Mepco bill

Mosquitoes have followed humanity to every corner of the world, acquiring a reputation for being one of our least welcome companions. They are carriers of some of the deadliest diseases on the planet, including malaria, dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and West Nile virus, which together claim over a million lives each year. For their ubiquity, … Read more

(1) IndiGo cancels over 1,000 flights, disrupting air travel Over the last week, India’s largest airline IndiGo cancelled over a thousand flights from various Indian cities in the wake of modified norms for pilot rest and duty time. The cancellations follow an earlier round of cancellations triggered due to a required software fix to Airbus … Read more

Patna: An IndiGo aircraft makes a landing at Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport in Patna, December 4, 2025. | Photo Credit: PTI The recent disruptions in India’s aviation sector, in particular IndiGo’s wave of flight cancellations, have placed the spotlight firmly on the new fatigue and rest norms developed by the Directorate General of Civil … Read more

Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi being felicitated by Deputy CM Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo during the Global Energy Leaders’ Summit, in Puri on December 6, 2025. | Photo Credit: ANI Energy leaders and policymakers have called for creating a diversified portfolio of future-ready power system technologies, including advanced transmission networks, flexible generation resources, and modern … Read more

A computer model showing filaments, walls, and voids forming web-like structures in the universe. | Photo Credit: Andrew Pontzen and Fabio Governato Cosmic or galaxy filaments are the largest ‘threads’ in the universe’s cosmic web. A single cosmic filament is a structure spanning hundreds of millions of lightyears, formed as a result of gravity pulling … Read more

Last Wednesday, the rupee slipped past the ₹90 per dollar mark. While this drop is labelled as ‘psychologically significant,’ the underlying economic factors haven’t changed much. Yet a specific set of recent events has added fresh momentum, decisively tipping the scales against the currency. The rupee’s rise or fall depends on two main factors: what’s … Read more

The passage of time, especially that inhabited by humans, has often been named based on the materials we use during that time. The Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages are, for instance, a three-age system that divides human prehistory based on the primary materials in use then. It makes sense as the materials we use helps … Read more

Administering the affairs of a medical school at a multidisciplinary private university, I have observed that our medical faculty are generally busy with their day-to-day affairs pertaining to patients and teaching students. They seldom get the time or the wherewithal to carry out quality and innovative research. While time is a one vital factor, another … Read more

The ‘breakup’ of a water stream into droplets is not caused by external noise or dysfunctional nozzles but by “thermal capillary waves,” physicists have found. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Why is the leaky faucet – that most irksome domestic malaise – so universal? Perhaps its scourge may be behind us now as a new scientific … Read more

Just nine Fugitive Economic Offenders (FEOs) owed Indian banks over ₹58,000 crore in principal and interest. Despite having arrest warrants issued against them, these FEOs have left India and refuse to return to avoid criminal prosecution. Of this, the principal amount owed is ₹26,645 crore, while interest accounts for ₹31,437 crore. To date, banks have … Read more

Nuclear activities worldwide generate around 200,000 m3 of radioactive waste every year. Of this about 10,000 m3, less than 5% by volume but containing most of the radioactivity, needs deep, long-term geological storage in the form of geological disposal facilities (GDFs). These caverns purpose-built hundreds of metres underground are packed with waste containers, cement backfill, … Read more

“Wastelands”. That’s how India’s biodiverse semi-arid grasslands and savannas have been undervalued ever since the British colonial era. For the masters, the woody forests of the subcontinent fuelled industrialisation, while the grassy biomes served no purpose in their timber-driven colonisation. Much of post-independence policy and jurisprudence drew heavily from the erstwhile rulers and “wastelands” made … Read more

Japan-China row: The high stakes of Takaichi’s stance on Taiwan

The paddy harvesting season for 2025 officially ended on November 30. Punjab and Haryana recorded a 90% reduction in stubble burning incidents this year compared to 2021. In fact, farm fires in the two States declined to their lowest levels in five years in 2025. However, pollution levels in Delhi remained stubbornly high, triggering protests … Read more

