Some facts are just boring, like 1 + 1 = 2. You already knew them before they were presented as such, and now that you do, it’s hard to know what to do with them. Some facts are clearly important, even if you don’t know how you can use them, like the spark plug fires … Read more
The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article because it was published in error before the peer review process was completed. The content of this article has been removed for legal reasons. The authors have been offered to submit a revised manuscript for further peer review. All authors agree with this retraction. This is the notice accompanying … Read more
Plagiarism is a tricky issue. If it’s straightforward to you, ask yourself if you’re assuming that the plagiariser (plagiarist?) is fluent in reading and writing, but especially writing, English. The answer’s probably ‘yes’. This is because for someone entering into an English-using universe for the first time, certain turns of phrase and certain ways to … Read more
This is an interesting discovery: First, it’s also a bad discovery (note: there’s a difference between right/wrong and good/bad). It is useful to found specific interventions on scientific findings – such as that providing pregnant women with iron supplements in a certain window of the pregnancy could reduce the risk of anaemia by X%. However, that the … Read more
The Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill passed away on January 14, at the age of 82. I don’t know most of his work, which means this note of remembrance is less about Bofill the architect per se and more about Bofill the designer of the La Muralla Roja, an apartment complex in Manzanera, Spain. Spanish for ‘The Red … Read more
I rewatched Eternals today and had some time to collect some of my thoughts on it. Spoilers ahead (including one each for The Tomorrow War and Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings). Too much deus ex machina – took 55 minutes minutes to find out what the Eternals are not capable of. And this trope continues through the … Read more
Science journalist Laura Spinney wrote an article in The Guardian on January 9, 2022, entitled ‘Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?’. This excerpt from the article captures its points well, I thought: Or take protein structures. A protein’s function is largely determined by its structure, so if you want to design a drug that blocks or … Read more
I’m partway through Renny Thomas’s new book, Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment. Its description on the Routledge page reads: This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical, autobiographical, historical, and … Read more
In mid-2012, shortly after physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe had announced the discovery of a particle that looked a lot like the Higgs boson, there was some clamour in India over news reports not paying enough attention or homage to the work of Satyendra Nath Bose. Bose and Albert Einstein … Read more