Space stations, lunar bases, and Mars missions have moved from humans’ imagination to engineering reality. In these environments, innovation emerges through collaboration rather than isolation. Living on the moon or Mars will depend on continuous technological innovation, including on systems that extract water, generate energy and recycle waste and which can adapt to harsh and … Read more
Image used for representational purposes only. File | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar The Delhi High Court issued notice to the Central Government on Wednesday (January 28, 2026), seeking its stand on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the blanket ban on the adoption of frozen embryos. A Bench of Chief Justice D. K. Upadhyaya … Read more
A simple Kagome lattice. The name comes from the Japanese for “basket” and “eye”, referring to the pattern when woven with bamboo leaves. | Photo Credit: N. Mori Helium is famous for making balloons float, voices squeak, and as a critical resource for MRI machines and aerospace engineering. Helium is expensive and scarce, finding leaks … Read more
Science Quiz: On medical disasters 1 / 6 | The drug shown here is created by slightly altering the chemical structure of Y. Name Y, whose use led to a tragedy in the 1950s and 1960s. 2 / 6 | On January 27, 1928, 21 children were inoculated with a diphtheria vaccine in Bundaberg, Australia. … Read more
The stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355, which resides in our Milky Way galaxy’s inner regions are seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. | Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. – B.R. Sravan The main reason is surface temperature. Stars behave roughly as objects that absorb all incoming radiation and radiate … Read more
In a milestone, India and the European Union (EU) have hailed the conclusion of the India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) while launching a ‘Comprehensive Strategic Agenda’ for 2030. Among other measures, the pact moves beyond supply chains to operationalise joint R&D in advanced semiconductor “heterogeneous integration” and chip design. It also formally links the European … Read more
The hydrogen atom is the lightest in the universe and it consists of the simplest nucleus: a single proton. But while helium is the second-lightest element, its nucleus isn’t the second simplest. That distinction belongs to the deuteron, the nucleus of the deuterium atom, which contains one proton and one neutron. (Deuterium is an isotope … Read more
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members, from left, Jon B. Wolfsthal, Asha M. George, Steve Fetter and Alexandra Bell, reveal the Doomsday Clock, set to 85 seconds to midnight, during a news conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on January 23, 2026, in Washington. | Photo Credit: AP The Bulletin of the … Read more
A kangaroo near White Cliffs, an Outback area in the state of New South Wales, Australia. | Photo Credit: AFP For a long time, biomechanics experts believed that giant, extinct kangaroos were simply too heavy to hop. While the largest modern kangaroos weigh around 90 kg, their prehistoric relatives were much larger and weighed more … Read more
Among the nearly 100 people who died during the U.S. military incursion in Venezuela that led to the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro, there were 32 Cubans who were part of Mr. Maduro’s security detail. Their presence reflects the intricate relations shared between Havana and Caracas. Ever since Venezuela has been ruled by the Bolivarians, … Read more
If there’s a soup of cells and you make them settle down and work together in orderly fashion, you reduce the system’s entropy. | Photo Credit: Bioscience Image Library by Fayette Reynolds Living things dump a lot of heat into their surroundings. The universe is strict about conserving energy. If there’s a soup of cells … Read more
Shruti Kumar (name changed) is a professor at a medical research institute, working on diagnosing a neglected tropical disease that infects almost a million new people every year. Prof. Kumar said that with the increasing number of requests by scientific publishers to peer review research manuscripts in recent years, the process takes so much of … Read more
In a random moment, all energy is lost. | Photo Credit: Unsplash Images In a random moment, all energy is lost. The unstable subject cannot help but decay, slowly but surely, letting go of particles to become stable. It loses itself to become balanced again. This is a radioactive atom’s decay. Warning: Danger ahead Look … Read more
In this screengrab from a video posted on January 26, 2026, President Droupadi Murmu confers India’s highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashoka Chakra, to Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla during the 77th Republic Parade, at Kartavya Path, in New Delhi. Pho(to Credit: YT/@NarendraModi via PTI President Droupadi Murmu on Monday (January 26, 2026) conferred India’s highest peacetime … Read more
Telangana is the richest among major Indian States, with highest per capita income. In 2022-23, the latest year for which data for all States are available, the figure for Telangana stood at ₹3.54 lakh (at current prices). For Karnataka it was ₹3.44 lakh, Haryana ₹3.24 lakh, Gujarat ₹3.1 lakh, Tamil Nadu ₹3.09 lakh, Kerala ₹2.9 … Read more
