The Blog
Women Sharing Space
This is of Ajay Palvayanteeswaran's pet theories: No two Indian girl graduate students can get along as roommates. Sometimes, he would extrapolate it to all Indians in general or any two women. "It is not a sexist statement," he would add. "In fact, it works...
Read MoreElephant Conservation Conundrum
Those who grew up in southern India may fondly recall temple elephants with their tinkling neck-bells. As children, we didn't notice the shackles on their legs. Elephants have iconic status in India, they were used in warfare, and also in construction and transportation, apart...
Read MoreThree Smart Bras
Did the Wonder Woman's bra confer any special protection on her? Was it good for anything more than, you know, the usual? I am not well up enough on my superhero comics to know the answer to this question, but here are three added-values bras...
Read MoreAn Interpreter of Interesting Research
No news story has written itself for me, thus far. This is not a complaint, it is a boast. As a science journalist, I work hard to file good articles, or copy as we say in the business. I translate jargon into narrative for a...
Read MoreMeeting Nexi
Nexi, the robot, features in articles on MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Storytelling. I am not entirely sure why this should be the case. Anyway, I decided to go meet this robot in Cynthea Brazeal's Personal Robotics Lab . Currently, the humans in the group are training their...
Read MoreSpiderman & Insect Research
Few stop to marvel at the backyard tree-scaler who limbers up palms to pluck coconuts for a living in South India. Considering that the trees reach up to a height of 60 feet and coconut grow at the very top of the tree, the hazards...
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