Tag: Science

A recent report by NITI Aayog, about ‘Ease of Doing R&D in India’ revealed some uncomfortable truths about India’s R&D ecosystem. Together with a companion survey with inputs from more than 400 institutional leaders and 850 scientists, it reported that close to 80% of funding under the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) — the flagship...

Dung beetles are humble insects. They feed on the faeces of other mammals. In many species, a male dung beetle flies to a fresh pile of dung, shapes a piece of it into a ball, and quickly rolls it away from the pile so others don’t grab it. Reputedly, male dung beetles have rolled dung...

Shortly after an intense heatwave struck South Asia earlier this year, World Weather Attribution (WWA) reported that climate change had made the event about three times likelier and up to 1° C warmer than it would have been in a world without climate change. WWA is an international research group that assesses the impact of...

The online sale of datura fruit and seeds prompted the Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration Department to suspend the licenses of e-commerce giants Amazon, Swiggy Instamart, and BigBasket. According to an order issued by Food Safety Commissioner K. Srinivas, the department has also directed the three platforms to immediately remove listings and advertisements for...

A: On August 24, China called off the launch of its Chang’e 7 mission to the moon’s south pole for the sake of “prudence, reliability and absolute mission success”. It will now have to wait until next year for another chance. All space missions have specific launch windows — periods when the positions and motions...

China said on Sunday (August 23, 2026) it was postponing its planned ambitious Chang’e-7 lunar mission, which was set to carry out explorations including searching for water ice on the moon. The Chang’e-7 spacecraft was originally set to lift off in the coming days from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on China’s southern Hainan island....

A new study on the Indian street dog states that “food subsidies” — availability of abundant, predictable food through garbage and intentional feeding — have an impact on their population in the country’s urban ecosystems. The study, titled ‘The Indian street dog crisis and multi-species coexistence in tropical urban futures’, conducted by Nishant Kumar, a...

Patient data, including medical records and patient experiences, are essential for scientists to develop new treatments, especially for rare diseases. The data help identify diagnostic biomarkers, predict disease progression, and help investigators design better clinical trials. This is important because clinical trials are required to show that a new treatment is safe and effective before...

When lightning strikes, it superheats the air around it and creates a shock wave that we hear as thunder. But thunder doesn’t just travel through the atmosphere to our ears. When that energy reaches the ground, some of it is converted into seismic waves that ripple through the soil and rock beneath. The resulting vibrations...

— S. Prakash, Tiruchi The processes that produce earthquakes happen deep underground. These processes include stress building up in rocks and faults and the complex ways in which they transmit or release it. Faults may also rupture suddenly after centuries of accumulating stress, small ruptures may trigger larger ones, and some formations may release stress...