Tuberculosis, caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is a leading cause of death worldwide. In 2017 alone, 10 million people across the globe were affected by the disease, and about 1.6 million succumbed to it.

Researchers suggest an experiment to understand when and how cloning can happen in nature.

Vast swathes of forests in many countries are being converted into agricultural lands to meet the ever-increasing food demand. India has increased its croplands by 56% from 1880 to 2010 while losing a whopping 26 million hectares of forest land during the same period.

As winter sets in over Punjab, one can hear the humdrum of hundreds of machines harvesting rice across lakhs of hectares of paddy fields. In Maharashtra, villages in Vidarbha lug their snowy cotton harvest to the market. Years ago, these landscapes were a sprawling array of forests, grasslands, wetlands and multiple crops cultivated on a shifting basis.

In a recent study, researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and Christian Medical College, Vellore, have developed a novel, inexpensive and easy-to-use device to detect tuberculosis.

A study published in the journal Scientific Reports probes the evolutionary relationship between cheetahs.

Obesity has become a global concern over the last four decades as the number of obese and overweight individuals has tripled since 1975. In 2016, about one in five children across the world, aged 5-19 years, were overweight or obese and half of them lived in Asia. The obesity epidemic, which was once prevalent in high-income, developed countries, has today soared in low- and middle-income economies, particularly in cities. A similar trend is observed in the case of hypertension—a major risk of obesity. In India, many studies have assessed the prevalence of obesity and hypertension and the correlation between them. However, recent data on this, particularly regarding children and adolescents from urban and rural areas, is scarcely available. Now, a recent study by researchers from India and the UK, published in the journal BMJ Open, provides some insights into the current prevalence rates for obesity and hypertension among adolescents in Northern India.

A new study from researchers at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), Faridabad, has decoded the bacterial species found in the vagina of pregnant Indian women by using advanced gene sequencing technology called Shotgun sequencing.

India is ageing. Approximately 104 million Indians are above sixty and vulnerable to cognitive disorders affecting memory, such as dementia. Despite this impending future, we haven't been able to assess the current prevalence of such illnesses in the country. It is partly due to the geographical and cultural vastness of India, and the barriers of language and ethics prohibit the use of tests used in western countries. Now, a new study is trying to close this gap by introducing a psychological test that is adapted to the cultural and linguistic diversity of India.

Building on their previous research, researchers at Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai have tried to find out the root cause of sepsis in a recent study. So far, most drugs treat the symptoms of sepsis, such as inflammation, rather than its causes. In this study, the researchers find that broken pieces of chromosomes could trigger sepsis. The results of the study are published in the journal PLoS ONE.