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Watch: How many stray dogs are there in India? No one knows

On August 15, 1950, India was celebrating its Independence Day. The mood was upbeat throughout the country. Just as celebrations were winding down for the day, a great disaster struck. At around 7:30 pm, an earthquake of magnitude 8.6 — the strongest ever recorded on land — jolted the country’s Northeast and some neighbouring areas … Read more

Elephants roam in Tsavo West National Park near Voi town in Taita-Taveta County, Kenya, August 7, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP For farmers in the Taita hills in southern Kenya, elephants are a menace: they raid crops and will occasionally injure or even kill people. Farmer Richard Shika, 68, has had some close encounters. “One … Read more

The Supreme Court on Monday directed authorities to remove all stray dogs from Delhi-NCR localities | Photo Credit: Swastika Rajput On August 11, the Supreme Court directed the Delhi government and local bodies to immediately capture stray dogs and put them in shelters. The Court was hearing a suo motu case on the increasing instances … Read more

Migrant workers arrive at Bengaluru city railway station from Eastern states. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar has raised concerns about possible disenfranchisement of migrant voters. Bihar, along with Uttar Pradesh, is a key source of outmigrants, and people from these two States are relocating in large numbers. This mobility … Read more

Bread stored in the refrigerator often goes stale faster. | Photo Credit: Charles Chen/Unsplash When bread becomes stale, it loses its soft, fresh texture and becomes dry and hard. As it happens, this isn’t just because it dries out. Staling is mainly caused by a process called starch retrogradation. When bread is baked, the heat … Read more

Science Quiz: Overturned ideas in the history of science Visual: In the mediaeval era, astronomers defended the geocentric model of the universe using the idea of epicycles and Z, shown here as the smaller and larger dashed circles, respectively. Name Z. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | In the mediaeval era, astronomers defended the … Read more

Can you weigh an elephant before and after it picks up a one-rupee coin, and tell the difference?  You can if the measurement is precise. To detect a 4-gram coin on a 4-tonne creature, the scales must come with a resolution of at least 1 part per million (ppm). Precise measurements such as these routinely … Read more

Prof Arnab Bhattacharya, Prof Ajit Kembhavi, Chief guest Prof Ajay Kumar Sood, Prof Aniket Sule during the opening ceremony of 18th International Olymopiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai on August 12, 2025. | Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI India is ensuring that technology is the priority for Viksit Bharat, … Read more

The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) on Tuesday announced the selection of the PixxelSpace India-led consortium to design, build, and operate India’s first fully indigenous commercial earth observation (EO) satellite constellation under the public-private partnership (PPP) model. The Bengaluru-based PixxelSpace India consortium comprises Piersight Space, Satsure Analytics India, and Dhruva Space. IN-SPACe … Read more

(1) Flash floods in Uttarkashi kill at least 4, with 43 still missing Flash floods triggered due to heavy rainfall pulverized the village of Dharali in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. At least 4 people have been killed and 43 people are still missing as of August 12, 2025. Around 1,308 people have been rescued … Read more

File photo of Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. | Photo Credit: PTI The Union Cabinet has approved four new semiconductor projects worth ₹4,594 crore, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday (August 12, 2025). Mr. Vaishnaw said “Semiconductors are a foundational, strategic industry without which no country can count … Read more

NASA astronauts Suni Williams, left, and Butch Wilmore en route to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 on June 5, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, ahead of their lift0off on the Boeing Starliner capsule. | Photo Credit: AP One of NASA’s two astronauts who piloted the ill-fated Boeing Starliner crew capsule has retired … Read more

Watch: Elector deletions after SIR in Bihar: Many problematic questions emerge: Data Point

The specific components of the immune response in a human body that protect against a dengue virus (DENV) infection and the subsequent illness remain unclear. Scientists are still trying to understand how natural infection and vaccination protect people so that they can develop better vaccines. Now, a novel study has revealed important insights into developing … Read more

