Astronaut and Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla speaks at Viksit Bharat Young Leaders Dialogue, in New Delhi on January 11, 2026. | Photo Credit: ANI Describing them as future makers of the nation, astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla urged youths to start owning dreams, whether in human spaceflight missions or other spheres, and work collectively towards realising them. … Read more
AI models don’t read words; instead they read chunks of characters called tokens. | Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa/Unsplash A: In the context of artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models (LLMs) like GPT-5 and Claude, the context window is the maximum amount of text the model can consider at any one time while generating a … Read more
Exactly 20 years ago, forest rangers in Chitwan National Park in Nepal nabbed a farmer, Shikharam Chaudhary, who they believed helped his son bury, in his own backyard, a stolen rhino horn. The rangers interrogated him and waterboarded him in prison. Days later, Chaudhary died. No horn was found. But the large and wealthy global … Read more
The launch of the PSLV-C62/EOS-N1 mission will be the 105th launch from Sriharikota. File image for representational purposes only. | Photo Credit: PTI The 22.5 hour countdown for the launch of the PSLV-C62/EOS-N1 Mission commenced at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Sunday (January 11, 2026). The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is … Read more
What is diabetes? Ask around in your circle, and chances are that there is someone you know who has diabetes. A chronic disease, diabetes is closely related to insulin, a hormone that regulates blood glucose. Diabetes occurs either when enough insulin is not produced by the pancreas, or when the insulin produced cannot be effectively … Read more
An image released by ISRO showing the Sun as captured by Aditya-L1 during a solar storm in 2024. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday (January 10, 2026) said its Aditya-L1 solar mission has provided new insights into how a powerful solar storm can impact Earth’s magnetic shield. “The … Read more
The Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoS&PI) captures spending pattern of Indian households across various consumption categories. Conducted every five years, the HCES provides granular estimates of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) for both rural and urban populations, covering a wide range of goods and services. The … Read more
The Taj Mahal in Agra covered by fog as people visit the iconic structure during the holiday season on December 28, 2025. | Photo Credit: PTI Winter fog is a familiar hazard across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, reducing visibility for hours at once. The fog often forms inside polluted air near the ground and polluted events … Read more
A long-duration ground test of ‘Actively Cooled Scramjet Full Scale Combustor’ conducted by the Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL) at its Scramjet Connect Pipe Test (SCPT) Facility, in Hyderabad. | Photo Credit: PTI Defence Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL), the Hyderabad-based laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has achieved a milestone … Read more
GUWAHATI A team of scientists led by researchers from Assam’s Tezpur University has identified distinct chemical signatures in blood, offering fresh hope in the early detection of one of the deadliest and often undetected cancers in India. The scientists who studied patients from Assam, a part of the Northeastern region with one of the highest … Read more
‘Do you play music to your plants?’. This was asked of the famous plant biologist James Wong of Kew Gardens in London. He said that it is the vibrations that open the plant’s epidermis. So did the physicist J.C. Bose of Kolkata. What has the latest research into this evergreen question shown? First, the obvious: … Read more
An artist’s impression of a protoplanetary disc around a young star. | Photo Credit: NASA A: The planets are in their present order because they formed from the same spinning disk of gas and dust that became the sun. Parts of this protoplanetary disc that were closer to the sun were hotter, so only materials … Read more
US President Donald Trump has signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing from 66 organisations, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The UN FCCC is the global treaty under which the UN conducts the annual Conference of Parties (COP) climate talks and under which the … Read more
China’s President Xi Jinping with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in 2023 | Photo Credit: MIRAFLORES PALACE With close to 200 American troops entering Caracas on Saturday, the Trump administration’s invasion of Venezuela and the capture of its President Nicolas Maduro was the most dramatic U.S. intervention in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion. The … Read more
President Donald Trump. | Photo Credit: AP President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from a foundational climate treaty and the world’s leading global warming assessment body, as part of a sweeping exit from the United Nations system, the White House announced on Wednesday (January 7, 2026). A total of 66 international organizations were … Read more
