Tag: Science

On November 26, a fire started on scaffolding at the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in Tai Po in Hong Kong and spread rapidly across multiple high-rise blocks wrapped in bamboo and other flammable external materials. At least 44 people had died as of 7 am IST (November 27) while hundreds were missing. The local...

Imagine watching the brain not as a finished organ but as a city under construction, where every neuron is a worker changing jobs as the skyline rises. A series of papers in Nature published on November 5 has captured exactly that. Led by researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in the USA, together...

China has finished building its Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a bittersweet development given that the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) has been in limbo for years. Both JUNO and INO were designed to study subatomic particles called neutrinos, which are very hard to catch because they rarely interact with matter. This is why both INO...

(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!) How far can plant life be pushed in harsh environments? Climate change as much as humans’ plans for colonies on the moon or Mars make this question urgent. Scientists already...

Q: How can candle wicks hold a flame for so long? – Sadhika G. A: A candle wick holds a flame because it isn’t just a string that burns. Its main purpose is to deliver fuel to the part of it that’s very hot. When you light the wick, the heat quickly melts the wax...

Research fraud is a global problem and has become worse due to the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The problem is even more acute in India’s higher education sector where both the number of journal publications and retractions are growing rapidly. However, journal retractions do not capture the scope of research fraud since it...

Science quiz: 110 years of general relativity Each exact solution of the mathematical relations of general relativity (Q1) has a name. Name this person, who solved the relations for what space looks like around a spherical and non-rotating black hole, while serving as a soldier in World War I. START THE QUIZ 1 / 6...

A collaborative study by researchers from three Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has found that adding tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles to certain synthetic plastics can significantly reduce their viscosity, making them easier and less energy-intensive to process. Plastics owe their versatility to long molecular chains called polymers, which make them moldable and stretchable. However, many synthetic plastics...

Hayli Gubbi is a shield volcano in Afar, Ethiopia, and a member of the Erta Ale Range. It’s located at the edge of the East African Rift where the African and Arabian plates are slowly pulling apart. A shield volcano is a broad, gently sloping volcano that consists of many thin, fluid lava flows. Its...

Pancreatic cancers are aggressive and deadly, with high rates of metastasis and poor prognosis. The tumour environment is also hypoxic: the cells rapidly divide and thrive in very low oxygen conditions. Now, IIT-Bombay researchers have shown that the hypoxia ends up enhancing the cells’ metastatic behavior. By affecting the cells’ plasma membrane lipids, hypoxic conditions...