The Union Environment Ministry should roll back its 2015 policy mandating all of India’s 537 coal-fired plants to install a class of equipment called Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) in order to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Instead, it should only apply to those plants using imported coal or high (>0.5%) sulphur coal, a study commissioned … Read more
A frame grab provided by the Schmidt Ocean Institute shows a colossal squid, or Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, in its natural habitat, during an Ocean Census flagship expedition in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean | Photo Credit: AP A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep … Read more
Imagine you are eating takeout, and suddenly you feel like you are getting breathless and it’s getting difficult for you to swallow the food. You also feel itchiness in several parts of your body. These might be symptoms of an allergic reaction or anaphylaxis. When you are allergic to a certain food item or object, … Read more
In a potential landmark discovery, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have obtained what they call the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system, detecting in an alien planet’s atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes. The two gases – dimethyl sulfide, or … Read more
A woman at work in a semi-mechanised match manufacturing unit at Kovilpatti in Tuticorin district. | Photo Credit: RAJESH N One of the drivers of Viksit Bharat will be manufacturing. One of the pillars of Viksit Bharat is ‘nari (women)’. However, women are missing from the factory floors. The share of women in India’s formal … Read more
In a significant breakthrough to tackle the freshwater scarcity in various parts of the world, scientists from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have developed a new material that can facilitate water desalination. Researchers Professor Swatantra Pratap Singh and Aiswarya C. L. have developed Dual-Sided Superhydrophobic Laser-Induced Graphene (DSLIG) evaporator that addresses multiple shortcomings of … Read more
When people on the internet searched Google for “cheese not sticking to pizza” in May 2024, the newly launched “AI Overviews” feature of the popular search engine replied “you can … add about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.” In a series of strange answers, the artificial intelligence … Read more
CCMB Director Vinay Kumar Nandicoori and IICT Director D. Srinivas Reddy at a press conference held in Hyderabad on Wednesday (April 16, 2025) | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) are working on ‘Anti-Viral Mission’ to come up with drugs and diagnostics to … Read more
Science Quiz | The world’s oldest lifeforms Name this micro-animal. It’s renowned for being able to survive harsh conditions, including outer space, and evolved around 500 million years ago. Credit: Kiosya Y., Vončina K., Gąsiorek P. (2021) START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | Scientists widely believe X are the first lifeforms on the earth … Read more
Bike riders passed through the parched forest area near Kulapully in Kerala’s Shoranur where trees are drying due to a lack of water and extreme weather conditions. File photo | Photo Credit: The Hindu In the early spring of 2022, South Asian countries including India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan experienced back-to-back extreme heat waves in the … Read more
Coupled with stagnant incomes, more urban consumers feel pessimistic about the overall economic situation of the country | Photo Credit: MANSI THAPLIYAL This March, while a significant share of urban consumers remained optimistic about job opportunities, many continued to be pessimistic about income levels. This suggests that although jobs are available in urban areas, income … Read more
People take part in a rally against the Israeli government in Tel Aviv, Israel. | Photo Credit: Reuters When Israel pushed through its contentious Budget last month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “This is a war budget and, God willing, it will also be the victory budget.” However, widely cited surveys suggest that most Israelis … Read more
The mantis shrimp is a colourful, 10-cm-long resident of the ocean whose appearance belies its reputation as one of the most fearsome predators on the planet. These unassuming crustaceans use a hammer-shaped appendage called the dactyl club to strike their prey at a blistering 23 m/s (about 50-times faster than the blink of an eye), … Read more
A scientist walking in a tunnel inside the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) Large Hadron Collider, during maintenance works on July 19, 2013, in Meyrin, near Geneva. File | Photo Credit: AFP The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN — Europe’s premier research centre for particle physics and home to the world’s largest … Read more
GUWAHATI An informal network of individuals and organisations working together to foster the knowledge and practice of ecological restoration of natural ecosystems in India is releasing a first-of-its-kind seed germination database on Wednesday (April 16, 2025). This free-access database, an initiative of the Ecological Restoration Alliance-India (ERA-I), offers more than 1,000 germination techniques for 465 … Read more
