An aerial view shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August 2023. The tanks contain treated radioactive wastewater the facility has been slowly releasing into the Pacific Ocean. | Photo Credit: Reuters Most monitoring of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s release of tritiated wastewater has thus far focused on local coastal waters. No … Read more
In 1959, the American biochemist Walter Kauzmann proposed a radical solution to the problem of protein structure. At the time, it was unclear how proteins, the workhorses of the cell, fold into their unique three-dimensional forms. Every protein is made up of a set of 20 amino acids, rather like beads on a string. The … Read more
Tech talk The Discoverer 13 was an Earth-orbiting satellite designed to test a number of aspects. Bear in mind that this was in 1960, the early years of the Space Age. Among other things, the Discoverer 13 was designed to test engineering techniques and to attempt deceleration and reentry through the atmosphere. If the deceleration … Read more
Elevators include components such as hydraulic lifting motors, ventilation pumps, and control panels that together demand a balanced power supply. | Photo Credit: Sung Jin Cho/Unsplash Because elevators are critical systems, downtime is expensive and dangerous. To avoid this, elevators need three-phase electrical power to meet its high power demand without compromising their reliability. Elevators … Read more
A fishing cat among mangroves in the Godavari river at night, 2018. | Photo Credit: Srichakra Pranav (CC BY-SA) In the wild, India has 15 species belonging to the cat family. Much attention has been given to our large cats, the lions and tigers. Not much is known of the smaller wild cats – the … Read more
James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97. Lovell died pn Thursday (August 7, 2025) in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday. “Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon … Read more
U.S. President Donald Trump. File | Photo Credit: Reuters The Trump administration is moving to shut down two NASA missions that monitor a potent greenhouse gas and plant health, potentially shutting off an important source of data for scientists, policymakers and farmers. U.S. President Donald Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 includes no money … Read more
A blockbuster study published in top science journal Nature last year warned that unchecked climate change could slash global GDP by a staggering 62 percent by century’s end, setting off alarm bells among financial institutions worldwide. But a re-analysis by Stanford University researchers in California, released Wednesday (August 6, 2025), challenges that conclusion — finding … Read more
“Italy is going to Mars!” Italian Space Agency president Teodoro Valente said on X [File] | Photo Credit: AP Elon Musk’s SpaceX has agreed to carry Italian experiments on its Starship megarocket during planned future missions to Mars, according to a new deal announced on Thursday. “Italy is going to Mars!” Italian Space Agency president … Read more
ISRO/NRSC used Cartosat-2S data to assess the devastating Aug 5 flash flood in Dharali & Harsil, Uttarakhand. Source: X/isro The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) National Remote Sensing Centre has done a “rapid assessment” of the damage caused by the flash floods in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand using very high-resolution images from the Cartosat-2S satellite. … Read more