newsletter – Close Read

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

Curious Bends is a weekly newsletter about science, tech., data and India. Akshat Rathi and I curate it. You can subscribe to it here. If have feedback, suggestions, or would just generally like to get in touch, just email us.

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.

World shipbuilding of total in gross tonnage

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Curious Bends – commoner panthers, space diplomacy, big data sells big cars and more

1. Why the GM debate in India won’t abate

It is a sign of its inadequacy that the debate on genetically modified crops in India is still on, with no end in sight. Although public consensus is largely polarised, the government has done its bit to postpone resolution. For one, decisions on GM crops are made as if they were “technical answers to technical questions”. For another, no formal arena of debate exists that also addresses social anxieties. (8 min read)

2. One foot on Earth and another in the heavens

Camera traps installed by the Wildlife Conservation Society of India have shown that about one in ten of all leopard images belong to black leopards (that is, black panthers). These melanistic big cats have been spotted in wildlife reserves in Kerala and Karnataka, and seem commoner in the wetter forests of the Western Ghats. In fact, written records of sightings in these parts date from 1879, and could aid conservation efforts in a country that lost its cheetahs in 1960. (2 min read)

3. One foot on Earth and another in the heavens

For smaller and middle income nations, strengthening institutional and technical capacity on the ground might be a better option than to launch satellites because more than vanity, the choice makes them better positioned to gather useful data. And if such a nation is in South Asia, then India’s planned SAARC satellite could make that choice easier, providing a finer balance between “orbital dreams and ground realities”. (5 min read)

+ The author, Nalaka Gunawardene, is a journalist and science writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

4. Do big car-makers know their way around big data?

When sales slumped, Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian car-maker, used data gleaned from the social media to strip its former best-selling XUV500 model of some features and sell it cheaper. The company declined to give further details. This isn’t unique—big car-makers around the world are turning to big data to widen margins. But do they know how best to use the data or is it just that putting the squeeze on this lemon is a fad? (6 min read)

5. A geothermal bounty in the Himalayas

As the developing world edges toward an energy sufficiency crisis, scientists, environmental conservationists and governments get closer to a Mexican standoff. This is no better highlighted than with the gigawatts of geothermal energy locked up in the Himalayas. A 20-MW plant could “save three million litres of diesel”, $2 million and 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide in northern India per year. Why isn’t it being used? (2 min read)

Chart of the week

“Both [female genital mutilation and child marriage] stem from deeply rooted social norms which can only be changed by educating parents about the harm they cause. Making foreign aid conditional on results gives governments an extra incentive not just to pass laws, but to enforce them. Police and women’s activists in some countries have set up phone hotlines and safe houses for victims or girls at risk. Most important … is to make sure that girls go to school and finish their studies.” The Economist has more.

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Hearing test, radiation-resistant cells, sign language and more

1. Poor children deserve better hearing tests; an Indian entrepreneur may have the solution

An estimated 63 million people in India suffer from hearing problems. But children are not tested for such impairment at a young age because of the costs of testing. Early detection and intervention is crucial for improving the difficulties with cognition and language skills. Now, a Bangalore-based inventor has come up with a solution that sharply lowers the cost of testing if a newborn can hear properly. (3 min read)

2. What makes cells resistant to radiation?

Radiation can damage cell’s DNA, and sometimes make them cancerous. But not all cells are affected by such radiation. Previously, it was thought that such ability was down to the DNA repair mechanisms in place in every one of them, but a new study shows that cells have more weapons to fight this invisible attack. (2 min read)

3. What sign language teaches us about the brain

As she took a course to learn sign language, a question kept nagging this neurobiologist: does the brain treat the visual language differently from spoken languages? Turns out, for the most part, they don’t. And yet brain studies of deaf people who use sign language helps bust a few myths about how our brains work. (5 min read)

+ The author of this piece, Sana Suri, is a neurobiologist at the University of Oxford.

4. Another biotech startup accelerator opens up in Bangalore. Can it deliver?

India’s biotech industry is supposed to be undergoing a boom. It was projected that revenues would reach $5 billion by 2009, but that hasn’t happened yet. Industry watchers remain optimistic, claiming that revenues will reach $100 billion by 2020. Can a startup accelerator help achieve this dream? (5 min read)

5. BRICS can boost their research by setting up collaborations, but there seems to be no will

The recent BRICS summit in Brazil saw the launch of the New Development Bank, which has been setup to rival the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But there was little progress on setting aside joint funds to boost scientific collaboration. There is a huge potential here but no one is interested in tapping it. (2 min read)

Chart of the week

It has been a terrible week for the civilian aviation industry with Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down over Ukraine and an ongoing investigation of Air Algerie Flight 5017 that crashed in Mali. Vasudevan Mukunth (one of the curators of Curious Bends; a.k.a. me) has collected the data of all such past events in one interactive chart.

screen-shot-2014-07-26-at-11-35-28-e1406399183451

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Finding quake shelters, breaking bad in Punjab, rice-wheat divide & more

