Science Pulse, Udaipur (2026)

11/10/2026

MRI, short for magnetic resonance imaging, can show how fat is distributed inside the body. It reveals both subcutaneous fat, which sits beneath the skin, and visceral fat, which lies deeper in the abdomen around organs such as the liver and intestines.

Women weighing 250 pounds and 125 pounds may have very different amounts of these fats. However, weight alone cannot tell us exactly how much visceral fat either woman has. Height, muscle mass, age, and genetics also matter.

Visceral fat is especially important because it is biologically active. Excess amounts are linked with inflammation and problems controlling blood sugar, including insulin resistance, when cells respond less effectively to insulin.

In 2007, Dr. Caroline S. Fox and colleagues published “Abdominal Visceral and Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue Compartments: Association With Metabolic Risk Factors in the Framingham Heart Study” in the journal Circulation.

The research included 3,001 adults in Framingham, Massachusetts, and involved the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. Researchers used CT scans to measure abdominal fat.

Higher visceral fat was more strongly associated with several health risks than fat beneath the skin. These included higher blood pressure, higher blood sugar, and unhealthy cholesterol levels, even after researchers accounted for body mass index and waist size.

Another 2007 Framingham study, led by Dr. Karla M. Pou of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, examined 1,250 adults. Both visceral and subcutaneous fat were associated with higher levels of inflammation markers.

These findings help explain why fat distribution matters alongside body weight. Having less excess visceral fat is generally associated with a healthier metabolic profile, but neither a scale reading nor a scan alone gives a complete picture of someone’s health.

10/10/2026

Dr. Mariangela Hungria, a Brazilian microbiologist, spent four decades developing bacteria-based treatments that help farmers grow crops with less synthetic fertilizer. Her work earned her the World Food Prize.

Her research focuses on biological nitrogen fixation. In this process, helpful bacteria convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into forms that plants can use to grow.

She helped make microbial inoculants practical for farmers to apply to seeds or soil. In some cases, a treatment costs about $2, compared with around $50 for conventional fertilizer, making it especially useful when fertilizer prices rise.

Her research has supported farming across Brazil, including soybeans, beans, corn, wheat, rice, and pasture grasses. The benefits vary by crop, but the overall aim is better plant nutrition and productive harvests with fewer chemical inputs.

Her work is credited with helping farmers save about $25 billion each year and preventing roughly 230 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. These reported benefits show the potential economic and environmental impact of using beneficial microbes in agriculture.

Hungria has authored more than 500 scientific papers, chapters, and other publications. Her research includes rhizobia and Azospirillum brasilense, bacteria studied for their roles in crop nutrition and improved yields.

Her career shows how decades of microbiology research can become affordable tools for farmers, helping them produce more food while reducing costs and environmental damage.

10/10/2026

This is Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the French software developer and president of VideoLAN who helped make VLC one of the world’s best-known free media players.

Often called “JB,” he is sometimes described as VLC’s creator. But VLC began as a student project at École Centrale Paris in France, before he joined its development in 2006.

VideoLAN’s official history traces the project back to 1996. Students wanted to stream video across their campus network, laying the groundwork for the player known today by its orange traffic cone.

On February 1, 2001, the project became open source under the GNU General Public License. This allowed people around the world to study its code, improve it, and share it.

Kempf later became a key figure in protecting that community’s work. In a 2017 report, Numerama described his account of rejecting an offer worth tens of millions of euros to add advertising and questionable code to VLC.

His reasoning went beyond personal preference. VLC was built through the work of many contributors, and he did not believe that their efforts should be sold at the expense of users’ trust.

In an interview with LiveVideoStack, shared by Kempf in 2022, he again stressed that VLC should remain free and maintained by its users.

That commitment matters every time someone opens a video without paying a subscription or watching an advertisement first. VLC’s open-source code also lets developers inspect how the software works and help improve it.

Kempf deserves recognition for defending those principles. So do the students, developers, translators, and volunteers who helped build and maintain VLC over the years.

Thank you, Jean-Baptiste, and thank you to the VideoLAN community, for keeping a useful everyday tool free and accessible.

