Category: Curious Bends

Curious Bends – Vandana Shiva, antibiotics in chicken, asteroid hunters and more

Akshat Rathi1 Comment
1. Why India’s fiercest anti-GM activist has found a big following abroad

Few technologies, not the car, the phone, or even the computer, have been adopted as rapidly and as widely as the products of agricultural biotechnology. The tools of genetic engineering have allowed a good proportion of the current population to survive and prosper. But such statistics (or any scientific argument) does not stop Vandana Shiva from thinking that the root of all evil lies in GM technology. (42 min read)

2. Chicken consumption is at an all-time high in India. It may be contributing to antibiotic resistance

An investigation of chicken from around Delhi shows that they contain antibiotics beyond the limits setup by international bodies. These antibiotics are used not to treat diseased chicken but to prevent them. However, there are no regulations in India for their use in poultry. This means the amounts used are often excessive, probably contributing to increasing antibiotic resistance. (21 min read)

3. India’s outdated approach to education is hurting students and academia

The University Grants Commission wants to reign in elite institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institutes of Technology, by making their courses shorter. This decision, however, isn’t based on any sound research. If such institutions aren’t allowed to experiment with education, then how would you know what works best for Indian students and academics? (5 min read)

+ The author, Vishu Guttal, is an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Science.

4. India has an asteroid search mission made up of mostly students

“Four years, 260 teams across India, 1200 observations of celestial bodies and 21 discoveries of asteroids. All India Asteroid Search Campaign was started by SPACE, an NGO in India, in 2010 with an aim to increase the love for science, astronomy and scientific research in Indian students. SPACE provides training to students and amateur astronomers to hunt for asteroids.” (2 min read)

5. An interview with Manjul Bhargava, winner of the 2014 Fields Medal

The first Indian-origin mathematician has won the Fields Medal, which is considered to be the Nobel Prize of mathematics. In an interview, he talks about growing up in India, Canada and the US and how his upbringing shaped up his desire to pursue mathematics, tabla and sanskrit. His hope is that Indian youth will take up research in basic science.

Chart of the week

You must have heard that even today half of India’s population lives off agricultural activities. But how true is that? Turns out that estimating how many cultivators and agricultural labourers India has is no easy task. Here’s an attempt by Hindustan Times.

Curious Bends – Indian Luddites, an academic career, the great forgetting and more

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1. Say with pride that we’re Luddites

Science is often confused with technology in India. The consequences range in flavour from amusing to dire – for example, we celebrate rockets, not rocket scientists. So we fund rockets, not rocket scientists. This piece explores the history of this perception with interesting and insightful episodes from the past. Beware, though: some of them have evolved many grey areas. (8 min read)

2. India’s hopes for development rely on its public health strategies

That India is neither a middling nor a superpower nation comes down to how good access to health, water, sanitation and education in it are. Health, in particular, needs special attention because of two reasons. First: India shares a disproportionate fraction of the world’s disease burden — especially among non-communicable diseases. Second: the skill and capital needed to resolve the problem is controlled by private interests operating only at state-wide levels. (10 min read)

3. Forgoing a fat pay cheque is totally worth it to become an academic

“The placement season is just starting for the 2015 graduates. And newspapers are already talking about crore+ salaries this year. That it would be for a very small number of graduates is lost on most people. And in this race to get the biggest package, one career that is often forgotten is that of an academic.” (6 min read)

+ The author, Dheeraj Sanghi, is a professor of computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

4. China’s JUNO launches international collaboration while India’s INO looks on

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory is expected to be completed by 2020, and will search for answers to unsolved problems in neutrino physics. More importantly, it will be China’s second big neutrino experiment and second also to feature an international collaboration of scientists and institutions. The India-based Neutrino Observatory, also foreseeing completion by 2020, is yet to find similar interest. As has frustratingly been the case, it’s the scientists who lose out. (3 min read)

5. Indian universities ban dissections

A campaign led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has borne its fruits: a central body that sets standards for university education in India has banned dissections in zoology and life sciences courses. This move solves some legitimate problems but exacerbates some silly others. For one, removing endangered animals from the table doesn’t mean non-endangered ones can’t be put there. For another, assuming “most zoology students do not use the knowledge gained from dissections after they graduate” excludes those who do, and education is for everybody. (3 min read)

Featured longread: What happened to each one of us before the age of seven?

