JOEL JOSEPH

“You are more microbes than human.”
It is possible you have had this factoid thrown at you, with the thrower claiming that the microbes in our bodies outnumber our own cells 10 to one.
But according to an assessment published in Nature Microbiology, this is a myth. In a 2016 study the assessment’s authors cited, researchers from Israel and Canada estimated a 70 kg “reference man” to have 38 trillion bacterial cells and 30 trillion human cells. Most current estimates of the size of the gut mic...

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising various aspects of life sciences, from drug discovery and disease diagnosis to education, showing great promise in improving healthcare and enhancing learning. But, caution is needed in its application, considering challenges like lack of generalisation across patient populations and the risk of over-reliance, as human collaboration and thoughtful use remain essential for its successful integration.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way we...

Ants are social insects that live in colonies. Individual ants perform specific tasks for the colony, like supplying food, cleaning the nest, defending the colony, etc. There’s no ‘control room’ telling which ant what to do, yet they seem to know exactly what to do and when.

Consider the foragers – worker ants that bring food into the colony. The amount of food they carry perfectly ...

Safety measures before a surgery aren’t just to save lives – they can also significantly lower the health bill if followed in letter and spirit.

Investing in safe surgeries could significantly reduce the costs associated with surgeries in low-to-middle-income countries like India, according to a study published in the Journal of Hospital Infection.

Mark Monahan, a lecturer of health economics at the Institute of Applied Health, University of Birmingham, led the multinational study. The findin...

This interview article delves into the innovative approaches and strategies adopted by four scientists from the Indian Institute of Science in their remarkable contributions towards mitigating the impact of COVID-19. It also highlights the broader collaborative efforts of academic institutions in battling the pandemic, as discussed in an event conducted by DST-Centre for Policy Research at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, on Feb 18, 2023.
The interview features four scientis...

Many countries across the world have come to recognize the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and devise strategies to combat it. Currently, 170 countries have established multi-sectoral national action plans (NAPs) on AMR. Most of them involve multipronged approaches, improving surveillance, diagnostics, treatment, and antimicrobial stewardship.
But here is the critical question: are these solutions sustainable, preventative, and protective in the long run? Envisaging sustainable solu...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world as we knew it. It locked us in our houses, restricted our physical interactions, and forced us to wear masks pretty much all day, every day. It led us — as governments, institutions, and the public — to think, discuss, and deliberate pandemics, public health, and healthcare systems, no matter how badly we wanted to avoid them.
For a few decades now, another public health crisis has been looming large right under our noses without receiving as much a...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is emerging as one of the greatest public health concerns of our lifetime. The situation is particularly exacerbated in low-to-middle-income countries owing to the high burden of infectious diseases, inadequate healthcare infrastructure, and poor sanitation.
Six of the top ten causes of death in these countries are different infectious diseases. This scenario, combined with the growth in human migration in our well-connected world, makes a fertile ground for the...

In recent years, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a global public health and economic concern. According to a study published in The Lancet, an estimated 1.27 million succumbed to bacterial AMR in 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. This challenge calls for innovative, multidisciplinary solutions to prevent, detect, and treat AMR.
Antimicrobial-resistant microbes can be found in people, anim...

The recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act brought cheer to animal rights activists and drug developers alike. By approving the Act, the US government green-lit computer-based and experimental alternatives to animals to test new drugs.
The move is expected to boost the research and development of organ chips – small devices containing human cells that are used to mimic the environment in human organs, including blood flow and breathing movements, serving as synthetic envir...

Ameer Shahul is an investigative journalist turned public policy leader. In his first book, Heavy Metal: How a Global Corporation Poisoned Kodaikanal, Shahul narrates the gripping story of how a Hindustan Unilever-owned thermometer factory unleashed a mercury poisoning catastrophe in Kodaikanal. In this book, Shahul recounts his personal experiences tracking the events as a reporter and Greenpeace campaigner in addition t...

Chennai. 13 December 2016.
I woke up in the morning and headed to the tea stall nearby for my daily dose of morning chai. It was windier than usual: my outfit ruffled heavily, and the umbrella I was carrying to protect me from the drizzle was almost flying away. I returned to my room and looked up the weather forecast – a cyclone warning had been issued for the day...

The distribution of certain plants in different parts of the world is tied to their colonial history, according to a new study. These plants in places that the Europeans colonised are more similar to each other than to those in other random parts of the world.

An international team of researchers led by Bernd Lenzner and Franz Essl, a postdoctoral researcher and an associate professor, respectively, at the University of Vienna, conducted the study. Their findings were published on October 17.

In August 2011, K Kesava Rao, Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, visited the village of Yellampalli, about 100 km north of Bangalore. The residents of the village were faced with a huge problem: water scarcity. To make matters worse, the available groundwater seemed contaminated. The government had set up a reverse osmosis plant to deal with the problem, but the reject water formed a pool nearby...