08/10/2026

In August 2016, a 42-year-old police officer in India went to the hospital after suffering from severe stomach pain and extreme weakness.

At first, doctors believed he might have a tumor. But after performing an endoscopy and a CT scan, they found something shocking inside his stomach.

His stomach contained dozens of knives.

The man told doctors he had swallowed 28 knives over a period of about two months. Surgeons decided he needed immediate surgery.

The operation lasted almost five hours. During the procedure, doctors carefully removed the knives one by one.

They first counted 28 knives, matching what the man had said. But before closing the operation, they checked again and discovered 12 more.

In total, surgeons removed 40 knives from his stomach.

Some of the knives were folded, some were open, and others were rusty or broken. A few were nearly 18 centimeters long.

When doctors asked why he had swallowed them, he said he liked the sensation after swallowing the first knife. Over time, it became a habit.

Doctors suspected he may have had a psychiatric disorder and planned psychological treatment after the surgery.

The case shocked the medical team and became widely reported because of how unusual and dangerous the discovery was.

08/10/2026

A July 2024 study published in Environmental Science & Technology by ACS Publications found that drinks stored in glass bottles may contain more microplastics than drinks stored in plastic bottles.

This finding is surprising because glass is often seen as a cleaner and more stable packaging material. But the study suggests the problem may not come from the glass itself.

Researchers tested beverages using three types of packaging: glass bottles, plastic bottles, and paper-based cartons. They used filtered water to compare how many microplastic particles each container type released.

Glass bottles had the highest level, with an average of about 630,000 microplastic particles per liter. Plastic bottles had fewer, at about 110,000 particles per liter. Cartons had the lowest amount, at about 30,000 particles per liter.

The researchers found that the likely sources in glass bottles were plastic-based liners, polymer cap seals, adhesives, and manufacturing residues. These materials can shed tiny plastic particles into the liquid.

The study challenges the common belief that glass bottles are automatically safer than plastic bottles when it comes to microplastic contamination.

Microplastics are a concern because very small particles may pass through the gut and enter the bloodstream. From there, they may reach organs, though researchers are still studying the possible health effects.

The findings do not mean glass has no environmental benefits. Many people choose glass because it can be reused or recycled. But the study shows that bottle caps, seals, and other packaging parts also need attention.

Researchers say more work is needed to find safer alternatives to plastic-based components used in beverage packaging.

08/10/2026

For the first time, Utah generated more electricity from solar power than from natural gas during a full month.

This happened in May 2026, when solar panels in Utah produced about 964,000 megawatt-hours of electricity.

That was roughly one-third of all electricity generated in the state that month.

According to reporting by Leia Larsen for Grist in 2026, and data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's May 2026 Electric Power Monthly, solar made up about 33% of Utah's power generation.

Natural gas was close behind at about 32%.

Coal supplied about 28%.

The milestone is important because Utah relied heavily on coal not long ago. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that coal supplied about 75% of Utah's electricity in 2015.

By 2024, coal's share had fallen to about 45%.

Large utility-scale solar projects helped drive the change. The Green River Energy Center is adding hundreds of megawatts of solar power and battery storage in Utah.

Other projects, including Elektron Solar, are already providing renewable electricity to Salt Lake City, Park City, Summit County and other large customers.

Solar has not yet replaced coal as Utah's leading power source across the entire year. Solar output changes with daylight and the seasons.

But for one month in 2026, sunlight produced more electricity in Utah than any other single energy source. That marks a major sign of how quickly the state's power mix is changing.

08/10/2026

A 2026 Stanford Medicine-led study reported a possible new way to repair damaged knee cartilage and slow or prevent osteoarthritis.

The research was published in Science under the title Inhibition of 15-hydroxy prostaglandin dehydrogenase promotes cartilage regeneration.

The senior authors were Helen M. Blau, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology and director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, and Nidhi Bhutani, PhD, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery.

The lead authors were Mamta Singla, PhD, and Yu Xin Wang, PhD, who is now an assistant professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego.

The team focused on a protein called 15-PGDH, which becomes more common with age. They describe it as a gerozyme, meaning an enzyme linked to age-related tissue decline.

