Each rare disease affects very few people. However, there are around 8,000 rare diseases, and they cumulatively affect hundreds of millions of people. In India, 1,004 rare genetic disorders have been reported so far. It used to be that because the number of patients for a rare-disease drug was very small, so the pharmaceutical industry’s...
Category: Science & Tech
China’s space diplomacy brings Pakistani astronauts closer to orbit
Two Pakistani pilots are memorising Mandarin, spinning in centrifuge drills, and learning to eat, sleep and repair equipment while weightless as a decision nears on which one will become the first foreign astronaut aboard China’s Tiangong space station. The voyage into space would be a first for the South Asian nation. It is part of...
Ig Nobel Prizes 2026 awarded to serious work in amusing areas
On September 3, a dozen people from various countries were declared to be the recipients of the Ig Nobel Prizes for 2026. Some readers may wonder what an Ig Nobel Prize is. The Ig Nobel Prizes are a light-hearted parody of the actual Nobel Prizes. They were instituted in 1991 by Marc Abraham, editor of The Journal...
Brain mapping of students and teachers uncovers when learning happens best
To help us retain the information about the Second World War, Rani Miss, our History teacher, divided the class into three groups. A few students were the Axis powers, another set was the Allied powers, and the rest were bodies like the League of Nations and the UN. A History class that could have been...
How India should recruit and train higher education faculty for the AI era
Fixing higher education requires completely redesigning how we recruit, train, and support faculty, while overhauling the legacy administrative and disciplinary protocols that govern our campuses. Ask the toppers of any graduating class what they want to do next- university teaching rarely tops the list. The reason is simple: teaching is not perceived as a competitive,...
Why do we make noises like ‘oof’ when we lift something or bump into furniture?
A: When you physically exert while doing a task, you may also briefly hold your breath, releasing it as the effort eases. Your body may also contract the muscles around the trunk, making the torso more rigid and giving your arms and legs a more stable base from which to work. When the trunk stiffens,...
India’s river interlinks may carry invasive species farther
The National River-Linking Project is the world’s most ambitious project of its kind to date, proposing to link 37 major river basins across India using 30 links, potentially redistributing around 174 billion cubic metres of water from ‘surplus’ to ‘deficit’ basins while generating some 34,000 MW of power. Yet the Project has also raised serious...
COP31 hosts Australia and Türkiye face the fossil-fuel question
The next United Nations climate change conference, COP31, will be held in Antalya in Türkiye in November this year. Türkiye will be hosting the event, with its environment minister Murat Kurum serving as COP31 president. Australia will oversee the negotiations process, with its energy and climate change minister Chris Bowen as the vice-president of COP31....
How the science Nikolai Vavilov built changed how we save crops
Nicolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943) was a remarkable agricultural scientist in the former USSR. His name is familiar to some as an ‘Indiana Jones’ who roamed around the world collecting crops and seeds, as someone who established the first global seed bank, as a martyr who died in prison despite his extraordinary accomplishments, and as the...
