, compiled … Read more
The Union Budget 2026-27 presented science as an instrument of growth, with large numbers on biopharma, semiconductors, carbon capture, and research-linked industrial finance on paper. However, expert reactions to this budget point to a more fragile reality. As the state attempts to move from adopting technologies to creating them, by building mission-linked platforms in biopharma, … Read more
An annular solar eclipse. | Photo Credit: AP The first solar eclipse of 2026 will occur on Tuesday, February 17. It will be an ‘annular solar eclipse’ and the world is eagerly awaiting the celestial event. Here’s all you need to know about it. What is a solar eclipse? A solar eclipse is when the … Read more
Drug-resistant pneumonia remains a serious complication in intensive care units, where treatment options are limited. Pseudomonas aeruginosa in particular causes about one in five hospital pneumonias and often resists multiple drugs. A research team at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, has reported that a gas already used in neonatal care … Read more
In India, the story of women and girls in science is organised around a mismatch between a widening pipeline and stubborn barriers. Put differently, the country is getting better at bringing girls and young women into STEM education but it has been much less consistent at converting those aspirations into long careers in scientific work. … Read more
The colours of the natural world are not what they once were. More than half of the oceans have become greener over the last 20 years, and forests are turning brown prematurely. Various species of flora and fauna have also been changing their colours to adapt to rising temperatures, loss of habitats, and pollution. This … Read more
ISRO Chairperson V. Narayanan addressing the US-India Space Business Forum, in Bengaluru on February 10, 2026. V. Narayanan, Secretary, Department of Space, Government of India, emphasised that collaboration is crucial for progress while speaking at the inaugural session of the US-India Space Business Forum in Bengaluru on Tuesday. Stressing the importance of collaboration, Mr. Narayanan pointed … Read more
The quantum computer It’s time to introduce the star of this article! The quantum computer is quite different from the regular computer you would use at home, the office, or in a school computer lab. It is a device that utilises quantum mechanics (a field of physics where the behaviour of matter and energy is … Read more
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, secured to the mobile launcher, are seen at Launch Pad 39B on January 17, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. | Photo Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky A week ago, NASA found a hydrogen leak during a wet dress rehearsal of its Artemis II mission. A … Read more
A person poses for a photo in front of a maple tree displaying fall colours in Kansas City, Missouri. | Photo Credit: Charlie Riedel/AP For a moment, close your eyes and imagine yourself in the fall season. The cold, chilly wind kisses your face, and the leaves begin to dance gracefully as they fall off … Read more
ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan on Tuesday (February 10, 2026) said that India’s space programme was conceived as a people-centric and application-driven initiative, rooted in international cooperation rather than competition. Highlighting six decades of the country’s space journey, Mr. Narayanan said the programme had evolved from modest beginnings into a globally respected ecosystem that serves not … Read more
What explains the SpaceX, Blue Origin moonward pivot? | Explained
A fresh year has just started, and we are already a month old. Year endings and startings are always occasions to ponder. Here in IIT Kanpur, where some of us teach, the first week of January is always hectic. A new semester just started, students are back after winter breaks, and people are rushing through … Read more
A Lok Sabha (LS) majority is often mentioned as monolithic fact, a number that can be nothing but objective. The objectivity of the number in this case is rather superfluous. An absolute majority in the LS requires 272 members, i.e more than half of its total strength of 543, wherever those come from; but where … Read more
One puff of a cigarette, within seconds, infuses the human bloodstream (via the lungs) with nicotine, the acutely addictive and carcinogenic chemical in tobacco. Nicotine binds to the brain’s cellular receptors, sparking the dopaminergic reward system to keep smokers hooked. And then there are additives in cigarettes, such as menthol, which gets nicotine to linger … Read more
On January 20, 2026, Rev. Dr. Leo D’Souza, a Jesuit scientist based in Mangaluru, died aged 93. Dr. D’Souza, fondly known as Fr Leo, trained in the 1960s at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, working alongside stalwarts in the field such as Ingo Potrykus, Joseph Straub, and Sudhir Kumar Sopory. … Read more
A new species of dragonfly discovered in Kerala has been named Lyriothemis keralensis in appreciation of the State’s rich biodiversity. Researchers have discovered a new species of dragonfly from Kerala and named it Lyriothemis keralensis, recognising the State’s exceptional biodiversity. The species was recorded from Varapetty near Kothamangalam in Ernakulam district, where it inhabits vegetated … Read more
A scaled-down model of Chandrayaan-4 was displayed at the ISRO stall at the 8th edition of the Bengaluru Space Expo 2024 (BSX), in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in Bengaluru. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Chandrayaan-4 Mission is at least two years away, but the ISRO has identified a location … Read more
A scaled-down model of Chandrayaan-4 was displayed at the ISRO stall at the 8th edition of the Bengaluru Space Expo 2024 (BSX), in association with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), in Bengaluru. File | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Chandrayaan-4 Mission is at least two years away, but the ISRO has identified a location … Read more
Researchers have discovered a new species of dragonfly from Kerala and named it Lyriothemis keralensis, recognising the State’s exceptional biodiversity. The species was recorded from Varapetty near Kothamangalam in Ernakulam district, where it inhabits vegetated pools and irrigation canals within well shaded pineapple and rubber plantations. The study was conducted by Dattaprasad Sawant of the … Read more
Palaeontologist Sebastian Apesteguia measures a footprint made by a meat-eating dinosaur some 80 million years ago at the Maragua Syncline, Bolivia, July 21, 2016. | Photo Credit: Reuters Footprints are among the most common kind of dinosaur fossils. Sometimes scientists find a single, lonely footprint. Sometimes they come across a chaotic jumble of tracks resembling … Read more
A file image of Elon Musk with a logo of SpaceX. | Photo Credit: Reuters SpaceX is putting its longstanding focus of sending humans to Mars on the back burner to prioritise establishing a settlement on the Moon, founder Elon Musk said Sunday (February 8, 2026). The South Africa-born billionaire’s space company has found massive … Read more
False-coloured SEM image of the microstructured device of PdGa made using focused-ion beam techniques, showing the three-arm geometry. The scale bar is 10 μm. | Photo Credit: Dixit, A., Sivakumar, P.K., Manna, K. et al. Nature 649, 47–52 (2026) In a new study in Nature, scientists from IIT-Delhi and Germany have demonstrated a device to separate … Read more
A file image of Elon Musk with a logo of SpaceX. | Photo Credit: Reuters SpaceX is putting its longstanding focus of sending humans to Mars on the back burner to prioritise establishing a settlement on the Moon, founder Elon Musk said Sunday (February 8, 2026). The South Africa-born billionaire’s space company has found massive … Read more
The budget has brought some cheer to India’s research community, particularly for those involved in astronomy and space research, as it has earmarked ₹13,416.20 crore for the Department of Space for 2026-27. A large chunk of the allocation has been set aside for deep-space exploration and astrophysics, including to build two advanced telescope facilities: the … Read more