Category: Curious Bends

Curious Bends – food prize, TB’s weakness, India’s big brother and more

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

1. World Food Prize goes to Sanjaya Rajaram 

“The 71-year-old veteran plant scientist has been declared the winner of the $250,000 World Food Prize this week. Born in Varanasi in India and now a citizen of Mexico, he has been chosen for his contribution to increasing global wheat production by more than 200 million tonnes in the years following the Green Revolution.” (2 min read)

2. Tuberculosis bacteria has a chink in its armour

With an increase in the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the need to develop new ways to fight infection has never been more urgent. Now researchers at the Indian Institute of Science have found a new anti-microbial target in TB bacteria, and it holds potential for new drugs. (4 min read)

3. Now we know why drugs don’t work on pancreatic cancer

“The quirks of pancreatic cancer make it one of the most lethal. The survival period after diagnosis is only four to six months. The widely believed reason for this failure has been that in pancreatic cancer, the tissue that surrounds the tumour, called the stroma, blocks the delivery of chemotherapy drugs to the tumour. But new research has turned that logic on its head.” (3 min read)

+ The writer, Mohit Kumar Jolly, is a graduate student at the University of Rice. This week he is blogging from the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting.

4. The biologist who played with animal poisons

Professor KS Krishnan, one of India’s top biologists, passed away earlier this year. “His fundamental impact was the ease with which he repeatedly linked his questions with the most innovative solutions. He was too smart to pursue science as a set of minor achievable goals. The exciting things he talked about were too broad to be limited to just one discipline. He was a man of science who loved molecules and molluscs in equal measure, researching the unexplored world of animal poisons, looking for that missing miracle cure for some of the most dreaded human diseases of the nervous system.” (3 min read)

5. India’s big brother is coming to Surat

Not the reality TV show, but the Orwellian character who watched over the action of the country’s citizens. Citizens of Surat, however, are celebrating. Their city will become the first to setup a network of closed-circuit cameras. The hope is that it will reduce crime, but past evidence on the use of such networks is not clear. Without proper laws in place to protect citizens’ privacy, India must debate surveillance before it is too late. (4 min read)

Chart of the week

An ageing population is going to be one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century, but solutions around the world differ wildly. Spot India and China in the chart below, and then hope that India’s health minister Harsh Vardhan will start acting rather than creating controversies. Those in the US can weep a little, too. Credit: 2013 health report by the OECD.

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For more, follow the curators Mukunth and Akshat. Get in touch with us at curiousbends@gmail.com.

Curious Bends  –  the history of the zero, flooding Asia’s rivers, maddening imprisonments and more

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

1. Was the zero really reinvented in India?

The academic and scientific environment in India leaves a lot to be desired. Nonetheless, many Indians are sated on the copious vestiges of the past, one of which is a claim to the invention of the zero. How true is that claim? The investigation takes the reader from Switzerland to Babylon and then from Rajasthan to Cambodia to reveal a bizarre story. (27 min read)

2. Climate change will increase flow in Asia’s big rivers

Climate change will affect emerging nations the most. Apart from slowing down economic growth, it also exacerbates their under-preparedness by threatening to disrupt ecosystems that support millions. In fact, the five big river systems of Asia that are fed by Himalayan glaciers—of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong—together support 1.3 billion people. According to a new study, climate change will increase water flow in them until 2050. Are policymakers prepared to confront how this will alter cropping calendars? (2 min read)

3. Suicide statistics, squalor & recidivism haven’t ended solitary confinement

Delve into the deceptively placid world of solitary confinement, its passions-packed history, the costs of running them, and the emotional and psychological damage it inflicts on those who underwent it. There is no alternative to the strong prose in this piece, so sample this: “One winter in Shawangunk, in Ulster County, NY, two inmates on either side of his cell devised a simple game. From morning to night, as Billy watched, envelopes of excrement went from one side to the other, careering past his cell like hockey pucks flying into a revolting space-time dimension. Most of the projectiles landed, and remained, just outside his cell door. After several days, he yelled: ‘If you have a beef with each other, go at it like men. Don’t do this bozo shit!’ … They came up with a new game. For five long weeks, they tirelessly banged on Billy’s cell with their sneakers.” (40 min read)

+ The writer, Shruti Ravindran, is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist. She recently graduated from Columbia University.

