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…
Growing up along Adobe Creek in Mountain View, Kiefer Chow spent his childhood afternoons doing something most people would call child’s play: stacking sticks and mud into makeshift dams. Years later, that same instinct would grow into something far more consequential. Alongside his sister Amelia, Kiefer founded Eco-Engineering In Action, a youth-led non-profit built on…
Detail of the main Huashan Rock art. Image Credit: Rolfmueller/Wikipedia Ancient paintings covering limestone cliffs in southern China may owe their remarkable survival to an unexpected ingredient known as ‘blood.’ A new study of the ‘Huashan rock art’ in Guangxi published in the ‘Journal of Archaeological Science’ suggests that the artists used a mixture containing…
Image(s): Left/Department of Physics, MIT/Right/MoM-BH*-1 A Hyderabad-born astronomer who left engineering school at 18 and counts Test cricket among his favourite pastimes is now helping scientists look deeper into the earliest chapters of the Universe. Rohan P. Naidu, an MIT Pappalardo Fellow in Physics, is the lead author of a new Nature study that examines…
