Category: Science

The 2019 draft version of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 made two sweeping assertions in seven words: “teaching is strengthened through research and vice-versa.” Are these assertions supported by evidence, however? This article restricts itself to the first part of the assertion — that teaching is strengthened through research — because of its direct…

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Say you’re on a desert island on a quest for buried treasure. You’ve lost your map and run out of clues. Now you have two options: you could walk around with a shovel, digging holes at random and hoping for the best, or you could fly a drone overhead equipped with special cameras that can…

Read More “What remote-sensing reveals about plants, forests, and minerals from space” »

The hydrogen molecule H2 is the simplest stable molecule, with two protons and two electrons bound together. Scientists have studied it for more than a century because it’s small enough that theory can try to predict its behaviour from basic physics yet it’s rich enough to include many features found in larger molecules. This said,…

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In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater. For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos…

Read More “Scientists obtain first 3D images from inside Mexican volcano” »

The dictionary of life has a new update. A DNA sequence that signals cells in almost all other organisms to stop synthesising proteins instead encodes a rare amino acid in some archaea, according to a study published in Science in November. Archaea are microbes that resemble bacteria in shape and size but are biologically distinct….

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An image comparison the size of a supermoon (left) and the micromoon, which is the moon at its apogee micromoon (right), as seen from the earth. | Photo Credit: NASA A “wolf supermoon” is a nickname that combines two distinct ideas: a wolf moon and a supermoon. The January 2026 wolf supermoon occurred late last…

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A significant telescope If we were to talk about the most popular telescopes of all time, it is unlikely that you will be mentioning the Airy Transit Circle (ATC). You’ll probably recall space observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble, and you might even spare a thought to the early versions made and…

Read More “Airy has an air about him” »