Clockwise from top-left: nearly defect-free 2D square array with 2,024 atoms; 2D pattern of the letters ‘USTC’ with 723 atoms; trilayer cuboid array with 1,077 atoms; trilayer twisted graphene structure with 752 atoms. | Photo Credit: arxiv:2412.14647 Quantum computing holds the promise to revolutionise science and technology by solving problems currently beyond the limits of … Read more

Over the last two years, India’s private sector banks have been expanding their physical presence. The two biggest lenders — HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank — opened 3,284 and 1,341 branches, respectively, between 2022 and 2024. Both lenders also increased their workforce, adding 40,305 and 9,204 employees in FY 2024, respectively. In FY25, however, HDFC … Read more

What are emotions, really? And why do we have them? Simply put, emotions are intangible responses to what we see happening around us. They arise spontaneously, without conscious thought. Emotions allowed early humans to efficiently dodge dangers as they explored the world around them. While the world and our lives in it are very different … Read more

C.P. Radhakrishnan, Governor of Maharashtra, presenting an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science to V.Narayanan, Chairman, ISRO, at the 21st SRM Institute of Science & Technology Convocation on August 10, 2025. | Photo Credit: Ragu R. After marking a humble beginning in the Indian space programme with a tiny rocket supplied by the United States, … Read more

An aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August 2023. The tanks contain treated radioactive wastewater the facility has been slowly releasing into the Pacific Ocean. | Photo Credit: Reuters Most monitoring of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s release of tritiated wastewater has thus far focused on local coastal waters. No … Read more

In 1959, the American biochemist Walter Kauzmann proposed a radical solution to the problem of protein structure. At the time, it was unclear how proteins, the workhorses of the cell, fold into their unique three-dimensional forms. Every protein is made up of a set of 20 amino acids, rather like beads on a string. The … Read more

Tech talk The Discoverer 13 was an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to test a number of aspects. Bear in mind that this was in 1960, the early years of the Space Age. Among other things, the Discoverer 13 was designed to test engineering techniques and to attempt deceleration and reentry through the atmosphere. If the deceleration … Read more

Elevators include components such as hydraulic lifting motors, ventilation pumps, and control panels that together demand a balanced power supply. | Photo Credit: Sung Jin Cho/Unsplash Because elevators are critical systems, downtime is expensive and dangerous. To avoid this, elevators need three-phase electrical power to meet its high power demand without compromising their reliability. Elevators … Read more

A fishing cat among mangroves in the Godavari river at night, 2018. | Photo Credit: Srichakra Pranav (CC BY-SA) In the wild, India has 15 species belonging to the cat family. Much attention has been given to our large cats, the lions and tigers. Not much is known of the smaller wild cats – the … Read more

James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97. Lovell died pn Thursday (August 7, 2025) in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday. “Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon … Read more

U.S. President Donald Trump. File | Photo Credit: Reuters The Trump administration is moving to shut down two NASA missions that monitor a potent greenhouse gas and plant health, potentially shutting off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers. U.S. President Donald Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 includes no money … Read more

A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62 percent by century’s end, setting off alarm bells among financial institutions worldwide. But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released Wednesday (August 6, 2025), challenges that conclusion — finding … Read more

“Italy is going to Mars!” Italian Space Agency president Teodoro Valente said on X [File] | Photo Credit: AP Elon Musk’s SpaceX has agreed to carry Italian experiments on its Starship megarocket during planned future missions to Mars, according to a new deal announced on Thursday. “Italy is going to Mars!” Italian Space Agency president … Read more

Migrant workers walk along a railway track to return to their home state of eastern Bihar, during an extended nationwide lockdown in 2020. | Photo Credit: ADNAN ABIDI An analysis of Bihar’s draft electoral rolls released on August 1, prepared after the completion of the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise, shows that more women than … Read more

ISRO/NRSC used Cartosat-2S data to assess the devastating Aug 5 flash flood in Dharali & Harsil, Uttarakhand. Source: X/isro The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) National Remote Sensing Centre has done a “rapid assessment” of the damage caused by the flash floods in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand using very high-resolution images from the Cartosat-2S satellite. … Read more