“… if the memory was a very emotional one, children were three times more likely to retain it two years later. Dense memories – if they understood the who, what, when, where and why – were five times more likely to be retained than disconnected fragments. Still, oddball and inconsequential memories such as the bounty of cookies will hang on, frustrating the person who wants a more penetrating look at their early past.” (18 min read)

Chart of the week

Gone are the days when Britain built most of the world’s ships and ruled the seas. By the end of the Second World War, the US was producing 90% of all the world’s ships by weight. By the 1990s, though, Japan and South Korea had in turns acquired the title. Now this decisive distinction could belong to China. Today, it produces around 35% of the world’s ships. The Economist has more.

Curious Bends – math puzzle winner, worm sperms, banning nuclear weapons and more

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1. Asking for a ban on nuclear weapons is futile, but this first step might help

There are many who want nuclear weapons banned, but they tend to be the countries who don’t have them. The countries that have nuclear weapons are disproportionately stronger, both economically and militarily, than the rest. This power imbalance creates a situation where calls for a nuclear weapons ban falls on deaf ears. One way out is to sign a convention barring first-use. (5 min read)

2. American Indian mathematician wins prize for solving 50-year-old math puzzle

Nikhil Srivastava, now at Microsoft Research India, has been named a joint winner of the prestigious George Polya Prize for finding the proof of what is known as the Kadison-Singer conjecture, first proposed by Richard Kadison and Isadore Singer in 1959. It pertains to the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, and asks if unique information can be extrapolated from a scenario in which not all features can be observed or measured. Srivastava and two others found an answer about a year ago. (2 min read)

3. Worm sperm may have helped uncover the mechanism underlying the formation of new species

“Different species are usually unsuccessful at interbreeding; if they do, the hybrid offspring is usually sterile. In this way, species are kept separate and the diversity of life is maintained. In a study published in PLOS Biology this week, scientists observed that when female worms belonging to the Caenorhabditis genus mate outside their species, they end up with reduced lifespans and fewer offspring than usual. While exploring the possible reasons, they may have uncovered a mechanism underlying the formation of new species.” (2 min read)

+ The author of this piece, Nandita Jayaraj, is a journalist with The Hindu.

4. ‘Money is not a problem in Indian science,’ researchers say. This proves them wrong.

Not long ago, senior researchers were complaining that the real problem in Indian science is not money but a lack of leadership. But now, nearly 3,000 junior researchers at India’s premier research institutes are protesting because of lack of funding and delays in payments. There is a disconnect between how science is done at these two levels and it exposes new cracks in the system. (3 min read)

​5. Informal healthcare providers (IPs) outnumber doctors in rural India, but that’s not bad

“IPs are on the margins of formalised medicine, but over the years they have established important niches, particularly in rural areas. They work within well-developed institutional arrangements, which have evolved in different directions in different contexts. This study dispels the myth that IPs are solo ‘quacks’ with only limited links to their community and to local institutions. It also underlines the likelihood that IPs will continue to play a role for quite a long time irrespective of increasing incomes and infrastructural development.” (24 min read)

Chart of the week

An analysis of all rape cases in Delhi registered in 2013 paints a more complex picture of the problem, according to The Hindu. For instance, an interesting fact is that nearly half of some 600 cases filed involved girls’ parents accusing the boy of rape because the young couple eloped. Another is that the conviction rate now is about the same (23%) as the national average was in 2010 (26%).

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