Tag: Science

J. Craig Venter, who mapped the first draft of the human genome and helped scientists understand how genes shape our lives, died on Wednesday (April 30, 2026). He was 79. Venter’s death was announced by the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genomics research group with locations in La Jolla, California, and Rockville, Maryland. The institute...

Mexico City is sinking by nearly 25 cm a year, according to new satellite imagery released this week by NASA, making it one of the world’s fastest-subsiding metropolises. One of the world’s most sprawling and populated urban areas, at 7,800 sq. km and some 22 million people, the Mexican capital and surrounding cities were built...

Mission Drishti, the world’s first OptoSAR satellite developed by Bengaluru based space startup GalaxEye has been successfully launched on Sunday (May 3, 2026) aboard a Falcon 9 by SpaceX from Vandenberg, California. Weighing 190 kilograms, Mission Drishti is India’s largest privately developed Earth observation satellite. “It is the first satellite globally to integrate Electro-Optical (EO)...

When we imagine space warfare, we picture shattered satellites and orbital debris. The reality is quieter but also more dangerous. The markers of modern orbital conflict are signal loss, deliberate misdirection, and sudden system failures. In the initial hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a cyber-attack crippled Viasat’s KA-SAT network, severing vital communications...

Electric method can identify coffee strength and roast The industry’s current tools can measure coffee strength but can’t separate roast colours. Researchers used cyclic voltammetry to pass a current through brewed coffee and found the electrical response revealed the strength. They also found the roast colour was related to how much caffeine stuck to the...

While the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has not come out with any firm dates as to when it plans to accomplish the launches it was scheduled to undertake this year which includes the first uncrewed mission of Gaganyaan (G1), April saw the space agency executing the second Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-02) for the...

Name this Norwegian adventurer, who set out on April 28, 1947, on the infamous Kon-Tiki expedition, since considered to be racially motivated, to the Polynesian islands. Published – April 30, 2026 05:05 pm IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit

Lara Marie Berger, Anna Kerkhof, and Nikola Noske, ‘Improving science literacy in the newsroom: Experimental evidence’, PNAS Nexus Science journalism is an endlessly fascinating enterprise. Being good at it doesn’t take more than being a ‘decent’ writer (as they say), a good journalist, and navigating science and science communication with a good journalist’s sensibilities. That...

India continues to face a large mental health treatment gap, with nearly 85% of individuals with common mental disorders receiving no formal care. However, over the past decade, access to antidepressant medication, especially drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), has improved, marking an important shift toward making treatment more available. This expansion is important...

The COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed moment for our country. While the pharmaceutical sector was robust, it lacked the capacity to produce specialised molecular components at scale. At the start of 2020, nearly all of the 20-plus reagents and enzymes required for making the vaccine kits were imported. Supplies were also vulnerable as the countries...