Stay Connected. Stay Informed.
Science
Girish Sahni | Photo Credit: File photo/The Hindu Former director-general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Girish Sahni, passed away August 19 at the age of 68. Multiple sources told The Hindu he had died of a heart attack. On X (formerly Twitter), CSIR said it “mourns the sudden loss” in a…
Antidepressants and therapy can provide much needed relief to people with mental health illnesses. But there are many people whose symptoms don’t respond to treatment and whose road to recovery often begins after trial and error with different medicines and/or modes of therapy. And in this time their symptoms could get worse. According to one…
Read More “fMRI may reveal depression ‘subtypes’ and treatments that could work” »
A blue moon rises above the Apollo Temple in ancient Corinth, Greece, on August 30, 2023. | Photo Credit: AFP The blue moon is a common example of an invented tradition — something someone has claimed is an old, time-honoured practice but which was in fact invented more recently. A second full moon in a…
Did you know that the discovery of helium, an element we immediately link with balloons, has an Indian connection? Here, a performer floats in the air with supporters attached to helium balloons. | Photo Credit: AFP What on Earth does a gas that we normally associate with balloons have to do with Guntur, a city…
Read More “Guntur, spectral lines, and the discovery of helium” »
Sumatran orangutan named Rakus seen two months after wound self-treatment using a medicinal plant, in Indonesia. | Photo Credit: Reuters In the May 2, 2024, issue of the journal Nature, an article titled: ‘Active self-treatment of a facial wound with a biologically active plant by a male Sumatran orangutan’, Laumer et al. report on how…
Read More “Zoopharmacognosy: the study of how animals self-medicate” »
TB infection can no longer be considered a binary — latent TB and active TB. People can also have TB disease and yet not display any of the characteristic symptoms associated with TB, such as cough. This is called subclinical TB. The national TB prevalence survey (2019-2021) found 42.6 % of the TB cases detected…
Read More “Subclinical TB is the reason for slow drop in TB incidence, says Soumya Swaminathan” »
A recent study details how trees in New York City, Boston and Baltimore, Maryland are more negatively impacted by heat waves and drought than trees of the same species in nearby rural forests. The urban trees in the three cities experienced greater negative impacts from heat waves and drought compared to rural trees. Also, the growth…
Read More “Do heat waves affect urban trees more than their rural counterparts?” »
A South American lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa) is seen at a laboratory at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, U.S., March 18, 2024. | Photo Credit: Katherine Seghers/LSU The South American lungfish is an extraordinary creature – in some sense, a living fossil. Inhabiting slow-moving and stagnant waters in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, French…
Read More “South American lungfish has largest genome of any animal” »
Indian Institute of Technology Madras(IIT,M) in Chennai on Thursday. | Photo Credit: Velankanni Raj B/The Hindu Questions: 1. In the early 1900s, this chemist published a famous work called ‘A History of Hindu Chemistry’ in two volumes. He was noted for his work on the synthesis of various nitrites and as an industrialist, philanthropist, and…
Read More “The Science Quiz: Modern India’s foundations of science and scholarship” »
SSLV-D3-EOS-08 mission during its successful launch from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on August 16, 2024. Photo: YouTube/ISRO official The Indian Space Research Organisation on Friday (August 16, 2024) successfully launched an earth observation satellite, onboard the third and final development flight of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle-03 from the…
