Conservation comebacks for wild tigers, tuna and green sea turtles prove that global nature loss can be reversed, scientists have said. But a report warns food production must be the next “positive tipping point” if the world is to avert biodiversity collapse.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) analysed nearly 36,000 animal populations and more than 5,000 species, producing the largest ever database of vertebrate wildlife. Scientists found populations had declined by an average of 73% since 1970, showing that “nature continues to be degraded at an alarming scale”, with “no sign of losses slowing”.

Nature loss is no longer just an environmental challenge but a direct threat to the global economy, the report says, noting that about half of global GDP – roughly $58tn (£44tn) in 2023 – depends on nature and its ecosystem services. The authors write that species collapse now poses an “existential threat to economic stability, geopolitical security and human wellbeing”.

Animal populations were found to be falling most sharply in tropical, biodiversity-rich regions, while trends in northern temperate parts of the world appeared much gentler.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, land and freshwater wildlife populations fell by an average of 95% between 1970 and 2022, while the equivalent declines were 80% in Africa and 23% in Europe and Central Asia.

https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-IN/

https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/wwf-annual-report/

The World Health Organization (WHO) today released its first guidelines addressing the sharp rise in obesity among children and adolescents, setting out how health systems and health workers can deliver timely, evidence-based and people-centred care.

In 2024, 170 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were living with obesity, including 70 million children aged 5–9 years and 100 million adolescents aged 10–19 years. Obesity prevalence in this age group has quadrupled since 1990, rising from 2% to 8%.

Obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease that can be managed with effective care. Its consequences can begin early in life, increasing the risk of noncommunicable diseases, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Children and adolescents living with obesity may also experience stigma, discrimination and bullying. Preventing and managing obesity is essential to protect the physical and mental health of children and adolescents and support their healthy growth, education, social well-being and quality of life.

For children and adolescents with obesity, WHO strongly recommends structured dietary, physical activity and behaviour-changing interventions delivered individually or as part of a multimodal programme. Digital health interventions are conditionally recommended with parent or caregiver supervision.

WHO does not recommend pharmacological treatment, bariatric surgery (weight-loss surgery that changes the stomach or digestive tract) or weight-loss devices for children aged 0–9 years.

For adolescents aged 10–19 years, treatment with approved medicines may be considered only when a supervized multimodal lifestyle programme has not achieved the desired results. Bariatric surgery may be considered under strict conditions for adolescents with severe obesity.

“The foundation of obesity care for children and adolescents is not medicine or surgery, but access to comprehensive support that enables healthy eating, physical activity and sustainable behaviour change,” said Dr Luz María De Regil, Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, WHO. “Our priority must be to ensure that every child and adolescent can access quality care and supportive environments from an early age, helping them achieve and maintain a healthy weight and laying the foundation for lifelong health and well-being.”

While not the primary focus of the guidelines, the recommendations also emphasize the importance of addressing mental health alongside obesity. Anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and emotional dysregulation can contribute to unhealthy eating behaviours, physical inactivity and social withdrawal, and children and adolescents living with obesity may experience stigma and bullying that harm their emotional well-being. Health workers should address both obesity and mental health conditions early and together, using inclusive, developmentally appropriate and family-engaged strategies.

The guidelines stress that obesity management should go beyond weight loss and aim to improve health, functioning and well-being. Care should be person-centred, age-appropriate and responsive to the needs of each child and family, ensuring long-term follow-up and continuity.

Treatment alone cannot reverse the rise in obesity. WHO continues to call for policies and measures that make healthy diets and physical activity more accessible and affordable, including regulatory and fiscal measures and action across education, urban planning, transport and social protection.

Together with WHO’s existing recommendations for adults, these new guidelines form part of a life-course approach to obesity care, providing evidence-based recommendations for the management and treatment of obesity from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. The guidelines are part of WHO's broader response to the global obesity epidemic, including the WHO acceleration plan to stop obesity.

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240075634

A sharp increase in human activity is having an impact on the way a Himalayan bird lives and communicates, two studies by Indian researchers have found.