1. Pesticides may be to blame for some cancers among India’s farmers

The green revolution in India increased food production but the agrochemicals it used could also have set off a “cancer epidemic”. A three-year study by Punjabi University, Patiala, revealed no confounding factors across demographics except pesticides. Many patients, some of whom travel thousands of kilometers for affordable care, are from the revolution’s belt. (3 min read)

2. A socially cognizant tool to identify quake shelters

Nepali and German scientists have devised a method called Open Space Suitability Index to rank the suitability of public shelters that could be used as quake shelters. Uniquely for it, it assesses both physical and social vulnerability (that is, the risks people, businesses and governments face). (2 min read)

3. Spare the mafia, spoil the smuggler, dealer and consumer

Punjab has a drug problem. Despite widespread efforts by the state to blow it off, then blow it away, its Walter Whites and Jesse Pinkmans persist. One is a cop, the other might be a BSF jawan. Effectively, the Narcotics Control Bureau is lost for ideas, and it might be because the state is targeting the victims instead of the drug mafia. (29 min read)

+ The author of this piece, Ushinor Majumdar, is an ex-lawyer and a journalist with Tehelka.

4. Delayed survey derails health monitoring

As it is India lacks key data to better govern its people. Now, its main source of health statistics, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), has been delayed. The NFHS is a large-scale household sample survey and produces internationally accepted estimates of fertility, mortality, contraceptive use, violence against women and, crucially, malnutrition. The latest survey should have been held in 2010, and it means for the last four years health workers have been blindsided. (2 min read)

5. Forget your 15 minutes of fame, think about your 15% chance of depression

Clinical depression has the dubious distinction of being the second most common cause of suffering in terms of burden of illness. The WHO has predicted it will become the leading cause of death by 2020. If this isn’t alarming, then sample this: new research says that every person in the world has a 15% chance of experiencing their first episode between the ages of 25 and 35. (4 min read)

Chart of the week

According to the 68th National Sample Survey (2011-2012), the consumption of rice has fallen marginally in a seven-year period while that of wheat is on the rise. There is a perceivable split between the Hindi heartland and the southern and eastern states which prefer wheat and rice, respectively. There is also an urban-rural and, intriguingly, a Jammu-Kashmir divide. Read more about it on Scroll.in.

1405378358-1351_Monthly-pc-qt-consumption-rice-urban

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Delhi’s pollution, faked data, AIDS epidemic and more

1. The puzzle of Delhi’s air pollution

Delhi has the world’s worst ambient air quality. In the decade since a chunk of its public transport moved to using compressed natural gas from petroleum, the problem has devolved into other socioeconomic issues. People whose power needs the city can’t meet use diesel generators. The number of cars on the road have shot up. Even though industries have been moved outside city limits, their smoke hangs like a pall together with that from burning post-harvest rice stalks from neighboring states. And a comparison with Beijing, where the civilian outcry against worsening pollution was pronounced, shows how much worse Delhi has it. (8 min read)

2. Indian scientist fakes data, but institute’s response is commendable

A scientist at the Institute of Microbial Technology in Chandigarh has been found to have fabricated data for seven papers published in the last year, all of which are now being retracted. The fabrication was brought to the attention of the director of the institute by a past supervisor of the scientist, and, instead of pushing it under the rug, the director followed the right procedures to start an investigation this January. Many Indian researchers both in India and abroad have had their work retracted, but as long as institutional provisions to deal with such misconduct are strong, it should help to curtail ills. (4 min read)

3. Clever experiment with mice reveals ovarian cancer’s secrets

Ovarian cancer starts spreading much earlier than other cancers do, and the first tissue that is its victim tends to be belly fat. It was previously thought this happens because of the physical proximity, but new research shows that the spread occurs through the blood. This matters because the proteins revealed to be involved in the process are targets of drugs meant for other types of cancers, and they could now be used to curtail the spread of ovarian cancer. (3 min read)

The author, Anwesha Ghosh, is a PhD student at the University of Rochester.

4. Give back to the locals if you profit from their knowledge

Fifty-one countries from around the world have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, which from October will give more legal backing to providers and users of genetic resources. These are commonly used to create better performing crop varieties. “Now, if a company or a person is accessing genetic resources or traditional knowledge for commercial purpose, they would be bound to share a part of their earning and profits with the community which has been conserving it.” (2 min read)

5. No one is tracking the lead that tyres leak

Lead is a neurotoxin that causes brain damage, and is most harmful to pregnant women and children. It has also been found that lead poisoning can be the cause of violent crime. Global campaigns to reduce the amount of lead in products such as fuel and paints have been going on for many decades with good success. However, in India, it seems that the campaign hasn’t been effective against lead’s use in tyres, where it is used to balance weights in the wheel. (3 min read)

Chart of the week

This week the annual international AIDS conference begins in Melbourne (despite the loss of researchers who were onboard MH17 that was shot down in Ukraine). The global fight against AIDS is being won, but some numbers, such as those below, are worrying. Pakistan has a population that is about one-sixth that of India, but the AIDS-related mortality is much lower in the neighboring country. More form UNAIDS here.

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