Category: Curious Bends

Curious Bends – lions, rural women, antibiotics and more

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

1. In a quiet corner in India trains are being slowed down as the population of Asiatic lions grows

The population of Asiatic lions in their only habitat in the Gir National Park has more than doubled since 1974. Their new enemies are not poachers or hunters, but trains. Six lions were run over by trains in 2013 alone. Sadly, many railroads still run through animal sanctuaries and India’s needs will force future railroads to be laid through more protected land. There is now a proposal to slow down such trains, but it is not clear how much that will help the lions. (2 min read)

2. Dumb phones help increase profits for self-employed women

The dumb phone is at centre of a revolution among one self-employed women’s group in Gujarat. These women get raw agricultural produce from farmers at market prices, process, package and sell them through the RUral DIstribution (RUDI) network of 3,000 other women. After the association overseeing this cooperative installed an SMS-based information management system, efficiencies spiked by 20% and income by 100%. (6 min read)

3. Toilets are urgently needed in rural India, but don’t expect that it will deter rapists

The horrendous incident in Uttar Pradesh is detracting attention from the real solutions to separate societal issues. Rape is a complex problem, which requires policy intervention. Toilet usage doesn’t. While the government has invested heavily in constructing toilets, its use remains dismal because of lack of education. Many families prefer to take a dump in the open even if they can afford to install a latrine back home. (8 min read)

4. Holy sites ‘may offer clues to antibiotic resistance’

If you think a dip in the water of Rishikesh or Haridwar will purify you of your sins, think again. You might just be gargling some bacteria with antibiotic resistant genes. A study by an IIT-Delhi professor shows how annual human confluences that pollute these venerated waters could be a hub for the exchange and distribution of these genes, giving a cultural context to a rising global ill. (4 min read)

5. The Pakistani women behind the official FIFA World Cup balls

If Ronaldo gets Brazuca—the official ball of the 2014 FIFA World Cup—to swing perfectly, it is because of the ball’s enhanced aerodynamic properties. But how likely are you to have known that it probably came from a small company in Pakistan, where they are sewed by unskilled women working? This isn’t a story of harassment but of outsourcing and its capacity to empower. (5 min read)

6. How Indian might be shaping rules to deal with international patents

Developments in India are leading to “a worldwide deteriorating trend on intellectual property,” according to a senior counsel for US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer. Does he think India is the leader of a pack? Possibly, as Brazil and Argentina have started to pay attention to an Indian law that refuses to patent drugs which have seen only incremental improvement. They must have noticed it keeps prices down and the pharma lobby on the edge of its broad seat. (3 min read)

Chart of the week

“From 1980-2007, only 15% of hurricanes, typhoons, and the like troubled the residents of low-income countries, but 68% of people killed by these systems died in poorer nations.” What these numbers tells us is that climate change is going to be more unfair to poorer people. The chart shows the vulnerability of countries to climate change. See how very vulnerable are developing nations clustered near the the equator, where climate change effects are typically more intense. More on Vox.

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Email curiousbends@gmail.com with story suggestions or feedback. For more such stories, find curators Mukunth and Akshat on Twitter.

Curious Bends – metal-plated insect syringes, white tigers, steppe eagles and more

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

1. Found: the first metal-plated syringe in a living creature

On a fig tree in the beautiful campus of the Indian Institute of Science, researchers have found a wasp that uses a zinc-plated “syringe” to pierce through the skin of unripe fruit and lay her eggs. What’s more, to reveal this intriguing adaption of nature, they used jury-rigged video equipment to capture close-ups of the wasps. Of course electron microscopy was needed to be sure… still a nice example of jugaad. (3 min read)

2. Everything you know about the white tiger is wrong

The white tiger is not really an endangered species. It’s an oddball animal produced purely for human entertainment. Its natural tropical habitat in India is not good for a predator that has lost its camouflage, and, if any existed in the wild, they would have died out. Instead, they remain in our zoos, suffering from the consequences of severe inbreeding, all because they bring in the crowd and, thus, money. (7 min read)

3. After devouring vultures, diclofenac is eating its way through eagles

After pushing vultures to the verge of extinction in South Asia, the veterinary painkiller and anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac is turning out to be a threat to eagles as well. India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan have banned the drug’s veterinary use, but it is available for human use and hence gets used illegally to treat livestock. (2 min read)

4. One social enterprises’s attempt to provide sustainable clean water to rural India

Water ATMs are popping all over small villages outside India’s capital. Clean drinking water is available for ₹1/litre. If the ATM’s tank falls below a certain level, it triggers a text message to the control room to fix the problem. But the uptake of water purchase is nowhere near sustainable. People prefer the free option, even if it is not clean or easy. (5 min read)

5. The simple rule that is China’s weapon to win the war on malaria

From 26,000 cases in 2008, the incidence of malaria in China has dropped to 2,716 in 2012. The reason is that they follow a simple 1-3-7 rule. New cases must be classified within three days and risk to the local area evaluated within seven days. (3 min read)

6. Animated timeline: creation of Indian states from 1951 to 2014
India has a 29th state in Telangana. Economists argue that this is a good thing. New states grow faster than old ones. If they have their way, India may one day have 50 states.

