Stay Connected. Stay Informed.
Science
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…
The impact of the Chicxulub asteroid sent columns of rock into the earth’s atmosphere, incinerated the planet’s forests and drove tsunamis far across the oceans. | Photo Credit: NASA/Reuters It was a turning point in the history of life on the earth. An asteroid an estimated 10-15 km) wide slammed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula 66…
Read More “Asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs originated beyond Jupiter” »
People who were stranded at Attamala after the landslide being evacuated through a temporary bridge on July 31, 2024. | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat A team of geologists who surveyed the landslide-hit zone in Wayanad on Thursday (August 15, 2024) said a heavy rainfall-induced “damming effect” in a densely forested and uninhabited uphill region had…
Read More “‘Dam burst effect’ caused Wayanad landslide: experts” »
View of Didymos, Dimorphos, and the plume coming off of Dimorphos after the Double Asteroid Redirect Test, or DART mission, purposefully made impact, in this image acquired by ASI’s LICIACube satellite just before its closest approach to the Dimorphos asteroid, September 26, 2022. | Photo Credit: Reuters Launched in 2011, NASA’s NEOWISE mission operated in Earth’s orbit…
Read More “NASA just shut down a planetary defence mission that tracks asteroids. Now what?” »
Indian Institute of Astrophysics’s Kodaikanal Solar Observatory. Photo: tamilnadutourism.tn.gov.in Astronomers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have found a new method to predict the amplitude of the upcoming solar cycle. Besides, their research can also help in space weather forecasting. The astronomers have discovered a new correlation using 100 years of solar data from…