Movie buffs and science aficionados are gearing up for the third Science Film Festival of India (SFFI) organized by Vijnana Bharati along with Vidnyan Parishad, Goa. The four day festival will kick off on the 16th of January 2018 in Panaji, Goa, and will feature movie screenings, workshops, exhibitions and competitions showcasing science and technology.

How do insects find partners of their species to mate with in vast fields and forests? Recent research from scientists at the University of Exeter and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have shown how sounds acts as a barrier between interbreeding among different species.

Footprints are the physical evidence of someone’s presence at a particular location. One such footprint is the carbon footprint; a unique and disastrous footprint left by us humans on Earth! It is expressed as the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂), generated as a consequence of our activities on Earth’s ecological surroundings. Estimating the carbon footprint of an individual is a tricky business. Traditionally, sum of all the possible emissions from various activities in one’s life is used to calculate one’s carbon footprint.

Scientists from Indian Institute of Khragpur (IIT KGP) have developed a novel method to estimate the biomass and pigment concentration of algae, without ever having to touch or disturb the organism, which could help algae using industries, like pharmaceutical and food industries, with quick tests of their yield.

Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur have developed a model to select the ideal combinations of temperature and pressure conditions to inactivate fruit-degrading enzymes during the processing of mango pulp.

Around 500 all weather roads, listed in the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana’s (PMGSY) monitoring data as being ‘complete’, and has been paid for, have never been built in reality, finds a new study. This study, by researchers from the Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, and the Paris School of Economics, Paris, France, has suggested that political corruption, and not a lack of resources as thought, is the main reason for the lack of roads connecting remote areas in India.

The Himalayas are home  to a host of biodiversity which has yet to be studied in detail. Taking the first steps to better understand a species of song birds scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Cornell University explore if the sex of Green-backed tits can be identified by looking at the size of the beak and the thickness of the breast stripe.

Dr. Vivek Nityananda, a research associate from the Newcastle University presented a lecture titled, “Stereovision and prey detection in the praying mantis”, on the 10th of January 2018 at the Indian Institute of Science. An alumnus of the Center for Ecological Sciences at IISc, Dr. Nityananda was introduced to the audience by his doctoral guide, Prof. Rohini Balakrishnan. The research that he presented to the audience was conducted at the Newcastle University, UK, conducted as a part of research undertaken by Prof.

The National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, along with the National Innovation Foundation-India (NIF), Gandhinagar, the Trans Disciplinary University (TDU), Bengaluru, and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Rural Energy and Development (MGIRED), Bengaluru, are organizing the first edition of the ‘Annual School for Grassroots Innovations’ -- a programme that brings together scientists, students, innovators and industry representatives to find solutions to local problems and promote sustainable development.

Scientists from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, find a way to convert undesirable heat energy from electronic devices to electricity and reconverting this into electricity using the concept of thermoelectric effect - a physical phenomenon where a difference in the temperature between two contacts leads to a difference in the voltage, and hence flow of electricity.