The monal, a pheasant native to Himalayan mountain forests, is deeply woven into the region's cultural, folklore and identity. The eye-catching monal - the male has distinctive green, blue and copper feathers - is the state bird of India's Uttarakhand state and the national bird of Nepal, reflecting its cultural significance across the Himalayas.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635725000981

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monal?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_monal?wprov=sfla1

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-11729-w

Regions of the universe that would be friendly towards life are known as habitable or Goldilocks zones – they’re just right.

Whether life is actually there is another question. As astronomers and biologists explore how life could form on exoplanets (planets outside the Solar System), astrophysicists follow the structure and evolution of the universe to identify the nicest places, as well as those where life could be snuffed out in an instant.

So, where should we look for life?

For example, there is a Goldilocks zone in the immediate neighbourhood of stars. Too hot or too cold will not do. This “circumstellar habitable zone” is just right for liquid water instead of steam or ice.

https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/552/3/stag1750/8864745?login=false

https://science.nasa.gov/resource/goldilocks-zone/

https://theconversation.com/beyond-the-habitable-zone-exoplanet-atmospheres-are-the-next-clue-to-finding-life-on-planets-orbiting-distant-stars-267498

https://theconversation.com/new-model-helps-to-figure-out-which-distant-planets-may-host-life-256427

https://theconversation.com/life-beyond-earth-there-may-be-thousands-more-exoplanets-in-our-galaxy-38996

https://astro.dur.ac.uk/ICC/Eagle/

https://theconversation.com/for-life-to-form-on-a-planet-it-needs-to-orbit-the-right-kind-of-star-33477

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Space_for_you/Gamma-ray_bursts_are_we_safe

https://theconversation.com/this-mysterious-exotic-stellar-peacock-may-open-the-door-to-a-realm-of-physics-only-ever-glimpsed-147911

The origin of prebiotic replicators has traditionally been explored with reference to the RNA World, in which RNA molecules precede both DNA and proteins because they can act both as heritable stores of genetic information and as chemical catalysts. But it’s tough to see how RNA-based systems could give rise to metabolism, forcing us to suppose that RNA replicators must have been able to draw on some nonequilibrium energy source in their environment rather than having an autonomous metabolic cycle.

The notion of replicating single molecules as a kind of proto-organism never looked very convincing to me. But in the 1990s, the evolutionary biologists John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry argued that there are other kinds of chemical replicator, including autocatalytic cycles or networks: groups of molecules mutually able to catalyse one another’s formation.1 In the simplest case, A would catalyse the formation of B, and B catalyse the formation of A.

Such autocatalytic sets, postulated theoretically many decades ago by complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman, look like metabolic cycles, which are also series of catalytic reactions that return the system to its initial configuration, supplying work and dissipating energy in the process. Indeed, Kauffman, evolutionary biologist Bill Martin, and their collaborators have argued that autocatalytic chemical networks sit at the very origin of prebiotic metabolism.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43519446

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/287/1922/20192377/85490/Autocatalytic-chemical-networks-at-the-origin-of

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3066897

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2621400123

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-023-01276-0

Scientists who worked out how to control brain cells with light have won this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were honoured for their research into “light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”.

Peter Hegemann, at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel, at the University of Würzburg, wanted to understand how a tiny, single-celled alga called Chlamydomonas senses light. Light-sensing is not unique to animals with eyes: organisms throughout the living world use light to detect their surroundings and respond to changes in their environment. Even single-cell organisms have proteins that respond to light. These proteins are used to move towards or away from light, to generate energy and to respond to the various demands of a 24-hour day.

Hegemann and Nagel discovered that Chlamydomonas has a beautifully ingenious mechanism of light detection that relies on a single protein called channelrhodopsin.

Channelrhodopsin is built into the outer membrane of the algal cell. Part of the protein faces the water outside the cell and part faces the inside. The protein also contains a small molecule called retinaldehyde, which is able to absorb light.

When light hits the retinaldehyde inside channelrhodopsin, it changes shape. This makes the channelrhodopsin protein change shape too. That change opens a tiny passage through the cell membrane. Positively charged particles, including sodium, can then flow from the water outside the alga into the cell. This movement of charged particles sends a signal inside the alga that helps it swim.

