Mimicking the energy efficient C4 photosynthesis could be a solution, but we are not there yet Waste handling is a necessary evil. Not every bit of what we buy from shops is useful. Take fresh food for example. We separate waste matter such as vegetable skins from the useful. Some waste materials are biodegradable that we distinguish from other waste and put in compost bins. The…

Cooperation needs to be celebrated more — Richard Dawkins once admitted that his book The Selfish Gene, arguably the most influential science book after Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, should better have had the title The Immortal Gene. He argued that genes carry the same information in copies for millions of years and hence are immortal…

Plans, toolkits and materials of life forms — I was watching a sixties movie last week. Halfway through the black-and-white classic I remembered having heard from my father’s mouth that this was an outstanding movie. I was surprised that I had that insignificant and meaningless (to me then) one sentence film review in my memory because I must…

What happens to life when the body dies — “Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell” - John Donne (1572–1631) on Death I live in a 35 years old house. It is showing signs of ageing. Some doors do not operate as smoothly as before. Ceiling walls have layers…

The big picture of megacities Are Cities Worth Their Existence? This was the title of one of my shelved articles. Current crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, which mainly impacted urban population, made me revisit the article. I was fired up by a friend’s social media post highlighting the irony that stoppage of non-essential businesses…

Life’s long march to uninhabitable land — We are most comfortable on land. Oceans are like alien worlds that we cross to arrive at another chunk of land. To us therefore land is the real earth that is alive. We have even put a price on every piece of land around us calling it the real estate…

We protect ourselves by wearing clothes, sleeping inside, applying various substances on our body, following hygienic practices and taking medication. Yet these are mere additional measures. Our greatest security cover is our immunity. Because the most dreadful things that still get inside are minuscule biological entities. Viruses for instance. Our…

Avoid? Am I kidding myself? Oxygen means so much to us. Yet in the larger context of biosphere, it not only is harmful, but is rather toxic to many bacteria — the dominant life form on Earth. To survive, life must avoid any toxic substance. The earliest bacteria lived deep…

Stuffed it up or not, we certainly have left prominent mark on the Earth. The human factor in shaping our planet on a global scale is now widely recognised. As a formal acknowledgement of this recent impact, scientists want baptising of a new geological time scale unit — Anthropocene epoch…