The Greenland shark can live up to 500 years. The kind of longevity that probably has something to do with its home: cold, dark depths of the North Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. Scientists have been studying the sharks’ biology — from its slow metabolism to cellular repair — to find answers for healthy ageing … Read more
A digital accelerometer from a Motorola Xoom smartphone. | Photo Credit: Raimond Spekking (CC BY-SA) A: Your smartphone knows which way is up due to its accelerometer. It’s a chip whose parts shift slightly when the phone accelerates or when gravity acts along a particular direction. The phone’s software reads the accelerometer’s measurements along the … Read more
President Droupadi Murmu pointed out that skills including data science, AI engineering and data analytics will play an influential role in developing the country’s AI talent pool. File | Photo Credit: ANI Describing Artificial Intelligence as a “big opportunity” for ushering in positive change, President Droupadi Murmu on Thursday (January 1, 2026) said it is … Read more
For much of the past decade, study abroad was discussed in India in terms of momentum. Numbers rose year after year, destinations multiplied, and overseas education came to be seen as an almost automatic pathway to global opportunity. In 2025, that narrative began to change. Applications softened across several markets, visa rules tightened or were … Read more
Frail participants were more likely to be female, have higher body weight, live with multiple long-term conditions, and lower educational attainment. They were also 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with dementia |Image used for representational purpose only | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT Older adults who are frail and have depression could be at … Read more
Over the last two decades, a small shelf of Indian nonfiction has treated the city itself as an environmental object. Jyoti Pande Lavakare’s Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health and Siddharth Singh’s The Great Smog of India explored North India’s atmospheric pollution as a human-made crisis with human costs sustained by official short-termism and … Read more
AI technology concept. 3D render | Photo Credit: BlackJack3D Generative AI is rewriting the tech career playbook. Programming, once the gold standard for high-paying jobs, is now viewed as a secondary skill that is ‘less essential’ to the future workforce. Because learning AI is more accessible to beginners, the disruption to traditional coding has multiplied. … Read more
A cloud of pollution released by an industry. | Photo Credit: rui_noronha The Indian banking sector plays a critical role in industrial growth. It channelises household savings to provide funds to firms at affordable rates. A review of the growth of credit to industries shows four facts and a puzzling observation. Fact 1: The share … Read more
In October 2020, when the world was beginning to come out of a global lockdown, a spacecraft more than 3 lakh km away performed a pogo-stick jump on a small asteroid called Bennu and collected samples of its surface. The craft, part of NASA’s OSIRIS REx, then launched itself away from the asteroid and towards … Read more
Researchers from the University of Guelph in Canada have reported an astonishing discovery: that the number of chromosome sets in their bodies’ cells seems to be linked to the rate at which the species’ mitochondrial genome evolves. This is unusual because mitochondrial DNA sits in a separate genome from the chromosomes in the nucleus and … Read more
India’s space journey has evolved beyond a string of spectacular missions. It has the national pulse and is a source of daily inspiration. In June 2025, when Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla displayed the Tricolour aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it was a moment of pride for every … Read more
Science quiz: Chemistry’s foul fellows Visual: Name the molecule depicted by this ball-and-stick model. It’s responsible for vinegar’s odour and imparts its sour taste. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | Name the molecule depicted by this ball-and-stick model. It’s responsible for vinegar’s odour and imparts its sour taste. 2 / 6 | X is … Read more
Medical researchers have traditionally viewed ulcerative colitis as a disorder driven by an overactive immune response or damage to the gut’s epithelial barrier. But a new study has argued that the disease may actually start earlier, when a normally hidden layer of immune cells just beneath the gut lining begins to become thinner. Specifically, the … Read more
Modern healthcare is fundamentally dependent on a constant supply of known and new drugs, making their discovery and manufacture a profitable business. The Indian pharmaceutical industry plays a key role in making drugs available globally at low prices, reflected in its projected revenue of about $130 billion by 2030. However, it largely manufactures generics that … Read more
