This week, from the 10th to the 16th of March, is observed as the World Glaucoma Week globally, to spread awareness of glaucoma—a group of eye conditions that damage the optic nerve and lead to total blindness if left untreated. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world accounting for upto 8% of total blindness.

Researchers from the USA, Australia and Canada identified some of the ‘hotspots’ and ‘coolspots’ of human activities in the world and analysed the impact of these activities on threatened and near-threatened wildlife.

Today’s world has more adolescents—children in the age group of 10-24 years—than ever in history. Of the 1.8 billion adolescents, a third of them, or 622 million, live in India and China. With this fraction of people growing up to be future citizens, are we doing enough to have their needs met? No, says a worldwide study on adolescent health and well-being, published in The Lancet.

Researchers from the International Food Policy Research Institute, University of Washington, USA, and Oklahoma State University, USA, have reported the economic losses and associated health risk caused by stubble burning in some parts of north India. 

An international collaboration of researchers, including two from IISc Bengaluru, have described a new starry frog Astrobatrachus kurichiyana from the Western Ghats.

An international team of researchers from India, Spain, Nepal, Myanmar, Italy and Germany have examined how climate change and human activities are affect the distribution of the Asian elephants in India and Nepal.

Moved by the cries of a friend during her semester exams due to period cramps, two undergraduate students from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) decided to put an end to this suffering with a unique innovation— Sanfe Period Pain Relief Roll On. Launched today on International Women’s Day, it is a natural, oil-based formulation to relieve menstrual cramps in women.

In a press interaction held at Vignan Bhavan, New Delhi, on the 6th of March, 2019, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Prof K. VijayRaghavan, shared details of the nine new science and technology missions with a focus on ‘Science for People and People for Science’. These missions, guided by the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC), aims to promote research for the benefit of the society.

Researchers from Biodiversity International and collaborators from Norway, Nicaragua, Italy, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Germany, and India have described how participation of farmers as citizen scientists can help to address this challenge.

In the recently announced AYUSH awards presented by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), an autonomous body of the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy), a research group from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has won two top prestigious awards.