The perils of image manipulation in science Volume 119, No 38, Figure 1. To most people, this is just a set of incomprehensible scientific data. But this figure, along with those from 13 other papers, is special. They lie at the heart of a high-profile scientific scandal: the downfall of a Nobel Laureate. Unlike […]
Designing an electric future A quiet hum is redefining mobility. More than a century ago, the rhythm of modern travel was measured by hoofbeats – the rhythmic sound of iron shoes on cobbled streets. Then came the gas-chugging Internal Combustion (IC) engines, whose roars marked a revolution of speed and power. Now, mankind stands […]
Tracing the history of the earliest neural network The year was 1958 when the United States Navy unveiled what they called a thinking machine – a perceptron. It was an IBM 704 equipped to “react” to and learn from its inputs. The giant computer simulator was the brainchild of Frank Rosenblatt, a scientist […]
Scientists are racing to outsmart cancer Mohit Kumar Jolly was reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, a popular science book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, when he became impressed by the idea of fighting against cancer. His interest grew exponentially after he started seeing cancer patients every day at the MD Anderson […]
The alluring mystery of an amorphous solid Glass is everywhere. You scroll over it on your phone, you drink from it, it’s in the spectacles perched on your nose and in the windows of your house. But how does it form? To picture that, imagine molten glass. As a liquid, it can flow; its […]
How citizens are helping collect research data On the rare occasion that you break away from the tedium of overflowing inboxes to listlessly stare into space, something extraordinarily fascinating could catch your attention. It could be a stray dragonfly perched on the window ledge, or perhaps a tree with a huge canopy farther away. […]
How creative pursuits open up new vistas for scientific exploration On a sunny day in the 1600s, in the picturesque town of Lombardy, Italy, an artist was busy at work in a hospital. This might sound strange, but it was a perfectly ordinary occurrence in the life of Leonardo da Vinci. The fifty-something-year-old was […]
Staff who support high-stakes research A long walk downhill on Silver Oak Marg leads you to the quiet edge of campus, where the bustle of the main roads fades into the murmur of trees. The air feels cooler here. Just past the Combustion Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory (CGPL), there is a gate on the left. […]
Hunting strategies of predatory bacteria In 1900, a young medical student named Alexander Fleming was studying at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London. Fleming also served in the London Scottish Regiment of the Territorial Army, where he became an expert marksman. His talent for shooting caught the eye of the captain of St […]
Why urban diseases like rabies and dengue are so hard to control Less than a kilometre from Bengaluru’s Lalbagh botanical garden lies the Bisilu Maramma Devi temple. The goddess has another name: Plague Maramma. Devotees believe that the deity harnesses the sun’s power to kill bacteria and viruses and ward off illnesses. The temple […]
