Number of words: 587 The behavioural scientist Dan Ariely once found himself chatting to a locksmith with a curious problem. The better he became at replacing locks, the less he got paid. In the early days, he explained, he might wrestle for hours with a jammed lock, but because his inexperience made his job look … Read more

Number of words: 1.112 So the power of reframing things cannot be overstated. What we have is exactly the same thing, the same activity, but one of them makes you feel great and the other one, with just a small change of posture, makes you feel terrible. And I think one of the problems with … Read more

Number of words: 370 If you think about it, if you want to live in a world in the future where there are fewer material goods, you basically have two choices. You can either live in a world which is poorer, which people in general don’t like. Or you can live in a world where … Read more

Number of words: 625 Domingo Paes, a Portuguese traveller who visited Vijayanagara in the early 16 century wrote, ‘The size of the city was as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight. The people are countless in number, so much that I do not wish to write it down for fear it should be … Read more

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