With nearly 2 –3% of the population of youngsters and adults (between the ages of 15–59 years) at risk of developing neuropsychiatric diseases, India needs to focus on understanding mental disorders.

Prof. Shashi Thutupalli, head of the Active Evolvable Matter Laboratory at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore has received a 2018 Young Investigator Research Grant from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP).

The prestigious three-year funding is intended to establish new collaborative ties with scientists around the world and empower these teams to combine their expertise in addressing fundamental questions.

The American Society of Naturalists (ASN) conferred its prestigious 2018 Presidential Award to evolutionary biologists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, based in Bangalore, India. The ASN Presidential Award honors an outstanding research article from among all the papers published in the society’s journal, The American Naturalist, in the preceding calendar year. ‘Am. Nat.’ is a prominent scientific journal that publishes research papers in frontier areas of evolutionary biology and ecology.

The eye of the fly

Is wondrous indeed,

For capturing images

At uncanny speeds.

The molecular signal

That makes this possible,

Recent work from Deepa Agashe’s and Radhika Venkatesan’s groups has shown that female red flour beetles reproduce better in male-dominated groups than in unbiased or female-dominated groups.

We live in a world dominated by microbes, and most organisms have had to evolve strategies to deal with both, beneficial and pathogenic microbes. For humans as well as the animals we have domesticated, vaccination is by far the most popular and effective strategy against many pathogenic microbes. Vaccination relies on immune memory: on first exposure to a pathogen, our adaptive immune system generates specific antibodies, protecting against re-infection by the same pathogen.

Dublin/Bengaluru, 27th November 2017— Science Gallery International (SGI) today announced the appointment of Dr Jahnavi Phalkey as the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru.

You and I live in a sensory world—sight, sound, touch and taste blend to give us a sense of our surroundings. However, imagine perceiving the world as a fly, with a brain the size of a pinhead. Yet many insects with miniscule brains manage to do exactly what we do—identify objects like a flower, or a plant.

The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) congratulates its current faculty member Upinder Bhalla, and former faculty member Yamuna Krishnan on winning the 2017 Infosys Prize in the life sciences and physical sciences categories!

The Infosys Prize celebrates the awardees’ outstanding achievements and is intended to honor them for the excellence of their work in their respective fields.

Ants are some of the smallest animals on earth but have a huge impact on the environment. Despite their important roles in the ecosystem, ant biodiversity in many tropical areas remains poorly documented and India is no exception.