On December 30, astronomer Jonathan McDowell posted on X.com: “The abandoned Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module, left in a 125000 x 305000 km orbit in 2024, had a bit of a tussle with the Moon in November and has now been found in a 365000 x 983000 km x 22 deg orbit”. Dr. McDowell is well-known for, … Read more
The Trump administration has seized two oil tankers of Venezuela so far After announcing a naval blockade and seizing two oil tankers, the Donald Trump administration has now ordered U.S. military forces to focus on enforcing a ‘quarantine’ of Venezuelan oil for at least the next two months, amping up economic pressure on Caracas. The … Read more
All major discoveries in cosmology underline the maxim that the universe is not only stranger than we suppose but that it is stranger than we can suppose. The latest example of this is a study by researchers at the Yonsei University in South Korea that said the expansion of the universe is slowing down. The … Read more
Image used for representation purpose only. | Photo Credit: ANI The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) successfully test-fired the Pinaka Long Range Guided Rocket (LRGR–120) from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) in Odisha’s Chandipur on Monday (December 29, 2025). Earlier in the day, the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, … Read more
(1) Bus accident kills 7 near Hiriyur, Karnataka Seven people were killed after a container truck rammed into the Gokarna-bound bus from Bengaluru, triggering a fire that rapidly engulfed the vehicle and left passengers with little time to escape. The tragedy has once again caused concerns that have surfaced repeatedly after similar accidents in recent … Read more
Oszkár Nagyapáti, farmer and member of the volunteer water guardians, stands in a hole in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, July 29, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP Oszkár Nagyapáti climbed to the bottom of a sandy pit on his land on the Great Hungarian Plain and dug into the soil with his hand, looking for a sign of … Read more
Astronomers from India have discovered the second farthest spiral galaxy in the depths of the universe, using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and have named it ‘Alaknanda’. The galaxy was an unexpected sight during a broader study of galaxy shapes in the early universe. The findings were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in … Read more
On December 23 Air Marshal and the Integrated Defence Staff chief Ashutosh Dixit laid out the defence establishment’s case for critical minerals. Modern defence systems, he said, rely on reliable access to these minerals and import dependence has become a strategic vulnerability because global supply chains are concentrated and exposed to export controls and geopolitics. … Read more
Spectrum of light from a frequency comb installed on the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, Chile. | Photo Credit: ESO A frequency comb is a special kind of laser light whose spectrum, or set of frequencies, resembles the teeth of a comb. Instead of containing just one colour (one frequency), it emits a large … Read more
A drone view of the Aravalli Hills in Ajmer. | Photo Credit: ANI The Aravalli Hills look modest today but they sit on some of the oldest and most studied rocks in India. Geologists care about them because they preserve a long record of how a piece of the earth’s crust in northwestern India was … Read more
Study authors call for integrated prevention strategies addressing alcohol and tobacco together, and for stronger regulation of locally brewed liquors, which often fall outside formal licensing and quality-control systems. Representative image. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Alcohol consumption, even in small amounts, significantly increases the risk of buccal mucosa cancer (BMC), a common and aggressive … Read more
What is it? Travel is an amazing activity one can take up to explore beyond the horizons of their knowledge. However, there are two sides to everything, both good and…not so good. Jet lag is one of the major drawbacks when one travels past multiple time zones (five or more) by plane. It is a … Read more
Rare-earth elements are a set of metallic elements in the periodic table. Chemists usually refer to a group of 17 elements when they use this label: the 15 lanthanides from lanthanum to lutetium, and scandium and yttrium. In most classroom periodic tables, the lanthanides are shown as a separate row placed beneath the main periodic … Read more
A spectacled cobra, one of India’s ‘Big Four’ species. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT/The Hindu As India has progressed, the stereotyped image of the “land of snake charmers” has been left behind. We now have snake rescuers. However, in rural areas, snakebites still account for 58,000 deaths every year, affecting workers in paddy fields as … Read more