In older mice, blocking 15-PGDH helped restore knee cartilage that had naturally thinned with age. The new tissue was hyaline cartilage, the smooth joint cartilage needed for normal movement, not less useful fibrocartilage.

The researchers also tested the treatment after knee injuries similar to ACL tears. Mice treated twice a week for four weeks were less likely to develop osteoarthritis and moved more normally than untreated mice.

Human cartilage samples from knee replacement patients also responded. After one week of exposure to the same inhibitor, the tissue showed signs of producing new functional articular cartilage.

The results suggest existing cartilage cells, called chondrocytes, may be pushed into a younger and more repair-focused state without relying on stem cells.

This does not prove the treatment will work in people yet. Clinical trials will be needed to test whether 15-PGDH inhibition can safely regenerate cartilage and reduce the need for knee or hip replacements.

07/10/2026

A Canadian aircraft enthusiast turned a rusty 1960s Volkswagen T1 camper van into a helicopter-inspired machine using parts from a scrapped Airbus H125.

The project combines the classic VW camper body with aircraft components, including the rear fuselage and helicopter parts from the Airbus H125.

The builder had 38 years of aircraft-maintenance experience, which helped him cut, weld, and assemble the unusual creation. The work took about a year to complete.

He kept the camper’s recognizable shape and personality while adding aviation-style details. These included extra roof windows and larger front lights.

Even though it looks like a helicopter, the vehicle was not built to fly. It is a static display piece rather than a working aircraft.

The unusual VW helicopter has still drawn a lot of attention. Many people have called it a work of art and said it would stand out at airshows.

It is a striking example of what can happen when vintage automotive design meets aviation engineering.

07/10/2026

Montana requires public schools to teach Native American history and culture as part of its commitment to preserving Indigenous heritage for future generations.

This requirement comes from Montana’s Indian Education for All Act, also known as IEFA, which was passed in 1999.

The law is tied to Montana’s constitutional requirement that schools recognize the distinct cultural heritage of American Indians.

A class-action lawsuit filed in 2021 by students, families, and tribes argued that Montana had not properly enforced this requirement in K-12 public schools.

The case led to a settlement that aims to make schools more accountable for how they teach Indigenous history and culture.

Since 2007, the Montana Legislature has provided about $3.5 million each year to school districts for IEFA programs.

That money is meant to support curriculum development, classroom materials, and teacher training.

But in 2019 and 2020, only about 10% of Montana school districts could show that they had used their IEFA funds properly.

Under the proposed settlement, schools must provide proof that they are carrying out Indian Education for All.

They must also report how the money is spent and may face funding reductions if they do not follow the rules.

The state also agreed to improve consultation with tribal nations and review IEFA spending at a minimum of seven schools each year.

Tribal leaders described the settlement as long overdue because it adds stronger oversight to Montana’s promise to teach Indigenous history and culture in schools.

07/10/2026

An international group of physicists led by Professor Enrique Gaztañaga from the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth has challenged the standard idea that the Universe began with the Big Bang.

Their theory suggests that our universe may have formed inside a black hole from an older, parent universe.

The model was published in Physical Review D and is based on Einstein-Cartan theory. This version of gravity includes a quantum effect called torsion, which can prevent matter from collapsing into an infinite singularity.

In this view, the universe did not begin from a single impossible point. Instead, matter inside a black hole reached an extreme density and then bounced, expanding outward into a new cosmos.

The researchers say this bounce could explain two major mysteries at once. It may account for the early rapid expansion known as inflation, and it may also help explain today’s accelerated expansion, often linked to dark energy.

A key point is that the model does not require exotic new particles or unknown fields. It works by extending known ideas from gravity and quantum physics.

The theory also predicts that the Universe should be slightly curved and closed. Future missions such as ESA’s ARRAKIHS and NASA’s SPHEREx may be able to test this prediction.

Another striking idea is that our universe may have inherited the spin of the black hole that created it. This could help explain why some observations suggest that about two-thirds of galaxies rotate in the same direction.

If future data confirms this cosmic spin, it could become important evidence for the theory.

The idea changes the meaning of cosmic origins. Instead of being the absolute beginning of everything, our universe could be one part of a larger cycle, where black holes give birth to new universes with their own histories.

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