The Northern Limit of Monsoon continues to pass through 22°N/60°E, 22°N/65°E, Jamnagar, Udaipur, Ajmer, Jhunjhunu, Hisar, Bhatinda and 32.5°N/70°E as on 05th July.
Conditions are favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon into some more parts of North Arabian Sea, Gujarat, remaining parts of Haryana & Punjab, and some more parts of Rajasthan during next 3 days.
Is it just me, or has the Indian protein market evolved way past simple muscle recovery? A couple of years ago, choosing a protein powder just meant picking between whey or plant isolate and choosing a flavor.
Now, almost every new-age D2C brand seems to be launching "functional" or "fortified" blends targeted at specific health goals.
Instead of just selling macros, brands are essentially merging supplements. For instance:
- OWN: Focuses on daily micronutrient gaps, fortifying their protein with things like Vitamin D3 and B12 to tackle general deficiencies.
- The Basics Woman: Targets female-centric wellness by blending their plant bases with Calcium, Selenium, and adaptogenic herbs like Shatavari.
- SUPR: Focuses heavily on the hormonal and gut health angle, adding Inositol and Psyllium husk directly into the powder to target insulin stability and digestion.
On one hand, it's super convenient, especially if you suffer from pill fatigue and hate taking five different vitamins, fiber supplements, or herbs separately every morning. On the other hand, it makes you wonder if we're actually getting therapeutic/clean dosages of these ingredients, or if it's just a clever way to stand out in a hyper-crowded market.
What’s your take on this shift? Do you prefer buying raw, unflavored protein and adding your own supplements, or are you leaning toward these all-in-one functional blends?
[P.S: the image has no relevance, I'm a protein connoisseur constantly following and trying different things in the market, tried this one from happy cultures today and it was decent :) ]
Honeybee queens facing ongoing pesticide exposure quietly unload that contamination into the eggs they lay, according to a study published this week in the journal Current Biology, led by researchers at UC Davis using radioactive tracing to follow the chemicals at the atomic level.
The behavior, which researchers are calling maternal offloading, had never been documented in honeybees before. Sascha Nicklisch, the study's senior author and an associate professor in UC Davis's Department of Environmental Toxicology, said that no one had shown this happening in bees until now.
Researchers also found a kind of dilution effect. Queens who laid more eggs spread their chemical burden across a bigger batch, which meant each individual egg carried less contamination. Queens laying fewer eggs concentrated more of the pesticide into each one. Nicklisch pointed out that the queen is the only bee in the colony capable of producing the next generation of workers, which is exactly why her exposure levels, and what she passes down, matter so much for the hive's survival.
The research pulled together expertise from the USDA, which brought decades of honeybee biology knowledge, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which supplied a technique called biological accelerator mass spectrometry, or BioAMS. That method let the team trace radioactively tagged pesticide molecules at extremely low concentrations, low enough to reflect real-world exposure levels rather than a lab-only worst-case dose. Bruce Buchholz, an LLNL scientist and co-author on the paper, noted that the doses used weren't lethal and were meant to mirror what bees actually encounter outside a lab.
The study looked beyond the standard focus on individual worker bees and instead mapped where chemicals ended up across the whole colony, tracking the queen's body, her ovaries, developing eggs and even the wax.
I would also like to bust some myth related to Heatwaves
Stay safe, stay hydrated, and keep cool. The good news is that weather models indicate this heatwave is expected to subside starting July 1st as the atmospheric pressure systems finally begin to shift. Though predictions are subject to change so stay tuned with your local weathermen.
Says in India, Art Deco is architecture of the common man (as compared to displays of power in America) vs. neo-Gothic/neo-Classical structures
Also says that the rise of gated communities, the lack of integration with Navi Mumbai is hurting Mumbai's growth. Explains why it's impossible for India to create it's own national architectural style
Thoughts?
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, on Tuesday, said the sighting of a juvenile gharial in the Kekaidong River in West Karbi Anglong is a significant indicator of the state's improving ecological health, describing it as evidence of the steady revival of Assam's natural ecosystems.
The sighting assumes added significance as it comes less than two months after another gharial, a critically endangered crocodilian species once believed to have disappeared from Assam, was spotted in the Burapahar range of Kaziranga National Park.
"Healthy rivers tell their own story. The sighting of a juvenile Gharial in the Kekaidong River, West Karbi Anglong, reflects the steady revival of Assam's natural ecosystems," Sarma said in a social media post.
