Mosquito borne diseases like malaria and dengue are still rampant and have posed a great challenge to mankind. We have lost several lives in our war against mosquitoes, and scramble new ways to fight them. Now, researchers are working to genetically engineer the genes of mosquitoes using the technique of RNA interference, where an RNA is artificially inserted to disturb the normal functions of mosquito cells, thereby killing them in the process. This process, they claim, is environmentally friendly and most effective compared to existing strategies.

The process of voting is the cornerstone of any democratic process. Be it selecting the leader of a nation or just deciding the laws that govern a nation, a democratic process allows the different participants and stakeholders of the election to have a uniform chance of having their choice win. The process of voting, sometime called the electoral system, can itself be carried out in many ways, sometimes depending on the outcome. A Plurality voting system selects the candidate with the highest number of votes as the winner.

Indigenous people throughout the world from the Amazon to the Andamans are caught in a tricky devastating situation. On the one side, their habitats are being continuously destroyed and the resources that they once depended upon -- like water and forests are being snatched away from them. On the other side there is a pressure of ‘modernization’ pushing them to everlasting poverty. Without a sustainable solution to these challenges that they face, they always remain left out from the mainstream unable to fend for themselves. On this   International Day of World’s Indigenous People, let us take a look at the Todas of Nilgiri and understand what it is like to be a tribesman in the  21st century.

The Smart Cities Mission of the Indian government aims to develop at least 100 cities around the country in to smart cities. Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems, the two technologies that will enable the smart city dream, still in nascent stages and require enormous efforts from researchers and engineers to set up the framework for such cities. Scientists are now looking to use crowdsourcing as an effective measure to collect the data and effectively implement certain smart applications.

The fossil fuel crisis arising due to our increased use of oil leading to diminishing oil reserves, is giving rise to an increase in renewable energy generation. While solar and wind are preferred to produce electricity, biodiesel is preferred as a replacement to petrol and diesel. Biodiesels are produced from plant or animal matter, like vegetable oil, animal fat or even waste cooking oil. Although biodiesels still produce exhaust gases, they are much cleaner and safer compared to the toxic fumes coming out of fossil fuel powered engines.

Since our young days as kids, we have been told that vegetables are healthy and that we should eat them. Then, we were told that raw vegetables are even better because they have more fibre and also cooking them will lead to destruction of some vital nutrients. Thanks to all this, now we have a wide range of salad recipes floating on the Internet and elsewhere! But can these supposedly healthy veggies turn out to be quite unhealthy? Yes say scientists from Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad!

Rainfall extremes have had devastating effects in the country, including floods in Gujarat and landslides in Darjeeling, both of which claimed many lives. With a warming climate, such extreme rainfall events are only going to increase.

The incidence of prostrate cancer, affecting the prostate gland in men, is one of the increasingly growing types of cancers and the cause of death across the world, particularly in developing countries. While traditional anti-cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy promise hope, they often come with undesirable side effects. In a new research, scientists have shown the possibility of natural extracts from two plants found in tropical regions of the country to be effective against prostate cancer. This research definitely promises to bring in new hopes in those battered with cancer, hope the scientists.

Space missions come with an unprecedented excitement of open a Pandora’s box of unknown facts, mysteries and phenomenons. It is hardly a surprise that New Horizons, NASA’s mission to explore Pluto and beyond has caused a great excitement in the field of planetary science. Launched in 2006, New Horizons has already provided mankind with the most intimate images of Pluto till date and is now cruising towards the Kuiper Belt beyond our Solar System. Read all that you should know about this space mission, its latest findings and its future stops as it progresses toward new horizons of space in an interview with Prof. Henry Throop.

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a joint mission of NASA and German Aerospace Center, was launched in 2002 and has been making a detailed map of earth’s gravity field anomalies. By studying these anomalies, one can show how mass is distributed on the planet’s surface. This allows researchers to map the different features on the surface of the planet, natural and man-made ones, in great detail, while also allowing us to monitor the changes in these features.