Data shows that not all commodities exported to the U.S. were impacted by tariffs | Photo Credit: VIPIN CHANDRAN Last month, we noted that India’s trade data for November had shown a continued resilience in exports despite mounting U.S. tariffs. Not only did India’s overall exports grow, but shipments to the U.S. also rebounded. However, … Read more
As 2025 ends, Indians are consumed by two anxieties — whether artificial intelligence (AI) will take over their jobs, and whether the future belongs to 80-hour work weeks or the right to disconnect after office hours. But for millions of working women, a near 80-hour work week is already a lived reality, as their workday … Read more
“A pathway to the left leads up to a rather extensive plateau for the hills, and forms a very pleasant resort for picnics… There is plenty of room for a good foot-race, and the scenery around, from most points, magnificent. Ponies … can go up all the way.” — Guide to Masuri, Landour, Dehra Dun, … Read more
Soumya Swaminathan | Photo Credit: File Photo The jury is still out on the origin of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus, although several hypotheses exist, including the possibility that the virus may have jumped from a secondary animal host, former World Health Organisation (WHO) chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said here on Wednesday. “We did not receive the … Read more
Hiccups | Photo Credit: Freepik Hiccups are essentially involuntary contractions (or spasms) of the diaphragm, the muscle that aids us in breathing. Each contraction comes with a sudden closing of the vocal cords, creating that familiar sound we all know. There are multiple causes of hiccups. Some include eating too fast, drinking something too hot … Read more
China’s government has long made efforts to tempt top scientists from abroad, but researchers say its institutions themselves are increasingly attracting talent thanks to their generous funding and growing prestige. State-backed initiatives like the Thousand Talents Plan have dangled fast-tracked hiring and bountiful grants to lure overseas experts in strategically important fields, as China and … Read more
File picture of Indian Space Research Organisation launching the PSLV-C61 mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota | Photo Credit: ANI ISRO is gearing up for its first launch of the new year with the PSLV-C62 mission on January 12 from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. According to an ISRO official, the primary … Read more
Imagine a diamond. You probably thought of a clear and flawless gemstone used in jewellery. But to a physicist, a perfect diamond might actually be quite boring. Something magical happens when the diamond is just a little broken. For decades, scientists have been fascinated by a specific type of defect in the diamond crystal lattice … Read more
Science quiz: A millennia-old calendar system Visual: Identify this Roman deity associated with gates and transitions, and identified as the tutelary deity of January. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | Identify this Roman deity associated with gates and transitions, and identified as the tutelary deity of January. 2 / 6 | While the Julian … Read more
A schematic illustration of the experimental technique. | Photo Credit: Cai et al., Photo Science, 2025 To understand how materials work, whether a metal in a car’s catalytic converter or the substances in a battery, scientists need to look at their surfaces at the atomic level. One of the best tools for this is X-ray … Read more
The United Nations has declared 2026 to be the ‘International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists’. In 2022, a group of scientists from institutions in Tanzania, Zambia, the U.K., the U.S., Germany and Canada wrote an open letter urging the parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) to broaden their goals to be … Read more
The record of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) over the last decade has been remarkably broad for an agency of its size and budget. Its rockets, especially the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), have sustained reliable access to orbit, rendering operations with multiple satellite classes almost a matter of routine today. And ISRO is … Read more
ISRO to launch Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun. File | Photo Credit: ANI On the second anniversary of India’s maiden solar mission, Aditya-L1 reaching the Lagrangian point (L1), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday (January 6, 2026) made the Announcement of Opportunity (AO) soliciting proposals for the first … Read more
The 2019 draft version of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 made two sweeping assertions in seven words: “teaching is strengthened through research and vice-versa.” Are these assertions supported by evidence, however? This article restricts itself to the first part of the assertion — that teaching is strengthened through research — because of its direct … Read more
Say you’re on a desert island on a quest for buried treasure. You’ve lost your map and run out of clues. Now you have two options: you could walk around with a shovel, digging holes at random and hoping for the best, or you could fly a drone overhead equipped with special cameras that can … Read more