Number of words: 415 The rock cut cave temples of Badami were sculpted at a time when women were first incorporated into temple service, at the beginning of the bhakti movement. Bhakti has been called the Tamil renaissance and a bloodless revolution, but it is perhaps best described as a religious movement which ultimately transformed … Read more

Number of words: 436 Devadasis have graced the halls of Indian temples for over a thousand years. Although commonly called temple prostitutes, they played a far more important role in society than this label admits. Dedicated to the service of a deity before the age of 9, girls received rigorous training in a wide variety … Read more

Number of words: 699 Antibodies from Winter, a 4-year-old llama with great eyelashes, have neutralized coronavirus and other infections in lab experiment. Winter is a 4-year-old chocolate-colored llama with spindly legs, ever-so-slightly askew ears and envy-inducing eyelashes. Some scientists hope she might be an important figure in the fight against the novel coronavirus. She is … Read more

Number of words: 1,235 Even as data science becomes ubiquitous, we still have a shortage of people who truly understand data. Yaneer Bar-Yam is a Professor and President of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He graduated from MIT and is an expert in complex systems. Throughout this pandemic, he has been meticulously analyzing COVID-19 … Read more

Number of words: 588 The mass extinction that killed nearly 70 per cent of the Earth’s land animals 252 million years ago may have played out at different times on land and in the sea, according to study of fossils from South Africa and Australia. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found new … Read more

Number of words: 341 Didymos, a 2,650-foot-wide asteroid, has an atypical cosmic companion— a 535 foot-wide satellite named Didymoon (10). These new two celestial bodies are not making a dangerous rendezvous with Earth, but they do provide an interesting opportunity for an apocalyptic dress rehearsal. NASA and ESA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will head … Read more

Number of words: 802 The U.S. government is enacting measures to save the airlines, Boeing, and similarly affected corporations. While we clearly insist that these companies must be saved, there may be ethical, economic, and structural problems associated with the details of the execution. As a matter of fact, if you study the history of … Read more