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A Spanish galleon (right, foreground) might carry dozens of animals to provide fresh eggs, milk, and meat for the first few weeks of a voyage. | Photo Credit: Public domain — Prabhakar Jonnalagadda A: To preserve a food item meant to remove moisture, increase acidity and/or to use natural preservatives. Meats and fish would be … Read more
India’s long wait for a dengue vaccine may finally be coming to an end. Takeda’s tetravalent dengue vaccine, TAK-003 (called ‘Qdenga’), recently received clearance from the Subject Expert Committee (SEC) under the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for use among individuals aged 4 to 60 years. This marks a significant milestone in the country’s … Read more
Throughout human history, the sky symbolised freedom — vast, open, untouched. Today, that no longer holds. The earth’s orbital environment has become crowded, fragile, and vulnerable, threatened by what is today evidently a failure of governance rather than just of engineering. The language of space sustainability has grown familiar in international forums and policy documents. … Read more
Scientists have shown that helium atoms can be entangled through their movement. Representative illustration. | Photo Credit: Getty Images Scientists have shown that helium atoms can be entangled through their movement. A team from Australia and the U.S. collided clouds of helium atoms together to create pairs that shared a single quantum state. The achievement … Read more
Albert Einstein (left) in conversation with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Picture taken in 1949 when Dr. Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives In the late 1930s, in a small corner of Thayyur, Thrissur, a couple had their third girl child, and no … Read more
Parkinson’s disease affects more than 10 million people worldwide. A patient struggles to perform coordinated movement, requiring conscious effort and attention even for a simple task like buttoning a shirt. Natural movements like walking and turning have to be planned as the person will struggle to start and stop actions. Over time, the person will … Read more
Vector cartoon stick figure drawing conceptual illustration. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Mosquitoes annoy almost everyone. And sometimes, you might notice that you are getting far more mosquito bites than your friend sitting right next to you in the same room. It can feel unfair, but let’s clear up a common myth first: it is … Read more
Professor Einstein (left) tells Dr. Robert Oppenheimer about his attempts to explain matters in terms of space. Picture taken in 1949 when Dr. Oppenheimer was Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives In the late 1930s, in a small corner of Thayyur, Thrissur, a couple had … Read more
What is “The Wow!” signal? | Photo Credit: Unsplash Images If you are a distinguished member of the “I think about extraterrestrial life all the time!” fraternity and don’t know about ‘The Wow!” signal, then you have some catching up to do. E.T Evolved from the ideas of the ‘alien’, the SETI or Search for … Read more
Jungle cats (Felis chaus) are found across diverse habitats, from grasslands and wetlands to deserts. They’re present across Asia, with large populations in India and Nepal, among others. The IUCN Red List lists the species as being of ‘least concern’. This has led to a “misconception that they are doing fine”, Kathan Bandyopadhyay, a postdoctoral … Read more