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Satellite data show India’s major deltas sinking due to human activity

An international research team has found a systemic drop in land elevation across India’s river deltas driven mostly by human activities. The researchers were motivated by the lack of high-resolution data of river deltas’ subsidence worldwide even though they support more than 340 million people. They used interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the European...

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NASA astronaut Sunita Williams retires

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Sunita Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired. The space agency announced the news on Tuesday (January 20, 2026), saying her retirement took effect at the end of December. Williams’ crewmate on Boeing’s ill-fated capsule test flight, Butch Wilmore,...

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NASA astronaut Sunita Williams retires after 27 years

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Sunita Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired. The space agency announced the news on Tuesday (January 20, 2026), saying her retirement took effect at the end of December. Williams’ crewmate on Boeing’s ill-fated capsule test flight, Butch Wilmore,...

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How reusability can lead to sustainable, cost-effective access to space

After four decades of government-led space exploration, the new millennium has ushered in a commercial revolution where private companies now lead and fund the industry’s most significant breakthroughs. Space is now a fast-growing industry, expected to exceed $1 trillion in value by 2030. The application of innovative technologies, notably partial reusability of rockets by these...

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Why is rice such a water-intensive crop?

A: Many rice-growing systems deliberately flood the fields and most of the water is lost to the air or to the ground. Farmers often maintain shallow flooding to stabilise some nutrient dynamics. In many paddies, water also moves sideways or down the soil unless the field is rich in clay or well sealed. Flooding is...

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Narrating stories of the world’s women mathematicians, in portraits

“Solving mathematical problems gave me a unique sensation of freedom that did not depend on what happened around me,” confessed Irina Kmit, a Ukrainian mathematician, now a professor in the mathematics department at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research topics include hyperbolic differential equations and boundary value problems. And she described maths as a...

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Why only female Darwin’s bark spiders weave the toughest webs

One of the strongest materials on the earth isn’t made in a factory or synthesised in a laboratory but spun by a creature barely two inches long. The Darwin’s bark spider (Caerostris darwini), found in the forests of Madagascar, weaves silk that outperforms steel and most human-made fibres in both strength and toughness. Larger webs,...

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What happens if you have a medical emergency onboard the ISS?

A: On January 15 morning, Crew-11 to the International Space Station (ISS) performed a rapid evacuation, with NASA getting the astronauts back to the earth around one month early due to an undisclosed medical concern with one crew member. When a medical emergency occurs on the International Space Station (ISS), the crew has a strict...

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Scientists plan to build a graviton detector. Why is it so hard?

The Stevens Institute of Technology in the US recently said some of its scientists plus a group at Yale University will be building “the world’s first experiment explicitly designed to detect individual gravitons”. The announcement has already drawn sceptical attention from the physics community — but also $1.3 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation. The...

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Apple leaf waste yields green anti-corrosion solution for metals

GUWAHATI Apple farm waste may soon help protect metal pipes, machinery, and infrastructure from corrosion. An international research team led by Nagaland University (NU) has found a way to turn discarded apple leaves into a highly effective, eco-friendly corrosion inhibitor, offering up to 96.2% protection for copper in harsh chemical conditions. The study, carried out...

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