Mepco bill

Protonemata grown by spore germination on BCDAT medium. (This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) How far can plant life be pushed in harsh environments? Climate change as much as humans’ plans for colonies on the moon … Read more

On November 26, a fire started on scaffolding at the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in Tai Po in Hong Kong and spread rapidly across multiple high-rise blocks wrapped in bamboo and other flammable external materials. At least 44 people had died as of 7 am IST (November 27) while hundreds were missing. The local … Read more

Imagine watching the brain not as a finished organ but as a city under construction, where every neuron is a worker changing jobs as the skyline rises. A series of papers in Nature published on November 5 has captured exactly that. Led by researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the USA, together … Read more

China has finished building its Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a bittersweet development given that the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) has been in limbo for years. Both JUNO and INO were designed to study subatomic particles called neutrinos, which are very hard to catch because they rarely interact with matter. This is why both INO … Read more

The crisis has been described by UNCTAD as the most severe economic crisis ever recorded, wiping out 69 years of human development. File | Photo Credit: AFP Gaza’s economy experienced an 83% decline in 2024, pushing all 2.3 million residents into poverty. This followed months of bombardment in military actions carried out by Israel, which … Read more

File photo of the Google logo. | Photo Credit: Reuters Thousands of users across India found themselves abruptly locked out of Google Meet calls after what appears to have been a wide-scale service disruption. Reports clustered around error messages and “502 — Bad Gateway” notifications, with many users unable to access meetings. The outage struck … Read more

The location of ‘Krishnan’ crater and nearby features | Photo Credit: Special arrangement A 3.5 billion-old crater on Mars will henceforth be known after M.S. Krishnan, the pioneering Indian geologist. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has approved it and several other names for Martian landforms proposed by two Kerala-based researchers. Apart from ‘Krishnan,’ the IAU … Read more

Previous work had already shown that channel state information (CSI) from WiFi signals can be used to identify people in a room but CSI is harder to obtain and needs specialised hardware and firmware. | Photo Credit: Paul Hanaoka/Unsplash Modern WiFi standards have a feature called beamforming that helps routers push signals more efficiently towards … Read more

For representative purposes. | Photo Credit: Getty Images Research fraud is a global problem and has become worse due to the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The problem is even more acute in India’s higher education sector where both the number of journal publications and retractions are growing rapidly. However, journal retractions do not … Read more

It’s the wax vapour rather than the solid or liquid wax that actually burns. | Photo Credit: Sixteen Miles Out/Unsplash Q: How can candle wicks hold a flame for so long? – Sadhika G. A: A candle wick holds a flame because it isn’t just a string that burns. Its main purpose is to deliver … Read more

Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity Each exact solution of the mathematical relations of general relativity (Q1) has a name. Name this person, who solved the relations for what space looks like around a spherical and non-rotating black hole, while serving as a soldier in World War I. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 … Read more

The Indian government often cites the World Health Organization (WHO)’s “benchmark” of one doctor for every 1,000 people. However, this is not a standard officially prescribed by the WHO. Parliament Question and Answer records show that until at least 2010, the government maintained that the WHO had not prescribed any specific standard for the doctor-population … Read more

An image of concrete tetrapods used as wave breakers to prevent beach erosion. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement A collaborative study by researchers from three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has found that adding tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles to certain synthetic plastics can significantly reduce their viscosity, making them easier and less energy-intensive to process. Plastics owe … Read more

In this photo released by the Afar Government Communication Bureau, ash billows from an eruption of the long-dormant Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia. | Photo Credit: AP Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano in Afar, Ethiopia, and a member of the Erta Ale Range. It’s located at the edge of the East African Rift where … Read more

Pancreatic cancers are aggressive and deadly, with high rates of metastasis and poor prognosis. The tumour environment is also hypoxic: the cells rapidly divide and thrive in very low oxygen conditions. Now, IIT-Bombay researchers have shown that the hypoxia ends up enhancing the cells’ metastatic behavior. By affecting the cells’ plasma membrane lipids, hypoxic conditions … Read more

Passenger Internet on aeroplanes used to be rare in the 2010s but has become almost commonplace today. On most flights, the basic idea is that the whole aeroplane is treated like a flying Wi-Fi router that connects to the rest of the Internet through a long backhaul link. This means your phone or laptop never … Read more

The child is being treated at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Bengaluru. File photograph A recent paper in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Dysmorphology has presented the first detailed case report of a new kind of gene mutation in a child, with a rare condition – pseudo-TORCH Syndrome Type 2. Using exome sequencing, a … Read more

Science is a fascinating subject because it tells stories that sound unbelievable at first, invisible forces, teleporting particles, and now, a crystal that dances in time! Every discovery feels like a peek into a new world of possibilities. And the best part? There’s no end to discovery. A crystal that never rests Imagine a crystal … Read more

Not long ago, most people thought of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, as a childhood condition that would eventually be outgrown. Now it’s everywhere. TikTok videos describe “ADHD moments” that feel instantly familiar, clinics are booked out for months, and adults are finally getting diagnoses that explain years of chaos and exhaustion. Also Read: … Read more

Road dust mainly comprises PM₁₀ and coarse particles and forms a large share of the air we breathe. With the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) aiming for a 40% reduction in PM₁₀ by 2025-2026, reducing road dust is an urgent priority. This is reinforced by source apportionment studies across 17 non-attainment cities that have found … Read more

When you visit a website, a small pop-up appears before you explore it fully, asking you to “Accept all” or “Deny.” These are internet cookies often explained in tiny bits of texts we don’t bother to read. In today’s digital world, where so much of our information exists online, it’s important to understand what happens … Read more

Eaglenest bush frog. Photo credit: Special arrangement In a major taxonomic revision of bush frogs, the Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has recorded 13 new-to-science species of amphibians from the northeastern part of the country. These new species have been described in a study published in the latest issue of Vertebrate Zoology, an international journal. … Read more