Scicomm
On January 30, the Union ministry of finance announced a 24-25% hike in the junior (JRF) and senior research fellowships (SRF) amounts effective from January 1, 2019. The decision had been prompted by a longstanding demand of India’s community of young scholars, who availed these fellowships to support themselves
Scicomm
A recent article in Scientific American on the benefits of “proper breathing” for overall health has ignited anger across social media, with many in India accusing the magazine of rebranding or even appropriating the ancient Indian breathing technique of ‘pranayama’. Detailed description of the benefits of the 2500-year-old Indian technique
Science
After CERN announced the plans for its new supercollider, I was surprised no one wanted to address the elephant in the room: the supercollider's similarity to one announced by China a few months ago. The Chinese machine is called CEPC (Circular Electron Proton Collider) and the CERN machine,
Scicomm
A consortium of Indian scientists has submitted a proposal to the national space agency for a new space science mission called CMB Bharat. Let's break it down. What is CMB Bharat? According to Tarun Souradeep, a senior professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, the
Scicomm
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has provided more details about its Gaganyaan programme, including new stages for its GSLV Mk III launch vehicle, through – of all things – a tender notice. Such surreptitiousness is par for the course for India’s spaceflight organisation, which has often done next to nothing
Science
Avi Loeb in his interview to the New Yorker: We don’t have as much data as I would like. Given the data that we have, I am putting this on the table, and it bothers people to even think about that, just like it bothered the Church in the
Scicomm
A Harvard astronomer believes that an interstellar object could possibly have originated from a civilization outside our solar system: https://t.co/qsLjVPGJy4 pic.twitter.com/x7jh3wnRDm — The New Yorker (@NewYorker) January 23, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js I doubt the New Yorker thinks Harvard University is a
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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is working on at least three different designs of reusable launch vehicles at the same time. Together with its endeavours to increase the number of objectives per mission and deploy purpose-built rockets, it seems like ISRO wants to secure a competitive advantage as quickly
Scicomm
Pamela Philipose, the public editor of The Wire, raised an important question towards the end of her latest column: The Wire Fortunately, he took the trouble to send in his suggestions: “It will be better you write good pieces on the policies of the BJP government and their work over
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The authors of a 2017 paper about why fake news spreads so fast have asked for it to be retracted because they've discovered a flaw in their analysis. This is commendable because it signals that scientists are embracing retractions as a legitimate part of the scientific process (which
Scicomm
About 300 million years ago, something happened. And the Moon was hit by meteorites twice to thrice as often after this period than before. The Solar System has always been a dangerous place for careless travellers. Out there are large clouds of dust, millions of rocks dislodged from ancient collisions,
Scicomm
On January 15, Harsh Vardhan, the Union science and technology minister, mulled renaming India's Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) as "Bharat Mata Mantralaya". (In Hindi, the ministry is currently called the 'Prithvi Vigyan Mantralaya'.) Vardhan was speaking at a function to mark the 144th