What is the total allowable catch?

Fishers venture out to fish in mechanised boats in Mandapam North Sea, June 16, 2023, after the end of the 61-day fishing ban. | Photo Credit: Balachandar L./The Hindu The total allowable catch (TAC) is a limit on the total quantity of fish that fishers can catch in a particular area. It’s usual for agencies … Read more

Blood of man bitten by hundreds of snakes leads to strong anti-venom

Representative image. An American man named Timothy Friede has subjected himself to more than 200 snakebites and 700 injections of venom over 18 years. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto For millennia, there have been stories of people who tried to make themselves immune to poison by regularly ingesting small, non-lethal doses of it. The practice … Read more

Pakistan formed 0.0001% of India’s imports in FY25

In 2024-25, pharma products formed close to 40% of all India’s exports to Pakistan | Photo Credit: Eblis The closure of the Integrated Check Post at Attari has brought to a complete halt the already negligible trade between India and Pakistan. The shutdown followed the recent terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir. In 2024-25, … Read more

UoH faculty member elected as Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry

 G.S. Vaitheeswaran | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT G.S. Vaitheeswaran from University of Hyderabad’s (UoH) School of Physics has been elected as a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry for his contributions to understanding the electronic structure of solids, particularly in the field of energetic materials. The fellowship will enable Prof Vaitheeswaran to expand … Read more

The Science Quiz: Mathematical puzzles

The Science Quiz: Mathematical puzzles 1 / 6 | Visual: Name the game whose starting setup is shown here. The point is to move the entire stack of disks to another pole, one at a time, but at no point allowing a larger disk to sit atop a smaller one. 2 / 6 | Pick … Read more

J&K’s economy and tourism in peril after Pahalgam massacre

Tourists enjoys horse ride at Gulmarg Famous ski resort north of Srinagar on April 30, 2025, a week after the Pahalgam massacre. | Photo Credit: IMRAN NISSAR The targeted killings of tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir took place at a time when the region was witnessing a tourism boom. The number of visitors … Read more

IIA researchers chart the Sun’s subsurface weather

An international team of solar physicists led by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have traced giant tides of plasma beneath the Sun’s surface at a region called near-surface shear layer (NSSL). According to a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the plasma’s currents shift with the Sun’s magnetic heartbeat and could have a … Read more

World’s largest fusion project reaches construction milestone with India’s help

In a major milestone, scientists working on the world’s largest nuclear fusion project have completed its main magnet system with India playing a key role in building critical infrastructure. This system will power the core of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) Tokamak reactor, which aims to demonstrate that fusion, the energy source of the sun … Read more

Science for All: The physics of human handclaps

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, left, claps as cricketer Virat Kohli looks on. (Image used for representation only) | Photo Credit: Bikas Das (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!) What’re the odds you clapped your hands … Read more

Puttur civic body converts wet waste into BioCNG to operate 6 vehicles

Puttur city municipality in Dakshina Kannada district use Bio CNG generated from wet waste to operate its six vehicles since August 2024. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT In a rare initiative in Karnataka, Puttur City Municipal Council in Dakshina Kannada district has been converting wet waste into Bio Compressed Natural Gas (BioCNG) with the help … Read more

The science of AI and the AI of science

The fundamental idea behind artificial intelligence (AI) stems from the British mathematician Alan Turing, who in the 1950s defined the idea of intelligence in a machine. During World War II, when attempting to break encryption code the Nazis used to transmit secret messages, he wondered whether machines would be able to find patterns in large … Read more

Indians fear fake news but are less concerned about press freedom

While distrust in fake news is high, confidence in systemic solutions such as a free press remains low | Photo Credit: EVGENIY MALOLETKA In India, while there is widespread anxiety about misinformation and fake news, people largely do not attribute it to government influence. Instead, a relatively large share do not mind greater state censorship, … Read more

Liberals ride the anti-Trump wave to victory in Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Liberal Party won Canada’s federal election, though the outright majority is still in question. | Photo Credit: DAVID KAWAI It is rare for the results of an elections in one country to be swayed by the leader of a neighbouring country. Yet that was the case in Canada’s 2025 … Read more

New study on Chandrayaan-3’s landing site reveals potential presence of primitive lunar mantle materials

The portion of Chandrayaan-3’s landing site taken by Vikram Lander after the successful landing. Photo: ISRO In a new finding, scientists of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) have revealed that the landing site (Shiv Shakti point) of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is a promising site to access primitive mantle samples, which was otherwise lacking in the … Read more

China’s Shenzhou-19 astronauts return to earth

Chinese astronauts (from left) Wang Haoze, Cai Xuzhe, and Song Lingdong wave as they attend a see-off ceremony for the Shenzhou-19 mission at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, October 30, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP Three Chinese astronauts returned to earth on April 30 after six months on the country’s space station, … Read more

Breakthrough Prize 2025 awarded to CMS collaboration featuring IIT Hyderabad physicists

Assistant Professor, Department of Physics at IIT Hyderabad, Saranya Ghosh (in white shirt) with his team of faculty members and students, who were part of the CMS collaboration that won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2025. | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT Researchers from IIT Hyderabad are part of the team that received the Breakthrough … Read more

Starlink’s India struggle: spectrum, surveillance, and connectivity

The vast rural expanses of India are often overshadowed by the country’s urban-centric digital growth; digital isolation has long stifled progress. Starlink’s ambitious satellite network now promises to turn night into day, literally and figuratively, by beaming high-speed internet across terrains where cables don’t reach and towers don’t exist. But as this technological advance prepared … Read more

What is the best way to peel a boiled egg?

We’ve all been there – trying to peel a boiled egg, but mangling it beyond all recognition as the hard shell stubbornly sticks to the egg white. Worse, the egg ends up covered in chewy bits of adhesive membrane in the end. The internet is littered with various “hacks” that claim to prevent this problem. … Read more

New model finds locusts making complex decisions in deadly swarms

In late 2019, a wave of billions of desert locusts flew into western India through Pakistan. Their journey had already spanned several thousand kilometers since they first erupted in the arid plains of East Africa. Locusts are grasshoppers that, in the right conditions, multiply rapidly. They grow larger and change colour in response to their … Read more

Axiom space mission: Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla to fly to International Space Station on May 29

Axiom Mission 4 crew, from left to right, European Space Agency astronaut Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland, former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, and Tibor Kapu of Hungary. Photo: X/@NASASpaceOps via PTI Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla’s mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to be launched on May 29 … Read more

Insufficient support for deep tech, startups by public-funded R&D: Study

Image for representation. | Photo Credit: Getty Image/iStockphoto Only about one in four public-funded research and development organisations in India give incubation support to start-ups and only one in six provide support to ‘deep tech’ startups. Only 15% collaborated with industry overseas and only half of them opened their facilities to outside researchers and students, … Read more

The week in five charts, Pahalgam, Pope

(1) Terrorists kill 26 people in Pahalgam Between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, a group of at least four terrorists selectively killed 25 tourists and injured 16 others on the basis of their religion. A ponywala, one of about 150 who ferries people up to Baisaran, was also killed when he tried … Read more