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.

In a recent study, researchers have described how chickpea evades blight infection, thus paving the way to develop a blight-tolerant mustard variety.

In this episode of The Joy of Science, Shambhavi Chidambaram speaks to Professor Shravan Vasishth, an Indian-origin professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In addition to his research, Prof Vasishth is an author of two interesting blogs—“Shravan Vasishth’s Slog”, where he talks about statistics, and “Things People Say”, a moving personal blog about his experiences of dealing with kidney failure and hemodialysis, and navigating the German health care system. 

A new study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, shows that dogs too have developed strategies to coexist with humans, and numbers play a role in it.