Coconut Husk. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Royal Society of Chemistry(RSC) Advances published a study which found that green coconut husk waste could remove 95.5% of Congo red dye from water within 80 minutes. The researchers modified the coconut-derived lignin by adding nitrogen-containing groups, creating what they called aminated lignin. Under the best conditions tested, only…
A diver in a kelp forest off the coast of California. Image Credit: Ed Bierman/Wikipedia A school-led restoration project in Orange County, California, has helped bring back kelp forests while turning thousands of students into active participants in marine conservation. Since 2009, the organisation ‘Get Inspired’ has involved schools and volunteer scuba divers in efforts…
In an experiment, scientists shook living earthworms at high frequencies to see how their flexible bodies responded to vibration. What they found was unexpected: the worms developed waves that oscillated at half the frequency of the force driving them. According to the 2019 study published in Nature, titled ‘Excitation of Faraday-like body waves in vibrated…
A feral goat. Image Credit: Scott Bauer/Wikimedia commons The introduction of goats to Seychelles islands created a long-term conservation problem, with one of the earliest eradication efforts recorded on Aride Island in 1920. The study titled ‘Introduced mammals on Western Indian Ocean islands’ documents how introduced mammals became targets of conservation programmes across the Western…
Elephant in Tanzania. Image Credit: Nevit Dilmen/Wikimedia Commons In parts of Tanzania, small farms are increasingly coming into contact with African elephants, leading to a hard conflict between wildlife conservation and rural livelihoods. A 2026 study, published in the ‘International Journal of Biodiversity and Conservation’ found that most of the reported crop raids in the…
Charles Darwin, the English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection transformed our understanding of life, also left behind observations that extended beyond biology. One of his most memorable reflections was on the value of time and how people choose to use it. His words, “A man who dares to waste one hour of…
Spider-tailed horned viper (Image Credit: Omid Mozaffari) The natural world is full of animals that use mimicry to survive, but few examples are as unusual as the spider-tailed horned viper. Native to Iran, this elusive snake has evolved a remarkable tail tip that resembles a spider, complete with a bulbous body and dangling, leg-like structures….
Malaysian students have built a prototype that attempts to recover electricity from one of the most overlooked sources of wasted energy in a home, water flowing down the sink. Developed by three students at Universiti Malaya, WattsUp is an IoT-enabled micro-hydropower system designed specifically for the weak and intermittent flow produced by household wastewater. Rather…
Representative image of Hawaii from Canva In 1902, red mangroves were brought to Hawaii with an apparently practical purpose. Their tangled roots could hold soil in place, reduce erosion and stabilise shorelines around vulnerable coastal areas. At the time, the trees seemed like a useful solution for an island environment shaped by waves, storms and…
The Mazama newt is a salamander found only in Crater Lake (Image: Oregon Zoo) More than a century ago, people introduced signal crayfish into Oregon’s Crater Lake as food for nonnative trout and salmon. The decision was made in 1915, decades before scientists understood how dramatically the crustaceans could reshape the lake’s ecosystem. Today, the…
Rose Ferreira’s path to NASA was shaped by setbacks few people would expect to overcome. She battled poverty, homelessness and cervical cancer while pursuing an education in science, eventually earning degrees that led her into the US space agency. NASA later celebrated her resilience in an employee profile that highlighted her unconventional journey into aerospace….
A still from Terminator 2: Judgement Day Marvel Studios is as good a metaphor for what happens when a company starts believing in its own infallibility. After the success of Endgame in 2019, Disney executives were thoroughly convinced that no matter what they produced, it would be lapped up by audiences if you stuck a…
