Bharatiya Janata Party
This bit of news is so chock full of metaphors that I’m almost laughing out loud. Annotated excerpts from ‘CSIR’s new lotus variety ‘Namoh 108’ a ‘grand gift’ to PM Modi: Science Minister‘, The Hindu, August 19, 2023: It’s a triviality today that the Indian government ministers’
Arun Mohan Sukumar
When in September 2019 the surface component of the Chandrayaan 2 mission failed, with the ‘Vikram’ lander crashing on the moon’s surface instead of gently touching down, there was a sense in all public spaces and conversations that the nation as a whole was in some grief. Until Wednesday,
Ashkan Salamat
So Physical Review Letters formally retracted that paper about manganese sulphide, in the limelight for having been coauthored by Ranga P. Dias, yesterday. The retraction notice states: “Of the authors on the original paper, R. Dias stands by the data in Fig. 1(b) and does not agree to retract
Abraham Flexner
Think of the long centuries in which attempts were made to change mercury into gold because that seemed like a very useful thing to do. These efforts failed and we found how to change mercury into gold by doing other things that had quite different intentions. And so I believe
academic publishing
Throughout the time I’ve been a commissioning editor for science-related articles for news outlets, I’ve always sought and published articles about academic publishing. It’s the part of the scientific enterprise that seems to have been shaped the least by science’s democratic and introspective impulses. It’s
atomic bombings
Oppenheimer was great. I really liked it. I don’t have a review as much as some notes that I took during the film that I’d like to share. But before diving into them, I should say that I got a certain impression of the film before I watched
Google Bard
The backdrop of the shenanigans of ChatGPT, Bard and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems these days has only served to accentuate how increasingly frustrating working with Google Docs is. I use Docs every day to write my articles and edit those that the freelancers I’m working with have filed.
Alex Travelli
The New York Times published a ‘profile’ of the Indian spaceflight startup scene on July 4. The article is typical in that: a) by virtue of being published by one of the world’s most-read news outlets, it can only be a big boost to the actors in its narrative,
Artemis Accords
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said its launch window for the Chandrayaan 3 mission is July 12-19. For now, the mission is expected to lift off on July 14 (at 2.35 pm IST). Chandrayaan 3’s mission is the same as that of its predecessor, Chandrayaan 2,
Ballia
More than half of the deaths reported during the heatwave in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar this week were reported from just one district in the former, called Ballia. On (or around) June 17, the medical superintendent of the Ballia district hospital was transferred away after he attributed the deaths (until
Majorana fermions
I’m looking forward to breaking down and understanding a new paper in Physical Review B soon – the sort of work of condensed-matter physics that’s complex enough to warrant a week-long dive into the subject but not so complex as to leave a non-expert enthusiast (such as myself) eventually
FOMO
“Pick your battles” is probably the most important thing I’ve learnt as a journalist. A lot of it is probably due to my firm belief that science has always been political, and getting people to see this has often left me grappling with difficult questions in a variety of
