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In the crevices of boulders and beneath the rustle of leaf litter in the hills of the Eastern Ghats in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh lives a tiny population of the strikingly-patterned Jeypore ground gecko, which was presumed extinct for 130 years until it was rediscovered in 2010 by an Indian scientist. Just four individuals of…
Read More “Mining project threatens future of rare Jeypore ground gecko” »
There are different ways to track and prevent type-I and type-II errors. Representative photo. | Photo Credit: Quilia/Unsplash A: The null hypothesis is a cornerstone of scientific experiments. It is the hypothesis that an experiment tests. For example, if a hospital is testing a new drug, the null hypothesis will be that the drug has…
Recent incidents have amplified calls on AI companies to slow their development cycles. | Photo Credit: Jakub Żerdzicki/Unsplash More than 200 artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity researchers have called for immediate action to prevent further cases of AI models going rogue and posing a risk to critical infrastructure. The letter signed by luminaries in the…
Read More “Top AI researchers demand action to prevent models going ‘rogue’” »
When a dying star runs out of fuel and sheds its outer layers, its remaining core can become an approximately Earth-sized, extremely dense stellar remnant called a ‘white dwarf’. | Photo Credit: K. MURALI KUMAR Simulations by researchers of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and their collaborators show that strong internal magnetic fields could allow…
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”, has brought renewed attention to using light to investigate fundamental biological processes. These include memory formation, feelings, and behaviours relevant for neurological and psychiatric disorders, as well as processes…
In science, some discoveries change the way we understand life. Others change the lives of the people who make them. For Tanaya Bose, her years in the laboratory of late Nobel laureate Ada Yonath were marked by both. Yonath passed away on August 31, 2026 at 87. (Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.) Yonath,…
Read More “Indian researcher recalls lifechanging mentorship of late Nobel laureate Ada Yonath” »
In this photo taken on August 17, 2021, a polar bear is seen on ice floes in the British Channel in the Franz Josef Land archipelago. | Photo Credit: AFP The decision was expected to take minutes. But after nearly three years of debate, members of the world’s leading authority on climate change still can’t…
Read More “World’s top climate body deadlocked over inclusivity concerns” »
For hundreds of years, science has operated with a social contract: science develops knowledge that improves the human condition and expands the range of what is possible while society provides public funds, infrastructure, and institutional support. Sustained investments in research have paid dividends to society, in the form of inventions and discoveries, new technologies, and…
Read More “Why science’s contract with society needs citizens as research partners” »
Representative photo. | Photo Credit: File photo Unusual rains of 2024 could be earth’s new normal The year 2024 experienced a record-breaking number of heavy and extreme rainfall events worldwide, a new study has confirmed. But unlike previous strong El Niño years, 2024 also featured unusual simultaneous warming across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans that,…
A Computer Aided Design (CAD) view of the TRISHNA satellite. | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Indo-French satellite TRISHNA (Thermal Infra-Red Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural Resource Assessment) will be launched in the next 12-16 months, said Jasvinder Singh Khoral, Director (Projects), U.R. Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), on Sunday (October 11, 2026). He said this…
Read More “TRISHNA satellite is in advanced stage of realisation, says ISRO official” »