The story so far: In 2016, under its National Framework for Malaria Elimination in India (2016-2030), India set an ambitious target to eliminate malaria (zero indigenous cases) by 2030, with an interim milestone of interrupting indigenous transmission across the entire country, including all high-transmission States and Union Territories (UT), by 2027. By the end of … Read more
Just retired NASA astronaut Sunita Williams said the upcoming Moon mission under the Artemis programme will give her FOMO (fear of missing out), even while she finds joy exploring Earth and all the places she glimpsed from up there in the sky. On the inaugural evening of the Kerala Literature Festival on Thursday (January 22, … Read more
The World Malaria Report 2025, launched in December, provided a bag of mixed news, five years ahead of the 2030 global malaria elimination deadline. While the reduction in estimated cases in southeast Asia provided definite hope, of serious concern were rising cases of resistance to artemisinin-based frontline treatment for malaria, and falling funding for malaria programmes. Notably, it is the Asia Pacific region that posted much of the good news. The significant reduction was driven by 10 of … Read more
Science quiz: on palaeoclimatology 1 / 6 | What’s the general name for formations like stalactites and stalagmites, which are formed when minerals slowly deposit at one location over a long period? 2 / 6 | An ___ ____ is a cylinder of ice that’s been drilled out of a larger mass. These objects have … Read more
The ‘sacred lotus’ plant is native to North and Central India and grows in ponds, lakes, and gently flowing waters. | Photo Credit: T. Voekler (CC BY-SA) Thermogenesis is the word for the way living things create their own body heat. While we usually only think of birds and mammals as being warm-blooded, all complex … Read more
The Ministry of Finance is set to scrap curbs on Chinese firms bidding for government contracts, which were introduced in 2020. The curbs were imposed following a deadly clash between the countries’ troops in the Galwan Valley. They required Chinese bidders to register with an Indian government committee and obtain political and security clearances. According … Read more
Schizophrenia is usually described as a disorder of thought, perception, and behaviour — a disease of the brain. Yet for years, researchers have noticed a quieter, more persistent pattern in the lives of people with the condition. Compared to the general population, they are more likely to have weaker bones and to suffer fractures, in … Read more
Those who perform exceptionally well at a young age versus those who do so in adulthood are rarely the same people, according to a December 2025 study in Science. This means “most early top performers don’t become top performers at peak age, and … most top performers at peak age weren’t early top performers,” the … Read more
In 1946, the U.S. put a price on Greenland for the first time. The country’s then-president, Harry Truman, offered Denmark $100 million in gold, which Copenhagen refused. More than half a century later, Donald Trump, another U.S. president, has doubled down on his quest for U.S. control of Greenland. But this time, the stakes are … Read more
“Too good to be true! Is it really possible to get our cohorts on board? Is it really free? How do we get to use the facility?”. These were some of the questions clinicians, researchers and start-up founders raised, quite surprised after the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) revealed that it was ready … Read more
Dark clouds loom over the catchment area of the Cauvery. July 14, 2018. | Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan/The Hindu An international research team has found a systemic drop in land elevation across India’s river deltas driven mostly by human activities. The researchers were motivated by the lack of high-resolution data of river deltas’ subsidence … Read more
The connection between bats and evil spirits is, unfortunately, a deep, cross-cultural myth that refuses to die, but did you know there is another, more fun spirit they are intricately associated with? Agave plants, the source of tequila and mezcal, depend on bats, especially the Mexican long-nosed bat, for pollination and seed dispersal, says bat … Read more
NASA astronaut (Retd.) Sunita Williams. | Photo Credit: PTI National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Sunita Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired. The space agency announced the news on Tuesday (January 20, 2026), saying her retirement took effect at the end of December. Williams’ … Read more
After four decades of government-led space exploration, the new millennium has ushered in a commercial revolution where private companies now lead and fund the industry’s most significant breakthroughs. Space is now a fast-growing industry, expected to exceed $1 trillion in value by 2030. The application of innovative technologies, notably partial reusability of rockets by these … Read more
Rice is a C3 plant, and C3 photosynthesis is less water-efficient in hot or dry conditions than C4 plants, e.g. maize. | Photo Credit: Steve Douglas/Unsplash A: Many rice-growing systems deliberately flood the fields and most of the water is lost to the air or to the ground. Farmers often maintain shallow flooding to stabilise … Read more