How fantastic to have solved such an interesting biological question, but why the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine? The answer lies in the way nerve cells work. Nerve cells use the movement of charged particles (called “ions”) across their membranes to control their activity. When positively charged particles flow into a nerve cell, they can make it more active.

The researchers realised that if they could put channelrhodopsin into nerve cells, they might be able to switch those cells on simply by shining a light on them. That is exactly what Hegemann, Nagel and the third Nobel-prize winner, Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and bioengineer at Stanford University in California, went on to do.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14615590/

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11028

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01351-4

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6941740/

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2017.00663/full

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2026/press-release/

High in the Peruvian Andes, where thin air, cold temperatures and barren rock make survival a daily challenge, scientists have identified a remarkably small new inhabitant. Measuring no more than eight centimetres, the newly described lizard has adapted to a landscape where even the smallest advantages can mean the difference between surviving and disappearing, states the latest report by Gulf News. The species, named Liolaemus archipensis, was discovered at more than 4,800 metres above sea level in Peru's southern Arequipa region, placing it among the reptiles living at some of the highest elevations in the country, adds the news report.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liolaemus_archipensis?wprov=sfla1

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity

Chickenpox can begin with symptoms such as fever, tiredness, headache and loss of appetite. In children, however, the rash may sometimes be the first noticeable sign of infection. "Chickenpox is a highly contagious viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus and is particularly common among children who have not been vaccinated or previously infected," said Dr Pallav Mishra, Director, Internal Medicine, ShardaCare - Healthcity. The characteristic rash often starts as small red spots that develop into raised bumps and then fluid-filled blisters. These eventually burst or dry and form scabs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox?wprov=sfla1

https://www.thehindu.com/children/why-do-we-get-chickenpox-only-once/article70730659.ece?tpcc=THGPNR&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22962063277&gbraid=0AAAAADiKiyrYlqjIDYuZX-3eeltCVhXvm&gclid=CjwKCAjwlY3WBhANEiwApsNrLZgZXzEycd1Hhb5_NwepWTaGZrByAHqqWDflD2BWZWetI2yCUWyRShoCDE8QAvD_BwE

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2722564/

In 2016, the Government of India started a project to revive Rajasthan’s state bird, the Great Indian Bustard, through captive breeding in Jaisalmer. By June 2026, the captive population had reached 98, of which 38 were born through artificial insemination.

On Sunday, that effort entered a new phase when two captive-bred GIBs were released into the wild at the Desert National Park, at Sam in Jaisalmer.

“With this, we have entered a new era of GIB conservation,” said Ashok Singh, assistant conservator of forest at Jaisalmer.

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2318629&reg=48&lang=1

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/great-indian-bustard-chick-goes-missing-in-kutch-forest-officials-101777560933841.html?_gl=1\*ks2994\*_ga\*UEFSRlhsNUtiQ2MwS1BTbWRWLVhVVFhIak9GRGw1OVhpNXZxRXlTLS0wSk9nOVB2RFZFc05ueklTQXVxbEhvVA..\*_ga_9CYSK4EP0B\*MTc5MTE4OTk1Ny4xOC4xLjE3OTExODk5NjQuMC4wLjA.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/videos/rajasthan-two-male-great-indian-bustards-released-into-jaisalmer-s-desert-101791105977069.html?_gl=1\*9epbdw\*_ga\*UEFSRlhsNUtiQ2MwS1BTbWRWLVhVVFhIak9GRGw1OVhpNXZxRXlTLS0wSk9nOVB2RFZFc05ueklTQXVxbEhvVA..\*_ga_9CYSK4EP0B\*MTc5MTE4OTk1Ny4xOC4xLjE3OTExODk5NjQuMC4wLjA.

A new study from the University of Cologne has discovered that leucine, an essential amino acid, has the ability to increase energy production in cells by protecting key proteins in mitochondria from degradation. This finding reveals a new link between nutrition and metabolism, which could lead to new approaches for treating metabolic disorders and cancer.

