Category: Science

West Indian cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul sporting eye-blacks in 2006. | Photo Credit: Ashlar (CC BY-SA) On November 30, Australian cricketer Steven Smith was spotted wearing eye-black strips while training for the forthcoming pink-ball Ashes Test match in Brisbane. These strips are pasted over the cheekbone and reduce the glare created by light reflected off the…

Read More “Steve Smith’s eye-blacks and the slippery slope of cricket’s tool rules” »

How does the human mind process climate change? Is the apathy reflected in people’s disengagement from inequality, disruption, and social change? Midway through his PhD, Rachit Dubey, now an assistant professor at the department of communication, University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), “shifted away from traditional cognitive science topics to tackle broader, interdisciplinary challenges around adaptation…

Read More “‘Our minds gaslight us into thinking climate change isn’t a big deal’” »

In a landmark paper in Science on May 20, 1983, researchers reported they had isolated a “retrovirus” from a patient at risk of developing AIDS. The work, led by French virologists Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier at the Institut Pasteur, was the first glimpse of what would become one of the most devastating pathogens in…

Read More “World AIDS Day: why HIV infections are still so hard to treat” »

Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla speakng at an interaction in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: PTI Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla has said the next five to 10 years are going to be defining times for India as far as space exploration is concerned, as a lot of things are going to happen. In an interactive session on the…

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The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that it has secured a record budget of 22.1 billion euros to fund its programmes for the next three years, as the continent seeks greater independence in space. The ESA also approved a plan to bolster defence cooperation and laid out plans for scientific space missions at a…

Read More “Europe secures record space budget to boost independence” »

A worker prepares brooms from bamboo at a roadside shop in Ahmedabad on November 28, 2025. | Photo Credit: AFP Scientists conducting a field survey in Manipur’s Imphal West district have discovered fossil evidence indicating that thorniness in bamboo was already present in Asia during the Ice Age, a government release said. Researchers from the…

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Scientists have solved the mystery of 3.4 million-year-old fossils called the “Burtele Foot” discovered in Ethiopia in 2009, finding they belonged to an enigmatic human ancestor that lived alongside another closely related species during a poorly understood time in human evolution. Based on the recent discovery nearby of 25 teeth and the jawbone of a…

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What with near-instant delivery of whatever food item that we seek — be it ready-to-eat or even to prepare — and supermarkets around every corner in an urban expanse, it might not be long before the need to preserve food at home becomes a forgotten art. And yet, home-food preservation was a tricky affair even…

Read More “Revolutionising home-food preservation, one jar at a time” »