Henrietta Lacks (Image Credit: Wikipedia) In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American woman, was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. During her treatment, doctors removed tissue from her tumour for research without telling her or obtaining her permission. The cells behaved unlike any human cells scientists had successfully maintained before: they…

Photo credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Pierluigi Rinaldi (Steward Observatory); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope first revealed mysterious “little red dots” (LRDs) in 2022, astronomers have been racing to understand what these strange objects really are. Compact, extremely distant and glowing red, they appear throughout the early universe, but…

Representative image of CME (Image credit: Nasa) BENGALURU: Scientists have developed a computer model that could help predict how quickly powerful eruptions from the Sun will travel towards Earth, potentially improving warnings for disruptions to satellites, power grids and communication systems.The three-dimensional model was developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), an…

While India is a country filled with annual cultural traditions, a natural one that returns every year without fail is the buzzing around the bed as soon as the monsoon rains begin pelting the ground. Most of the mosquitoes that entered homes and offices were removed with the help of α-cypermethrin, a widely used pyrethroid…

Ornithoptera priamus. Image Credit: Robert Nash/Curator of Entomology Ulster Museum/Wikipedia Butterfly wings could offer a unique solution to one of the biggest problems faced by solar panels, which is ‘sunlight that bounces away before it can be used.’ A study published in ‘Solar Energy’ explored how the tiny structures found on the black scales of…

A juvenile and an adult Black Drongo perch on a tree branch (ANI Photo) In 1935, the Japanese South Seas Development Company made a decision that would have repercussions for Mariana Islands’ ecosystems for nearly 100 years. In search of a natural method for controlling agricultural pests, they imported black drongos (Dicrurus macrocercus) from Taiwan…

Catatumbo lightning at night. Image Credit: Fernando Flores/Wikipedia Lake Maracaibo in north-western Venezuela is home to one of the most remarkable lightning displays on Earth. Around the southern part of the lake, thunderstorms can return night after night, producing flashes with such regularity that the phenomenon is known as ‘Catatumbo Lightning’ (because Catatumbo River meets…

A used paper towel is rarely given a second thought. Once it has wiped up a spill or dried a surface, it usually goes straight into the bin, while the material it was made from has already passed through a much longer chain of production. International Science and Engineering Fair reported that Arnav Kodavati, a…

​Representative Image of oak trees with delayed budburst as caterpillars wait for young leaves to emerge (AI-generated image) In temperate forests, spring timing can determine whether newly hatched caterpillars find a feast or almost nothing to eat. Many herbivorous insects emerge around the time trees produce their first young leaves, when the foliage is soft…

Max Hung Nguyen was 17 when he began looking at a problem that astronomers have been studying for decades: whether the chemical make-up of a star can offer clues about the planets that form around it. The Leland High School student from San Jose used data from Nasa’s Exoplanet Archive and the Hypatia Catalogue for…