What IISc scientists are doing to help solve the city’s civic challenges In the 2014 Malayalam film Bangalore Days, the character played by actor Nivin Pauly is asked during a job interview about his opinion of being posted in Bangalore city. With a shy smile, he thinks, “Who can say no to Bangalore?” That […]
The need for archives in academic institutions In a pivotal scene in the sensational Christopher Nolan film, Oppenheimer, the protagonist, J Robert Oppenheimer, meets Danish physicist Niels Bohr while struggling with his research at Cambridge University in the early 1920s. Bohr urges Oppenheimer to move to Germany and study under the famed physicist and […]
India is betting big on lithium-ion batteries, but at what cost? In 1817, Johan August Arfwedson, a Swedish lawyer and mineralogist, was studying the mineral petalite in the laboratory of the renowned chemist Jacob Berzelius. His investigations revealed that the mineral mainly contained aluminium, silicon and oxygen. But around 4% of the composition […]
Researchers at IISc and ARTPARK are building robots that will soon become an integral part of human environments The Terminator movies and several science fiction books have painted a picture of robots as mostly evil overlords bent on wiping out humanity. The reality is that although robots have evolved significantly in the last few decades, […]
After centuries of sky-watching, we are yet to understand the complex nature of clouds It’s an early winter dawn. The lake seems to be steaming, but it is not. A cloud is being born. I am on a hilltop, watching a village in the valley sparkling in the early morning rays when a white sheet […]
The perils and pitfalls of making AI speak like humans In June this year, a Google engineer made a bombshell claim: the Artificial Intelligence (AI) system he had been working on had become sentient – it had become aware of its own existence and begun expressing emotions and feelings. Google summarily dismissed his claims […]
With each passing year, floods in Assam have become increasingly catastrophic, driven by a combination of socio-political factors and climate change The Udalguri district in Assam, which shares an international border with Bhutan, has historically been an area largely unaffected by extreme climate. But in recent times, this district, like many others across the […]
How pollutants like microplastics and fertilisers are damaging riverine ecosystems It’s 2022, which means that if the word “river” crops up in a conversation among college students, it would most likely be in the context of a Buzzfeed quiz that seeks to categorise them into a type of river. With the vast number of […]
The soil under our feet is teeming with life, and understanding and nurturing it has a positive impact on our lives A memory. My friend and I followed the ball as it bounced towards the pit in the backyard. Heat wafted up, and the air was saturated with a warm, earthy smell that wasn’t […]
How geologists connect the dots to tell stories of the Earth’s evolution It was a clear but cold July evening in the Kumaon Himalayas in Uttarakhand. Prakash Chandra Arya and his younger brother, Vikas, were on day one of their 15-day trek from a village called Munsiyari to the Milam glacier, more than 4000 […]
