Jammu and Kashmir had 3 instances of Internet shutdowns due to protests in 2024 | Photo Credit: NISSAR AHMAD;NISSAR AHMAD – Globally, there were 88 Internet shutdowns due to communal violence in 2023 and 2024 and all of them were in India. In fact, nearly 95% of all Internet shutdowns ordered by the state due … Read more
Generative AI systems like large language models and text-to-image generators can pass rigorous exams that are required of anyone seeking to become a doctor or a lawyer. They can perform better than most people in Mathematical Olympiads. They can write halfway decent poetry, generate aesthetically pleasing paintings and compose original music. These remarkable capabilities may … Read more
File image of Union Minister Jitendra Singh | Photo Credit: PTI India will overtake the United States in the number of scientific publications by 2029, Union Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said at a public function on Friday (February 29, 2025) to commemorate National Science Day. “Future projections say that we will overcome … Read more
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh along with Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and others participate in ‘Vigyan Vaibhav 2025’ programme at Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad on February 28, 2025. | Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal “Today, Indians are living in cyberspace, working on the cloud, and talking to artificial intelligence,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh remarked … Read more
Aditya-L1 is the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun. | Photo Credit: ISRO India’s first dedicated space based solar mission, Aditya-L1, has made a ground-breaking observation as one of its scientific payloads has captured the first-ever image of a solar flare ‘kernel’ in the lower solar atmosphere. The Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) … Read more
There are trillions of charged particles – protons and electrons, the basic building blocks of matter – whizzing around above your head at any given time. These high-energy particles, which can travel at close to the speed of light, typically remain thousands of kilometres away from the earth, trapped there by the shape of the … Read more
Forest Minister and Bidar In-charge Eshwar Khandre addressing a media conference in Bidar on February 27, 2025. 11 deliberative sessions would be held at the three-day conference. Traditional healers from across Karnataka and beyond would participate to share their rich healing experiences in these sessions. | Photo Credit: GOPICHAND T. Forest Minister Eshwar Khandre said … Read more
Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) will celebrate National Science Day on March 2 as IIA Open Day. The campus at Koramangala in Bengaluru will be open to everyone from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.. | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) will celebrate National Science Day as IIA Open Day on … Read more
National Science Day is celebrated in India to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by physicist C.V. Raman. File National Science Day is celebrated in India to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by physicist C.V. Raman on February 28 in 1928. India has been celebrating National Science Day since 1986 when the … Read more
Therapeutic proteins are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of healthcare, with their applications found in treating both infectious diseases, and non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer. What are they and how do they work? Proteins are the largest class of biomolecules that drive cellular activities essential for life. Any aberration in their synthesis, processing … Read more
Prime Minister Narendra Modi. File photo | Photo Credit: ANI Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday (February 28, 2025) greeted people on the occasion of National Science Day and called for leveraging science to build a Viksit Bharat. He said on X, “Greetings on National Science Day to those passionate about science, particularly our young … Read more
An illustration shows NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer approaching the moon as it enters its orbit in this artist’s concept. | Photo Credit: Lockheed Martin Space/Reuters A dishwasher-sized NASA satellite was launched into space from Florida on Wednesday to identify where water – a precious resource for lunar missions – resides on the moon’s surface in places … Read more
Photographers record images of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander as lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on February 26, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP A private company launched another lunar lander Wednesday (February 26, 2025), aiming to get closer to the … Read more
According to new research led by researchers at Stanford University in the US, coal-fired power plants are quietly depleting India’s rice and wheat output, destroying up to 10% of the yield in several states. The emissions from coal power plants include carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, fly ash, soot, suspended particulate matter, and other … Read more
