Future of Science Fiction in China – Cixin Liu

“I’m so tired of the future.” It was late in the day at the Tsinghua University Art Museum, and I was getting whiny. My boyfriend and an acquaintance thumbed through some catalogues near the exit and managed to ignore me. We had reached the end of an exhibition of architectural models from the firm Foster…

Google’s Artificial Intelligence Is Now Creating its Own

Google’s pretty good when it comes to designing artificial intelligence. Its most famous neural network, DeepMind, is both able to “dream” and understand the benefits of betrayal. It’s also better than any living human at the infinitely complex game, Go. As impressive as this is, Google is determined to show the world it’s not just…

Now, a Test to Detect Cancer & HIV with Naked Eye

Scientists have developed a new ten times cheaper ultra-sensitive sensor test to detect the early stages of several cancers and viruses, including HIV, with the naked eye. Researchers from the Imperial College London claim that their visual sensor technology is ten times more sensitive than the current gold standard methods for measuring biomarkers. These indicate…

Fingers crossed at AIIMS after stem cell transplant for Multiple Sclerosis, first in country

Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have conducted a stem cell transplant on a multiple sclerosis (MS) patient. They believe this is the first recorded case of an autologous stem cell therapy — where the donor and recipient are the same person — for MS in the country.  Six months after…

India’s Heaviest Satellite GSAT-10 Successfully Launched

ISRO still needs to get the GSLV right so that they can do these heavy launches from India itself.  Anyway, this being the heaviest satellite launch at 3400kgs is another feather in ISRO’s cap. India’s advanced communication satellite GSAT-10 was successfully launched early today on board Ariane-5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. GSAT-10,…

The Importance of Conserving Water And Rainwater Harvesting

Water water everywhere not a drop to drink.  This sentence is not only true when you are on the sea and don’t have a drop of fresh water to drink but also in a rainy season when the whole city is flooded and the only source of fresh tap water is also contaminated. As the…

Neil Armstrong – The Original Moonwalker

The debate on whether the US really did make it to the moon or was the whole thing staged in a studio will forever haunt conspiracy theorists.  But indeed it was an iconic moment in man’s history.  For thousands of years, man has not only feared moon, but worshiped it as the moon was beyond…

Global science papers from India on the upswing

The good news is that science papers being filed from India are on the upswing.  The bad news is that countries like China, Korea etc have left India long behind in this race.  In fact, China has more than doubled its research output since 2004.  Read more on these reports at this Thomson Reuters website….

ISRO launches Oceansat-2 and 6 nano satellites

All 7 satellites launched in their precise orbits by ISRO’s old workhorse, the PSLV in its 16th launch is indeed praiseworthy.  The successor to the Oceansat-1,  is supposed to be the country’s second ocean studies satellite that aims to aid fishermen in identifying fishing zones and weathermen to forecast cyclones by measuring sea surface winds….

I Wonder Why – Fighter Aircraft vs Missiles

There are questions in the back of everyone’s minds.  Things that we might find trivial and are afraid of asking someone lest they might think that we are stupid.  Maybe people are simply jealous that they never thought of it before.  Or maybe people being people are so happy living a conformist life that they…

World Community Grid

Most of the time, we hardly use about 10-20% of our computer’s resources and the rest 80% odd is wasted.  By being a part of the World Community Grid, a small part of an application runs in the background of your PC thus contributing your computing power to getting results on a lot of projects….

India’s spy satellite RISAT launched

The PSLV-C12, carrying 300-kg Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-2) and 40-kg Micro Satellite ANUSAT lifted off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan space Centre here on Monday morning. At the end of the 48-hour countdown, the 44-meter tall four-stage PSLV-C12 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage. PSLV C-12 at…