Category: Science & Tech

When Isaac Newton wrote Opticks, published in 1704, he divided the colour spectrum into the now famous VIBGYOR, a set of seven colours (the decision was not, as such, scientific because Newton’s choice was dictated by ‘7’ being a significant number in alchemy.) What Newton observed was a series of hues merging into one another,...

In 1987, four years after the discovery of HIV as the causative agent of AIDS, scientists reported the first drug effective against the virus, called zidovudine. Zidovudine targeted a viral enzyme called reverse transcriptase, and prevented the virus from completing its life-cycle. However, zidovudine was no magic bullet. It could hold the virus at bay...

— Gayatri Chandrashekar A: There’s a neural basis for handedness but it’s not due to any single part of the brain. Hand preference reflects how the brain organises movement control. In most right-handed people, the left hemisphere has stronger control over fine hand movements and also more often dominates language. In left-handed people, these patterns...

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have mapped a neural circuit in the brain involved in the complex relationship between itch and stress. Their findings, published in Cell Reports, reveal how specific neurons activated during stress can directly regulate itch. IISc said that itch and pain are both unpleasant sensations triggered by harmful...

A committee that includes K. VijayRaghavan, former Principal Scientific Advisor, and S. Somanath, former Chairman, India Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will probe “systemic issues” underlying the successive failures of ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). While technical committees probe and submit ‘failure analysis reports’ when mishaps occur, this committee, The Hindu has reliably learnt, will...

In many animals, sex is decided by obvious physical differences in the chromosomes. But in ants, bees, and wasps, sex is often decided in a more unusual way: by whether an embryo carries two different versions of a specific DNA region or two matching ones. Two studies, one in Science Advances in 2024 and the...

Scientists find bouba-kiki effect in three-day chicks Humans often match “bouba” with round shapes and “kiki” with spiky ones. Researchers raised baby chicks, then played the sounds while showing them the two shapes. Three-day-old chicks chose the round shapes more often when they heard “bouba” and spiky shapes more often when they heard “kiki”. The...

In a 1953 experiment, two scientists named Stanley Miller and Harold Urey attempted to recreate the conditions of the early earth long before life existed. They showed that organic molecules such as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could form spontaneously in the conditions that prevailed on a primitive earth, 3.5-4 billion years ago....