Divya Gandhi-Frontline

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Among female faculty, surveys have found a decline in representation as their seniority grew.

Indian women enter STEM fields in record numbers. But why do they vanish from academic positions?

While India boasts of a 40 per cent enrolment of women in STEM fields, they make up only 16 per cent of faculty positions. What is pushing them out?

A toilet built as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission in Virhamatpur village, Uttar Pradesh, on April 7, 2018.

Why the Nature paper on Swachh Bharat Mission, lauded by Modi, should be read with caveats

The study links a decrease in infant deaths to the number of toilets constructed, but the correlation appears weak.

Polymetallic nodules, potato-sized metal-containing solids, found 13,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean. At depths of 13,000 feet, where sunlight cannot penetrate, these nodules are producing oxygen.

The ocean is pumping oxygen from its abyss

How is the deep seabed, containing no photosynthetic organisms, releasing oxygen?

On a hot summer afternoon in Prayagraj on June 10, when the country was in the grip of a heatwave, the longest ever to hit the country.

India’s record heatwave vows to return: Can we survive the next?

The country just emerged from the longest-ever heatwave in its recorded history, and the forecasts for the future are alarming. Action is overdue.

An Indian crow on a tree. In Mombasa, Kenya, these “invasive birds” have become a major environmental concern, prompting officials to plan the elimination of one million crows by year’s end.

Why Kenya plans to kill a million Indian crows

The invasive species feasts on local wildlife, snatches food from tourists, attacks chicks in poultry farms, and poses bird strike hazard at airports.

Digital aids are sweeping through a sleepless world.

ASMR lullabies: The double-edged sword of digital sleepscapes

Millions of people are now using digital aids to help manage a growing malaise: sleep disorders. But do they stand the test of scientific rigour?

A coursing cheetah and caracal in Rajasthan, by Kurt Boeck ca. 1890.

Caracal: The mystery cat

A redolently illustrated, rigorously scientific, and richly historical book tells the story of one of India’s most elusive cats.

Government school students get their share of eggs in their mid-day meal in Puducherry, July, 2016.

The great Indian protein inequality

Malnourished children deprived of eggs. Affluent adults guzzling protein powders. India’s dietary dilemma is one of supreme irony.

Scientist studied DNA samples of 281 German cockroaches from 17 countries, across all six human-inhabited continents.

Cockroach: How a reviled pest from India colonised the world

A new study deciphers the historical routes that the most common species of cockroach took from its origins in Asia.

Air pollution is a significant contributor to allergic conditions like asthma. In India, 37.9 million people—equal to more than half of the UK’s population—live with asthma.

Breathless in India: Are we staring at an allergy epidemic?

Food allergies are rare here, but respiratory allergies triggered by air pollution, sometimes proving fatal, have the nation scratching its head.

Marginlands captures Arati Kumar-Rao’s journey into the heart of landscapes that lie marginalised, and here, she immerses herself, and captures—through words, photographs, and sketches—the tenuous lives of people: people of the Thar desert, the mangroves of Sundarbans, the coastline of Kerala.

‘Our excesses are the root cause of destruction elsewhere’: Arati Kumar-Rao

The environmental photographer, writer, and artist’s book, Marginlands, brings us stories from the forgotten fringes of the subcontinent.

Alok Shukla helped mobilise Adivasi communities across Chhattisgarh under the “Save Hasdeo Aranya Resistance Committee”. This has saved 4,45,000 acres of forests from no less than 21 proposed coal mines.

‘The Hasdeo movement is a model of resistance’: Alok Shukla

The activist, who won the Goldman Environmental Prize for his campaign against coal mines, talks about the struggle of grassroots activists.

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