Category: Science

In CAR T-cell therapy, a patient’s T cells (one shown) are isolated, engineered to target specific cancer cells, then reinfused to mount their attack. | Photo Credit: NIAID/Unsplash Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, an approach that modifies a patient’s own immune cells to hunt down cancer, has transformed treatment for blood cancers such as…

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Plants face two broad types of stress: biotic stress, such as pest infestations and disease, and abiotic stress, such as drought and extreme temperatures. | Photo Credit: Daniel Fazio/Unsplash Imagine your houseplant sending you a message: “I’m thirsty — could you water me?” Or a rice  field alerting a farmer to a disease outbreak before…

Read More “Cyborg botany: how scientists are turning plants into circuit boards” »

Mirror to humans: Swedish scientist Svante Pääbo poses with a replica of a Neanderthal skeleton at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, October 3, 2022. | Photo Credit: AP Pursuing the mystery of how the Neanderthals went extinct, researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and of Montreal have now asserted that…

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The authors designed a pilot project, called AI4WaterPolicy, in the water-stressed Sirohi and Pali districts of Rajasthan. And rather than deploy AI to push information outwards, the project used it to listen. | Photo Credit: Getty Images India is in an artificial intelligence (AI) moment. Across agriculture, health, finance, and governance, the race is on…

Read More “How AI helped promote community-led development in Rajasthan” »

An Air France aircraft operated with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is refuelled before its first flight from Nice to Paris at Nice airport, France, October 1, 2021. | Photo Credit: REUTERS An Indian government notification on April 17 tapped ethanol to make Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Aviation has been hard to decarbonise because aircraft can’t…

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Although the Indian government launched its Ethanol Blending Programme in 2003, it remained dormant for a decade and was around 2% in 2014. | Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL/The Hindu The story so far: On April 21, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said India should try to achieve 100% ethanol blending in the…

Read More “What is 100% ethanol blending? | Explained” »