SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY

இரண்டு வாரங்களுக்கு முன் சென்னை கோட்டூர்புரத்தில் அமைந்துள்ள ‘பெரியார் அறிவியல் தொழில்நுட்ப பூங்காவிற்கு’ (http://tnstc.gov.in/periyar-science-tech.html) என் இரண்டே முக்கால் வயது மகளை அழைத்து சென்றேன். வாழ்க்கை பயணத்தில் சென்னை வந்து பல வருடம் ஆகியிருந்தாலும், பள்ளிப்பருவத்தில் சென்னையில் இருக்கும் உறவினர் வீட்டிற்கு வந்தபோது ஒரு முறை மட்டுமே அங்கு சென்ற ஞாபகம். ‘பெரியார் அறிவியல் தொழில்நுட்ப பூங்காவின் ஒரு பகுதியான  பிர்லா கோளறங்கத்தின் உள் அமர்ந்து கோள்களையும், நட்சத்திரங்களையும் கண்டது மட்டும் இன்னும் பசுமையான நினைவாக உள்ளது. நான் சென்றது ஒரு விடுமுறை தினமாதலால் பல பள்ளிகள், சில கல்லூரிகள் என மாணவ மாணவிகளின் பெருங்கூட்டம். பிர்லா கோளரங்கத்திற்கான நுழைவு சீட்டு கூட கிடைக்கவில்லை. அறிவியல் மையத்திற்கு மட்டுமே கிடைத்த நுழைவு சீட்டை எடுத்துக்கொண்டு நானும் என் மகளும் பயணித்தோம்.      பெரியார் அறிவியல் தொழில்நுட்ப பூங்காவில் உள்ள காட்சிக்கூடங்கள்: பெரியார் காட்சி கூடம் Periyar Gallery போக்குவரத்து காட்சிக்கூடம்…

Why do sharp, witty lines from Dale Carnegie’s books cut the misty, morning breezes in Mitra Jyothi, a school for the visually challenged in Bengaluru? How did the author become a dramatis personae here, you wonder. Ratna, a volunteer, walks out from one of the audio rooms. She proudly says that textbooks, magazines, competitive exams, novels, fiction and biographies in Kannada, Hindi and English are converted into CDs, so that they can be documented and made accessible to visually challenged students. The technological details are rather complex but interesting. “With Daisy Resources, we are transcribing a number of books into…

On Saturday, Aug 19th, 2016, over 45 teams will participate in the second edition of the Soul Kere Science Fair - Vigyana Habba. The participating students are from grades 1 to 12 of various school and communities in the neighborhood of the lake. The event is organized by MAPSAS and supported by Genpact,(Platinum sponsor), Infosys Science Foundation (Gold sponsor), Biocon and United Way Bengaluru. Entry to the event is free and open to all. The teams will demonstrate live experiments that explore the topic ‘Science in everyday life’. The fair is aimed to encourage a scientific spirit among children that…

Vikhyath Mondreti, a class 10 student from Greenwood High International School Bangalore, was part of the winning team in an innovation challenge conducted by the New York Academy of Sciences as part of their Junior Academy program. Through the course of 70 days, students formed virtual teams and worked with STEM (Science-Technology-Engineering-Math) professionals serving as expert mentors. There were 91 teams with participants from 51 countries out of which 3 teams were chosen as winners. These challenges were sponsored by major corporations such as ARM and PepsiCo. Vikhyath’s team won the Biodiversity category in which the participants were required to…

Indian cities are not altogether unfamiliar with marches. Over the past few years, an increasingly awakening civil society has publicly gathered for a variety of causes - from freedom of speech to women’s safety to economic equality. Come August 9th however, for the first time in the country, you can join fellow citizens across India in a march for the cause of science, demanding robust funding for science education and research and pressing for governmental policies guided by scientific evidence. Eminent scientists, researchers and teachers have come together to put out an appeal to citizens across the country to come…

Saturday (10 June 2017) morning saw me at the Kengeri railway station. I was there to see the Science Express - Climate Action Special. This was a special train exhibition that had reached Kengeri the previous day after a 3-day halt at Whitefield. The first thing that met my eyes was a queue that appeared to be almost never ending, especially as it was a serpentine queue spanning at least 2 platforms and an overhead bridge. This was something I had not expected. In my naivety (or should I say arrogance as I had believed that not many would be…

I've been writing code for a while now. I first learned to program at age nine, and can now write an entire app on my own. The thing I've noticed, though, is that a lot of my friends seem to have a bit of a phobia of writing code.  The US may be pushing code in a big way, but in India, computer science still seems to be the realm of precious few. I take computer science in school, and there are only 7 others taking it out of a class of 40. There isn't a single girl in our…

WhatsApp is huge in India. It reaches the common man much more than Facebook or Twitter does in India. It’s so big that government authorities in India use WhatsApp for information dissemination or even to get information. For a lot of people in India, WhatsApp has become the window to the Internet. Many in the country now use WhatsApp to get news. Most of them get this news while being part of a big group as ‘forwards’. This makes it a rich medium for any controversial news to go viral. Also a good medium for scammers. Recently, the prime minister of India mentioned…

I'm sure all of us have read a fair number of posts about the negative effects of gaming (it promotes violence and a desire to drag people out of their cars and beat them up, apparently. We kids have brains too, you know! And if you say otherwise, I'll shoot you! I saw it in a videogame!). People quite entirely ignore the positive effects of gaming in these posts. So, to counterbalance all the flak gaming's been getting, here's a little bit about the good side of gaming.  Now, I'm sure all of us have heard of this one before,…

Bengaluru is the IT hub of India, and most people here are becoming tech-savvy.  Bengaluru is today a global name, and with the changing stature of the city, the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) too is striving to do its best.  Given the widespread use of technology, BTP has decided to use technology to serve citizens better. BTP frequently receives many complaints against auto drivers from the public—refusal to go on hire, demanding excess fare, misbehaving and other issues—through its various communication channels. In order to address citizens’ problems effectively, BTP has designed, developed and launched a mobile application called bSafe…