In the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese government was facing a serious crisis. It was losing more soldiers to malaria than to the war itself. Chloroquine, the antimalarial drug used for decades, had lost its effectiveness because Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite, had become resistant to it. Desperate for … Read more
For millions battling infertility, the effortless miracle of procreation is a punishing ordeal of tests, treatments and trials, often chipping away not just at their finances, but also their sense of self. Researching embryos and embryo-like models is therefore critical to peering into the earliest moments of human development to understand why conceptions fail. A … Read more
Titas Chanda (left) and Sthitadhi Roy. | Photo Credit: International Centre for Theoretical Physics The 2025 ICTP Prize has been awarded to Titas Chanda of IIT-Madras and Sthitadhi Roy of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has said. A statement said the award “recognises the winners’ exceptional … Read more
Image used for representational purposes. File | Photo Credit: Reuters ISRO has lined up seven launch missions by March next year, including one to demonstrate home-built electric propulsion systems for satellite and quantum key distribution technologies, and the first uncrewed mission of the Gaganyaan project. The first of the seven launches is expected to take … Read more
Given so much of the world’s population lives along coasts, mangroves’ functions directly benefit many people. | Photo Credit: Getty Images Saltwater would kill most plants, but it cannot fell the ancient mangroves species distinct for their giant stilt roots. So how do they survive on brine? International researchers and authors of a new paper … Read more
Kerala local body elections 2025: One of the counting centers in Thiruvananthapuram. | Photo Credit: A. Jayamohan The counting of votes for the high-stakes Kerala local body elections began at 8 a.m. on Saturday (December 13, 2025), with early trends pointing to a close contest between the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Opposition … Read more
Kerala local body elections 2025: One of the counting centers in Thiruvananthapuram. | Photo Credit: A. Jayamohan The counting of votes for the high-stakes Kerala local body elections began at 8 a.m. on Saturday (December 13, 2025), with early trends pointing to a close contest between the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Opposition … Read more
Achal Agrawal, founder of India Research Watch. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Achal Agrawal founded the India Research Watch (IRW) after his observations of grave academic misconduct in India. Dr. Agrawal, now a freelance data scientist in Raipur, told scientific journal Nature how shocked he was when a student spoke casually of using software to … Read more
Visual: Max Born was the maternal grandfather of this celebrated musician and actor. Name her. | Photo Credit: Eva Rinaldi Q: Max Born was the maternal grandfather of this celebrated musician and actor. Name her. A: Olivia Newton-John Q: Max Born made many contributions to quantum theory. This said, he was awarded the Nobel Prize … Read more
As India moves closer to flying astronauts as part of Gaganyaan, human-rating has emerged as a central but oft-unseen part of the story. Launch vehicles like LVM-3 already fly satellites safely but carrying people demands a lower tolerance for risk and a different way of thinking about failure. What’s the definition of human-rating? Human-rating is … Read more
Displaced Sudanese who fled El-Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rest in the camp located on the southwestern edge of Tawila Sudan’s economy has contracted sharply since the civil war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15, 2023. Its GDP, … Read more
A golden apple snail climbing the edge of a lotus leaf in a pond. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement In Hindu mythology, Lord Shiva’s third eye is said to open only in moments of great transformation. What if this isn’t just a mythic symbol of cosmic vision but also a metaphor for renewal? Ever wondered … Read more
This illustration provided by NASA depicts the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. | Photo Credit: AP NASA has lost contact with a spacecraft that has orbited Mars for more than a decade. Also Read | MAVEN beams first images from Martian atmosphere Maven abruptly stopped communicating with ground stations … Read more
There’s at least one space race already underway to get to the moon. There’s also another one: to claim radio frequencies and orbital slots in the limited space around the earth. The main participants of this race are companies launching large fleets of satellites working together, called megaconstellations. These megaconstellations are already revolutionising Internet access … Read more
