R Ramachandran-Frontline

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MRI images of the brain: With ageing, some parts of the brain degenerate at the same time with other regions, while other parts do so independently.

AI spots five ways your grey matter goes grey; CERN’s search for new physics; Oxygen gives 2D materials a glow-up

Brains, beams, bright materials, and more in this edition of Science Notebook.

R. Ramachandran

A bed of manganese nodules from deep offshore of the Cook Islands taken during a Japanese research cruise in 2000. The nodules range in size from about 2 cm to 10 cm across.

Ocean floor breathes oxygen; Superconductors leap forward; Hepatitis C meets its DIY match

Seabed minerals produce ‘dark oxygen’; High-temp wires break records; and WHO approves first hep C self-test kit in this edition of Science Notebook.

R. Ramachandran

The victorious Team India at IMO 2024 with the accompanying Deputy Leader Rijul Saini, Short Term Visitor at HBCSE (extreme right) and Observer Mainak Ghosh, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru (extreme left).

Youngsters do India proud at IMO 2024, pure sulphur found on Mars, and a blood test to detect cancer

India has its best outing yet at a maths olympiad; NASA’s Mars rover finds elemental sulphur on Mars; at last, a non-invasive test to detect cancer.

R. Ramachandran

The likely location of an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the Omega Centauri star cluster.

Omega Centauri’s black hole, record-energy neutrino, and GaN semiconductors for nuclear reactors

Evidence for central black hole in Omega Centauri; undersea telescope spots most energetic neutrino; GaN semiconductors to monitor nuclear reactors.

R. Ramachandran

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer perched atop the International Space Station, on the left.

China bags moon dust from far side, top quark tips the scales, and the cosmic deuteron puzzle

Chang’e-6 mission brings home 2kg of lunar secrets; CERN teams up to nail down elusive particle’s mass; and how Deuterons defy expectations.

R. Ramachandran

The proposed site of CERN’s new underground particle collider, the Future Circular Collider FCC, overlaid on the existing LHC at CERN.

CERN’s funds crunch, new tech for nuclear fuel, and airborne pathogens get a new name

A new particle collider needs funds, a more efficient way to process irradiated nuclear fuel, and agreement on a common term for pathogens.

R. Ramachandran

This illustration lays a depiction of the sun’s magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The complex overlay of lines shows the ways the sun’s magnetism changes in response to the constant movement on and inside the sun.

A 400-year-old solar mystery, mass-producing recombinant proteins, and safer X-rays

Solving a puzzle Galileo struggled with, using MSG and ethanol to produce recombinant proteins, and a step closer to gentler medical imaging.

R. Ramachandran

Rings of a redwood tree in California. Tree rings contain annually resolved and absolutely dated information about past summer temperatures.

Why 2023 was the hottest summer yet, and a way to improve lithium-ion batteries

With the help of tree-ring data, scientists have found summer 2023 was the hottest thus far. Researchers have developed a new electrolyte that improve

R. Ramachandran

A Petri dish containing Salmonella bacteria.

Vampire bacteria, Tarapur reactor renewal, and uncovering Fermi’s exotic particle prophecy

How some bacteria are attracted to blood; why scientists are extending life of Tarapur nuclear plant; and how a 1949 prediction is proven true now.

R. Ramachandran

An illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed at the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

NASA Mars Sample Return mission to take longer than anticipated

CERN measures width of the W boson at the Large Hadron Collider, and scientists use spectroscopy to differentiate between space junk and asteroids.

R. Ramachandran

The rod-shaped Oscillibacter species bacteria take up fluorescently labelled cholesterol (shown here in green).

Cholesterol-chomping gut bacteria can reduce risk of heart attack

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument experiment has provided the largest and the most precise 3D map of the universe to date.

R. Ramachandran

Brain neurons. Researchers found that during sleep neurons drive cleaning efforts by firing electrical signals in a coordinated fashion to generate rhythmic waves in the brain.

While you are asleep, your brain flushes out waste

Cash-strapped NASA may gradually shut down Chandra Observatory and researchers developed a device which produces high-intensity radiation.

R. Ramachandran

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