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Plastic bags floating in a water body. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Scientists in Germany have identified plastic-eating fungi that could offer a glimmer of hope in tackling the problem of millions of tonnes of waste polluting the world’s oceans every year. But they warn that their work is likely to be only a small…
Read More “Plastic-eating fungi could be glimmer of hope in cutting ocean pollution” »
For billions of years, the carbon cycle has been nature’s solution to removing excess carbon from the atmosphere. In nature, volcanic eruptions and life forms vent carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Plants and trees then draw in and store this CO2 during photosynthesis. Of late, the carbon cycle has been a focus area in…
Read More “Cold War nuke tests light up problem with present-day climate models” »
Nitrogen use efficiency refers to the yield of a crop relative to the nitrogen (natural and artificial) available to it | Photo Credit: The Hindu Biotechnologists at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGU) in New Delhi have discovered a wide variation among popular varieties of rice in India in their ability to use nitrogen….
Read More “Study finds wide variety of nitrogen-use efficiency in Indian rice varieties” »
Perseid meteors streak past stars in the night sky near Amman, Jordan, in the early hours of August 12, 2004. The Perseid meteor shower is sparked every August when the Earth passes through a stream of space debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, and was clearly visible to the naked eye in several parts of the…
Over 14,000 mpox cases and 500 deaths have been reported this year from 10 African countries The ongoing multinational mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) outbreaks continue to be a significant threat to public health systems across the world. The outbreak that gained global attention in 2022 has persisted, and as of mid-2024, the WHO reports…
Read More “New mpox clade Ib disproportionately affects children” »
Antibiotics are often hailed as miracle drugs, capable of curing once-deadly infections and saving countless lives. However, the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals, and agriculture have severe and often overlooked consequences. While the world is acutely aware that such practices drive antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a more insidious danger lies beneath the surface….
Read More “Hidden dangers of irrational use of antibiotics on microbiome” »
Water temperatures in and around the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, in the past decade have been the warmest in the past 400 years. The results were published recently in Nature. These periods of warming increase the risk of mass coral bleaching and mortality and are likely driven by human-induced climate change. The Great Barrier Reef has…
Read More “Record temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef seen in the last decade” »
Despite there being some evidence that jellyfish may actively affect their position, the role of active swimming in controlling jellyfish movement and the characteristics of jellyfish swimming behavior, have not been fully understood. As a result, jellyfish are often considered as passively drifting or randomly moving organisms. But a recent study using drone videos helped understand…
A study that came out recently has prompted much media attention about the role of plastics in developing autism. In particular, the study focused on exposure to a component of hard plastics – bisphenol A, or BPA – in the womb and the risk of boys developing this neurodevelopmental disorder. Importantly, the study doesn’t show…
Read More “No direct evidence to show plastics cause autism, but what does BPA do?” »
Like many useful innovations, it seems, the creation of high-quality steel by Indian metallurgists more than two thousand years ago may have been a happy confluence of clever workmanship and luck. Firing chunks of iron with charcoal in a special clay container produced something completely new, which the Indians called wootz. Roman armies were soon…
Read More “Automakers creating new steels to make safer, more fuel-efficient cars” »