A team of the local Idu Mishmi people led by Dr Sahil Nijhawan from ZSL and UCL, placed cameras in the jungles of Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh to understand the distribution of medium and large-sized mammals. Among the images, they found many pictures of differently coloured, medium sized cats—all of which were Asiatic golden cats. The study also marks the first discovery of the tightly-rosetted morph of the golden cats in the world.

Among the illustrious list of Padma awardees for 2020 on the eve of Republic Day, the Government of India has announced Padma Shri to Prof. Kattungal Subramaniam Manilal under Science and Engineering category. He is among the eight of 118 Padma Shri awardees under the Science and Engineering category.

Prof Subimal Ghosh, Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2019 by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This award recognises his significant contributions to our understanding of how land surface processes influence the Indian monsoon, as well as for improving regional monsoon simulations and predictions. 

Researchers from Canada, Bangladesh, and the USA have proposed a simple, cost-efficient blood test of the newborn that can estimate the pregnancy length. Such a test can help diagnosis preterm births in low resource countries and was found to work successfully for new-borns from Bangladesh.

How many bird calls can you recognise? Crows and pigeons, for sure! But have you ever come across an app that can recognise bird calls for you? With apps like eBird and India Biodiversity Portal, identifying and collecting data has become an activity that not just researchers can take part in. Rather, these technological advancements provide a push to scientific research as a whole! A mini-symposium was organised in IISER Mohali to discuss just that.

In an event today, Prof. K VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, launched a national program to foster cross-disciplinary leadership in India. Named the EChO Network, it focuses on increasing research, knowledge, and awareness of Indian ecology and the environment. It is hoped that this program would develop a national network to catalyse a new generation of Indians who can solve real-world problems in medicine, agriculture, ecology, and technology.

Southern India, now battered with the scorching heat, is awaiting the monsoon showers that bring some respite during the month of June. It looks like the wait would not be too long and well worth it. In a press release issued today, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has announced that the southwest monsoon rainfall over the country, on the whole, is likely to be normal.

The Centre for Human Genetics, Bengaluru, is hosting the second edition of the Indo-Swiss Meeting Meeting on Evolutionary Biology, held in India this year. The meeting is jointly organised by the Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists, Centre for Human Genetics, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and Swissnex India. The gathering brings together faculty and students from India and Switzerland. The three day meeting begins on the 12th of December and continues until the 14th.

Dr Neena Gupta, Associate Professor at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2019, in the field of Mathematical Sciences. This prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the country for research in Science, honours scientists for significant and cumulative contribution to their area of research. Dr Gupta, the youngest person in Mathematical Sciences to receive this award till date, has been recognised for her contributions to affine algebraic geometry, especially in proposing a solution to the Zariski Cancellation Problem.

Lectures on Probability and Stochastic processes (LPS), an annual workshop for early-career young researchers in India, begins in the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Delhi today. The workshop, in its fourteenth year, focuses on the latest advancements in the field of Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes. Held between the 2nd of December to the 6th of December, 2019, the workshop has mini-courses and invited talks, and provides ample networking opportunities for those interested in this field of mathematics.