Innovation India-style, by IBM
IBM has brought fresh cheer to neighbourhood vegetable-sellers, who fan out every evening with their carts full of produce illuminated by cheap LED lamps in colours designed to highlight their...
View ArticleSpeech bubble
The first hashtag pinned to the transcript of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the Indian Science Congress, on his own website, is #Digital India. Therein, he spoke of putting “science and...
View ArticleTaming the demon
The industry and governments have turned artificial intelligence (AI) from an academic fascination to a potentially explosive technology, but there has been very little research into AI policy-making,...
View ArticleTreating vaccine-phobia and GM-aversion
Talk about first-world pains—while countries like India struggle to ensure full vaccination coverage, the president of the United States has to go on national television to urge parents to get their...
View ArticleComing back to life
Two extraordinary events are underway in February in science and technology, the first in quantum physics and the other in computer security. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will be brought back...
View ArticleBorrowing from nature
Patella vulgata, a common limpet which spends its lifespan of about 20 years rasping at rocks for sustenance, has acquired rockstar status in the material sciences. A paper in the journal Interface of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A fork that could worry Android
For years, smartphone makers have been uneasy about being dependent on just one open source operating system, Android. Last week, Google’s new nemesis Cyanogen raised $80 million in its latest round of...
View ArticleMining Wikipedia for health data
The rise of communicable diseases such as Ebola, swine flu and MERS, which have been developing into sudden public health catastrophes because they cannot be combated by common drugs and clinical...
View ArticleHoney, I am shrinking the device…
Wearable computing, the subject of breathlessly speculative stories on the science and technology pages until last week, finally made front page news on Sunday, for an utterly shameful reason. Four...
View ArticlePatenting science fiction
Multinational corporations which fund research routinely file patents that they may operationalise, sell, hoard or just forget about at a later date. This year, some of them have been quietly patenting...
View ArticleThinking beyond Maggi
The sudden excitement over Maggi marks a great stride forward for health enforcement in India, as state after state moves to investigate and perhaps prevent the sale of instant noodles. For the first...
View ArticleLet’s turn to science
The growing debate over food safety in India has taken a turn for the better with the chairman of the scientific panel of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) calling for a complete...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The internet of the future
In other parts of the third world, too, wireless networks helped countries to leapfrog terrestrial issues. (Reuters) It is just about two decades since the commercialisation of the internet, which...
View ArticleThe internet of the future
It is just about two decades since the commercialisation of the internet, which began with Netscape’s blockbuster IPO of August 1995, and the next wave appears to be imminent. One level up from...
View ArticleDead men’s secrets
Two breakthroughs in forensic archaeology have been reported in August, which draw attention to the extraordinary violence that seems to have been commonplace in ancient times. At least one of these...
View ArticleSupermoon eclipse: Scooting about the solar system
News of the supermoon eclipse due on the night of September 27-28 has recommended the heavens yet again to public attention. It’s a rarity, a blood moon about 14% bigger than normal. Like all celestial...
View ArticleThe Holy Grail of authentication
Rejoice, Nandan Nilekani, for it is now proven that not only can human identity be uniquely established by fingerprints and retinal scans, it can also be detected by the bugs that humans carry. Each...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Developing drugs from nature
All three Medicine Nobel winners were inspired by natural substances which are either found just lying about or have existed in the traditional pharmacopoeia for millennia The Nobel Prize for...
View Article‘There are times in history when you have to stand up and be counted. This is...
Why NAYANTARA SAHGAL Last week, Nayantara Sahgal, renowned writer and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, returned the Sahitya Akademi award she had won in 1986 for her political novel Rich Like Us. In an open...
View ArticleWould you accept a pig’s heart or a cow’s skin?
The English appreciate the wonder that is the cow far better than those Indians who see her as their mother. We remain at a very preliminary stage of research, no better than the poor schoolchildren...
View Article