America has already lost its global competitive edge in science, and funding cuts proposed in early 2025 may further a precipitous decline. Proposed cuts to the federal agencies that fund scientific research could undercut America’s global competitiveness, with negative impacts on the economy and the ability to attract and train the next generation of researchers. I’m an astronomer, and … Read more
A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled history of life and our planet, we propose that the coevolution of life and Earth’s surface environment may have unfolded in a way that makes the evolutionary … Read more
“Who wants to live forever?” Freddie Mercury mournfully asks in Queen’s 1986 song of the same name. The answer: Quite a few people – so much so that life extension has long been a cottage industry. As a physician and scholar in the medical humanities, I’ve found the quest to expand the human lifespan both … Read more
Militaries that have taken power in Africa’s Sahel region – notably Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – have put pressure on western mining firms for a fairer distribution of revenue from the lucrative mining sector. Gold is one of the resources at the heart of these tensions. West Africa has been a renowned gold mining hub for … Read more
Fragments of an explosive device, a radiation warning sign in the foreground, are displayed by Ukrainian authorities after a drone attack at the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine, Friday, February 14, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP Questions: 1. There are four ways to measure radiation dose. Of these, gray and X measure the absorbed … Read more
In this undated image released by Intuitive Machines, their newest lunar lander is displayed. | Photo Credit: Intuitive Machines via AP Intuitive Machines is “ready to go” with its second moon landing mission, a company executive said on Wednesday (February 26, 2025), a day ahead of the scheduled launch of its lunar lander. The … Read more
Prof. B D Vishwajit and Mahesh Tanwade at work in the animal house in Sharnbasva University, Kalaburagi. | Photo Credit: ARUN KULKARNI An advanced laboratory studies on rats and mice on reproductive toxicity and endocrine disruptive compounds by two scientists of Sharnbasva University has revealed disturbing facts of how harmful contents in some cosmetics and herbicides … Read more
Eighty million years ago humans, rats, and mice shared the same mammalian ancestor. More recently, researchers made the astonishing discovery that even today our genomes contain close to 500 segments that have remained totally unchanged since then. These segments are called ultra-conserved elements (UCEs). Nearly all the UCEs are also highly unchanged in the chicken … Read more
Environmental activists take part in a flash mob at Circo Massimo as the COP16 biodiversity conference resumes at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) headquarters in Rome, February 25, 2025. | Photo Credit: AFP Global talks to protect nature restarted Tuesday with a call for humanity to come together to “sustain life on the … Read more
More often than not, you may happen to hear a crack or a pop from your joints, especially during your PT or PE period and yoga classes. You might have been chided or even scolded for cracking your knuckles and been told it’ll lead to arthritis. Today, let’s explore the real reason behind our noisy … Read more
Sci-Five | The Hindu Science Quiz: On Fibonacci 1 / 5 | What are the first five numbers of the Fibonacci sequence? 0, 1, 1, 2, 3 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 4, 6, 8, 9, 10 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 The first five numbers of the Fibonacci sequence are 0, 1, 1, 2, … Read more
Time measurements and calendars have often been refined over the years. | Photo Credit: Alexey Savchenko/Unsplash A: A tropical year is the time (365.242199 days) the earth takes to revolve around the sun once. By having just 365 days in a calendar year, 0.242199 days are lost each year. To correct this error, Julius Caesar … Read more
An illustration shows a hypothetical picture of Mars 3.6 billion years ago when an ocean may have covered nearly half the planet, released February 24, 2025. The blue areas show the depth of the ocean filled to the shoreline level of the ancient, now-gone sea, dubbed Deuteronilus. The orange star represents the landing site of … Read more
Questions: 1. This material is one of the lightest solids known, since more than 99% of its composition by volume is air. Making it involves extracting the liquid component of a particular type of semisolid by supercritical freezing. Name it. 2. In the 1970s, a British hairdresser named Maurice Ward developed a material his granddaughter … Read more
This April 2024 image provided by NASA shows the SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) telescope at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colo. | Photo Credit: AP NASA will soon launch a new telescope which it says will create the “most colourful” map of the cosmos ever made. The SPHEREx … Read more
Encounters between baboons and people are common in parts of South Africa. WhatsApp groups often share stories of baboons raiding a kitchen and stealing all the food. And stories appear in the media about the torture and killing of baboons. Recently the hashtag #JusticeForRaygun has been widely shared on social media. A young male baboon named Raygun was being tracked as … Read more