A: To keep our torso stable and conserve energy, we swing our arms backwards and forwards while walking. When you swing, say, your right leg forward to take a step, you provide a rotational moment about the central vertical axis of your torso. By the principle of conservation of angular momentum, an opposite reactionary moment … Read more
Primates, which include humans, apes, monkeys and lemurs are diverse in traits like brain size, diet, locomotion and habitat. Using insights from recent advances in primate genomics and studying the DNA of over 500 primate species, scientists have uncovered the genetic secrets behind their evolutionary success and ecological flexibility. A global team of scientists, including … Read more
Primates, which include humans, apes, monkeys and lemurs are diverse in traits like brain size, diet, locomotion and habitat. Using insights from recent advances in primate genomics and studying the DNA of over 500 primate species, scientists have uncovered the genetic secrets behind their evolutionary success and ecological flexibility. A global team of scientists, including … Read more
A SpaceX capsule carrying NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida, U.S., on March 18. | Photo Credit: NASA The recent safe return of NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore after a nine-month stay onboard … Read more
One of the most powerful objects in the universe is a radio quasar – a spinning black hole spraying out highly energetic particles. Come too close to one, and you’d get sucked in by its gravitational pull, or burn up from the intense heat surrounding it. But ironically, studying black holes and their jets can … Read more
The invention of silicon chips revolutionised communications. Even today they are the cornerstone of the technologies we use to move information around the world. The way they work has changed significantly, however. They have become better: for a long time this was because experts improved its hardware to operate as efficiently as possible. But more … Read more
(1) Supreme Court gives verdict on Tamil Nadu Governor withholding assent to Bills The Supreme Court in a two-judge bench verdict approved 10 Bills for which the Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi had withheld assent and fixed a 90-day maximum time period within which the Governor must take action on Bills sent to him by … Read more
In one way or another, all living people on the earth can trace their ancestry to Africa and therefore carry some portion of African ancestral DNA — some to a significant degree, others less so. If we all originated from the same African ancestors, why do we look so different? Imagine two grains of paddy, … Read more
Leptobrachium aryatium, a new-to-science frog recorded from a reserve forest on the edge of Guwahati. Photo: Special Arrangement GUWAHATI A study spanning 21 years has yielded a new species of frog named after an Assam college that helped a locality shed its identity as a hub of country liquor production. Guwahati’s Aryanagar used to be … Read more
Since Donald Trump regained the U.S. presidency, he has coveted Greenland. Trump has insisted that the U.S. will control the island, currently an autonomous territory of Denmark, and if his overtures are rejected, perhaps seize Greenland by force. During a recent congressional hearing, senators and expert witnesses focused on Greenland’s strategic value and its natural … Read more
For her PhD research, bat biologist Kadambari Deshpande made overnight recordings of bat echolocation calls in the Western Ghats. A “good night” would generate about 30 GB of data from 11 hours of recording with a bat detector. To process the data, Deshpande would go through several one-minute recordings, scanning every millisecond for bat calls, … Read more
Did you know that the word “atom” originates from the Greek word “atomos”? The Greek word means uncuttable or indivisible and the choice of the word comes more from philosophical concepts than from scientific studies. Atoms, as you might well have studied in school, comprise subatomic particles. The first nuclear transmutation of one element … Read more
Two old African elephants, Bully (left) and Susi, stand inside the Barcelona Zoo in Spain, March 27, 2025. | Photo Credit: AP At the Barcelona Zoo, a 40-year-old African elephant places her foot through the metal barrier where a zookeeper gently scrubs its sole — the beloved pachyderm gets her “pedicure”, along with apple slices … Read more
Representative image | Photo Credit: Getty Images The story so far: The preliminary findings of the GenomeIndia project, which attempted to study whole genomes of 10,000 healthy and unrelated Indians from 83 population groups, were published in the journal Nature Genetics on April 8. After excluding two populations, the published findings are based on the … Read more
A study which examined the spatial rainfall trends across India has found that the amount of rainfall per day in certain parts of India has increased during the last decade 2011-2020 compared with the previous decade (2001-2010) while certain other parts have witnessed a reduction in the rainfall amount. The study has used the GSMaP-ISRO … Read more