Category: Science

Yawning has important functions for the body. | Photo Credit: Tim Bish/Unsplash A: You’ve just had a heavy meal and now you have to sit through a dull lecture. Soon you’re feeling drowsy. You yawn, and your eyes water. This happens because yawning affects the muscles and glands around the eyes. Just above each eye…

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The story so far: Millions of naturally occurring Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD) orbit the earth, posing a constant threat to all spacecraft and space stations. The menace attracted global attention recently when a piece of debris struck the Chinese crewed vehicle Shenzhou-20, causing a minor crack in the window of its return capsule, rendering…

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Planarian flatworms are small, unassuming creatures with an astonishing talent. Cut one into pieces, and each fragment can regrow a complete animal. This seemingly magical ability comes from their prolific stem cells, known as neoblasts, which can produce every tissue in the body. In most animals, such regenerative stem cells grow under the care of…

Read More “In axolotls and flatworms, regeneration is a body-wide choreograph” »

Commemorating December 22 as National Mathematics Day invites memories of biographies, theorems, institutes, and prizes. But India also has mathematical places: built environments that render the mathematical act of measurement public. Jantar Mantar in New Delhi is one of them. It was commissioned by Sawai Jai Singh II and completed in 1724 as an architectural…

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For many students, mathematics feels less like a subject and more like a verdict, you’re either “good at it” or you’re not. There’s no escape from maths in school, and for some, every class brings a familiar knot of anxiety rather than curiosity or confidence. You’re not imagining it: the fear is real, and it’s…

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A NASA illustration depicting the MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. | Photo Credit: AP NASA has lost contact with its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, the Mars orbiter that has worked for more than a decade to study how the planet’s atmosphere is escaping into space. The spacecraft went silent in early December and…

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The chilly waters of the Southern Ocean that surround Antarctica like a moat are among the least explored and least understood of all the world’s oceans. This is stark because we also know that this ocean plays an outsized role in regulating the earth’s climate with its moody currents and its tremendous ability to absorb…

Read More “Southern Ocean carbon ‘anomaly’ reveals what models can still miss” »

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