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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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A data scientist must consider societal impact, not just model accuracy. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto In the rapidly evolving field of Data Science, technical skills such as programming, statistics, and machine learning are often emphasised as the foundation for success. However, while these are essential, they are not sufficient on their own. A successful…
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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…
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The Scientists for Genetic Diversity, a group of scientists, has written to Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, and the Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research M. L. Jat expressing its concern over the “compromise proposal” presented at the 11th session of the governing body (GB11) of…
Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft blasting off the launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. | Photo Credit: AFP The Baikonur cosmodrome is a spaceport in Kazakhstan that Russia leases and operates as the site of its space launches. It was built in the 1950s first as a missile test range before becoming the centre of…
India produces a large amount of sugarcane. | Photo Credit: Getty Images A recent paper by Olivier Garsmeur and colleagues titled ‘The genomic footprints of wild Saccharum species trace domestication, diversification, and modern breeding of sugarcane’ in the journal Cell conducted genomic analyses of 390 sugarcane breeds from Australia, Brazil, China, France, French Polynesia, India,…
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“During this phase, the science orbit will be maintained via regular manoeuvres, scheduled to avoid or minimise conflicts with science observations. Extensive calibration and validation activities will take place,” the ISRO had said earlier. File | Photo Credit: NASA via PTI The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, launched in July, has entered the…
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A prototype of the MATSYA 6000, a submersible made by Chennai’s National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT). | Photo Credit: Ravindran R. A crucial set of tests on the Samudrayaan, India’s first manned-submersible dive into the ocean, is likely only mid-next year following a delay in the procurement of syntactic foam cladding from France. The…
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The effects of feminising gender-affirmative hormone therapy (GAHT) are more than skin deep, new research in Nature Medicine has reported, with the changes going down to the very proteins circulating in a person’s blood. University of Melbourne endocrinologist Ada Cheung, who co-led the study, has called the findings “a world-first”. Sanjay Kalra, an endocrinologist and…
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On November 26, a fire started on scaffolding at the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in Tai Po in Hong Kong and spread rapidly across multiple high-rise blocks wrapped in bamboo and other flammable external materials. At least 44 people had died as of 7 am IST (November 27) while hundreds were missing. The local…
Read More “Hong Kong blaze: Why buildings have disastrous fires and how they can be prevented” »