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In March 2026, the Webb and Hubble space telescopes teamed up to observe Saturn and acquire a richer understanding of its atmosphere. This image shows Webb’s view. The rings are bright because they are made of water ice, which is very reflective. | Photo Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA PRAXIS is an acronym of ‘Planetary…
A six-year-old girl in China died in March 2025 after receiving what researchers said they believed was the world’s first base-editing therapy directed at the brain, according to an investigation by Science and Retraction Watch. The investigation has raised important questions about the oversight of an experimental personalised gene-editing trial and the way the researchers…
Read More “Girl’s death in China reveals human cost of unregulated science” »
India’s drug regulator just approved the country’s first dengue vaccine, Qdenga. It is designed and claimed to protect against the four serotypes of the dengue-causing virus, called DENV-1 to DENV-4. Young children as well as adults (aged 4-60 years), irrespective of whether they have had dengue before, may be vaccinated with Qdenga. More than 40…
Read More “India’s first dengue vaccine arrives with a crucial safety caveat” »
Even a perfectly “safe” AI toy, one that never says anything inappropriate, never mishandles data, still does not drive child development. Image used for representational purposes only | Photo Credit: Getty Images A five-year-old sat with a talking AI-powered stuffed animal, as part of a University of Cambridge study. At one point, the child told…
Read More “AI toys are gaining ground, but do they help children’s language skills?” »
Mary Anning | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons Mary Anning was born in a little town in South West England in the 18th Century. Her father Richard Anning was a carpenter. When Mary was about a year old, she survived a major lightning strike that killed the woman who was carrying her. This ‘miraculous escape’ soon…
What is your height? This seemingly innocuous question, if you come to think of it, doesn’t always hand you the same answer. No, I’m not talking about the numerical part of the answer that is bound to be different for different people owing to their different heights. I am, instead, drawing your attention to the…
A view of Abi Srinjamo Bao from below. | Photo Credit: Devers 2015 Who were the people who left their dead in a cave 4,000 m above a Ladakhi village — and why does almost nobody alive carry their particular mix of ancestries? A study published in Science Advances on Friday has reported genome-wide data…
Read More “Half Tibetan, half North Indian: a lost Himalayan people emerges from a Ladakh cave” »
A view of the mission control centre at the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), Peenya campus, through a glass window. | Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K./The Hindu The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is being poisoned by politicisation. With each passing year of late, it is a darker shadow of its once-formidable self,…
Read More “The state is draining ISRO’s hard-won excellence” »
There have been a number of news reports recently about a startup in Bengaluru called Vimag Labs that has reportedly replaced rare-earth magnets in motors with so-called “virtual” magnets. One such report quoted Manish Seth, the start-up’s CEO, as saying: “We remove permanent magnets, replace them with copper coils, and then through software, we generate…
Read More “‘Virtual magnet’ claims reveal why EVs need their rare-earth magnets” »
A black-throated parrotbill, an inhabitant of the eastern Himalayas | Photo Credit: Dibyendu Ash As spring approaches in the hyper-biodiverse Himalayas, birds that are accustomed to cooler climes migrate to the north. This is driven not just by temperature or precipitation alone, but also the availability of prey: arthropods (insects and spiders). But climate change…