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 […]
How do you use AI tools in your work? (Edited by Ashmita Gupta)
Researchers are using science to improve our coffee It’s a crisp, windy morning in Bengaluru. I open my jar of fresh coffee powder and pack some tightly into my coffee filter. I then gently pour some boiling water over the bed of coffee grounds, filling it to the brim. Watching the water burble over […]
Why some enjoy the subject for what it is Let us begin with an unusual counting puzzle. Imagine two blocks labelled 1 and 2, next to each other on the ground beside a wall. Assume that the ground is frictionless, and that the blocks will not lose energy when they hit each other or […]
Can scientists solve the conundrum of consciousness? Sometime in the late 1980s, two Oxford scientists examined PS, a patient who had suffered damage to the right side of her brain. The damage left her unable to notice things to her left. Even when she drew objects, she would draw their right sides perfectly […]
How the genre has evolved and influenced researchers It was early 2005. GK Ananthasuresh had joined IISc a few months before. His neighbour in the campus quarters then was Utpal Nath, another faculty member who was researching gene mutations in plant leaves. It was known that certain genes are responsible for facilitating differential growth […]
