The late scientist and thinker Donald Braben argued that 20th-century breakthroughs arose from scientists being free to pursue bold ideas without pressure for quick results or rigid peer review. The rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines seemed to validate his claim: emergency conditions sped up trials, relaxed regulatory sequencing and encouraged scientists to share findings before peer…
NEW DELHI: Delhi government will use nature-based solutions (NbS) to treat polluted water in different drains before it enters the Yamuna. NbS is an eco-friendly initiative for pollution abatement that treats raw sewage on-site. Under the initiative, approved by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) last week, government will use rock filters, stone masonry…
The Italian “demographic winter” has a number of causes, but rising male biological infertility is not one (A child is born: Italians celebrate village’s first baby in 30 years, 26 December). A lot of worry about falling sperm counts has been generated by some studies, but a more recent meta‑analysis found, through inclusion of regional controls,…
Available for 34 days We’ve opened the airwaves to the curiosity of some familiar voices. Victoria Gill puts burning science questions submitted by celebs to Penny Sarchet, Managing editor of New Scientist, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London and Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Professor of Astrophysics at…
Abu Khaled al-Zoubi, 67, walks slowly through his orchard in Irbid, northern Jordan, his footsteps kicking up dust from the parched earth beneath centuries-old olive trees. He stops at a gnarled trunk, its bark split and peeling from months of unrelenting heat. He points out that the branches should be sagging under the weight of…
Leading doctors have called for a national UK programme to monitor schoolchildren for high blood pressure amid concerns that rising rates in adolescents will increase cases of organ damage, strokes and heart attacks. Rates of high blood pressure have nearly doubled among children in the past 20 years, but no routine testing is performed in…
Miriam Rivera Bordones tends her goats in a dusty paddock in the russet mountains of Chile’s Atacama desert. She also keeps chickens and has planted quince and peach trees and grapevines, which are watered by a stream winding down the hills towards the Indigenous community of Copiapó. But now the huge British-Australian mining multinational Rio…
A group of progressive politicians and advocates are reframing emissions-cutting measures as a form of economic populism as the Trump administration derides climate policy as a “scam” and fails to deliver on promises to tame energy costs and inflation. Climate politics were once cast as a test of moral resolve, calling on Americans to accept…
About 200 kilometres south of Delhi lies the mostly forgotten town of Bayana in Rajasthan. Once celebrated for producing perhaps the world’s first and finest clear crystalline sugar, Bayana rivalled Agra and Delhi in wealth and grandeur. What made Bayana’s sugar special was something to do with its wells and their water. Then, suddenly, Bayana’s…
Plant biologist P.V. Shivaprasad received the Tata Transformation Prize 2025 in the Food Security category in recognition of his research on climate-resilient rice varieties. Shivaprasad highlights how epigenetic research can aid in developing crops that can withstand climate impacts and provide good nutrition for India’s growing population. In this interview, Shivaprasad shares that it…