Science & technology

Denmark said on Thursday it would create an international research centre focused on the fight against resistance to antibiotics, a scourge affecting almost half a million people worldwide. Danish Health Minister Ellen Trane Norby signed a memorandum of understanding in Seattle, in the United States, with the international network of …

In a bid to reduce global air pollution, Swedish home furnishing company IKEA on Thursday announced its plan to turn rice straw into a new renewable material source for its products. The project, part of the company’s ‘Better Air Now’ initiative, will begin from India and is focussed on New …

The human lifespan is increasing by approximately three years every generation — a trend likely to continue, a Stanford study has found. A team of researchers analysed life expectancy data from the past 50 years and found that people who survive to age 65 are continuing to live longer than …

But the technological and medical hurdles are immense Deadly radiation from the cosmos, potential vision loss, and atrophying bones are just some of the challenges scientists must overcome before any future astronaut can set foot on Mars, experts and top NASA officials said on Tuesday. The U.S. space agency believes …

U.S. FDA is giving companies two years to purge products that use any of the six artificial flavours Six artificial flavours are being ordered out of the food supply in a dispute over their safety, but good luck to anyone who wants to know which cookies, candies or drinks they’re …

Heaviest satellite to be carried on indigenous rocket Amid concerns of Cyclone Gaja spoiling the launch of the country’s heaviest satellite to be carried on board an indigenous rocket from Indian soil, the Indian Space Research Organisation pulled off the feat to perfection on Wednesday, a crucial launch for ISRO …

Committee to submit report to government to alleviate woesof victims The Assurances Committee of the Legislative Council on Wednesday directed the Dakshina Kannada Deputy Commissioner to get the surface and the groundwater of endosulfan-affected areas tested to verify whether they are the still contaminated with the chemical. Chairing a review …

Wants IONS members to be part of it The Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) being commissioned by the Indian Navy as an adjunct to its Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) in Gurugram will be independent of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) forum, but the …

Refrigerants are the major contributors to global warming By 2022, India is expected to have a fourth of the world’s air conditioning units, and the risks to climate from this could be immense, according to a report. The refrigerants used for cooling are the major contributors to global warming, and …

Mars sunrise recreated with musical piece Scientists have created the soundtrack of the 5,000th Mars sunrise captured by NASA’s rover, Opportunity, using data sonification techniques. Researchers from the Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Exeter in the U.K. created the two-minute piece of music, titled Mars Soundscapes. It will …

Pedal desks can help sedentary employees achieve their health goals, and lower the risk of diseases linked to physical inactivity, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease, a study has found. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in U.S. found that pedalling while conducting work tasks improved insulin responses …

The world’s largest supercomputer designed to work in the same way as the human brain has been switched on for the first time. The Spiking Neural Network Architecture machine is capable of completing more than 200 million million actions per second, with each of its chips having 100 million transistors. …

Praying mantids prey on smaller insects and sometimes the odd frog or lizard. Now, it looks like they’ve added fish to their menu too, for naturalists have observed one catching and eating small ornamental fish in a garden in Bengaluru. Guppy-catcher It was on the evening of March 7 last …

Natural recharge during monsoon may not help much if groundwater depletion becomes acute, as rainfall of past years controls current storage With 230 billion metre cube of groundwater drawn out each year for irrigating agriculture lands in India, many parts of the country are experiencing rapid depletion of groundwater. The …

The pH and salinity of the waters exceeded permissible limits for ecologically sensitive zones The water quality at the Point Calimere Wildlife Sanctuary might be unsafe for avifauna to feed and breed, notes a study that examined different pollution indicators in water. Researchers from Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli compared their results …

Sensitivity for pulmonary TB and pleural TB were 94% and 93%, respectively. A highly sensitive diagnostic test for pulmonary TB and pleural TB has been developed by a multi-institutional team led by Jaya Sivaswami Tyagi from the Department of Biotechnology at AIIMS. The diagnostic test makes use of a DNA …

Since April 2016, all oral polio vaccines (OPV) across the world contain only two of the three polio serotypes — Type 1 and Type 3. Type 2 is banned because the wild, disease-causing version of this virus was eradicated globally by 1999, and because OPV itself can cause polio in …

A major factor holding back development of wearable biosensors for health monitoring is the lack of a lightweight, long-lasting power supply. Now, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US have developed a method for making a charge-storing system that is easily integrated into clothing. “Batteries or other …

Anti-tobacco activists have expressed concern that comparing the ill-effects of air pollution to that of smoking will result in trivialising the catastrophic effects of smoking. They say that such comparisons also promote the theory that it is all right to smoke as the air that we breathe is equally harmful. …

Chinese state broadcaster unveils world’s first AI anchor China’s state-controlled news broadcasters have long been considered somewhat robotic in their daily recitation of pro-government propaganda and a pair of new presenters will do little to dispel that view. Calling it a “world first”, Xinhua news agency this week debuted a …