Author: auto_blogs

Smoke rises from a coal-powered steel plant at Hehal village near Ranchi. File | Photo Credit: AP The Union Environment Ministry should roll back its 2015 policy mandating all of India’s 537 coal-fired plants to install a class of equipment called Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) in order to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Instead, it should only apply to those plants using imported coal or high (>0.5%) sulphur coal, a study commissioned by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, and executed by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, has found.Although coal-fired plants were to have installed FGD…

The Union Environment Ministry should roll back its 2015 policy mandating all of India’s 537 coal-fired plants to install a class of equipment called Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) in order to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Instead, it should only apply to those plants using imported coal or high (>0.5%) sulphur coal, a study commissioned by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser, and executed by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, has found.Although coal-fired plants were to have installed FGD by 2018, only 8% of the plants have installed the equipment after the Environment Ministry extended deadlines.…

A frame grab provided by the Schmidt Ocean Institute shows a colossal squid, or Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, in its natural habitat, during an Ocean Census flagship expedition in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean | Photo Credit: AP A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep sea by an international team of researchers steering a remotely operated submersible. The sighting was announced Tuesday (April 16, 2025) by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. The squid filmed was a juvenile about 1 foot (30 centimeters) in length at a depth of 1,968 feet (600…

Imagine you are eating takeout, and suddenly you feel like you are getting breathless and it’s getting difficult for you to swallow the food. You also feel itchiness in several parts of your body. These might be symptoms of an allergic reaction or anaphylaxis. When you are allergic to a certain food item or object, and you accidentally consume the same, your immune system reacts to protect you from the “invader”. This immune response leads to the release of a flood of chemicals, which cause symptoms of an allergic reaction.An anaphylactic shock is a more severe, life-threatening allergic reaction that…

In a potential landmark discovery, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have obtained what they call the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system, detecting in an alien planet’s atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes.The two gases – dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disulfide, or DMDS – involved in Webb’s observations of the planet named K2-18 b are generated on Earth by living organisms, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton – algae.This suggests the planet may be teeming with microbial life, the researchers said. They…

In a significant breakthrough to tackle the freshwater scarcity in various parts of the world, scientists from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have developed a new material that can facilitate water desalination.  Researchers Professor Swatantra Pratap Singh and Aiswarya C. L. have developed Dual-Sided Superhydrophobic Laser-Induced Graphene (DSLIG) evaporator that addresses multiple shortcomings of earlier evaporators and has the potential for large-scale applications. While water is abundant on Earth, only about 3% of it is freshwater, and even within that, less than 0.05% is easily accessible. Removing salt (desalination) from seawater and brackish water is seen as one of the solutions…

When people on the internet searched Google for “cheese not sticking to pizza” in May 2024, the newly launched “AI Overviews” feature of the popular search engine replied “you can … add about ⅛ cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.”In a series of strange answers, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool also recommended that people eat one small rock a day and drink urine in order to pass kidney stones.The popular name for these bizarre answers is hallucinations: when AI models face questions whose answers they weren’t trained to come up with, they make up…

CCMB Director Vinay Kumar Nandicoori and IICT Director D. Srinivas Reddy at a press conference held in Hyderabad on Wednesday (April 16, 2025) | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) and CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) are working on ‘Anti-Viral Mission’ to come up with drugs and diagnostics to deal with potential emerging viruses in the near future.CCMB Director Vinay Kumar Nandicoori and IICT Director D. Srinivas Reddy at a press conference held in Hyderabad on Wednesday (April 16, 2025) said that the scientific collaboration is not only to repurpose the existing anti-viral drugs…

Science Quiz | The world’s oldest lifeforms Name this micro-animal. It’s renowned for being able to survive harsh conditions, including outer space, and evolved around 500 million years ago. Credit: Kiosya Y., Vončina K., Gąsiorek P. (2021)START THE QUIZ 1 / 6 | Scientists widely believe X are the first lifeforms on the earth that produced oxygen, and thus filled the atmosphere with this gas during the Great Oxidation Event around 2.4-2 billion years ago. Name X. 2 / 6 | This particular form of rock is created when X (from Q1) forms large colonies where each member is connected…

Bike riders passed through the parched forest area near Kulapully in Kerala’s Shoranur where trees are drying due to a lack of water and extreme weather conditions. File photo | Photo Credit: The Hindu In the early spring of 2022, South Asian countries including India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan experienced back-to-back extreme heat waves in the months of March and April. A study published on April 8, 2025, by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, has uncovered why South Asian countries experienced back-to-back extreme heat events in early spring of 2022.  Also read:…