Science

More than two kilometres beneath the surface of the Pacific, off the coast of Oregon, an active underwater volcano has been hiding one of the strangest landscapes ever mapped on the seafloor. Using robotic vehicles capable of withstanding crushing depths, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have spent more than two decades surveying…

The reintroduction and success of sea otters in British Columbia was a story that initially satisfied everyone including conservationists and the natives. The adorable creatures once occupied much of Canada’s Pacific coast, before the fur trade for their exceptionally dense coats turned into a mass death sentence. But now, their population is threatening the availability…

At a time when laundry was one more task competing with school, travel and family responsibilities, a Kerala schoolgirl began thinking about a surprisingly simple alternative to the washing machine she did not have. Remya, who was studying in the 10th standard, was already spending hours travelling to school each day and helping her twin…

He is 85, known as the father of sociobiology, has been at Harvard for 60 years, and has won a hundred scientific awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes. Yet what E.O. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, is focused on is a new conservation approach, a new ecological Grail which is a quest to refute conservation sceptics who…

For years, St. John’s wort was treated as a useful medicinal plant in parts of Europe. In northern California, its reputation became very different. The yellow-flowered weed spread across pasture and open land, reducing the value of grazing areas and creating another problem for livestock because animals that consumed enough of it could become dangerously…

Jung was a celebrated psychologist Two people can wake up from the exact same vivid, strange dream and treat it in completely different ways. One dismisses it within minutes, filing it away as random mental noise generated by an unremarkable night’s sleep, forgotten entirely by breakfast and never thought about again. The other sits with…

Image: Left/ESA/Right/Nasa One thing that characterises science in its early stages is the fact that it all starts with the desire to find out more about something that is yet unknown to people. As Edwin Hubble put it in one of his famous quotes, “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him…

When engineers lined canals across the dry American Southwest with concrete, they solved one problem while creating another. The hard surfaces helped stop precious water from disappearing into the soil, but they also stripped away the irregular edges, vegetation and sheltered spaces that aquatic life had used in the old earthen channels. Fish eventually returned,…

At 86, Mervin Raudabaugh had a decision to make over 261 acres of Pennsylvania farmland he had spent decades working. The land had caught the attention of data-centre developers, who reportedly put forward offers exceeding $15 million, including one estimate of about $60,000 an acre. On paper, it was the kind of figure that could…

​Representative Image of a male Burmese python moving through South Florida wetlands in search of females (AI-generated image Wildlife researchers in the Everglades are using one Burmese python to help find another. Scientists at the University of Florida are fitting captured snakes with small radio transmitters and releasing them back into the wild, then following…