Mepco bill

While humans have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years, some scientists think this history could go back millions of years. According to the drunken monkey hypothesis, humans’ taste and indeed preference for alcohol may have evolutionary roots, shaped by our primate ancestors consuming small doses of alcohol found inside ripe fruit. Our bodies may … Read more

Scientists have interpreted the TLPs’ existence to mean the moon is more dynamic than they once believed. | Photo Credit: Mike Petrucci/Unsplash For centuries, sky-gazers have reported seeing peculiar, short-lived events on the moon’s surface, from strange flashes of light to hazy glows and patches of unusual colour. These fleeting occurrences are called transient lunar … Read more

The carabid ground beetles of the family Carabidae are as common as they come. These little nocturnal hunters are found in almost any terrestrial habitat on the planet. To some, they’re simply pests — infamous for their pungent smell, which they emit when they’re threatened. Others, but farmers in particular, are fond of them because … Read more

Many people fervently believe that coin tosses are random. The Indian men’s test cricket team captain Shubman Gill lost all five of his tosses against England this summer. The probability of such an event is only 3.1%, or one in 32, if winning or losing is assumed to be random. Some cricket enthusiasts realised then … Read more

The northeast monsoon has kicked in early this year, and at least four days sooner for the second year running, over Tamil Nadu. Last year, this phase of the monsoon ended with the State recording 33% more rain than the long-period average, and forecasters expect this year to go the same way as well. Historically, … Read more

Immunology has increasingly taken centerstage in modern biomedicine, powerfully capturing the popular imagination. From revolutionising vaccine development during the COVID-19 pandemic to yielding profound insights into autoimmune disorders and cancer treatment, immunological research now drives biomedical innovation more significantly than ever. The recent pandemic revealed immunology not as an esoteric branch of science but as … Read more

The politics of welfare in India has become increasingly gendered, with cash transfers emerging as both a social policy instrument and an electoral strategy. Just weeks before Assembly elections, the Bihar government has rolled out the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana — a ₹10,000 transfer to 75 lakh women as seed capital for self-employment. The goal … Read more

Baratang’s mud volcano in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. | Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons The samples collected from India’s only active mud volcano at Baratang in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands belong to the Oligocene age, which was around 23 million years ago, a Geological Survey of India (GSI) official said. The lithoclasts ejected from the … Read more

A artist’s depiction of the Chandrayaan 2 Lander Vikram on the Moon. Photo: YouTube/ISRO Official The Chandrayaan-2 mission, launched in 2019, has made the first-ever observation of the effects of the Sun’s Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on the Moon using its onboard scientific instruments, ISRO said on Saturday (October 18, 2025). This observation would help … Read more

In science and technology, as is the case in many other fields, progress often isn’t accomplished by one person acting in isolation. Renowned English polymath Isaac Newton probably summed this idea best in a letter to fellow scientist Robert Hooke in 1675, when he stated that “If I have seen further [than others], it is … Read more

As the principal investigator in the phase III trials of the Rotovac vaccine to prevent rotavirus related gastroenteritis Gagandeep Kang is “very excited” with the publication of the results of a study that established the effectiveness of the vaccine, country wide.   Currently director of the global health team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, responsible for enterics, diagnostics, epidemiology and genomics portfolio, Dr. Kang, in a previous position with the Christian … Read more

Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently has warned that the type of microbes in rice paddies can determine whether arsenic, a notorious carcinogen and plant toxin, builds up in rice grains and triggers drastic crop losses. The study has identified an important balance between arsenic-methylating bacteria, which convert inorganic arsenic … Read more

Edible palm weevil larvae (Rhynchophorus phoenicis) at a traditional food market in Puerto Francisco de Orellana, Ecuador. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto We depend on insects in many ways for producing food for the world’s population. They pollinate our crop plants, break down decaying plant and animal matter, and are natural pest controllers. We also … Read more

Nearly 80% of the world’s poorest, or about 900 million people, are directly exposed to climate hazards exacerbated by global warming, bearing a “double and deeply unequal burden,” the United Nations warned Friday (October . “No one is immune to the increasingly frequent and stronger climate change effects like droughts, floods, heat waves, and air … Read more

Manishka Dubey is known for having won The Inventor Challenge on Colors Infinity TV, for her ‘Child Safety Band’, a creation that was made to help children when they get lost and can’t find their parents. Her great passion towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and strong desire to help others have led her … Read more

Fortune must have had a pretty good time when the solar nebula exploded, tossed, roared, and turned around 4.6 billion years ago. If the slightest something hadn’t gone the way it did, we wouldn’t be here writing and studying the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what is’ of our universe. One night, like our good old Galileo, … Read more

A molecular biologist from Madurai, our quizmaster enjoys trivia and music, and is working on a rock ballad called ‘Coffee is a Drink, Kaapi is an Emotion’. @bertyashley Quiz | Easy like Sunday morning: Starry starry night! Although we depict sunlight as yellow, and it is classified as a ‘yellow-dwarf’ star, what colour is the … Read more

An artist’s depiction of earth’s magnetic field deflecting high-energy protons from the sun. | Photo Credit: REUTERS Researchers analysed data from the European Space Agency’s ‘Swarm’ mission and recently reported that the South Atlantic Anomaly, the region of weakest intensity in the earth’s magnetic field, has expanded since 2014. Today, according to the data, it … Read more

Science quiz: When physics steps outside its comfort zones Visual: This German physician described a law for the process of _________. When this process didn’t follow his law, it was called ‘anomalous.’ Fill in the blank. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | This German physician described a law for the process of _________. When … Read more

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s recent remarks amid public outrage over an alleged gang rape in Durgapur have drawn sharp criticism from the Opposition and citizens alike. The incident has once again reignited concerns over women’s safety and the lack of accountability in the State. The recent crime, in which the victim is a … Read more

A bright band of diffuse gamma ray glow along the map’s center, which marks the central plane of the Milky Way galaxy, is seen in an undated image based on five years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. | Photo Credit: Reuters Scientists may be coming closer to confirming the existence of dark … Read more

(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!) There is ample evidence that the big leaps science achieves from time to time are often built on scientists asking simple questions, driven solely by their curiosity and not because … Read more