As the global population increases, the need for more sustainable and nutritious food sources becomes greater. In this context, the book Biomass Conversion and Sustainable Biorefinery edited by Lubis et al. in 2024,highlights recent advances in using wasted biomass from conversion and biorefinery concepts and discusses how biomass waste and by-products can be minimised by...
Category: Science & Tech
Meet the woman who’s on a climate mission to the North Pole
It isn’t every day someone casually mentions they are heading back to a cabin near the North Pole. Yet, that is exactly what 57-year-old Hilde Fålun Strøm, a citizen scientist based in Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost town, told me when we met last year in the frozen archipelago of Svalbard. Norwegian by nationality, Strøm grew...
Experiencing heat during pregnancy results in fewer male babies: study
When pregnant women experience higher ambient temperatures during gestation, fewer males are born, a recent analysis of demographic and health surveys in sub-Saharan Africa and India, showed. A paper titled ‘Temperature and sex ratios at birth’ in the journal Demography, by Jasmin Abdel Ghany et al., concludes after a detailed analysis that experiencing higher ambient temperatures during pregnancy is associated with changes in the natural sex ratio at...
Patriarchy, the Matilda effect, and the erasure of women in STEM
While the death of James Watson on November 6, 2025, closed a famous chapter in the history of DNA, it also opened a necessary conversation about who we choose to remember, how, and why. The discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA remains a scientific triumph but it’s also a cautionary tale of...
Why India’s ‘leaky pipeline’ in research is unlike the rest of the world
Girls and women represent half the population of the world yet their participation in scientific research is lagging. In many countries, this disparate contribution starts as early as school. In the U.S., for example, girls are less likely to take advanced calculus, physics, mathematics, and biology at high school level. In many other countries, the...
India-Canada uranium deal and India’s nuclear programme | Explained
The story so far: In its quest for energy security, on March 2, India signed a CAD 2.6 billion deal with Canada’s Cameco. The deal ensures a supply of around 10,000 tonnes of uranium between 2027 and 2035 to India. What uranium ‘stocks’ does India have? India has both domestic reserves and imported stockpiles of...
‘Free’ vaccines, single-dose nudge pushes India-made HPV vaccine to back of the line
A relaxation by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the prescribed dosage for the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine and ‘free’ doses may have pushed back the inclusion of an India-made vaccine into the national programme to inoculate children against HPV. This, despite the Health Ministry in 2023 committing to preparing the India-made vaccine for...
Why do some people believe the whole universe is a simulation?
A: Most believers of this idea follow an argument made by the philosopher Nick Bostrom. In half a century, video games have gone from dots on a screen to lifelike 3D worlds. Believers argue that in future, we will eventually create simulations indistinguishable from reality. If an advanced civilisation creates millions of such simulations, simulated...
IISc and Pratiksha Trust launch moonshot project on brain co-processors
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on March 4 launched a moonshot project to develop brain co-processors that combine neuromorphic hardware and AI algorithms to enhance or restore brain function. The project is funded by the Pratiksha Trust, founded by Senapathy ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan and Sudha Gopalakrishnan. “India is emerging as a global leader in neuroscience...
