Science & technology

The Maharashtra government started conducting soil testing at Rajapur tehsil’s Barsu village in the coastal Ratnagiri district. To know if the site was suitable for the proposed multi-billion dollar Ratnagiri Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited project which is touted as the world’s largest single location refinery complex. India’s oil refining capacity stood at 251.2 million metric tonnes per annum, making …

Psychedelic drugs, banned in India under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, are emerging in research as promising ways to treat treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder Psychedelics Psychedelics are a group of drugs that alter perception, mood, and thought-processing while a person is still clearly conscious. Psychedelics are non-addictive, non-toxic and compared to illicit drugs, they are less harmful to the …

A group of researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel reported that they had been able to pick up distress noises made by plants which was already shown by Jagadish Chandra Bose more than a century ago. A physicist-turned-biologist who lived between 1858 and 1937, made pioneering contributions in both the fields. He was the first …

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch Singapore’s TeLEOS-2 satellite. The launch will be carried out by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV. TeLEOS-2 is an Earth Observation Satellite. In 2015, ISRO launched TeLEOS-1, the first Singapore commercial Earth Observation Satellite. More about the satellite: TeLEOS 2 is a Singaporean SAR Earth Observation satellite. It is built …

Users of the digital newsletter platform Substack reported they could not like or retweet Twitter posts with Substack links Substack Substack, launched in 2017, is an online publishing platform that lets writers and podcasters publish and share content directly with their target audience. The platform allows content creators to generate income directly from subscribers on their terms. The platform …

The deaths of 11 people in Mumbai due to heatstroke, while they were attending a government meeting in an open space, is possibly the largest heatwave-related death toll from a single event. Key details: According to the IMD, heatwave conditions are currently prevailing in some areas of Gangetic West Bengal, coastal Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. What …

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to take its most daring leap yet with a round-the-world test flight of its mammoth Starship. SpaceX Space is a rocket company founded by Elon Musk. It was created with the mission of taking humans to Mars. Headquarters: Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of …

A video of a group of men performing the traditional dance of Indian ‘garba’ under the stunning northern lights in Alaska has gone viral. What are ‘Auroras’? Auroras are a natural phenomenon caused by magnetic storms initiated by the Sun’s activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. They are visible as bright lights in the sky and are …

Context: The Indian Space Research Organisation and its partners successfully demonstrated a precise landing experiment for a Reusable Launch Vehicle at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR), Chitradurga, Karnataka. Key details: The Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV LEX) test was the second of five tests that are a part of ISRO’s efforts …

ISRO releases images of Earth captured by its EOS-06 satellite EOS-6 is the third-generation satellite in the Oceansat series. This is to provide continuity services of Oceansat-2 spacecraft with enhanced payload specifications as well as application areas. Payloads Ocean Color Monitor (OCM-3) Sea Surface Temperature Monitor (SSTM) Ku-Band Scatterometer (SCAT-3) ARGOS Mission Objectives To ensure the data continuity of Ocean colour …