Research Matters

Study shows how paper wasps use the space in their nests to feed their larvae and fend off diseases.

Study explores the factors behind missing women in India’s healthcare.

Among the various types of cancer, Urothelial Bladder Cancer (UBC) is responsible for around 2 lakh deaths per year around the world. This cancer affects the inner lining of the bladder and is the most common form of bladder cancer. It usually affects aged individuals, with blood in urine and painful urination as the first sign of its manifestation. Conventional methods of treatment involve surgical removal of cancerous tissue in the bladder and chemotherapy.

In a study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Rupnagar, have explored how prey is caught and retained by a healthy spider web when compared with a damaged one. The study, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, was featured under the theme 'Bioinspired materials and surfaces for green science and technology'. The researchers studied the webs of St Andrew's Cross spider (Argiope aetherea), which builds orb-webs and belongs to the Araneidae family.

The Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists (ISEB), an independent consortium of researchers and faculty working on evolutionary biology in India, is holding its first conference on the 24th and 25th of October, 2019, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru. The two-day meeting is themed around ‘Celebrating Ecology and Evolution in India’. It is bringing together eminent researchers and students across the country, who are actively involved in research on evolutionary biology.

In a new study, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, and the Pennsylvania State University and Colorado State University in the USA, have studied how flies land on ceilings. The researchers have also explored how the fly’s brain integrates visual and balance-related inputs from the surroundings to generate appropriate movement in the wings and legs to achieve a perfect landing.

In a recent study, researchers from Agharkar Research Institute, India, Harbin Normal University, China and the University of Colorado, USA, have described a new genus of diatoms called Kulikovskiyia. Diatoms belonging to this genus are currently found only in the Western Ghats of India and Hainan Province of China. The study, funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board, was published in the journal Phycological Research.

The use of vaccination for preventing diseases has had the most profound effect on human health and quality of life. Despite this, anti-vaccination movements are gaining popularity in recent years, especially in high income countries with historically near universal vaccine coverage, like the USA. Consequently, cases of diseases like measles have seen a 30% rise globally. Vaccine hesitancy has been declared one of the top ten threats to global health by the WHO in 2019. In times like these, what if science showed some added benefits of vaccination besides the obvious? A recent set of studies by a team of international researchers, led by those at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP), Washington DC and New Delhi, have shown that vaccines can have other unintentional positive effects.

Prof Bhaskaran Muralidharan and Dr Alestin Mawrie of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay have researched a specific category of two-dimensional nanomaterials, called semi-Dirac materials. Their theoretical studies show that it is possible to engineer semi-Dirac materials to make optical filters and efficient thermoelectric nanodevices.

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.