4. The amazing micro-engineered, water-repelling surface that lives outside your window

The curious incident of water-repelling leaves in the garden inspires two physicists to explore how some leaves in nature are superhydrophobic—that is, completely water-averse. Using a high-speed camera and some high school math and physics, they show how this cool effect comes about. (7 min read)

5. An interview of T.V. Jayan, science editor of The Telegraph (India)

This interview was published in 2011. However, Jayan’s views on science journalism in India are no less pertinent. He talks about understanding science, misreporting, sensationalisation and ethics. He has advice for aspiring science journalists, too: “Read, read and read.” (9 min read)

Interactive story of the week

Immerse yourself in the wonderful story lives of Vumbi pride of lions at the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Produced by National Geographic, the story has 23 short chapters and a compassionate aesthetic to help you understand the complex lives these animals lead, how they grow up, how they hunt, why they eat what they eat, the tribes that live around them, the people who kill them and what we can do to help them. The Vumbi might have provided narrative fodder but their stories are true for every lion in the wild.

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We received many helpful replies to our survey (if you filled it out, thank you!). One popular request was to send out Curious Bends twice a week, and we’re going to give that a try.

If you have any suggestions or other feedback, send them to curiousbends@gmail.com. You can also find Akshat and Mukunth on Twitter. Have a nice week!

Curious Bends — internet on dumb phones, new form of matter, canal solar plants and more

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

1. Two-thirds of the world’s mobile phones are dumb phones. Meet the company getting them online 

The proportion of dumb phones is even higher in the emerging countries. Now a Singapore-based startup launched by Indian entrepreneurs is bringing the internet to such phones using simple technology that tailors services such as Twitter and Facebook to text-only functionality. They already have 17 million users in 36 countries. (6 min read)

2. India’s quest to end hunger and malnutrition with the help of a miracle crop

The problem is not that there isn’t enough food, but that those foods (rice, corn and wheat) don’t have enough nutrients. Now, 30,000 small farmers are growing pearl millets, a variety which has unusually high levels of iron and zinc. “We must re-marry agriculture and nutrition—the two have been too far away from each other for a long time,” says M.S. Swaminathan, the father of India’s Green Revolution. (12 min read)

3. The quest for a radically new form of matter

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Dan Shechtman for the discovery of quasicrystals. This form of solid is in between true crystals, such as salt, and amorphous, disordered solids, such as glass. Its acceptance by the scientific community has been marred with controversy. Although developed in labs in the 1980s, their natural occurrence was only confirmed recently. It took three scientists a trip to the Russian tundra armed with Kalashinovs for defence to find a few grains that proved their existence. (20 min read)

+ This piece from science writer Virat Markandeya recently won the best Science & Innovation feature at the Press Club of Mumbai’s National RedInk Awards.

4. There is a major flaw in the design of a growing number of hydro-electricity projects

The death of five students from Hyderabad (19 still missing) after they were washed away by the river Beas in Himachal Pradesh should serve as an alarm to the designers of the run-of-river hydro-electricity projects. Flash floods, which probably caused their death, seems to be inherent in the design of such plants. And yet, for such projects “hundreds of agreements have been signed and great stretches of rivers have been apportioned to private and public enterprises.” (4 min read)

5. This two-minute fix could reduce the large number of anaemic children born in India

More than 3 out of 4 children in India suffer from anaemia (iron deficiency) at birth. One way to reduce that number is to delay cutting the umbilical cord for a mere two minutes after the baby has been delivered. The period allows the baby to take in more blood from the placenta, but doctors have been taught by old textbooks to cut the cord as soon as possible. (5 min read)

6. 1,000 Miles of canals in Gujarat are set to be covered with solar panels

The concept is beautiful in its simplicity: take long stretches of open canals in dry, sunny terrain, and cover them with solar panels. The solar roofs prevent the evaporation of water. And the coolness of the water, in turn, will keep the panels at a more efficient operating temperature. Some logistical issues remain, but the plan is genius. (3 min read)

Chart of the Week

This chart shows the disparity between Scheduled Caste and other households in toilet ownership. Probably of greater interest is the blog Data Stories, which is run by a Delhi-based journalist and has some of the smartest data-driven stories. The chart below is a static image of an interactive map, so go check it out.

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Curators Mukunth and Akshat have been brainstorming ideas to reach a bigger audience. You could make their lives easier by forwarding this to a friend. Send suggestions and feedback to curiousbends@gmail.com. Have a good week!