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Health appears to improve when one listens to music The annual world music day was held on June 21, 2024. It is an occasion to look back at how music and rhythm have evolved from ancient times. As the study by Hattori and Tomonaga points out, when a rhythmic piece was played to a group of…
Slamming the recently published paper by Dr. Jacob Puliyel from the International Institute of Health Management Research, New Delhi, on rotavirus vaccine safety, microbiologist Dr. Gagandeep Kang says: “If you do 20 different analyses, one of them will appear significant. This is truly cherry picking data, cherry picking analysis, changing the data around, adjusting the…
Read More “Rotavirus vaccine: tortured data analyses raise false safety alarm” »
E. woodii is a member of the cycad family, heavy plants with thick trunks and large stiff leaves that form a majestic crown. | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons “Surely this is the most solitary organism in the world,” wrote palaeontologist Richard Fortey in his book about the evolution of life. He was talking about Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a plant…
Read More “Scientists search for a female partner for world’s ‘loneliest’ plant” »
Neanderthals, the closest cousins of modern humans, lived in parts of Europe and Asia until their extinction some 30,000 years ago. Genetic studies are revealing ever more about the links between modern humans and these long-gone relatives – most recently that a rush of interbreeding between our species occurred in a relatively short burst of…
Read More “The mysterious fate of the Neanderthal Y chromosome” »
Muslim pilgrims gather at the top of the rocky hill known as the Mountain of Mercy, on the Plain of Arafat, during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, June 15, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP Each year, millions of Muslims from across the world embark on the Hajj…
Read More “Climate change has made the Hajj pilgrimage more risky” »
In parts of South Australia, long stretches of beach are often blanketed in large patches of pink sand. Strong swells can dump drifts of reddish grains of garnet along the shore – but the origin of these colourful crystals has until now been a mystery. Garnet is rare in beach sand, as it is destroyed…
Read More “Australia’s enigmatic pink sand was born in Antarctic mountains: new research” »
Image for Representation. | Photo Credit: The Hindu The landscape along the Buffels River in South Africa’s Namaqualand region is dotted with thousands of sandy mounds that occupy about 20% of the surface area. These heuweltjies, as the locals call them (the word means “little hills” in Afrikaans), are termite mounds, inhabited by an underground network of…
Read More “World’s oldest termite mounds found in South Africa, storing carbon for millennia” »
A photograph of Dhirendra Sharma (right) holding hands with A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement With the passing away of Professor Dhirendra Sharma (1932-2024) in Dehradun this week, a highly contested and sensational chapter in the history of nuclear technology development in India has ended. Prof. Sharma was the first intellectual to publicly…
Read More “Remembering Dhirendra Sharma, quintessential dissenter and academic-activist” »
People watch the sun rise, as they take part in the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, Friday, June 21, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP The world has enough solar power capacity to generate a fifth of its midday peak electricity needs on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, up from…
Read More “Solar can provide 20% of world electricity on northern summer solstice, thinktank says” »
Questions: 1. In the earth’s first geologic aeon, the moon was created, in the process also laying the groundwork for an atmosphere rich in hydrogen, water vapour, and carbon dioxide. This period is named for a famous Greek god. Name it. 2. Some 720-630 million years ago, the Cryogenian period immediately followed another billion-year-long period…
Read More “The Science Quiz | A brief history of the earth” »