Miscellaneous

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Stirring up Debates

Sometimes, an article I write stirs up intense debates. Like so. The title of the post relates to a debate going on over at the Science Careers Blog. The editor there was responding to an article by Dr. Isis that was responding to an article...

Dilip Kumar, Improbable Tamil Anthologist

Dilip Kumar, Booksellers and Exporters, was the name of the Tamil literary bookstore he ran in Mylapore, Chennai. For over a quarter century, till 2016, research scholars and avid readers dropped in here to discuss books with the genial owner. He shipped books to the...

My Friend from Islamabad

Summer vacation did not mean days off for graduate students in the United States but in those warm months we could take longer-than-usual coffee breaks without feeling guilty. Pocket Park, our campus coffee shop, tiny and transparent, was wedged into a far corner of a...

The Ramachandran Plot

The double helix is, perhaps, one of the most iconic structures from the world of science. In Chennai, not far from the banks of river Adyar, there’s an auditorium in the heart of a national research centre that appears wholly unremarkable, but for its name:...

A Numismatist of Note

Here is how a several centuries-old coin may rewrite a key chapter in the history of ancient India: In 1851, a hoard of gold coins issued by kings from the Gupta dynasty was unearthed near the holy city of Varanasi, in northern India. The...

Closing The Education Divide

In the Arab world, sheer numbers call for leap-frogging into digital learning, said Maysa Jalbout, CEO of the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education. Over half the 385 million people who live the region are under 25 years of age, she said. A good many...