Lab Rats

Lab Rats has moved

Posted by sadmin at 
Lab Rats, along with all of Livemint's blogs has moved to a new Wordpress platform. Visit http://blog.livemint.com/lab-rats for more posts on science simply click here . Also don't forget to update your RSS feed readers and tell all your friends! Share this post: email it! | del.icio.us! | digg it! | newsVine!

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Was our response to swine flu alarmist?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Now that the media have somewhat stopped counting the A/H1N1 deaths, and there seems to be a sense of relief in the society, it's time to see how the public health measures taken in response to the swine flu spread actually measure up. A research paper in the latest issue of British Medical Journal by Peter Doshi from the Massachusetts Institute...

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Why do journalists in India not write books?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Well, I am not asking this (for, to some extent, I know why) but the versatile historian and sociologist Ramachandra Guha is. Last Friday, at the Bangalore launch of the book The Long Revolution-The birth and growth of India's IT Industry by Dinesh C Sharma, science editor at Mail Today , Guha spoke passionately (as he always does) about the conspicuous...

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Chandrayaan-I comes to an end

Posted by Seema Singh at 
As was feared on July 17, 2009 (when a star sensor malfunction in Chandrayaan-1 was first revealed) India's first lunar expedition came to an end today. A rather sad day for Indians who have associated national pride and Indian technological prowess with this mission, even though ISRO has been launching several important communication and remote...

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How about handwriting for lie detection?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
I don't know about you but I've had mates in school and college who used to dabble in "handwriting analysis" and would often show-off by critiquing the way we dotted our "i's" or crossed our "t's", whether our "l's" were slanting or straight, whether the loop in "h" was constricted...

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Modern day search for 'Sanjeevani'

Posted by Seema Singh at 
So is there, rather was there, a miracle plant called Sanjeevani ? If yes, could/can it resurrect life as different versions of the epic Ramayana tell us? Interesting questions even today, aren't they? Pulled by many such intriguing questions a team of researchers set out on their own "search for Sanjeevani ". The full account can be found...

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Home-grown tech for cancer care

Posted by Seema Singh at 
India can hardly boast of any biomedical new technology that can withstand global scrutiny. (Of course there could be exceptions). So now when I learn that Cytotron (a machine for non-invasive treatment of cancer and arthritis), developed by a Bangalore technologist Rajah Vijay Kumar, has been certified by the world's leading and a century-old product...

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IITs finally getting close to medical science

Posted by Seema Singh at 
It's great to see the first and the oldest of all IITs to make a move towards medical education and research. IIT Kharagpur has signed a unique partnership with the University of California San Diego Health Sciences to set up an International Academic Medical Center at IIT-K. IIT-K Director Damodar Acharya believes this collaboration to be among...

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Indian tigers key to global tiger recovery?

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Indians have always taken pride in their tigers. So every time the dwindling tiger count comes to the fore, there's a national uproar. But now there's one more compelling reason to save Indian tigers. New research in today's issue of the open source journal PLoS Genetics shows that tigers in the Indian subcontinent retain 60-70% of global...

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IISc is India's top ranking engg/tech institute

Posted by Seema Singh at 
...Among the 67 engineering and technological institutes which have a publishing record. Comparing this record between 1999 and 2008, Gangan Prathap and BM Gupta report in Aug 10 issue of Current Science that IISc ranks No. 1, followed by some IITs. (list below). These institutes together have published 75,166 papers during this period, according to...

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India-Australia education ties still strong

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Despite the souring of ‘education' relationship between India and Australia, in the wake of recent attacks on Indian students there, institutional ties remain intact. The first plans of the $10 million IITB-Monash (University) Research Academy, to be built at IIT in Mumbai, have been released. The Academy is expected to be ready for occupation in...

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Rethinking biology, with math in tow

Posted by Seema Singh at 
For long, biology and math have been somewhat mutually exclusive, at least in this part of the world and in initial years of education. In any case, introducing math to biologists later in career turns out a tad too late or difficult for optimal use. Now, a large part of the scientific community is rethinking biology education, which apparently needs...

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What divorce damages, remarriage cannot heal

Posted by Seema Singh at 
Marriage and health have a close connection, whatever level - physical or metaphysical -- you may want to consider. So, when researchers say divorce, and widowhood, have a lingering and detrimental impact on health even after a person remarries, you take notice. To be published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior , the...

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This blogpost will Vanish...

Posted by Seema Singh at 
...if I download this tool and choose to make it disappear from Labrats. For now, I have no such intention, but here's the story of how it could happen: Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a way to put an expiry date on electronic text. So. if any email, Facebook or chat message, blogpost or any electronic stuff (in future...

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waiting for the sun...

Posted by Jacob Koshy at 
Going by the amount of media space that the moon landing anniversary generated, Albert Einstein will surely be a tad jealous. Folks, it is 90 years--last May 20--since Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was proved right! Arthur Eddington, famous astronomer and supposedly the first true blue fan of the shock-haired, tongue-popping Einstein...

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