SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY

Prakash Belawadi, an actor and a theatre personality, had the shock of his life when a caller posing as a bank officer asked his wife for the One Time Password (OTP). Belawadi happened to reveal it to her without thinking. It was too late when he realised that his wife had unintentionally communicated to it to the person at the other end of the phone. The result: money to the tune of Rs 90,000 was billed to his credit card. A screengrab from an animation by the Federal Trade Commission intended to educate citizens about phishing tactics. Pic: Wikimedia Commons…

Tasked with creating an app that addresses a ‘community problem or issue’, five Bengaluru girls won $10,000 (approximately Rs 6.4 lakh) at Technovation, an international technology entrepreneurship competition, to further develop their app designed to keep waste off the streets of Bengaluru. Team Pentechan. From left to right: Mahima, Sanjana, Swasthi, Anupama, Navyasree. Pic: Holly Thorpe Anupama N, Sanjana Vasanth, Mahima Mehendale, Navyasree B and Swasthi P Rao, all of 14 years and in Class 9 at New Horizon Public School, won the prize money when they took first place in the competition in San Francisco. They competed in the…

The Bangalore Traffic Police (BTP) seems to have new arsenal - an Andriod app for Bangalore road users. The app has been developed Shree Manu, an employee with a software firm, who builds apps as a hobby. Manu initially approached the BTP with a location finder app called Wherez U, that he had developed post the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi. The BTP posted a link to the app on its Facebook page, and the app was received rather well; it has been downloaded about 4000 times so far. Following this, a user gave feedback saying that it would be useful…

  While there are many technologies that provide us with energy, there are also technologies that help us with saving energy. The latter is gaining ground as more and more people are becoming aware of the conscious use of energy. ApnaComplex along with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)- CleanTech Special Interest Group and Indian Institute of Human Settlements, had organised an event on ‘Sustainable Apartments - Learn how to reduce energy bills of your association’ on September 21st, 2013. The event hosted people from different backgrounds - IT, the new section of people who have ‘quit IT’ to follow their passion,…

Bangalore consumes 2000 MW of power. What does this mean? We often see in the news that so much of MW of power is required for the city, and so much is the shortage. What is it all about? How is this calculated? This is a highly simplified attempt to explain it. So, please don't compare it with what you read in textbooks!  Electricity means, flow of 'current' in a metal-wire (conductor). 'Current' is flow of electrons. It's like a series of cars moving at the same speed on a highway. Does it mean that for a given size of…

It is election season in the city and the rest of the state. Most of the local news is about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and various political parties, campaign activities, problems existing in different constituencies and . In addition to this, are stories about voter awareness drives, poll code violations, contestant support campaigns by groups such as B.PAC and Praja Rajakiya Vedike, a political platform launched in 2010. Apart from all this, there are some specific groups of people who have brought out what they expect of the representatives to be elected, through detailed manifestos. These include…

Technology is becoming the driving factor for the growth of any industry while information and awareness is key to ensuring healthy growth. With technology, information and awareness becoming increasingly accessible, the education and employment industries now understand the need to "Connect the dots". Education now includes courses that span across disciplines. The more diverse your background is, the more sought after you are by employers. And that is where Bangalore's National Institute of Advanced Studies plays such a critical role. The National Institute of Advanced Studies Pic: www.nias.res.in The vision of the institute is to serve as a forum for…

High mountains, deep mines and pristine particles - that's where you'll find yourself or lose yourself to the basic sciences of "Astrophysics and Astronomy" and their endless possibilities. "For the purpose of research, the collection of particles that reach the Earth from outer space needs to happen either at high altitudes or deep beneath the Earth's surface," says 70-year old astrophysicist Dr. Palahalli Vishwanath as he reminisces his work days spent at the best of locations that he would perhaps never have visited had work not taken him. And if that sounds exciting, then you should probably find out more…

"We are a pure science research institute that focuses on biological sciences but we are also probably the only institute that recognises the need to diversify. We have students from engineering and technology backgrounds taking up Ph.D courses with us," says Dr. Mukund Thattai, Professor (Computational cell biology) capturing the essence of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, an offshoot of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). NCBS. Pic courtesy: ncbs.res.in Students have to appear for an entrance exam held by TIFR which is a common exam for about seven institutes : TIFR, CDFD, NBRC, CCMB, NCCS,…

Arun Raghavan, an open source software enthusiast, and four friends worked all night on January 19th on a very unique problem. They were scraping electoral data from ceokarnataka's website. They wanted to create a user-friendly frontend for citizens to search their names and polling booth information. They did this as part of a hacknight to commemorate the life and works of Aaron Swartz, on January 19th and 20th organised by HasGeek, an event organiser for geeks. Aaron Swartz was a hacktivist, who died in early January. He had helped create RSS 1.0; contributed to Creative Commons; was an early builder of Reddit, where…