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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

In a landmark paper in Science on May 20, 1983, researchers reported they had isolated a “retrovirus” from a patient at risk of developing AIDS. The work, led by French virologists Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier at the Institut Pasteur, was the first glimpse of what would become one of the most devastating pathogens in … Read more

Scientists have solved the mystery of 3.4 million-year-old fossils called the “Burtele Foot” discovered in Ethiopia in 2009, finding they belonged to an enigmatic human ancestor that lived alongside another closely related species during a poorly understood time in human evolution. Based on the recent discovery nearby of 25 teeth and the jawbone of a … Read more

A worker prepares brooms from bamboo at a roadside shop in Ahmedabad on November 28, 2025. | Photo Credit: AFP Scientists conducting a field survey in Manipur’s Imphal West district have discovered fossil evidence indicating that thorniness in bamboo was already present in Asia during the Ice Age, a government release said. Researchers from the … Read more

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that it has secured a record budget of 22.1 billion euros to fund its programmes for the next three years, as the continent seeks greater independence in space. The ESA also approved a plan to bolster defence cooperation and laid out plans for scientific space missions at a … Read more

Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla speakng at an interaction in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: PTI Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has said the next five to 10 years are going to be defining times for India as far as space exploration is concerned, as a lot of things are going to happen. In an interactive session on the … Read more

A data scientist must consider societal impact, not just model accuracy.  | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto In the rapidly evolving field of Data Science, technical skills such as programming, statistics, and machine learning are often emphasised as the foundation for success. However, while these are essential, they are not sufficient on their own. A successful … Read more

What with near-instant delivery of whatever food item that we seek — be it ready-to-eat or even to prepare — and supermarkets around every corner in an urban expanse, it might not be long before the need to preserve food at home becomes a forgotten art. And yet, home-food preservation was a tricky affair even … Read more

The Scientists for Genetic Diversity, a group of scientists, has written to Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, and the Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research M. L. Jat expressing its concern over the “compromise proposal” presented at the 11th session of the governing body (GB11) of … Read more

Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft blasting off the launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. | Photo Credit: AFP The Baikonur cosmodrome is a spaceport in Kazakhstan that Russia leases and operates as the site of its space launches. It was built in the 1950s first as a missile test range before becoming the centre of … Read more

India produces a large amount of sugarcane. | Photo Credit: Getty Images A recent paper by Olivier Garsmeur and colleagues titled ‘The genomic footprints of wild Saccharum species trace domestication, diversification, and modern breeding of sugarcane’ in the journal Cell conducted genomic analyses of 390 sugarcane breeds from Australia, Brazil, China, France, French Polynesia, India, … Read more

“During this phase, the science orbit will be maintained via regular manoeuvres, scheduled to avoid or minimise conflicts with science observations. Extensive calibration and validation activities will take place,” the ISRO had said earlier. File | Photo Credit: NASA via PTI The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, launched in July, has entered the … Read more

A prototype of the MATSYA 6000, a submersible made by Chennai’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). | Photo Credit: Ravindran R. A crucial set of tests on the Samudrayaan, India’s first manned-submersible dive into the ocean, is likely only mid-next year following a delay in the procurement of syntactic foam cladding from France. The … Read more

Chinese and U.S. flags flutter outside the building of an American company in Beijing, China | Photo Credit: TINGSHU WANG China lent more than $2 trillion in loans and grants to over 80% of countries and regions in the world between 2000 and 2023. The U.S. was the biggest beneficiary, according to data released by … Read more

Having failed to force a retraction, Beijing escalated the issue to the United Nations | Photo Credit: Andrew Cabello Reynolds Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sparked a controversy when she said that a Chinese assault on Taiwan could be deemed a “survival-threatening situation” — a legal justification allowing Tokyo to exercise collective self-defence. China claims … Read more

The effects of feminising gender-affirmative hormone therapy (GAHT) are more than skin deep, new research in Nature Medicine has reported, with the changes going down to the very proteins circulating in a person’s blood. University of Melbourne endocrinologist Ada Cheung, who co-led the study, has called the findings “a world-first”. Sanjay Kalra, an endocrinologist and … Read more