Tag: Science

India has called for the shrinking pool of climate finance and a widening adaptation finance gap to be tackled head-on at the United Nations climate negotiations-linked talks under way in Bonn, Germany. It has urged that a Paris Agreement provision, which obliges developed countries to provide funds to developing nations, be given dedicated agenda space...

Droughts can increase the levels of antibiotic resistance in soil, a new study by researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has reported. Published in Nature Microbiology, the study revealed that when soil dries due to drought stress, the concentration of natural antibiotics increases, favouring the survival of resistant bacteria. The study also projected...

For most frogs, life begins as a game of odds. They lay their eggs in the water, where fish and insects gobble up about 98% of them before they even have a chance to hatch. The African grey foam-nest tree frog (Chiromantis xerampelina) figured a way out: it took its nest into the air. In...

Lung cancer is one of the more common cancers affecting people worldwide. This is mainly thanks to smoking and, to a lesser extent, air pollution and occupational exposure. According to the latest World Health Organization estimates, there are about 2.5 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths every year. Prevention offers the ideal solution to...

Most digital security relies today on random numbers to generate cryptographic keys. Think of a cryptographic key like a long, complex password. If that password is truly random, an attacker has to guess every possible combination. But if the ‘random’ process used to make that password has a pattern, the attacker can use that pattern...

The sun may well add to this year’s Deepavali celebrations, if predictions made by solar physicists come true. A solar flare that occurred on the Sun has triggered a magnetic storm which scientists predict will arrive at the Earth in the early hours of November 4, and this can give rise to spectacular displays of...

‘Aurora Borealis’, more popularly called ‘northern lights’, is expected to be visible in India on June 8, 2026. A massive solar storm is expected to make the beautiful phenomenon, commonly seen in Nordic countries such as Switzerland and Finland, a reality in the country. When and where to watch auroras?  The auroras are expected to...

Pyroprocessing is a way to change a solid material physically or chemically using high temperature. It is a dry process and very energy-intensive. The three sectors that use it most are cement-making, metallurgy, and nuclear power. Of these, cement-making uses pyroprocessing the most. First, finely ground limestone, clay and iron — the raw materials —...

For much of modern history, human evolution was thought to progress in linear fashion, with one species replacing another, one by one. The famous ‘ape turning to human’ cartoon illustrating a stooped primate gradually straightening into a modern man essentially captures this idea. That picture began to change in the second half of the 19th...