Helical paths are everywhere in the microscopic realm. Many bacteria and parasites don’t simply swim or glide in straight lines. In three dimensions, they trace corkscrew-like tracks through their surroundings. Malaria parasites, for example, glide through soft 3D gels and, in the skin of a bitten host, on paths that look like stretched springs. For … Read more

Edible insects are part of traditional foods from southeast Asia (Image used for representational purposes) | Photo Credit: Getty Images The Science Gallery in Bengaluru unveiled its year-long exhibition, Calorie, earlier this year. Through art installations, workshops and interactive games, the exhibition explores our relationship with food, nutrition and agriculture. Now as part of Calorie, … Read more

Albert Einstein couldn’t admit Niels Bohr’s argument that uncertainty is an inalienable part of nature. | Photo Credit: Image created with ChatGPT In the 1920s, Albert Einstein proposed a twist on the double-slit experiment. Rather than a wall with two fixed slits, he imagined a very light slit that would recoil when a single photon … Read more

Science quiz: The natural artists called minerals Visual: This photo shows various minerals displaying ____________. Fill in the blank with the name of a phenomenon where they absorb UV light and reemit it as visible light. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | This photo shows various minerals displaying ____________. Fill in the blank with … Read more

It is possible to build a temporary reality sans noise. | Photo Credit: Freepik Our reality is a yes, yippie one for noise. We are always swimming in it. Sound waves pervade our atmosphere and a certain portion of those sound waves are what we refer to as noise (Sounds change into its alter ego … Read more

In August 2008, Bihar experienced one of the worst floods in nearly five decades when the Kosi River breached its embankment at Kusaha in Sunsari district of Nepal, killing more than 400 people and displacing thousands. A staggering 33 lakh people were affected at the peak of the flood in Bihar. Indeed, the Kosi River … Read more

Anxiety changes how you pay attention to bodily sensations. | Photo Credit: Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash When you’re nervous or scared, your body enters its fight-or-flight mode, controlled by the autonomic nervous system. Adrenaline levels rise, your heart races, palms sweat, and blood flow and muscle tone are redistributed to prepare you to act. Your bladder and … Read more

Human waste is leading to a decaying world where access to clean air, water or soil is becoming increasingly difficult. The solution is two-pronged – stop making more waste and clean up the waste already made. What is bioremediation? Bioremediation literally means “restoring life through biology.” It harnesses microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, algae and … Read more

The US recently announced plans under its Lunar Fission Surface Power Project to deploy a small nuclear reactor on the moon by the early 2030s. It could be the first attempt to establish a permanent nuclear power source beyond earth orbit, signalling the start of a new era in space. While solar energy can power … Read more

The new research has identified specific genetic markers that significantly increase susceptibility to oral cavity cancer, one of the most common and preventable cancers in India, primarily linked to tobacco use |Image used for representational purpose only | Photo Credit: DHIRAJ SINGH Researchers at the Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer (ACTREC) … Read more

The importance of ocean sustainability, safety, resilience, and India’s leadership in advancing ocean research under the U.N. Decade of Ocean Science was highlighted at the inaugural session of the five-day International Indian Ocean Science Conference 2025 (IIOSC-2025), organized by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad on Monday (December 1, 2025). … Read more

West Indian cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul sporting eye-blacks in 2006. | Photo Credit: Ashlar (CC BY-SA) On November 30, Australian cricketer Steven Smith was spotted wearing eye-black strips while training for the forthcoming pink-ball Ashes Test match in Brisbane. These strips are pasted over the cheekbone and reduce the glare created by light reflected off the … Read more

(1) Cyclone Ditwah batters Sri Lanka As Cyclone Ditwah crossed Sri Lanka, it brought torrential rains, leading to overflowing rivers and landslides. The death toll reached 159 on Saturday (November 29, 2025). Most fatalities were recorded from Kandy and Badulla districts. Water levels at gauging stations breached minor flood and major flood levels along rivers … Read more

How does the human mind process climate change? Is the apathy reflected in people’s disengagement from inequality, disruption, and social change? Midway through his PhD, Rachit Dubey, now an assistant professor at the department of communication, University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), “shifted away from traditional cognitive science topics to tackle broader, interdisciplinary challenges around adaptation … Read more