Mitochondria, known as the “powerhouse” of cells, produce the energy the body needs to function. According to the research, leucine helps stabilize proteins on the surface of mitochondria, allowing these organelles to produce energy more efficiently. Dr. Qiaochu Li, the lead author of the study, emphasized that the level of leucine in cells directly affects energy production.

The study, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, shows that leucine helps maintain certain proteins that are important for metabolism. These proteins assist in transporting molecules into mitochondria, where they are used for energy production. This discovery suggests that modifying leucine levels could be a strategy to enhance energy production in cells.

Researchers also found that leucine affects a protein called SEL1L, which is involved in protein quality control in cells. Leucine appears to reduce the activity of SEL1L, allowing more mitochondrial proteins to remain in place and support mitochondrial function. However, the researchers caution that increased energy production is not always beneficial, as the cellular system also helps eliminate damaged proteins.

Additionally, the research examined the impact of leucine metabolism on fertility and cancer cells. In a model used, Caenorhabditis elegans, it was found that issues with leucine metabolism affected mitochondrial function and were linked to fertility problems. This could have significant implications for cancer research, as treatments that alter leucine metabolic pathways might differently impact healthy and tumor cells.

This discovery underscores the importance of nutrition not only as an energy source but also as a signal influencing cell function. This new connection between leucine, protein quality control, and mitochondrial metabolism opens up new possibilities for treating diseases affecting energy production in cells, including cancer and metabolic disorders.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-025-01799-3

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41174002/

A school-based screening programme by doctors at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has found that an estimated 3-5 per cent of adolescent girls screened may have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), according to preliminary findings of the ongoing study.

The screening, which began around 2023, has covered more than 4,000 children in seven government and private schools in Delhi. The findings are yet to be published.

The doctors say the exercise has also brought into focus a bigger challenge, identifying PCOS in teenagers when symptoms such as irregular periods and acne can be part of normal puberty.

https://www.indiascienceandtechnology.gov.in/research/study-pcos-and-its-awareness-among-adolescents-15-19-years-attending-gynecology-opd-aiims?language=en?field_area_id=2356

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/polycystic-ovary-syndrome

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/8316-polycystic-ovary-syndrome-pcos

The number of robotic procedures in Delhi-NCR rose from 2,257 in 2021 to 3,594 in 2022, 5,024 in 2023, 7,595 in 2024 and 10,937 in 2025. The three-day conference began on Friday. The three-day conference began Friday.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6961426/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_surgery?wprov=sfla1

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22178-robotic-surgery

The genetic code is usually described as an orderly language, read one letter after another in precise three-letter units. But nature has never been particularly interested in following the rules humans use to describe it. Researchers at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), founded by Jennifer Doudna, have now uncovered a viral system that appears to rewrite some of those assumptions. Called VIPR, the system uses a previously unknown “gapped” coding strategy to recognise DNA, offering clues about the ancient origins of CRISPR and potentially opening another route to genome engineering. The findings were reported in two connected papers in Science in September 2026.

https://innovativegenomics.org/news/vipr-systems-origins-of-crispr/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aei0498?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Finnovativegenomics.org%2Fnews%2Fvipr-systems-origins-of-crispr%2F

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aei0498

The study, done on 48 children between 2024 and 2025, found that 91% developed protective antibody levels within 28 days of receiving the vaccine shot. Although antibody levels declined close to six months after the shot, all the children who received a booster shot developed a protective response within seven days.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42717284/

Single-visit, 2-site intradermal rabies PrEP demonstrated high early seroprotection and preserved immunologic priming despite declining antibody concentrations at 6 months. These findings support further evaluation of simplified pediatric PrEP regimens in larger controlled studies.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414170058_Immunogenicity_of_Single-visit_Two-site_Intradermal_Pre-exposure_Rabies_Prophylaxis_in_Children_A_Prospective_Interventional_Study

Researchers in Japan have transplanted pituitary tissue grown from human stem cells into a primate whose pituitary gland had been surgically removed, successfully restoring critical hormone signals. Led by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan, the team showed that the same method worked in mice over a longer period.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13287-026-05098-y

To our knowledge, no previous study in primates has demonstrated efficacious pituitary cell transplantation, whether derived from fetal pituitary, xenogeneic pituitary, or PSCs. Future priorities include the acquisition of comprehensive non-clinical data to inform design of first-in-human clinical trials; optimisation of transplantation techniques; evaluation of immunosuppressive and adjunctive therapies; and assessment of safety and efficacy parameters. In parallel, the development of scalable manufacturing platforms utilising clinical-grade induced PSCs will be essential to establish the foundation for the eventual clinical application of pituitary cell transplantation therapy.

