Seema Singh - Livemint.com
ABOUT RECENT POSTS
Member since 05-26-2008
Last visited 09-11-2009
Timezone 5.00 GMT
Total Posts 173
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  • Sunday, September 06, 2009
    Posted at 11:20:00 AM
    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 of Technology says the public health response to the swine flu outbreak can be seen as "alarmist, overly restrictive, or even unjustified". Doshi's argument is based on the thesis that.
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  • Tuesday, September 01, 2009
    Posted at 3:29:00 PM
    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 absence of books by journalists, particularly beat reporters. And he has put money (and energy, his as well as Nandan Nilekani's) where his words are. As one of the two managing trustees.
  • Saturday, August 29, 2009
    Posted at 8:47:00 PM
    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 sensing satellites for years now. However, unlike last announcement, which was first made to a TV channel exclusively and then when the media pestered the space agency for details, it hurriedly called.
  • Friday, August 28, 2009
    Posted at 12:06:00 PM
    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 or rounded... it just went on. I thought most of those comments were from common sense rather than from any scientific study. After all, isn't it commonsensical to tell a person with a neat hand.
  • Tuesday, August 25, 2009
    Posted at 4:47:00 PM
    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 here, in today' s issue of Current Science . They started out by logically eliminating the following hypotheses, one by one. 1. It refers to a specific plant, either extinct or extant, with a.
  • Friday, August 21, 2009
    Posted at 10:15:00 AM
    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 safety certification body Underwriters Laboratories, followed by the European regulatory agency's CE certification for popular use, I feel delighted. And to some extent vindicated, as I've.
  • Wednesday, August 19, 2009
    Posted at 1:52:00 PM
    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 the first between an IIT and a public US university in the field of medical education and research. In addition to IIT's strong education and research focus in engineering and the sciences, we also.
  • Friday, August 14, 2009
    Posted at 11:28:00 AM
    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 genetic variability, despite evidence of a relatively recent and potentially human-induced population crash 200 years ago. The findings suggest the subcontinent tigers may be a worthy focus of conservation.
  • Sunday, August 09, 2009
    Posted at 11:52:00 AM
    ...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 publication data downloaded from the SCOPUS International multidisciplinary bibliographical database. Put together, this is more than the output of the university sector (59,685 papers) and constitutes.
  • Wednesday, August 05, 2009
    Posted at 3:02:00 PM
    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 early 2011 and will have nine labs and can accommodate 350 researchers, though it has already begun taking students. Acting CEO of the Academy Mohan Krishnamoorthy says there was strong demand for entry.
  • Sunday, August 02, 2009
    Posted at 5:44:00 PM
    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 to undergo mutation, one that is induced by mathematics. Computing Has Transformed Biology -- Biology Education Must Catch Up, is the title of a paper in this week's Science . The authors argue.
  • Tuesday, July 28, 2009
    Posted at 9:54:00 AM
    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 research, intriguingly titled Marital Biography and Health Midlife , shows: "Among the currently married, those who have ever been divorced show worse health on all dimensions. Both the divorced.
  • Wednesday, July 22, 2009
    Posted at 9:47:00 PM
    ...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 even images) is sent using the new system, called Vanish, then you could choose its lifetime. Literally. Any text uploaded to any Web service through a browser can do this permanent vanishing act and.
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