When a team at IIT-Delhi recently compared the members of a family of minerals called rutile oxides, they found a significant difference between metals and insulators that a well-known mathematical model could not explain. Understanding why is a necessary precursor to design next-generation electronics and efficient industrial catalysts. While rutile oxides have the same crystal...
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June 26, 2026June 26, 2026Science & Tech
A surgeon’s paradoxical lesson for journalists to survive the news
In an episode of the TV show Elementary, a surgeon prepares to perform a surgery. After he dons his gloves and mask, with his students watching from the back, he plays some funny music from speakers. The students are pleasantly surprised. The surgeon turns around and tells them that they will need to learn to take...
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June 25, 2026June 25, 2026Environment, Science & Tech
India urges clarity as ‘tipping points’ rock Bonn climate talks
At the Bonn climate talks in Germany on June 8-18, alongside the usual laundry list of contested themes like climate finance, tipping points became an unexpected source of debate and controversy. According to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, India urged care and clarity in using terms like “tipping points”, which it said would present challenges around...
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June 25, 2026June 25, 2026Science & Tech
Venezuela’s deadly history of earthquakes — and how they affected its politics
Two devastating earthquakes struck Venezuela within seconds of each other on the evening of June 24, reportedly affecting several of the country’s States and bringing entire buildings down in the capital Caracas. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the first quake of 7.1 magnitude had its epicentre off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast and the second, which...
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June 25, 2026June 25, 2026Science & Tech
Why does wet paper tear so easily?
As the southwest monsoon sweeps over India, people brace for storms, floods, and the occasional sight of a damaged bookstore or library. What makes the last a particularly sad sight is that paper tears easily when it’s wet. Paper is made primarily from wood pulp, which contains a dense network of cellulose fibers. Cellulose consists...
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June 25, 2026June 25, 2026Science & Tech
A black market for ‘fake patents’ is a new poison in Indian research
A worrying new trend of ‘fake patents’, in which education companies sell thousands of patents registered in the U.K. to academics from India and elsewhere, has raised concerns among research integrity experts. The issue of ‘fake patents’ was flagged in a report published in the International Journal of Educational Integrity. Its authors, from the U.K....
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June 24, 2026June 24, 2026Science & Tech
Watch: What is ammonia poisoning?
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June 24, 2026June 24, 2026Environment, Science & Tech
Kingmakers: Meet the insects that make India’s famed mangoes
More than a thousand varieties of mangoes exist in India, the popular ones being Banganapalli, Dassheri, Alphonso, Badaami, Imaam Pasandh, and Mulgoa. There is even a “Lalbagh” variety in Bengaluru. Many of us associate the fruit with a summer childhood memory, of eating it with our bare hands, the mango juice dripping on our clothes....
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June 24, 2026June 24, 2026Environment, Science & Tech
Need forces DR Congo gold miners to keep working despite Ebola
In the mines of Mongbwalu, the epicentre of an Ebola outbreak in the northeastern Democratic Republic Congo, gold prospectors have no choice but to overcome their fear of the virus and carry on their backbreaking work. “Ebola is real and it scares us. But if I stay at home, what are my children going to...
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June 24, 2026June 24, 2026Environment, Science & Tech
Bird flocks soar through the sky like a liquid, atomic orchestra
Birds fly in flocks, fish swim in schools. What bonds them together, without dispersal or collision? Mathematicians from New York University (NYU) explained the method to the madness: the animals move in tandem, like an orchestra with a maestro leading them. A bird’s flapping wings, for instance, produces “vortex wakes” (or travelling waves) with each...