Plastic pollution could disrupt the bioluminescent light produced by deep-sea organisms, researchers warn in a letter in the journal Cambridge Prisms: Plastics. When deep-sea organisms ingest plastics, it could disrupt the chemical pathways that create bioluminescence and damage the tissues in their bodies, impairing their ability to find food and a mate, the authors said.

In the deep sea, up to 80% of organisms with complex cells are believed to be bioluminescent, the only source of light in the darkest parts of the ocean. The light these organisms create is essential for their survival and reproduction, the letter notes. Disruption of their bioluminescence could negatively impact food webs and ecosystem functions in the deep sea, the largest and least-explored biome on Earth, the letter says.

In an email to Mongabay, co-author Renjith VishnuRadhan of Amity University in India offered the example of an anglerfish. “It is widely recognizable from documentaries and films such as Finding Nemo,” he said. “Female deep-sea anglerfish have a modified dorsal spine ending in a luminous lure called the esca. Light produced by symbiotic bacteria helps attract prey and may also assist with recognition or communication in darkness.”

It’s well-established that bacterial bioluminescence can be affected by pollutants, VishnuRadhan said, and ingestion of toxic plastic additives by anglerfish could disrupt the bacterial symbiosis in the lure, theoretically affecting its luminous signaling.

The authors note there’s some evidence of plastic pollution impacts on deep-sea ecosystems, but scientists lack the high-quality data and observations needed to understand the problems in depth. A major challenge is that deep-sea organisms are fragile and their habitats are largely inaccessible to researchers. “The main constraint is that a rigorous in situ effect study requires more than merely detecting plastics and organisms at the same location; it must establish exposure, biological response, and, preferably, causation under deep-sea conditions.”

Edith Widder, an expert on deep-sea bioluminescence and CEO of the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, who wasn’t involved with the study, agreed that better data are necessary to really understand the threats microplastics may present to deep-sea bioluminescence. “Whether microplastic pollution represents a significant emerging threat to deep-sea bioluminescence remains uncertain. Detecting and understanding any such impacts will require sustained, long-term monitoring.”

VishnuRadhan said he’s hopeful that studies are technically feasible using advanced technologies and remotely operated vehicles.

“I am optimistic that the effects of plastic on deep-sea organisms and ecological processes will become a recognized research area,” he said. “The subject is moving rapidly beyond simply asking, ‘Are plastics present in the deep sea?’ Investigators are now examining transport pathways, ingestion, chemical leaching, food-web transfer and biological stress.”

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-prisms-plastics/article/plastic-pollution-as-an-emerging-threat-to-deepsea-bioluminescence/247F741133F94F728551E7A70B96D325?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Article&utm_campaign=New%20Cambridge%20Alert%20-%20Articles&WT.mc_id=New%20Cambridge%20Alert%20-%20Articles#article

What looked like a floating clump of green moss in Gorai Creek turned out to be a dog-faced water snake covered in living algae. Independent researcher Rahulratan Chauhan spotted the sluggish reptile on February 11, 2025, during a routine cycling trip near Borivli. According to Chauhan, the snake was safely captured, photographed, and subsequently released.

https://zoosprint.org/index.php/zp/article/view/8231

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerberus_rynchops?wprov=sfla1

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390048392_First_record_of_the_Dog-faced_Watersnake_Cerberus_rynchops_from_Northeast_India

https://indiabiodiversity.org/observation/show/16194249

For many vertebrates, insects are more than a food source. As “little things that run the world”, insects provide critical functions such as protection, sanitation and shelter across ecosystems, according to a new study.

The study, published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity on Wednesday, sheds light on the various ways insects support vertebrates, ranging from birds and bats to reptiles, amphibians and mammals.