"It encourages us to remain steadfast in protecting the rich biodiversity that defines our state," he added.
India was officially declared polio-free on 27 March 2014. The World Health Organisation (WHO) issued this certification after the entire South-East Asia Region maintained a zero-case status for three consecutive years. However, mass immunisation remains vital to sustain India's polio-free status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio
IBS is a chronic disorder, which involves the way the digestive system works, without any apparent structural damage to the intestines. Typical symptoms of IBS include abdominal pain, bloating, excess gas, constipation, diarrhoea or a combination of both. It's not fatal but it can impact a person's quality of life, impacting work, sleep, social interactions and emotional wellbeing.
Female reproductive hormones play a significant role in the increased incidence of IBS among women, and one of the most compelling explanations is that these hormones can trigger IBS symptoms. Oestrogen and progesterone have a significant influence on a number of functions in the body, including digestion. These hormones can impact the rate at which food passes through the intestines, change the sensitivity of the bowel, and impact the brain's processing of pain signals.
The skeletal remains at Roopkund, located in the Himalayan region, have been puzzling archaeologists and visitors for many years now. Previous theories about their origins assumed that all the skeletons came from one fatal event; however, the landscape of the site left plenty of room for speculation. The bones were scattered randomly and lacked the characteristics of a regular grave site, leaving plenty of space for conjecture. Roopkund became an unusual case of archaeological inquiry because its physical layout was clear, even as its human history remained unknown. According to a study published in the Nature Communications journal, the researchers decided to go straight to the source and use the samples from the bones in order to unravel the mystery behind the bones.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11357-9
https://www.shh.mpg.de/1824772/roopkund-lake-analysis-makes-nature-communications-top-25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roopkund
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210705-the-unsolved-mystery-of-skeleton-lake
In a major breakthrough, doctors at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) have successfully performed a blood-filtering procedure to wash harmful, bad cholesterol directly out of a patient’s blood, significantly reducing her future cardiac risk.
The advanced procedure, known as LDL apheresis, acts like a filter to clear out dangerous fats that regular medications fail to control, making SCTIMST one of the few select centres in India to offer the therapy. The landmark procedure was conducted on a 34-year-old woman suffering from Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic condition that causes extremely high cholesterol levels from a young age.
The patient already had severe premature coronary artery disease and had undergone a coronary artery bypass surgery at a young age of 24. Despite taking the maximum tolerable doses of multiple cholesterol-lowering medications, her low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or bad cholesterol’ levels remained dangerously high at 500mg, showing limited improvement.
During the three-hour procedure, blood was drawn from the patient and passed through an apheresis machine to separate the plasma from the blood cells.
This plasma was then directed through a specialised adsorption column that trapped the LDL cholesterol before the treated plasma was recombined with the blood cells and safely returned to the patient. The process successfully brought the patient’s LDL level down from 500mg to an optimal 40mg.
Dr Harikrishnan S, head of cardiology at SCTIMST, explained that this is a specialised treatment for a rare disease affecting a few families under their care, some of whom had previously lost members because conventional medicines could not lower their abnormally high cholesterol.
In the 1930s, under Mussolini's fascist regime, Italy launched a sweeping reforestation drive across the northern Alps. The goal was to practically prevent soil erosion, secure timber, and project an image of national productivity. The chosen tree was Norway spruce (Picea abies), a fast-growing conifer prized for its straight trunk and reliable wood yield. Thousands of hectares of meadows and native forest were cleared to make way for these dense, uniform plantations. It seemed, at the time, like a reasonable solution to a real problem. Nearly a century later, a new study published in the journal Ecosystems has measured what that decision actually cost, and the numbers are striking. Plant diversity in these spruce monocultures is more than 50% lower than in native forests, and nearly 75% lower than in the region's natural grasslands.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10021-026-01048-0
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Dalton said atoms were indivisible.
Thomson discovered electrons and shattered that idea.
Rutherford fired alpha particles and exposed the atom's hidden nucleus.
Bohr gave electrons their quantized orbits.
Then came Heisenberg.
Not with a better picture of the atom-but with a revolutionary truth:
You can never know everything about a particle at once.
The more precisely you know its position, the less precisely you know its momentum.
Physics didn't just update the model of the atom.
It changed what humanity thought it could know about reality itself.
