January 2025 - curiosita

Roger Penrose

Krishnendu2 months ago3 days ago1 mins

In our inaugural issue of Curiosita, we feature Sir Roger Penrose, the 2020 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, to celebrate his remarkable journey of perseverance and unconventional thinking. His work embodies the spirit of exploration and curiosity that Curiosita seeks to inspire.

In our inaugural issue of Curiosita, we feature Sir Roger...

The Accidental Palaeontologist

Krishnendu2 months ago1 week ago10 mins

How British soldier William Henry Sleeman became the first to discover dinosaur fossils in Asia and what became of them Major General William Henry Sleeman was a B r i t i s h soldier and administrator in India, best known for the suppression of “thugees” or organised gangs of robbers and murderers between 1830...

How British soldier William Henry Sleeman became the first to...

‘The British trained us to appreciate our culture’

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago11 mins

Ravindra Singh Bisht, a former joint director-general of the ASI, speaks to The Telegraph about its great significance and urgent need for better protection of Indus Valley Sites Dayaram Sahani discovered Harappa on the banks of the Ravi in 1921 and Rakhaldas Banerji excavated Mohenjo-daro on the banks of the Indus in 1922. These discoveries...

Ravindra Singh Bisht, a former joint director-general of the ASI,...

Dr Solitarious & Mr Gregarious

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago15 mins

The army of desert locusts marauding through Rajasthan and MP, rushing towards Maharashtra, making Karnataka shudder and putting Telangana on alert, is actually billions of grasshoppers gone rogue On the menu… but conditions apply Locusts cause acute food shortage, but for a while scientists have been working on how to turn them into food for...

The army of desert locusts marauding through Rajasthan and MP,...

Routes and Wings

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago5 mins

How to become an aerospace engineer? Prasun Chaudhuri asks Subrata Roy (see pic), professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the founding director of the Applied Physics Research Group at the University of Florida in the US. Roy, who has also been a visiting professor at the University of Manchester in the UK and the...

How to become an aerospace engineer? Prasun Chaudhuri asks Subrata...

Ice spies

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago9 mins

The RV Polarstern will park itself in the Arctic Ocean for a year. Its data harvest should help counter climate change, says Prasun Chaudhuri In 1893, Norwegian explorer and zoologist Fridtjof Nansen set off on a mission to the North Pole in a wooden vessel named Fram. His plan was to steer the manoeuvrable ship, made...

The RV Polarstern will park itself in the Arctic Ocean...

‘A true scientist appreciates being proven wrong’

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago9 mins

Professor Charles Henry Bennett of IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York, US, is a physicist and information theorist whose pioneering efforts span various domains, including quantum teleportation and quantum cryptography. Bennett has received several prestigious awards and accolades, including the Dirac Medal (2017), Wolf Prize in Physics (2018) and the Breakthrough Prize...

Professor Charles Henry Bennett of IBM Thomas J. Watson Research...

Follow the Map

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago10 mins

Sarah Teichmann, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), was in Calcutta to deliver a talk on mapping the human body. Sarah Teichmann, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), was in Calcutta to deliver a talk on mapping the human body. She and Partha P. Majumder, past president of the Indian Academy of Sciences...

Sarah Teichmann, co-founder of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA), was...

Turn of the key: Why cryptography makes for good career choice now and in near future

Krishnendu2 months ago2 months ago6 mins

Encryption is a security technique. The science of encrypting and decrypting information is called cryptology. “Encryption works by encoding plaintext into ciphertext or coded text, typically through the use of cryptographic mathematical models known as algorithms,” says Bimal Roy, who is head of the Cryptology Research Group and the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta, and...

Encryption is a security technique. The science of encrypting and...

Heads and Tails

Kaushik2 months ago2 months ago15 mins

The Article on a life-saver cancer drug, its workings and how it spent a decade post-discovery in oblivion Some scientists hail this molecule as the “poster child” of cancer therapy. Cancer patients, whose days were numbered until the drug was launched in India, 20 years ago, call it a “wonder drug”. And many haematologists and...

The Article on a life-saver cancer drug, its workings and...