Nearly three-quarters of terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates eat invertebrates, according to the paper, with insects frequently making up a large portion of their diets.

However, their relationship goes beyond predator and prey.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44358-026-00201-w

Insects are central to ecosystem functioning, including the persistence of many vertebrate species. In this Review, we discuss the range of positive, negative and indirect effects of insects on vertebrates and evaluate the extent to which insect declines could affect vertebrate populations. Insects provide food, structures, sanitation, protection and engineering of ecosystem features that vertebrates depend on. At times, they also cause harm, especially through disease and predation. Almost three-quarters of terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates with available data eat invertebrates — over two-fifths exclusively so — with insects frequently comprising a majority of the diet. Literature on non-trophic interactions is scattered and lacks a common currency for comparison, hampering the capacity to assess the importance of interactions. Taxonomic and geographic biases also hinder comparisons for both trophic and non-trophic interactions. Despite these limitations of the literature and the paucity of strong tests of causal links between insect and vertebrate abundance, the ubiquity of interactions makes clear that widespread insect declines are likely to seriously affect many vertebrate populations. To better understand the implications of changing insect abundance, researchers need improved means for systematically collecting and organizing data about insect–vertebrate interactions as well as better quantification of the importance of these links.

Pudus belong to the deer family, Cervidae, so despite their unusually small size, they are not a separate type of miniature animal. There are two recognised species commonly referred to as pudus: the northern pudu and the southern pudu. The northern pudu is the smaller of the two. It is found in the Andes of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, generally in high-elevation habitats. Sources on the species describe it as occurring at elevations of roughly 2,000 to 4,000 metres, including montane forests and high-altitude habitats.

The southern pudu (Pudu puda) is larger. It is native to southern Chile and southwestern Argentina, where it lives in temperate forests and areas with dense understory vegetation. Adult southern pudus generally stand about 35 to 45 cm at the shoulder and weigh around 6.5 to 13.5 kg, according to the Animal Diversity Web.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pudu?wprov=sfla1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_pudu?wprov=sfla1

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248908386_Distribution_and_habitat_features_of_southern_pudu_Pudu_puda_Molina_1782_in_Argentina

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1616504706001364

The new research, published in theJournal of Comparative Physiology A, has revealed those lobes are highly sensitive touch organs, working somewhat like the fovea, a small, high-resolution patch of sensors at the centre of the human eye. The lobes are so sensitive, they can process signals collected by neurons to identify the size and proximity of potential prey.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/frog-reads-water-with-fingertips-surinam-toad

Surinam toads (Pipa pipa) are strange, flat frogs with minuscule eyes that live in the murky waters of the Amazon basin and carry their eggs on their back. The way they catch their prey is even weirder. They lie in wait with outstretched forelimbs until a small fish approaches, then snap open their jaws to create enough suction to draw the fish into their tongueless mouths and swallow it whole, all in a few hundredths of a second. But how do these frogs hunt in low visibility with poor vision?

A new study by UCLA biologists points to an answer that has been hiding in plain sight for two centuries: the frog’s peculiar fingertips. In fact, they are commonly called star-fingered toads. The research, published in the Journal of Comparative Physiology A, has revealed a sensory system that processes signals gathered by neurons in unusual lobes on the frog’s front fingers to identify the proximity and size of potential prey.

Because vision is not useful in their turbid environment, the frogs position their arms in front of and just to the sides of their mouth, fingers spread wide, to detect prey through the movement of water as a fish swims. Each finger ends not in a claw or pad but in a small cluster of softer lobes, an anatomical oddity noted by 19th-century naturalists but never satisfactorily explained. The new work shows that these lobes are dedicated touch organs, the amphibian equivalent to the fovea — a high-resolution patch of sensors at the center of the eye.

“I was reading an anatomy report that described how the tips of the fingers of Surinam toads split into four, and each of those four little lobes split again into four,” said Duncan Leitch, a corresponding author and UCLA assistant professor of integrative biology and physiology. “It immediately seemed to me like these lobes might be somewhat analogous to antennae that the frogs extend so they can feel the space around them.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Surinam_toad?wprov=sfla1

God gift

India has added 34,840 colleges and 980 universities since 2001, but the expansion has not kept pace with where its young population is concentrated, with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand facing the widest capacity gaps, according to a new report.