Chart of the week

More than 2 million people responded to the “My World” survey run by the United Nations. They all unanimously agreed that education was their top priority, regardless of the economic background they were from. Action taken on climate change, on the other hand, sat right at the bottom, along with need for reliable energy at home. More from MSNBC here.

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Email curiousbends@gmail.com with suggestions or feedback. We’d love to hear from you. For more such stories, find curators Vasudevan Mukunth and Akshat Rathi on Twitter. Enjoy the week!

Welcome to Curious Bends

Akshat RathiLeave a comment

A few years ago, I formed a group of science enthusiasts. Our goal was to fix the problem of poor science communication in India. There only existed a handful of science publications and fewer among them did the work that was so critical to a democracy with the potential that India has. We discussed many ideas but couldn’t implement them.

After all these years, science communication in India hasn’t changed much. But the problem kept nagging me all along. So now, with fellow nerd Vasudevan Mukunth, I’ve started a weekly newsletter to address that problem in a small way. The aim of the weekly newsletter would be to become a place where you can come to find interesting stories from global publications covering science, technology and data that have their focus not on the West.

Here is this week’s edition (our second). If you enjoy it, you and your friends can subscribe here.

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1. Warheads at supersonic speeds… on the ground
India’s defence research organisation has installed five 4-km long rails at a research lab in Chandigarh for propelling missile warheads at supersonic speeds. Could this be useful for India’s space programmes, too? The timing is suggestive. In July this year, the space agency is slated to launch an unmanned “Orbital Vehicle” that is at the heart of India’s human spaceflight program. The rails can be used to simulate re-entry of crew capsules. (3 min read)

2. In the unfortunate event that New Delhi is nuked…
On the Doomsday Clock, which is a countdown to global catastrophe, the world has come 12 minutes closer to midnight since 1991. Recently, Nitin Gadkari, now a minister in the new Indian government, was exchanging nuclear threats with a Pakistani analyst on TV. This spurred a journalist to look at the government’s emergency plans to deal with a nuclear fallout. Hint to civilians: “To begin with, nothing that can be dug without the help of E. Sreedharan—the Metro Man—is likely to be deep enough.” (8 min read)

3. Are tiger poachers really trying to hack radio-collar data in India’s sanctuaries?
The more we resort to technology to protect something, the more its failings become liable for abuse—except when it’s animal poaching. There was a scare about a Pune techie trying to hack into data transmitted by radio-collars around some tigers. It turned out to be false, but not before conservationists reasoned that poachers relied on simpler, ground-based techniques to trap animals, and that’s why they get away. (4 min read)

4. 101 suicides in two months: is Marathwada the new Vidarbha?
Freak hailstorms in March flattened orchard crops in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region. In the two months since, 101 suicides have been reported. The reason? Faulty agriculture and irrigation policies have driven farmers to orchard farming that is submissive to failing, because of the time and capital investment it requires. (5 min read)

5. Call for action to prevent millions of “invisible” deaths
More than 780,000 babies less than 28 days old die every year in India. The cost of preventing these deaths is a meagre $1.15 (₹ 68) per person. Why then aren’t these deaths prevented? Because these are “invisible deaths”. Parents don’t seek to register their child’s birth or death because they don’t think it can make a difference. This silence perpetuates the myth that newborn deaths and stillbirths are inevitable. (6 min read)

6. Video: Putting hardy small millets back on the menu
Decline in food diversity is driving malnutrition around the world, and the hardy millet is one casualty. This cereal crop can be cultivated in a variety of ecosystems, from coastal areas in South India to mountainous terrain in the Himalayas, but it has become a niche crop. A Canadian agency wants to redress this imbalance in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and to put women farmers in the centre of its approach. (5 min watch)

Chart of the week

If you divide China into two, one half will have 94% of its population (nearly 20% of world’s population). This geographic divide hasn’t changed in last 80 years despite the population tripling. In 1935, a Chinese geographer noticed the divide and drew an imaginary line, called Heihe–Tengchong Line, that no one seems have crossed over to settle. Yet, what this map hides is the fact that China has recently seen the largest migration in human history: 160 million people have moved from rural areas to urban ones in the last 30 years, no doubt within Eastern China.

Please email curiousbends@gmail.com with suggestions or feedback. We’d love to hear from you. For more such stories, find curators Vasudevan Mukunth and Akshat Rathi on Twitter. Enjoy the week!