The first weeks after a baby comes into the world are critical for growth, development and overall health. This is when a baby's body and brain grow quickly, and parents get used to having a baby. For many families, one of the major choices they must make is how to provide for their baby's needs when it comes to feeding. Although breastfeeding is recommended as the best source of nutrition, it is also important to know that infant formula can provide a safe, nutritionally complete alternative when breastfeeding is not an option.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) advise exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life as far as possible. Breast milk is specifically formulated to provide the infant with the nutrition he or she needs and contains a mixture of nutrients that can never be duplicated.
https://www.who.int/health-topics/breastfeeding#tab=tab\_1
Tamil Nadu is set to deploy India’s first 3D-printed artificial reef modules in coastal waters as part of an ambitious marine habitat restoration initiative under the second phase of the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana. Scheduled off the Ramanathapuram coast on Sunday, it will serve as a pilot to assess the performance of six newly developed reef designs created through advanced 3D-printing technology.
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The modules, each weighing about 1 tonne, were developed by Chennai-based startup Tvasta, an IIT Madras-incubated company, in collaboration with Visakhapatnam Regional Centre of the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, led by principal scientist and head Dr Joe K Kizhakudan.
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Unlike conventional artificial reefs made from reinforced concrete structures, the new modules feature complex geometries with multiple crevices, folds and attachment surfaces designed to enhance biodiversity. They are manufactured without iron reinforcement and incorporate material innovations aimed at increasing porosity and creating substrates more suitable for marine organisms, including corals, sponges and other reef-associated fauna. These modules will be deployed about two nautical miles offshore.
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“The objective so far has been fish habitat restoration and strengthening the resilience of coastal communities. These new-generation modules provide immense possibilities because they allow greater structural complexity, higher surface area, and species-specific habitat design,” Dr Kizhakudan told TNIE. He pointed out that the technology offers significant advantages over traditional reef modules, including faster fabrication, reduced labour requirements and flexibility to alter material composition according to site-specific ecological needs.
The Oriental pied hornbill is not native to Delhi. It is largely a Terai and Himalayan foothill species, with historical records noting only scattered sightings in the 1940s and early 1970s. After decades of silence, isolated reports began surfacing again after 2013. According to birder Sudhir Vyas, these birds may be long-lived escapees from captivity or wandering vagrants that have dispersed unusually far south into the Indo-Gangetic plains.
Delhi now appears to have at least two — both believed to be females. One is frequently spotted around Jamia Millia Islamia; the other has transfixed birders at Lodhi Garden.
On Friday morning, observers watched the female pied hornbill arrive repeatedly at the nest cavity, regurgitating berries and fruit into the narrow slit. Two beaks emerged from inside to accept the food. Moments later, the resident male grey hornbill would arrive and feed the chicks in turn. The coexistence was not always peaceful: during one feeding round, the pied hornbill aggressively chased the male grey hornbill around the tree before returning to the nest herself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornbill
Your heart may be older than you think, say doctors, warning that as obesity rates rise in India, many people may have a 'cardiac age' significantly older than their actual age, raising the risk of cardiovascular disease much earlier than expected.
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The concern comes in the wake of findings from the National Family Health Survey-6 (NFHS-6), which showed a sharp increase in obesity among Indian adults.
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The survey found that 30.7 per cent of women aged 15-49 years were overweight or obese in 2023-24, up from 24 per cent in NFHS-5 (2019-21), while the proportion among men rose from 22.9 per cent to 27.3 per cent.
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https://www.nfhsiips.in/nfhsuser/index.php
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https://www.who.int/india/health-topics/cardiovascular-diseases
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https://world-heart-federation.org/world-heart-observatory/countries/india/
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https://www.fortishealthcare.com/blogs/overview-cardiovascular-health-india
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When a group of researchers repeatedly heard from local fishermen about a distinctive dark-coloured fish in the middle stretches of the Cauvery River near Shivanasamudra and nearby regions in Karnataka, they were intrigued.
Initially, the fishermen considered the fish, ‘Kaage Meenu’, to be a local carp. However, its unusual blackish colouration and distinct body features immediately attracted the researchers’ attention, as it did not closely resemble the commonly known Labeo nigrescens species from the Cauvery system.
The fishermen helped the team obtain specimens from their catches, which led to the fish being identified as a new species — the Labeo kaage, previously unknown to science.
Researchers Rahul G Kumar, Charan Ravi, Krishnaprasoon NP and VS Basheer were involved in the discovery of the fish, and their findings were accepted and published in the Journal of Fish Biology on 26 March 2026.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jfb.70446
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeo
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/labeo