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Microbes are an integral part of most, if not all multi-cellular organisms. In fact, these organisms are the way they are because of the tiny partners they house within and on them. These microbes constitute the microbiome: an “invisible organ” weighing approximately 2.5 to three kilograms in an adult human and much more in larger animals. This…
There has been a series of disruptive weather and climate phenomena in India this year, demonstrating the complexity of our precipitation system. There was the Western disturbance, which usually brings much-needed moisture from European seas to the western Himalaya and parts of northern India in the winter and spring. But this year, the Western disturbance…
Sometimes, the canopy of trees in a forest suggests that the treetops are locked together in a mosaic of leaves separated by thin grooves of sky. This slender separation is called crown shyness – a phenomenon common in temperate deciduous forests, where the trees vary in age and species. Crown shyness is also primarily observed…
On a cold winter night on March 13, 1989, the power grid in Quebec, Canada, went down without a warning, plunging the province into darkness. The underground metro railway in the city of Montreal came to a grinding halt and airport operations were disrupted. Down south in the neighbouring United States, nights lit up in…
Read More “Aditya-L1 mission pursues the enigma of space weather” »
This handout photograph released by the CEA on September 7, 2023, shows a 3D representation of the galaxy “Bubble”, coloured in brown. The image shows the position of the Milky Way, with a small white dot located outside the bubble on the right, in a white cloud. The blue wisps represent the “cosmic web”, the…
A mosquito hangs from a leaf, Bengaluru, October 28, 2019. | Photo Credit: Syed Ali/Unsplash Throughout human history, mosquitoes have constantly buzzed in the background of human existence, irritating us with their incessant bites and occasionally wreaking havoc by transmitting deadly diseases. The earliest known mosquitoes from the fossil record date back at least 70…
Read More “Buzzing breakthrough: genetic engineering gives mosquito control an upgrade” »
A recent study (Nature) has reported how ancient coastal habitats adapted as the last glacial period ended more than 10,000 years ago and projected how they are likely to change with this century’s predicted sea level rise. By examining the ocean sediments of ancient shorelines from a time when oceans rose rapidly, mainly because of…
Read More “What are the predicted effects of rising sea level on coastal habitats?” »
Due to ethical reasons and technical challenges, studying human post-implantation development has been limited. The closest that scientists have come to understand intrauterine development after implantation is by using mouse naïve embryonic stem cells (ESCs) that gave rise to embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells capable of self-assembling into mouse structured stem cell-based embryo models at the…
Read More “Scientists grow a model of human embryo in the lab” »
The low incidence rate of leprosy (0.45 per 10,000 population) in India makes it a rare disease. | Photo Credit: Getty Images Much of our conversation about health leads to the talk of a few common ailments that afflict several of our acquaintances — diabetes probably tops this list. Yet, for each of the few ailments that…
Read More “India reports far fewer people with orphan diseases” »
On July 22, 2019, India successfully launched Chandrayaan-2, the second mission to the moon. Twenty-two days later (August 14), after a series of orbit raising manoeuvres, the spacecraft finally escaped the earth’s gravity and followed a path towards the moon. Six days later, Chandrayaan-2 was successfully inserted into lunar orbit. Finally, on September 2, the…
Read More “What helped Vikram lander to soft-land on the moon” »
