Real pride of ancient Indian science

Indian scientists are nowhere to be seen in the world you and I inhabit. This is when our modern world requires science to be integrated into …

Inundated by colonial misconceptions

The benefits that can be derived from controlling flood waters intelligently have been wasted, largely because of wrong, archaic notions about …

‘Indian vegetarians do not eat vegetables’

Food historian and physician Manoshi Bhattacharya explains how the diet of Indians have changed over centuries

Relevance of Gandhian environmentalism

Mahatma Gandhi never used the words environment protection, but his writings are replete with remarks on the excesses of industrial society

Fossil evidence reveals that cancer in humans goes back 1.7 million years

Cancer is not the modern disease many believe it to be. New fossil evidence from two South African caves suggests that its origins lie deep in …

Fabric of the byte

The development of technology and its relations with society and culture hold contemporary lessons for India

History of rational thoughts

Efforts by rationalists to spread scientific thinking have been scuttled by those in positions of power throughout history

A sea of stories

Book>> The Great Sea, A Human History Of The Mediterranean • by David Abulafia, Allen Lane • RS 1,500

Old shine

Indian scientists have found a chemical that cleans antique metallic objets d'art without damaging the patina

Anatomy of the plague

The Black Death is an established phenomenon the world over, so there is no point pillorying India alone

Expedition.com

Click here to participate in an archaeological expedition some 2,000 km away from home. Thanks to the Internet, 30 Australian students will go on-…

Changing notions

Who were the first people to use the alphabet? Semitic people of Egypt, says a fresh discovery

`Ancient Indian literature displays exact knowledge of environmental phenomena'

Retired diplomat and well-known translator of ancient Sanskrit texts, Aditya Narayan Dhairyasheel Haksar recently released the reprint of his …

Bhutan: Pursuit of happiness

Karma Tshiteem is the secretary of the Gross National Happiness Commission, the novel name of Bhutan’s Planning Commission. He tells Aditya …

Where did the Earth’s oxygen come from? New study hints at an unexpected source

Some of Earth’s early oxygen came from tectonic sources via movement & destruction of crust

Technology To The Core, Science and Technology with Indira Gandhi

Book>>Technology To The Core, Science And Technology With Indira Gandhi by Ashok Parthasarthi Pearson Longman 2007

Environmental change may have played a role at the dawn of Egyptian history — here’s how

As the environment changed, the Nile Delta gradually became much less rich in wild food resources

The peasant rebels of the Satnami Rebellion

'Fear of Lions' is a fictional retelling of the Satnami revolt against Aurangzeb, and underlines the importance of rebellion in times of oppression

Early Indians: Joining the dots and burying the myths

Tony Joseph debunks the myth of India being the homeland of the Aryans and offers a scientific chronicle

Elephanta caves: Re-carving the old magic

Working for over eight months at a stretch, the Wadars tibals arrive at Elephanta Island to recreate the old magic of the caves by breaking …

Beyond DNA

Maurizio Meloni's book is a fascinating social and political history of human heredity spanning over 150 years

A sniff to save

It can detect a person buried under six metres of snow. Pervez Cama, who travelled to the Swiss Alps, traces the history of St Bernard, a dog …

Is information knowledge?

Book>> The Information, A History, A Theory, A Flood • by James Gleick • Fourth Estate • Rs 599

A lead from the past

Evidence trawled from lake sediments in Sweden traces atmospheric lead pollution back to more than 2 millennia

BBC dreams about the machine

Two BBC serials take the viewer to the awesome world of computers, dramatising their history, and showing how they have become an integral part …