Category: Science

Astronomers from India have discovered the second farthest spiral galaxy in the depths of the universe, using the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and have named it ‘Alaknanda’. The galaxy was an unexpected sight during a broader study of galaxy shapes in the early universe. The findings were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics in…

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On December 23 Air Marshal and the Integrated Defence Staff chief Ashutosh Dixit laid out the defence establishment’s case for critical minerals. Modern defence systems, he said, rely on reliable access to these minerals and import dependence has become a strategic vulnerability because global supply chains are concentrated and exposed to export controls and geopolitics….

Read More “Aravalli question faces the brunt of India’s fondness for ‘strategic exemptions’” »

Spectrum of light from a frequency comb installed on the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, Chile. | Photo Credit: ESO A frequency comb is a special kind of laser light whose spectrum, or set of frequencies, resembles the teeth of a comb. Instead of containing just one colour (one frequency), it emits a large…

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A drone view of the Aravalli Hills in Ajmer. | Photo Credit: ANI The Aravalli Hills look modest today but they sit on some of the oldest and most studied rocks in India. Geologists care about them because they preserve a long record of how a piece of the earth’s crust in northwestern India was…

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Study authors call for integrated prevention strategies addressing alcohol and tobacco together, and for stronger regulation of locally brewed liquors, which often fall outside formal licensing and quality-control systems. Representative image. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Alcohol consumption, even in small amounts, significantly increases the risk of buccal mucosa cancer (BMC), a common and aggressive…

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Rare-earth elements are a set of metallic elements in the periodic table. Chemists usually refer to a group of 17 elements when they use this label: the 15 lanthanides from lanthanum to lutetium, and scandium and yttrium. In most classroom periodic tables, the lanthanides are shown as a separate row placed beneath the main periodic…

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A spectacled cobra, one of India’s ‘Big Four’ species. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT/The Hindu As India has progressed, the stereotyped image of the “land of snake charmers” has been left behind. We now have snake rescuers. However, in rural areas, snakebites still account for 58,000 deaths every year, affecting workers in paddy fields as…

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DNA inside human cells is not free-floating. Instead, it is tightly wrapped around small protein units forming a long chain, with DNA looping around each unit before moving on to the next. This DNA-protein complex is called chromatin and allows nearly 2 m of genetic material to fit inside a nucleus only a few micrometres…

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Scientists have suspected for decades that high-flying mosquitoes could move pathogens far from where the mosquitoes first took an infected blood meal. | Photo Credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann/Unsplash Mosquitoes spread diseases such as malaria and dengue, and these diseases affect billions of people worldwide. Many public health plans assume that pathogens borne by mosquitoes spread over…

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