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Kasturi Das

Independent journalist I Editor I Photography

Scientists Map Stomach Tumours To Personalize Cancer Treatment – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (Jun. 13, 2025) – Gastric cancer is a major global health concern, ranking as the fifth most common cancer and the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with close to 770,000 deaths each year. In Singapore alone, gastric cancer is among the top 10 causes of cancer-related deaths, taking about 300 lives annually.
But scientists in Singapore have now made a significant discovery to tackle the disease.
A team of researchers from the Singapore Gastric Cancer Consorti...
Mongabay Environmental News •

Churpi from mithun milk could boost farmer incomes

Churpi, a variety of hardened cheese, is a popular traditional snack in the Himalayan belt of Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet and parts of northeastern India. Primarily made from yak milk, it can also be made using cow or buffalo milk, and even the milk of chauris, a crossbreed of yak and cow. Arunachal Pradesh is known for its Geographical Indication (GI) tagged churpi made from yak milk.

Recently, a farmer from the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh has developed churpi made from the milk of mithun — a semi...
The New Indian Express •

Faraway Festival of Eclectic Esoterica

The road leading to the land of the Lisu tribe in Arunachal Pradesh is long and arduous. If one travels by road from Guwahati in Assam, it takes an overnight bus or train ride to Tinsukia, followed by a three-hour drive to Miao. From there a backbreaking nine-hour journey on a 4x4 pickup truck, through the dense forests of Namdapha National Park finally leads to Gandhigram, a remote village nestled in the easternmost corner of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Myanmar. Also known as the Yobins, the L...

A New Immune Cell Atlas To Help Decode Disease Risk In Asians – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (May. 28, 2025) – Scientists from five Asian countries — Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and India — have created the world’s first Asian Immune Diversity Atlas (AIDA), a comprehensive single-cell resolution map of immune cells from diverse Asian populations.
Published in Cell, this study could lead to more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments for Asian populations.
“Creating an immune cell atlas specifically for Asian populations addresses a critical gap in glo...

Oceans Hold Key To Forecasting China’s Prolonged Summer Rains – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (May. 19, 2025) – Extreme rainfall events in China, from flash floods to devastating landslides, often leave a trail of destruction. While their frequency and intensity have been studied extensively, one crucial element has remained elusive: duration. How long it rains can be just as critical as how hard it rains. Now, a team of climate scientists may have found the key to predicting such prolonged rainfall — hidden in the oceans.
A new study published in Advances in Atmospheric S...

Heart Research Has A Gender Bias – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (May. 09, 2025) – One afternoon in 2022, when 60-year-old Lekshmi could no longer bear the chest pain she had been brushing off as gastritis for the past few weeks, she rode her scooter to a private hospital near her home in Alleppey, a city in southern India. The doctors at the hospital ran a few tests and advised her to get admitted for checkups. But Lekshmi declined. She told the doctors that she lived alone and would prefer to come back when her daughters, who lived outside Al...

Antibiotic Resistant Bug Found in Retail Chicken In Bangladesh – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (May. 06, 2025) – In Bangladesh, chicken is a common source of protein — but new research from Osaka Metropolitan University reveals that it may be carrying a hidden threat. Researchers from Japan have detected alarming rates of Escherichia albertii, an emerging foodborne pathogen, in retail chicken meat sold in Bangladesh. Their findings show extensive contamination and significant antimicrobial resistance, posing potential risks to public health.
Escherichia alberti is a less kn...

These Newly Discovered Compounds Can Delay Flowering In Plants – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (Apr. 16, 2025) – As climate change continues to disrupt traditional agricultural cycles around the world, scientists in Japan have discovered new chemical compounds that can regulate the timing of flowering of crops. The findings of this research could help increase crop yields and improve food security.
Plant growth and development depends on several environmental signals, such as temperature, daylight hours and genetics. In many species, flowering in the spring only begins afte...

Ancient Earth Had Green Oceans – Asian Scientist Magazine

AsianScientist (Apr. 09, 2025) – When Voyager 1 spacecraft captured a photo of the Earth from six billion kilometres away, astronomer Carl Sagan famously described our planet as a “pale blue dot.” That blue hue was sunlight scattering and reflecting off of the oceans. But now, researchers in Japan have found evidence that Earth’s oceans may not have always been blue — they were green.
A group led by Taro Matsuo from Nagoya University in Japan, has found evidence that cyanobacteria, often called...
The New Indian Express •

The Birdman of Nagpur

Tewani, who lives with his wife, found himself looking for a fulfilling way to spend his days after his retirement from the Bank of India in January 2012. Two years later, while flipping through Twinkle Star, a children’s magazine published in Nagpur, he came across an article about the declining population of sparrows in the city. “I thought, why not help them myself?” says Tewani. He first started building birdhouses with materials he could find locally. This repurposing of scrap helped him ke...

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