Delhi’s winter haze is infamous for disrupting the air, railway and road traffic. With visibility dropping to near zero on a few days, life-threatening accidents spike during this season. Animals, on the other hand, seem to have a trick up their sleeves—they use sounds or visual cues to help them ‘see’ through low-visibility conditions. But what about fish? Can they navigate through turbid waters? Indeed, says a study by researchers at two Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), Mohali and Kolkata. The researchers have shown, for the first time, how zebrafish find food in turbid waters.

In a study published in the journal The Lancet Oncology, the researchers collected and analyzed data from various published reports such as the Global WHO FCTC Implementation Progress Reports of 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, WHO reports on global tobacco epidemic 2013, 2015 and 2017, Global Tobacco Surveillance System Data and the WHO-NCI Monograph. They examined the prevalence, trends and policy progress in smokeless tobacco control on the lines of the WHO FCTC guidelines.

Researchers from IIT Bombay and Archaeological Survey of India, Aurangabad studied soil from the Lonar lake and found that the materials from the meteor had a significant impact on the native soil.

Pune researchers take a molecular modelling approach to identify drug targets for the deadly Nipah virus.

The Centre for Human Genetics, Bengaluru, is hosting the second edition of the Indo-Swiss Meeting Meeting on Evolutionary Biology, held in India this year. The meeting is jointly organised by the Indian Society of Evolutionary Biologists, Centre for Human Genetics, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and Swissnex India. The gathering brings together faculty and students from India and Switzerland. The three day meeting begins on the 12th of December and continues until the 14th.

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The virus spreads through blood-to-blood contact, and is usually associated with the use of intravenous drug use, blood donations and other unhygienic use of medical equipment leading to exchange of blood. Once infected, a patient can go years without facing severe symptoms, like liver failure and cirrhosis, only to feel it’s accumulated effects after a long period.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder where the body does not produce or effectively use the hormone insulin, resulting in elevated levels of glucose in the blood. Monitoring the amount of blood glucose can aid effective diagnosis, treatment, and access to quality healthcare management to diabetic patients. One of the ways to monitor blood glucose is through commercially available biosensors. Although such a test can be done at home at any time, there is a growing need to have pain-free alternatives. Hence, researchers are exploring glucose biosensors that do not need so much blood and are reliable, accurate, biodegradable, biocompatible and user-friendly. In a recent study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the Indian Institutes of Technology Indore and Bombay, have developed one such sensor.

Hypertension is the most prevalent chronic ailment in India. According to the National Health Profile (NHP) 2019 data, of all the patients who visited government clinics in 2018, 6.19% of the people were diagnosed with hypertension. It is higher than the people diagnosed with diabetes, the next prevalent chronic disease in India, which accounts for 4.75%. However, the numbers could be an underestimation, since the NHP does not assess people who visit the private clinics.

Researchers from IIT Bombay, Microsoft India and Google Inc, develop a search system to extract meaningful data from live social media posts

Dr Neena Gupta, Associate Professor at the Theoretical Statistics and Mathematics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize 2019, in the field of Mathematical Sciences. This prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the country for research in Science, honours scientists for significant and cumulative contribution to their area of research. Dr Gupta, the youngest person in Mathematical Sciences to receive this award till date, has been recognised for her contributions to affine algebraic geometry, especially in proposing a solution to the Zariski Cancellation Problem.