India’s power woes have shifted from generation to distribution What happens if you don’t pay your electricity bill? The power company cuts you off (unless you happen to be a politician, slumlord or goon), right? Now what happens if you happen to be the power company, and haven’t been paying …

Around the world with a bagful of books Ruskin Bond never tires of describing Landour, a little settlement high in the hills above Mussoorie in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal where he’s made his home for many decades; and his readers never fail to find something new in his descriptions as they fill …

Among the gimmicky installations and concept artworks at the India Art Fair, some pictures take you towards your north pole Every year, Delhi’s art season throws up all sorts of odd things. Nowadays there are art events in the NCR all across the year but the so-called season is in …

As the sins of the creator are foisted upon their work, writers craft a public persona superior to their own artistic creations A few days ago, I translated a verse by a mighty Indian poet — a sprawling banyan tree of literary consciousness — from his mother tongue to English. …

Medical leaders and associations must take the lead in issuing effective and clear messages countering fake information Along with the Hippocratic oath, the MBBS curriculum has a mantra: bar God, all must provide data. A good physician treats patients based on scientific principles derived from solid evidence. The physician’s personal …

Hydrothermarchaeota, or microbes living in extreme environments may hold clues to the evolution of early life. These microbes use carbon monoxide and sulfate as sources of energy – chemosynthesis. Published inThe ISME Journal, the study used genomic approaches to unravel the secrets of its survival. It may help predict about …

The abundance of 86 proteins were altered It is well known that TB bacteria can actively manipulate the degradative pathway of macrophages (cells responsible for detecting, engulfing and destroying pathogens) such that instead of getting destroyed, the TB bacteria can actually multiply inside the macrophages. Now, researches at the Institute …

By studying the faecal samples of over 100 healthy people from Madhya Pradesh and Kerala, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal have decoded the Indian gut microbiome and have created a gene catalogue. Constructed using multiple omics approaches such as genomics and proteomics, the …

Ethmostigmus centipedes dispersed across peninsular India to form new species Fossils and advanced genetic methods to study relationships between species now tell an intriguing story about a group of tropical centipedes. Continental drift (the moving apart of continents) almost 100 million years ago created many species of Ethmostigmus centipedes in …

13 drug targets for treating retinoblastoma have been identified Based on computational modelling, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have identified the biochemical pathways that eye cancer (retinoblastoma) preferentially chooses for growth and survival. The pathways chosen are very different from the ones that normal, healthy cells …