Earlier this month, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, professor Aninda Sinha and his former doctoral student Faizan Bhat linked the esoteric mathematics of Srinivasa Ramanujan with the principles underlying the physics of turbulent fluids and the expansion of the universe. The bridge they laid was π (pi) — not the humble one but the transcendental … Read more
When heating water in a microwave, avoid overlong heating and be careful when adding anything to it. | Photo Credit: Dewang Gupta/Unsplash A: Water has a property called surface tension: its surface behaves like a stretched skin that tries to shrink. When a vapour bubble forms inside hot water, surface tension tends to squeeze it. … Read more
The western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus) is one of India’s rarest pheasants and the state bird of Himachal Pradesh. It was once found across parts of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, but now survives in small fragmented pockets. Studies in the forests of Kazinag and Limber in Jammu & Kashmir have revealed that while … Read more
A car burns during a wildfire in Meda, Portugal, August 15, 2025. | Photo Credit: Reuters This year is set to be the world’s second or third-warmest on record, potentially surpassed only by 2024’s record-breaking heat, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on December 9. The data is the latest from C3S … Read more
Elon Musk had said in 2020 that SpaceX planned to list Starlink several years in the future once its revenue growth became “smooth & predictable” [File] | Photo Credit: REUTERS Elon Musk’s SpaceX is moving ahead with plans for an initial public offering that would seek to raise significantly more than $30 billion and target … Read more
Science quiz: Fighting back against diseases This 2019 illustration provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention depicts carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) bacteria. START THE QUIZ 1 / 5 | This ailment is also called Hansen’s disease. One of the main symptoms of a long-term infection of its causative pathogen is the body’s sensory nervous … Read more
IndiGo has contracted its daily operations from 2,300 to approximately 1,800–1,900 flights | Photo Credit: Salman Ali Starting this month, IndiGo’s operations unravelled as thousands of flights were cancelled. The primary trigger was the airline’s failure to prepare for the new pilot rest and duty norms (Phase II), which came into full effect on November … Read more
While a small section of older Indians has benefited from the rise of formal sector retirement, more than 88% of today’s senior citizens continue to work. | Photo Credit: Jasmine Nongrum India’s rapidly ageing population is emerging as a pivotal pension challenge. Today, over 153 million Indians are aged over 60. This is projected to … Read more
ISRO captures the signatures of the solar eruptive events from Earth, Sun-Earth L1 Point, and the Moon. File photo India’s first solar observatory Aditya-L1, along with six U.S. satellites, in a major breakthrough, has revealed why the May 2024 solar storm also known as Gannon’s storm behaved so unusually. In May 2024, the Earth faced … Read more
Static electricity with hair and a balloon. | Photo Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS To put it simply, static electricity is the small buildup of electrical charge on the surface of an object. It occurs when materials rub against each other and the friction often comes with a transfer of electrons, leading to an imbalance of charges. … Read more
“You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in/His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed; His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed. He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake; And when you think he’s half asleep, … Read more
Light that’s too bright can damage the retina. | Photo Credit: Bacila Vlad/Unsplash You’re standing on your balcony in the noon sun. It’s bright. After a moment, you step back into a darker room, and for a few moments you’re unable to see clearly. This is because your eyes need time to adjust. The eyes … Read more
Static electricity with hair and a balloon. | Photo Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS To put it simply, static electricity is the small buildup of electrical charge on the surface of an object. It occurs when materials rub against each other and the friction often comes with a transfer of electrons, leading to an imbalance of charges. … Read more
Former U.S. President Barack Obama announces the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the White House in Washington on April 2, 2013. | Photo Credit: REUTERS The story so far: The brain remains humanity’s final frontier. In the decades ahead, neurotechnology will stretch the boundaries of what it means to understand, and … Read more
The Allen Forest Zoo in Kanpur is one of India’s largest zoological parks. Located in the middle of the city, it’s a vast expanse of fresh air, tall trees, and animals and birds of all shapes and sizes, and these early winter months are the best time to soak in the filtered sun when you … Read more
