In the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese government was facing a serious crisis. It was losing more soldiers to malaria than to the war itself. Chloroquine, the antimalarial drug used for decades, had lost its effectiveness because Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria parasite, had become resistant to it. Desperate for...
Category: Science & Tech
UNESCO Ambassador Vishal Sharma visits INCOIS, backs dedicated ocean observation satellite
Ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to UNESCO in Paris, Vishal V. Sharma visited the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) here and supported the idea of developing a dedicated space satellite for ocean observation for the region, along with expanding training opportunities for young researchers in the field. He reviewed its SynOps...
Wasps are excellent predators of pests and can play a big role in controlling them: IISc professor
Wasps have a great potential to be beneficial insects and can play a larger ecological role in controlling pests, said Raghavendra Gadagkar, professor and National Science Chair, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc. Delivering the T.N. Ananthakrishnan Birth Centenary Lecture on “You are how much you eat: Caste and nutrition in the Indian paper wasp, Ropalidia...
University of Liverpool marks start of Bengaluru campus project
The University of Liverpool has begun work on its proposed Bengaluru campus with a ground-breaking ceremony held at Alembic City on Monday. The campus, which is scheduled to begin operations in 2026, will offer UK-accredited degree programmes in Computer Science, Business Management, Accounting and Finance, Biomedical Sciences and Game Design. The Game Design course will be the...
Inside a scientific experiment that transformed skin cells into embryo-forming eggs
For millions battling infertility, the effortless miracle of procreation is a punishing ordeal of tests, treatments and trials, often chipping away not just at their finances, but also their sense of self. Researching embryos and embryo-like models is therefore critical to peering into the earliest moments of human development to understand why conceptions fail. A...
2025 ICTP Prize awarded to Titas Chanda, Sthitadhi Roy
The 2025 ICTP Prize has been awarded to Titas Chanda of IIT-Madras and Sthitadhi Roy of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bengaluru, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) has said. A statement said the award “recognises the winners’ exceptional and original contributions to the theory of quantum many-body systems, at the interface of...
ISRO lines up 7 launches, including uncrewed Gaganyaan mission by March 2026
ISRO has lined up seven launch missions by March next year, including one to demonstrate home-built electric propulsion systems for satellite and quantum key distribution technologies, and the first uncrewed mission of the Gaganyaan project. The first of the seven launches is expected to take place next week. India’s heaviest rocket, LVM3, will place in...
What is ‘lunarcrete’?
Lunarcrete is an umbrella term for ‘concrete made on the moon’. As the US and China race to establish long-term lunar settlements, scientists are looking for a suitable building material to protect people from hazardous radiation and drastic temperature swings. Lunarcrete is one promising candidate: instead of sand and gravel, it uses lunar regolith, the...
How mangroves’ cells helps plants survive in saltwater
Saltwater would kill most plants, but it cannot fell the ancient mangroves species distinct for their giant stilt roots. So how do they survive on brine? International researchers and authors of a new paper in Current Biologyhave delved into their cells and discovered what makes mangrove shrubs and trees so different from all other terrestrial...
How mangroves’ cells help plants survive in saltwater
Saltwater would kill most plants, but it cannot fell the ancient mangroves species distinct for their giant stilt roots. So how do they survive on brine? International researchers and authors of a new paper in Current Biologyhave delved into their cells and discovered what makes mangrove shrubs and trees so different from all other terrestrial...
