Tag: Science

The boundary between land and sea is neither fixed nor clear. The soil does not suddenly stop and give away to a wall of water. Instead, the line is often a salt marsh, where ocean waves break and lose vim as they pass over the marsh’s elevated surface and push against the stems of salt-tolerant...

Evolution is too slow to detect within a single human lifetime | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto — Anand Songara, Indore Humans are still evolving — through new mutations, natural selection, migration, and random chance. Modern medicine and technologies have also changed the pressures acting on us. Put one way, evolution can be discerned from changes...

In 1904, two scientists, Henry Wheeler and Treat Johnson, synthesised a variant of cytosine, one of the building blocks of DNA, in the laboratory. The variant they synthesised contained a chemical tag called a methyl group (-CH3) attached to cytosine, so they called it 5-methylcytosine. Their motivation for doing so was based on the observation...

Technology is rapidly changing the way we cultivate rice and wheat, and India has the opportunity to lead the pack if we restore the attraction of fundamental research in plant sciences to our students. The shrillness of anti-GMO voices have driven aspiring biology researchers to other areas of life sciences, which use much the same...

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva winning his fourth term as Brazil’s President has also interrupted a series of right-wing electoral wins in Latin America. That said, Brazil and Mexico are now the sole left-wing governments among the region’s largest economies. And while it would be reductive to believe the left is more welcoming of climate...

A canopy of trees provides shade over a road in Chennai, 2022. | Photo Credit: V. Srinivasan/Unsplash Green trees and plants are vital for human health. In villages and farmlands, the uppermost parts of the tree provide a canopy, with roof-like branches, offering people a cooler and healthier environment. And the rivers, canals, ponds and...

Decades of psychology have categorised human personality into five broad buckets: openness to experience (curiosity and imagination), conscientiousness (organisation and responsibility), extraversion (sociability), agreeableness (compassion), and neuroticism (a tendency towards anxiety and volatility). In new findings published in Nature, scientists have completed one of the largest-ever genetic analyses of these ‘big five’ traits, offering a...

What should happen to your body after you die? It’s hardly a topic you’d bring up over dinner, but it’s a decision that will eventually need to be made, either by you or by those you leave behind. In Australia, the choice has traditionally been between burial and cremation. However, concerns about environmental impact, limited...

The team used an in vitro method that simulated digestion in a laboratory. File | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto While plant-derived kababs may still struggle to replicate the taste and texture of meat from a tandoori joint, they may contain relatively more protein in a form that the body can absorb, according to a study...

For many generations, Kashmir’s farmers have cultivated traditional varieties of rice — and a new study by researchers at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST-Kashmir), Srinagar, has found that these varieties carry a unique genetic history. According to the study, published in The Plant Genome, Kashmir’s traditional varieties carry cold-tolerance and other...