Bidar to host State-level traditional medicine conference from March 2

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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

Protein therapeutics in healthcare: current and future trends

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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

NASA launches satellite on mission to detect water on the moon

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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

Private company Intuitive Machines launches lunar lander Athena to explore moon’s south pole with drone Grace

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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

Coal power is costing India up to 10% of its rice and wheat crops

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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

How will Trump’s fund cuts hit the US’s technological competitiveness?

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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

Evolution of intelligent life on earth may not have been so unlikely

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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

Why is there so much gold in west Africa?

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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

The Science Quiz | Surviving radiation

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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

‘Harmful contents in cosmetics, herbicide lead to endocrine disruption, hormonal imbalance’

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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

Researchers spot a clue as to why human and mouse genomes overlap

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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

Why don’t century years get leap days unless divisible by 400?

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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

The Science Quiz | Unusual materials

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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

Baboons and human fear: a deep history behind the cruel attacks in South Africa

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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

Art and science illuminate the same subtle proportions in tree branches

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Do artists and scientists see the same thing in the shape of trees? As a scientist who studies branching patterns in living things, I’m starting to think so. Piet Mondrian was an early 20th-century abstract artist and art theorist obsessed with simplicity and essence of form. Even people who have never heard of Mondrian will likely recognize his … Read more

Chinese rivals to Musk’s Starlink accelerate race to dominate satellite internet

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Space is about to get more crowded for Elon Musk. The billionaire’s Starlink communications network is facing increasingly stiff challenges to its dominance of high-speed satellite internet, including from a Chinese state-backed rival and another service financed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. Shanghai-based SpaceSail in November signed an agreement to enter Brazil and announced it … Read more

China aims to eliminate severe air pollution this year

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The sun sets next to a smokestack from a coal-burning power station in Beijing January 9, 2008. | Photo Credit: Reuters China aims to effectively eliminate severe air pollution by the end of 2025, a senior environment official said, as authorities ramp up efforts in pollution control and emissions reduction in the “battle for blue … Read more

Manipur’s GST growth rate declines, inflation surges: Data

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Security personnel stand guard during a protest at in the Kangpokpi district of Manipur in November last year. | Photo Credit: PTI The ongoing conflict in Manipur has had a significant impact on the State’s economy. The revenue flow from GST has slowed down drastically, while retail inflation levels have skyrocketed. The double whammy came … Read more

Physicists propose tabletop experiment to test gravity’s quantumness

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General relativity and quantum mechanics are two highly successful theories. The former explains gravity and the latter teams up with special relativity to describe the other three forces of nature: electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear forces. However, scientists don’t know how gravity fits into quantum mechanics. In fact, they have been proposing experiments that … Read more