\Zeeshan Mirza & Mayuresh Ambekar of

A new study has found that mixed agriculture-forest landscapes near protected areas can also be used to promote conservation of bird biodiversity. The study was conducted by Biang La Nam Syiem, a student of the postgraduate programme in wildlife biology and conservation, jointly conducted by the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Wildlife Conservation Society India Programme. Syiem, along with Dr. Divya Vasudev and Dr. Varun R. Goswami of WCS, has published a report on the study in journal PLOS ONE.

The paper, titled "In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings: Woodlands in an agricultural matrix maintain functionality of a wintering bird community", explores the potential of an agricultural landscape in Meghalaya to support a wintering bird community.

A team of researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru (NCBS), Fergusson College, Pune, and Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, have described two new species of geckos and cleared a taxonomic mix-up that lasted for over 200 years.

What makes one rat species a pest that is difficult to eradicate and the other a forgotten endemic species vulnerable to extinction?

You get into a lift at the ground floor and press the button for the top: You notice a gentle tune playing and then realise you are going up. Both sets of information, that is sound and linear movement are perceived in our ears, but how do our ears sense them? It may be surprising to learn that it is just a few, highly modified cells in our inner ear that plays a vital role in maintaining balance and sensing sound.

Prabahan Chakraborty is a PhD student at the 

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     The National Health Service and the Department for Health in UK set up a plan for “Action on Hearing Loss” in 2015, to address the growing problems of hearing loss which have significant economic, social and personal consequences. It is estimated that one in six people in the UK suffer from one or the other form of hearing loss and that amounts to nearly 11 million people!

     The sequencing of human genome has raised much excitement about the possibility of understanding the blueprint of life. Further, the development of low-cost high-throughput DNA sequencing has facilitated the analysis of large numbers of human genomes and revealed the diversity in DNA sequence within and between human populations.