Although spending on science has risen worldwide, greater investment is needed in the face of growing crises, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recommended in a new report published. The latest edition of its Science Report, which is published every five years, further reveals that there is …
geologists have discovered an active tectonic fault about 60 kilometres (km) north of Kathmandu in Nepal. The new fault runs 23 km south of the Main Central Thrust (mct), which demarcates the Greater Himalayan ranges in the north from the Lesser Himalayan mountains in the south. Nepal is sandwiched between …
a recent discovery of fragments of fossilised bones from the Narmada basin has once again brought to the fore the question of the antiquity of the first humans on the Indian subcontinent. Anek Ram Sankhyan, a senior anthropologist with the Kolkata-based Anthropological Survey of India (asi), had unearthed collarbones and …
if you thought depletion of stratospheric ozone layer happens only over the polar regions, it's time you relocated your view tropically. For, scientists have found the ozone layer over the Indo-Gangetic (ig) basin is getting seriously compromised, due to, among other things, the increasing load of atmospheric pollution. Carried out …
farthest galaxies: The most distant cluster of galaxies yet has been revealed by astronomers to lie 9 billion light-years away. That beats the 8.5 billion light-years' distance of the previous record holder, says Christopher Mullis, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, who led the team. The new …
"In 1859 Darwin published his theory of common descent through natural selection. I don't think there has ever been a set of theories so heavily attacked or that has had so many alternative theories to face. Look at it now. It stands there, not a dent in it,' said Ernst …
An important find at Gona in Ethiopia's Afar region, about 500 kilometres from Addis Ababa, is likely to fill a major gap in the story of human evolution. Fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus, one of the earliest humans who lived about 4.5 million years ago, are expected to provide insights into …
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have successfully implanted genetically engineered human embryonic stem (ES) cells into the hearts of guinea pigs (Circulation, Vol 432, No 7015). If replicated in humans, the technique could replace electronic pacemakers used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. These devices are used to …
function illus() { var popurl="image/20050131/38-chart.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=600,height=400,scrollbars=yes") } After a 20-year lull, scientists are once again setting their sight on the moon. With past cruises to the moon throwing up new and perplexing questions rather than satisfactory answers, lunar scientists have an onerous task ahead. Among the questions to which they …
On the future of lunar exploration The future of lunar exploration is to witness a healthy competition, though a rat race cannot be ruled out completely. I think it should be more like an Olympic race where everyone gets the best from themselves. But it should not be a race …
On the future of lunar exploration The future of lunar exploration is to witness a healthy competition, though a rat race cannot be ruled out completely. I think it should be more like an Olympic race where everyone gets the best from themselves. But it should not be a race …
On changes in the manner space technology is evolving, and its effect on lunar explorations One of the major changes currently happening in lunar exploration is that space technology is no longer a prerogative of large organisations. It is being evolved at the level of individuals. Smart-I is a good …
using cotton gin residue: US researchers have found the waste generated when cotton is ginned (seeds separated from fibre) can yield valuable products. They have developed manufacturing processes to extract specific chemicals and make two products
Science has reached the deep-forest monkey of West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh. It is now officially recognised as Macaca munzala. The macaque was discovered by a team of ecologists comprising Anindya Sinha of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore; Aparajita Datta and Charudutt Mishra of the Mysore-based Nature Conservation Foundation …
Concrete Facts is the result of an exhaustive two year effort to rate the cement industry. It details the industry's ecological challenges and rates how well Indian companies address them. Companies are benchmarked against global best practices at each stage of the life cycle - from mining to use of …
the world has been calculating the mass of the kilogramme wrongly. The error would seem insignificant to a common person, but it is important for scientists, as they are left paralysed without precise values. But work done at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, France, and the Korea Research …
Little humans with small heads, of the size of a large grapefruit, and long arms might rewrite the story of human evolution. Australian archaeologists have found the remains of this new species, Homo floresiensis or
when S Krishna Prasad and co-workers at the Centre for Light Crystal Research in Bangalore shone a light on a class of liquid crystals, it induced the crystal molecules to change shape on a quick time-scale. This finding suggests that the system is a potential candidate for storage of images …
