Category: Science & Tech

Of late, increasingly concentrated rainfall and violent floods have devastated India’s cities and farms alike. For years, scientists have debated whether this is simply natural variation or the direct result of climate change. A new study in Environmental Research Letters has found the smoking gun. Specifically, for the first time, researchers have dispositive evidence that...

Traditionally, many conservationists and policymakers have seen biodiversity conservation as a choice between protecting nature and meeting human needs. Forests were often seen as places that had to be protected from people, while alleviating poverty and economic development were treated as separate concerns. A new international study has concluded that this is a harmful view....

I am an oncologist. I have watched large language models (LLMs) do something I have been trying to do for years: make cancer comprehensible. A patient sits across from me with newly diagnosed cancer. I used to explain the PDL1 status and the role of neoadjuvant therapy, where patients get immunotherapy first followed by surgery...

The recent death of two people in Brazil during its dengue vaccination campaign, leading to the shot’s suspension on June 8, is a crucial wake-up call for India. This is because the dengue vaccine in Brazil, Butantan-DV, is pretty similar, if not identical, to India’s soon-to-be-launched dengue vaccine, DengiAll. Both the Brazilian and Indian vaccines...

Sea star sports nature’s optic fibres to focus light A remarkable structure in the chocolate-chip sea star (Protoreaster nodosus) has come to light. On the tip of each arm, a skeletal part contains an array of cone-shaped structures that, like optic fibres, transmit 70% of incident light and concentrate it nearly 3x at the base....

If you start looking up “1893 Chicago” in India, then the predictive autofill suggestions provided by the search engine likely concerns three main subjects. One of these revolve around Swami Vivekananda. It was in the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago that Vivekananda wowed the gathered audience with his historic address –  a speech...