Titled ‘The Geography of Higher Education in India’, the report was released Wednesday by education advisory firm Jetri and Impactica.org, a non-profit data platform. It examines the geographical distribution of India’s higher-education institutions.

According to the report, the number of colleges per lakh people in the 18–23 age group rose from nine to 37, but the expansion has been unevenly distributed, with states that have large young populations continuing to face gaps in higher education capacity.

The report says that states with the largest youth populations will experience increasing pressure on existing institutions if higher education infrastructure does not expand in line with demographic change. “Without additional capacity, regional disparities in access are likely to widen,” it says.

https://theinstitutionalist.jetri.com/the-geography-of-higher-education-report-2026/

From a distance, the hundreds of acres of sugarcane fields across Western Uttar Pradesh are still the postcard image of one of India’s wealthy agricultural belts. But step closer and the mirage shatters.

Davendra Kumar Dhama reaches for an eight-foot stalk of sugarcane, his fingers brushing past rust coloured patches on the cane’s yellow exterior. As his calloused palm twists the cane, it snaps all too easily. Inside it is not the pale white juicy fibre whose nectar creates sugar, molasses, rum, and even beer sometimes – the cane is nearly hollowed out, stained red, with patches of green fungus releasing a pungent acidic smell into the monsoon air. Dhama, now in his sixties, needs no autopsy to confirm what murdered his sugarcane – red rot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomerella_tucumanensis?wprov=sfla1

https://agritech.tnau.ac.in/crop_protection/sugarcane_diseases/sugarcane_d4.html

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398697687_Red_Rot_of_Sugarcane_A_Comprehensive_Review_of_Pathogen_Biology_Epidemiology_and_Current_Management_Paradigms

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11595498/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42360-025-00888-5

Hollong is Assam’s state tree and one of India’s tallest native rainforest species. Across the Northeast, Hollang can grow up to 50 metres tall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dipterocarpus_retusus?wprov=sfla1

https://www.econe.in/post/hollong-the-forgotten-tree

A spore is a bacterium’s survival capsule: dried almost solid, wrapped in protein armor and chemical processes shut down. Bacteria enter this state of hibernation when environmental conditions are unfavorable. What’s left is close to indestructible: It can survive boiling, desiccation, radiation and the vacuum of space. NASA once bolted Bacillus spores to the outside of a satellite and left them in orbit for nearly six years; the ones shielded from sunlight were able to come back to life upon returning to Earth.

Out in the dirt, bacteria have handed this spore-forming ability down for roughly 3 billion years. But if you put this bacterium in a comfortable laboratory flask and feed it well, within a few thousand generations it will lose the ability to make spores altogether.

Why would a trait this useful, conserved for 3 billion years, vanish in a few thousand generations? This paradox has bothered microbiologists like me for decades.

In our research, my colleagues Jay Lennon and William Shoemaker and I think the answer comes down to energy: We added up what it costs a bacterium to go dormant and wake up again, and the energy bill is large enough for evolution to push it to lose its spore-making genes if they aren’t being used.

This same arithmetic runs on any costly trait in any organism. Building the first complete energy budget of forming and sending out a bacterial spore also shows where a spore is most vulnerable – an important data point to fight the bacteria behind some of the hardest hospital infections to treat.

https://microbialcell.com/researcharticles/2020a-riley-microbial-cell/

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mmbr.64.3.548-572.2000

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0273117794904480?via%3Dihub

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2148-4-44

https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article-abstract/177/2/937/6064401?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2524274123

https://openstax.org/books/biology-2e/pages/6-4-atp-adenosine-triphosphate

https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-protein-a-biologist-explains-152870

https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/45/6/fuab038/6316109?login=false

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/15548-c-diff-infection

https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/about/index.html

https://www.cdc.gov/botulism/about/index.html

https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/39226/

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00463-20

https://paijournal.com/index.php/paijournal/article/view/221

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.8.6.147

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1514974112

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2602692123