Forests play a critical role in sustaining biodiversity on the planet, including humans. They once provided food and shelter when we were hunter-gatherers. Today, our relationship with forests is at a new level. We derive most of our energy resources from forests in the form of wood and coal. What are some of the implications of this relationship and how fragile is it getting in the future? On this International Day of Forests, here is an introspection of the same.

Did you know that the mouth, which is the gateway to our digestive health, is one of the most neglected parts of the body? With a zillion bacteria that call it home, our moth, teeth and tongue have a lot to endure. On the event of World Oral Health Day, lets understand the oral health situation in the country and resolve to keep our mouth clean and healthy.

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have conducted a study analyzing the influence of socio-demographic factors on the commuting habits of people in Bengaluru. The findings of the team, led by Prof. Ashish Verma from the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), can be implemented in metropolitan cities to ease traffic congestion and pollution by opting for alternative and eco-friendly modes of transport.

A new study has now revealed how knowing beforehand what to look for, helps in our visual search process. Previews – bits of information available in advance, are shown to accelerate our search process as the brain can differentiate and identify the object we are looking for, even among a large set of identical objects. This discovery throws some light on the neurological process responsible for visual search and recognition. 

Autophagy, or self-eating, is a process where cells in our body devour some of the cell components to replenish their nutrient supply during severe shortage.  This process, though sounds gruesome, is essential for our survival and any defect in this mechanism could lead to neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Several research, inspired by Nobel Laureate Prof. Yoshinori Ohsumi’s work on autophagy, has now uncovered new dimensions on our understanding of how cells function.

Escherichia coli, a poster boy for microbiology research and the notorious bacteria that causes stomach infections, might soon be an unusual source of inspiration for us, humans, for learning how to handle stress! A new study by scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER)  Pune, has revealed, for the first time, that E. coli cells become more sturdy and fit when exposed to unpredictably fluctuating environments containing high levels of salts or chemicals, or having extreme pH values.  Led by Prof. Sutirth Dey, the study aims to investigate the evolution of fitness and the costs incurred by the bacteria in this process.

How do stars and star clusters influence their neighbourhood? How does the birth of stars affect their neighbours? let us start with the birth of a star. It begins with gasses, mostly hydrogen, accumulating under gravity until it gets hot and dense enough to start nuclear fusion, where the lighter Hydrogen atoms merge to form heavier helium atoms, with an enormous outburst of energy. This energy moves in the form of a shockwave, pushing all the excess gas away from the newborn star. For a million years after its birth, high energy radiation from the star continues to push the surrounding gas away. From here the picture gets a little murky as we hadn’t quite understood what happened around a star or a cluster of stars, after the million year mark. Now a new study by researchers from Raman Research Institute (RRI), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and P.N Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia could throw more light on this issue. They have successfully developed a model to simulate the interaction of a star cluster with its surroundings. The model was then tested for accuracy by comparing it with observations from Tarantula Nebula, a nearby star cluster, where the observations matched closely to the predictions made by the model. Maybe now we can better understand the processes that guide the formation of stars, nebulae and galaxies!  

If you have read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers,' then you might be well acquainted with the ‘10,000-hour rule’, which states that to master a new skill, such as playing the piano or knitting, one needs 10,000 hours of practice to become world-class. This long practice, studies show, facilitates ‘motor learning’ - a set of complex processes that occur in the brain in response to practice or experience of a certain skill, resulting in changes in the central nervous system.

If you have ever visited the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium (JNP) in Bengaluru, you are sure to be mesmerized by the art of story telling in the recorded videos played during the shows and the cartoons on display. If there is one person that has to be credited to introducing this uniqueness to the planetarium, it is definitely Prof. C V Vishveshwara, famously called the ‘black hole man of India’.

The 3rd of March every year was declared World Wildlife Day by the United Nations General Assembly to mark the signing of the landmark Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973. Aimed at celebrating and raising awareness of the world’s wild animals and plants, the day is a chance for us to think about the major threats to wildlife including habitat change, over-exploitation and illicit trafficking.