In a recent announcement, Dr Shekhar C. Mande, the current Director of the National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune has been appointed as the new Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), India. He succeeds Dr Girish Sahni, who retired on 31st August 2018. CSIR is one of the world’s largest publicly-funded research and development organisations and is known for its contributions in diverse areas of science.

Researchers from RRI, Bengaluru and their collaborators at Leiden University, Netherlands, and the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, delved into the lives of nuclear stars, and how gravity influences their orbits. They have identified instabilities, driven by the gravitational interactions between the stars themselves and the central black hole, this can drive a disc full of stars on nearly circular orbits into a state where the disc has more elongated orbits.

“Can this wait? I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“I have a headache, and I need some coffee.”

“You look tired! Can I get you some coffee?”

In a recent study, scientists have reported that the extract of the plant Toxicodendron pubescens, commonly called the Atlantic poison oak, could help alleviate neuropathic pain caused by nerve damage. The study included researchers from the R. C. Patel Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, SVKM’s Institute of Pharmacy, Janmangal Homeopathy and Wellness Centre and UAE University.

Researchers from the IASST, Guwahati, used a combination of cutting-edge nanotechnology, antibiotics and enzymes, to punch holes in the defences of the bacterium Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus and kill it.

Last week, the world enthusiastically awaited one of the year’s exciting announcements—the Nobel Prize in the fields of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry. First of them to be announced was the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, jointly awarded to James P. Allison, Professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA, and Tasuku Honjo, Professor at Kyoto University, Japan. They were considered for this prestigious honour for their contributions to cancer therapy using our body’s immune system to attack cancer cells.

If someone came up to you and said the stool from one person can be used as medicine to treat another, you’d most likely be disgusted or find it absurd.  It sounds incredible, but it is true.

In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, and Louisiana State University, USA, have analysed the differences in the genome of a variety of weedy rice, with that of two cultivated rice varieties. Weedy rice, as the name suggests, is a variety of rice that grows like weed in paddy fields.

Researchers from the ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, have recently identified parts of the DNA in lentils that are associated with flowering.