Science

The foggy morning had given way to a brilliant sun. Despite the chill in the air, I could feel sweat starting to bead down my neck as my field assistant and I made our way to a waterhole in the Kanha Tiger Reserve. It was December 2019, and I had just started the fieldwork component

A hospital in India has deployed a customer-service robot to patrol its wards, connecting coronavirus patients to friends and relatives. Mitra, meaning ‘friend’ in Hindi, is best known for interacting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event in 2017. Its piercing eyes are equipped with facial recognition technology to help it recall people it has

Elon Musk is hailed as an innovator and disruptor who went from knowing next to nothing about building cars to running the world’s most valuable automaker in the space of 16 years. But his record shows he is more of a fast learner who forged alliances with firms that had technology Tesla lacked, hired some

Nearly two thirds of people in leading Western European countries would consider augmenting the human body with technology to improve their lives, mostly to improve health, according to research commissioned by Kaspersky. As humanity journeys further into a technological revolution that its leaders say will change every aspect of our lives, opportunities abound to transform

Astronomers have discovered a planet the size of Jupiter closely orbiting the smouldering remains of a dead star, the first time that an intact exoplanet has been discovered travelling around a white dwarf, according to research published Wednesday. Researchers said the fate of this giant planet, called WD 1586 b, offers a potential vision of

Scientists have created first gene-edited livestock that can serve as viable “surrogate sires”, males that produce sperm carrying only the genetic traits of donor animals, an advance that they say could improve food production for a growing global population. The research, published in the journal PNAS, could speed the spread of desirable characteristics in livestock,

China has successfully sent nine satellites into orbit in its first commercial launch of a rocket from a platform at sea, state media reported on Wednesday. The satellites, one of which belonged to video-sharing platform Bilibili, were deployed by a Long March 11 rocket from the Yellow Sea on Tuesday, media reported. The Long March

The atmosphere of Venus contains traces of phosphine gas, which on Earth can be attributed to living organisms, scientists said on Monday, in a fresh insight into conditions on our nearest planetary neighbour.   Conditions on Venus are often described as hellish with daytime temperatures hot enough to melt lead and an atmosphere comprised almost

Fulcrum is an app that allows scientists to gather data and maintain entries generated in the field when carrying out their research and it has helped prevent the loss of data to random accidents. In today’s age, mobile applications are very valuable and useful tools for us that enable us to carry out a variety

Dark matter, mysterious invisible stuff that makes up most of the mass of galaxies including our own Milky Way, is confounding scientists again, with new observations of distant galaxies conflicting with the current understanding of its nature. Research published this week revealed an unexpected discrepancy between observations of dark matter concentrations in three massive clusters

Engineers have developed a robot that can detect whether people are wearing a mask to guard against COVID-19 and, if not, politely remind them to put one on. The feature is an upgrade of Pepper, a 120 centimetre (47 inch) high robot with human-like features that is already in operation in some countries welcoming visitors to

NASA on Thursday announced it was in the market for Moon rocks, and wants to pay companies to scoop out the dirt, take a photo, and then have it ready for collection by a future mission. The contract doesn’t actually involve getting to the Moon itself, a feat only achieved by the national space agencies

Asteroid 2020 QL2 that could be up to 120 meters (394 feet) in diameter is expected to safely fly past Earth on September 14, as per NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The asteroid is expected to fly past at a speed of nearly 38,620 kmph (24,000 mph) and come within a distance of

Apple has developed masks that the company is beginning to distribute to corporate and retail employees to limit the spread of COVID-19. The Apple Face Mask is the first created in-house by the Cupertino, California-technology giant for its staff. The other, called ClearMask, was sourced elsewhere. Apple previously made a different face shield for medical workers

Russian research and development enterprise Zvezda has started manufacturing of space suits and personal flight equipment for Indian cosmonauts undergoing training in Russia to be part of India’s first manned space mission Gaganyaan, Glavkosmos said on Monday. Glavkosmos is a subsidiary of Roscosmos with which the Human Spaceflight Center (HSC) of the city-based Indian Space

An experimental reusable spacecraft launched into orbit two days ago by China has successfully returned to a designated site on Sunday, marking a breakthrough that could lead to cheaper round-trips to space, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The mission had been kept low-key, and state media had yet to publish photographs or video footage