When we think about drug-resistant microbes, bacteria such as the ones responsible for antibiotic resistance usually steal the spotlight. But bacteria aren’t the only microorganisms evolving to evade our medicines. Fungi are joining the race too, and one species has become a growing concern for hospitals worldwide: Candida auris (C. …
Walk through any supermarket today, and you’ll notice one word everywhere: protein. From breakfast cereals and yogurts to chips, cookies, and even ice cream, countless products proudly advertise their protein content. Scroll through social media, and you’ll likely come across fitness influencers encouraging people to “eat more protein” to build …
Rice has been a staple food for billions of people for thousands of years. Yet, in recent years, white rice has earned a bad reputation, often being labeled as nothing more than “empty carbs.” But is all rice really the same? Not quite. Choosing the right type of rice is …
Imagine if your body kept a 90-day diary of your blood sugar, and your doctor could read it with a single blood test. That’s exactly what the HbA1c (Hemoglobin A1c) test does. While a finger-prick test or a glucose monitor tells you what your blood sugar is right now, HbA1c …
Imagine you’re about to undergo surgery. After asking about allergies, medications, and previous illnesses, the anaesthetist suddenly asks, “What is your caste or community?” For many patients, the question feels surprising, uncomfortable, or even inappropriate. Yet, in some hospitals, particularly in parts of southern India, this question has traditionally been …
If you’ve ever heard the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover,” the thymus is living proof. Tucked quietly just above the heart, this small, butterfly-shaped organ spent centuries hiding in plain sight. Because it is large in children but shrinks dramatically after puberty, scientists once believed it was …
Rabies is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases. Once symptoms such as fever, confusion, difficulty swallowing, or paralysis appear, the disease is almost always fatal. Yet, it has one remarkable weakness: it is nearly 100% preventable if treatment begins soon after exposure. In many countries across Asia and Africa, …
Imagine looking through a clean window. Now imagine that window becoming cloudy, scratched, or cracked, you would struggle to see clearly, no matter how bright the world outside is. That’s exactly what happens when the cornea, the transparent, dome-shaped front layer of the eye, is damaged. It acts as both …
Every year, after harvesting bananas, farmers chop down the plant and move on to the next crop. What remains is the pseudostem, the thick, trunk-like structure that looks like a tree trunk but isn’t one. For decades, this bulky leftover has been treated as little more than farm waste, often …
Imagine waking up, putting a few drops into your eyes, and reading a text message or a restaurant menu without reaching for your reading glasses. It sounds like something from a science-fiction movie, but it’s becoming a reality for many people with presbyopia, the age-related difficulty in seeing nearby objects …
Have you ever listened to a voice note or watched a video of yourself and wondered, “Do I really sound like that?” For many people, hearing their own recorded voice is surprisingly uncomfortable. It often seems higher, thinner, or somehow less “you.” The surprising answer is yes, that’s very close …
Over the past few years, medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro have dominated headlines. Some people describe them as “miracle weight-loss injections,” while others worry about their side effects. So, what’s the truth? Like most medical breakthroughs, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. These medicines belong to a …
You’re sitting outdoors with a group of friends on a pleasant evening. By the time everyone heads home, you have half a dozen itchy mosquito bites while everyone else seems perfectly fine. It may feel as though mosquitoes have declared you the evening’s buffet, but is that really what’s happening? …
Every few weeks, a new headline seems to promise the secret to preventing dementia. One day it’s blueberries, the next it’s crossword puzzles or a miracle supplement. If only it were that simple. The truth is both more complicated and more hopeful. Scientists have not found a guaranteed way to …
Losing a permanent tooth has always seemed like a one-way journey. Unlike a lizard that can regrow its tail or a shark that continuously replaces its teeth, humans get only two sets of teeth in a lifetime. Once an adult tooth is lost, it never grows back naturally. For decades, …
When doctors have two effective treatments for the same disease, choosing which one to use first isn’t always easy. It’s a bit like standing at a crossroads without a map, you know both roads can lead to the destination, but you don’t know which one offers the smoother journey. That …
Imagine carrying the entire contents of one of the world’s largest data centres in something smaller than a sugar cube. It may sound like science fiction, but scientists believe nature has already built such a storage device. It’s called DNA. Every day, humanity generates enormous amounts of digital information, from …
When you switch on your phone, tiny flashes of light carry information that lets you send messages across the world. Surprisingly, scientists now think something similar may be happening inside your own cells, not with visible light, but with incredibly faint flashes that no human eye can see. Every cell …
At first, it sounds impossible. How can one baby have DNA from three different people? Is it science fiction? A cloning experiment? Or something straight out of a movie? The truth is even more fascinating. It’s a medical technique designed not to create “three-parent babies,” but to prevent children from …
We’ve long been taught a simple story in biology: when your body begins to lose water, the brain releases a hormone called vasopressin, which tells the kidneys to conserve water and prevent dehydration. It’s a textbook example of how the body maintains its water balance. But what if the kidneys …
There’s a common saying: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The same advice applies to food labels. Just because a product says “plant-based” doesn’t automatically mean it’s healthier or more nutritious. As more people embrace vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, plant-based cheese has become one of the fastest-growing food products …
There’s an old saying: “What goes around comes around.” For decades, we have used plastic because it is cheap, lightweight, and convenient. Now, scientists are discovering that tiny pieces of it may be finding their way back to us, in our food, our water, the air we breathe, and even …
We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The same can be true for our food. A bowl of fresh salad or a juicy raspberry may look perfectly clean, yet in rare cases, it can carry an invisible hitchhiker, a microscopic parasite called Cyclospora cayetanensis. This …
A few decades ago, if doctors wanted a closer look inside the body, they often had to perform surgery. Today, that’s rarely necessary. Thanks to modern medical imaging, doctors can examine organs, bones, blood vessels, and even the brain without making a single incision. Among the most commonly used imaging …
For nearly a century, fungi have quietly transformed medicine. They gave us penicillin, the antibiotic that revolutionised the treatment of bacterial infections, and statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs taken by millions of people worldwide. Yet scientists have long suspected that these familiar organisms are hiding far more chemical treasures than we …
Spectrum of Sciences - Sign up for Updates
Follow on X
Telegram