To understand an extensive, complex physical system, thinkers break it up into smaller components and try to understand the properties of the most minor microscopic components. This method helps us understand many complicated things around us, and has helped us solve a lot of real-world problems. But it does not help us understand certain phenomena, such as turbulence in fluids. A different way of thinking, a method that considers the physical system as a whole is needed in such cases. This method is called the multiscale analysis.

Humans communicate a lot non-verbally, thanks to the ability of our brain to understand tone. Would computers be able to do this? Currently capable of understanding plain text, they are struggling to learn the emotions behind the words, conveyed through tone. But these machines are catching up fast. Digital audio processing tools equip computers to understand various information in sound, including emotions.Prof Preeti Rao of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is an expert in sound processing—an approach that helps us do various useful things, one of which is removing unwanted sounds (or noise) from an audio clip. With her team at the Digital Audio Processing Lab, Prof Rao attempts to understand the nature of sound, reveal the information it may hold, and use it for, say, identifying tracks, melodies or the raga of a song.

Carbaryl is one of the commonly used pesticides for agricultural as well as non-agricultural use. But like any other insecticide, higher concentrations of Carbaryl in the soil can have adverse effects on humans and other organisms. The need to completely remove it from the environment or break it down into less harmful substances is of primary importance. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), and Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), Delhi, have achieved a significant breakthrough in identifying bacteria which can clean up this pesticide from the environment and understanding exactly how the breakdown occurs.

In a recent effort, researchers at IIT - Kanpur have worked on answering about the approaches to flatten the epidemic curve.

 The novel coronavirus — termed SARS-CoV-2 — belongs to a family of viruses that target and infect the upper respiratory tract of mammals. At least six types of coronaviruses are known to infect humans that cause common cold. Scientists have reported the existence of coronaviruses in bats and birds dating back to millions of years ago. They believe that the cross-species transmission is more of a recent event.

A ventilator can be a life-saver for patients whose lungs are damaged by the COVID-19 infection. But India, like all countries grappling with this pandemic, is likely to face a large shortage of ventilators. Manufacturers are unable to source key components such as sensors and flow controllers from abroad due to the current disruptions in global supply chains.To address this shortage, a team of engineers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is currently building a prototype of an electro-mechanical ventilator from scratch, using only components found or made in India, based on guidelines issued by the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. It is expected to be ready within the next couple of weeks.

According to the National Tiger Estimation survey, the number of tigers has surged to 2967, indicating a doubling of tiger numbers since the first survey conducted in 2006 under a revised monitoring methodology. Although this change may sound exciting to the layperson, some scientists have flagged concerns about accepting these claimed changes in tiger numbers. In a recent study, published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, researchers from India and Norway refer to important mathematical, statistical and ecological principles and highlight how India’s tiger survey results deviate from these principles.

As COVID-19 pandemic marches on in India with over 800 positive cases and 19 deaths at the time of this article, there is an urgent need for deploying out-of-the-box innovations that can help curb this menace.

Researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai have discovered that tiny RNAs, called microRNAs, help our cells to maintain an equilibrium of energy production during states of upheaval—fasting and feasting.

In 2008, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced Aditya-1, India's first solar mission to study the Sun. This ambitious endeavour, with various indigenously-developed instruments onboard, holds much promise for our scientific community as they expect to unravel the mysteries of our closest star, the Sun. Now renamed as Aditya L1, the data from the instruments onboard are expected to be a treasure-trove of information on the dynamic processes on the Sun's surface and its atmosphere.