Tag: Science

Each rare disease affects very few people. However, there are around 8,000 rare diseases, and they cumulatively affect hundreds of millions of people. In India, 1,004 rare genetic disorders have been reported so far. It used to be that because the number of patients for a rare-disease drug was very small, so the pharmaceutical industry’s...

Two Pakistani pilots are memorising Mandarin, spinning in centrifuge drills, and learning to eat, sleep and repair equipment while weightless ​as a decision nears on which one will become the first foreign astronaut aboard China’s Tiangong space station. The voyage into space would be a first for the ‌South Asian nation. It is part of...

On September 3, a dozen people from various countries were declared to be the recipients of the Ig Nobel Prizes for 2026. Some readers may wonder what an Ig Nobel Prize is. The Ig Nobel Prizes are a light-hearted parody of the actual Nobel Prizes. They were instituted in 1991 by Marc Abraham, editor of The Journal...

A: When you physically exert while doing a task, you may also briefly hold your breath, releasing it as the effort eases. Your body may also contract the muscles around the trunk, making the torso more rigid and giving your arms and legs a more stable base from which to work. When the trunk stiffens,...

The robotic spacecraft that failed to rescue an aging NASA telescope plunged back to Earth on Friday (September 25, 2026) less than three months after launching on the bold mission. Katalyst Space Technologies announced the demise of its three-armed spacecraft named Link. It reentered the atmosphere overnight, bringing the $30 million, NASA-sponsored salvage effort of...

IIT-Madras tool bridges quake science and dam safety An IIT-Madras team evaluated 6,545 dams under India’s National Dam Safety Authority and found standard seismic zone maps misjudge earthquake risks. For Himalayan ‘mega-dams’ like Tehri and Bhakra, site-specific modelling revealed previously projected ground accelerations were too conservative. The team achieved this using a combination of a...

From the largest ever study of bat genome and fossils, scientists deduced that the world’s only flying mammals — that account for one fifth of all living mammals — likely originated in Europe, and spread to every continent except Antarctica. The scientists, in a paper in the journal Nature, pegged the bat’s evolution at 65 million...

The Hindu’s weekly Science for All newsletter explains all things Science, without the jargon. (This article forms a part of the Science for All newsletter that takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Subscribe now!) When did our ancestors begin walking on two legs? This evolutionary question about our terrestrial bipedalism has...