Q: How can candle wicks hold a flame for so long? – Sadhika G. A: A candle wick holds a flame because it isn’t just a string that burns. Its main purpose is to deliver fuel to the part of it that’s very hot. When you light the wick, the heat quickly melts the wax...
Category: Science & Tech
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Publish or perish: making sense of India’s research fraud epidemic
Research fraud is a global problem and has become worse due to the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The problem is even more acute in India’s higher education sector where both the number of journal publications and retractions are growing rapidly. However, journal retractions do not capture the scope of research fraud since it...
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Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity
Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity Each exact solution of the mathematical relations of general relativity (Q1) has a name. Name this person, who solved the relations for what space looks like around a spherical and non-rotating black hole, while serving as a soldier in World War I. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6...
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Tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles could make plastics easier to process, finds IIT study
A collaborative study by researchers from three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has found that adding tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles to certain synthetic plastics can significantly reduce their viscosity, making them easier and less energy-intensive to process. Plastics owe their versatility to long molecular chains called polymers, which make them moldable and stretchable. However, many synthetic plastics...
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Why did Hayli Gubbi erupt now?
Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano in Afar, Ethiopia, and a member of the Erta Ale Range. It’s located at the edge of the East African Rift where the African and Arabian plates are slowly pulling apart. A shield volcano is a broad, gently sloping volcano that consists of many thin, fluid lava flows. Its...
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Hypoxia rewires membrane lipids, drives pancreatic cells to move: IIT-Bombay study
Pancreatic cancers are aggressive and deadly, with high rates of metastasis and poor prognosis. The tumour environment is also hypoxic: the cells rapidly divide and thrive in very low oxygen conditions. Now, IIT-Bombay researchers have shown that the hypoxia ends up enhancing the cells’ metastatic behavior. By affecting the cells’ plasma membrane lipids, hypoxic conditions...
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How are passengers able to access the Internet on aeroplanes?
Passenger Internet on aeroplanes used to be rare in the 2010s but has become almost commonplace today. On most flights, the basic idea is that the whole aeroplane is treated like a flying Wi-Fi router that connects to the rest of the Internet through a long backhaul link. This means your phone or laptop never...
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Indian researchers reveal novel mutation that causes rare condition among consanguineous children
A recent paper in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Dysmorphology has presented the first detailed case report of a new kind of gene mutation in a child, with a rare condition – pseudo-TORCH Syndrome Type 2. Using exome sequencing, a genetic test that analyses the protein coding regions of the DNA, researchers have identified a novel...
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What on Earth (or Beyond) is a Time Crystal?
Science is a fascinating subject because it tells stories that sound unbelievable at first, like invisible forces, information teleporting between particles, and now, a crystal that dances in time! A crystal that never rests Imagine a crystal that moves forever, not in space, but in time. It keeps oscillating for an extremely long period without...
