Category: Science & Tech

In a 1983 paper, Harvard University geneticists James Gusella and Nancy Wexler reported that Huntington’s disease, a fatal inherited disease where brain cells progressively decay, was caused by a gene mutation on chromosome 4. This was the first time a single gene had been implicated in a disease. Since then, scientists have discovered about 5,000...

Modern computing is often effortless. You pick up a calculator or open the calculator app on your phone, and you’re on your way in seconds. But getting here took humans several centuries from when they first tried to speed up computing. One particularly important passage in this history involved the English mathematician Charles Babbage, who...

India has called for the shrinking pool of climate finance and a widening adaptation finance gap to be tackled head-on at the United Nations climate negotiations-linked talks under way in Bonn, Germany. It has urged that a Paris Agreement provision, which obliges developed countries to provide funds to developing nations, be given dedicated agenda space...

Droughts can increase the levels of antibiotic resistance in soil, a new study by researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has reported. Published in Nature Microbiology, the study revealed that when soil dries due to drought stress, the concentration of natural antibiotics increases, favouring the survival of resistant bacteria. The study also projected...

For most frogs, life begins as a game of odds. They lay their eggs in the water, where fish and insects gobble up about 98% of them before they even have a chance to hatch. The African grey foam-nest tree frog (Chiromantis xerampelina) figured a way out: it took its nest into the air. In...

Lung cancer is one of the more common cancers affecting people worldwide. This is mainly thanks to smoking and, to a lesser extent, air pollution and occupational exposure. According to the latest World Health Organization estimates, there are about 2.5 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths every year. Prevention offers the ideal solution to...