One of the annoying side effects of being absorbed in a gripping novel is that the cup of tea on the table becomes cold! Unfortunately, the tea would not heat itself by absorbing the heat around it, just as pieces of a broken egg would not put themselves together or milk mixed in coffee would not separate by itself. Such things are irreversible, and define a fixed direction of time—that from the past towards the future. This apparent progression of time is called the ‘arrow of time’. In a recent study, Prof Mahendra Verma of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, suggests a way, different from any previous ones,  to determine the direction in which time is progressing. He uses the concept of energy cascade to define the arrow of time.

A specimen of a cuckoo bee  lay in a museum in Austria for decades before Dr Petr Bugosch took a look at it and described it as a new species, Epeolus ladakhensis. 

Researchers from the University of Toronto, Canada, King George’s Medical University, Lucknow, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, and the Indian Council of Medical Research have analysed the impact of the national measles immunisation campaign in India.

The leading cause of death in the world is not wars or famines but cardiovascular diseases, and worse still, we haven't fully understood what causes these ailments. Researchers believe it to be a mix of genetic factors, lifestyle changes, diet and environmental factors like air pollution, noise and our neighbourhood. In recent years, cases of high blood pressure and hypertension, which directly contribute to heart diseases, have increased, and those living in low and middle-income countries are the most vulnerable.  A recent study, published in the journal Epidemiology, aims to examine the associations between long-term exposure to ambient particulate air pollution, and prevalence of hypertension in adults from peri-urban India. 

In a recent study, researchers from the Bangalore Baptist Hospital, Bengaluru, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands and the University of Sheffield, UK, have attempted to find what ailments plagued the residents of Devarajeevanahalli.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) and the University of Birmingham, UK hope to better understand urinary incontinence and possible interventions for those suffering from this condition.

In a recent study, published in the journal Current Science, researchers from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, South Asian University, New Delhi, and Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany, have studied how much attention Indian research gets on social media.

Human decision-making is critical to voluntary vaccination programs. In a recent study, published in PLoS Computational Biology, researchers from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, have modelled the outcomes of such programs using game theory. Game theory is a branch of mathematics that studies how agents in an interaction make strategic decisions.

An Indian scientific conference pressed for progress towards gender equity in science. The recommendations, which emerged from the discussions, have been forwarded to the Department of Science, Government of India.

Researchers from IIT Bombay and CSIR-NCL show how gold-liposome nanohybrids can kill cancer cells.