History

A small bag of unroasted coffee beans. Credit: Isai Symens/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

A Brief History of Coffee – the Brew of Empire, Sedition and Exile

Suvasini Ramaswamy 23/03/2016

Coffee has transformed wild mountainsides into plantations at the...

A scanning electron microscope image of normal circulating human blood. In addition to the irregularly shaped leukocytes, both red blood cells and many small disc-shaped platelets are visible. Caption & credit: Wikimedia Commons

Crosstalk: How Two Modest Heroes Won the Battle Against Childhood Leukaemia

Sunil Laxman 20/03/2016

Y. Subbarow and Sidney Farber developed a friendship recognising...

An image of the M101 spiral galaxy, 25 million lightyears away, snapped by NASA's Spitzer space telescope. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, K. Gordon (STScI) et al.

Are the Constants of Physics Constant?

Venkat Srinivasan 11/03/2016

The weird thing about them is that there is...

Dr. V Shanta who steered the Cancer Institute in Chennai to iconic status.

A Woman Pioneer in the Male World of Oncology

Kamala Ganesh 10/03/2016

The extraordinary story of Dr. V Shanta, 89, who steered...

meinertzhagen1

Listen: Birder, Swindler, Soldier, Spy – Colonel Meinertzhagen’s Ornithology Fraud

Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian 08/03/2016

A science-detective story about the biggest scam in the...

The entrance dome (detail) of the central pavilion of the Giardini in Venice, decorated in 1909 by Chini (1873-1956) for the 8th Biennial Art Nouveau, illustrating the evolution of art. The 'architectural elements' for false ceilings are in the foreground. Credit: dalbera/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Crosstalk: When Galileo Saw Some Moons, and Other Stories of Invention

Sunil Laxman 22/02/2016

Places that foster conditions to drive innovation, enterprise, and...

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Crosstalk: When an Apple Fell on Newton’s Head, and Stories on the Process of Discovery

Sunil Laxman 20/01/2016

A discovery is made only when the appropriate tools...