chakravarthy

Say the word fatwa and eyebrows are raised and not without reason. The reactions to the ones popularly reported are often sharp and polarised. On the one hand are the shrill voices lambasting the fatwa culture - various Islamic institutions have been called 'fatwa factories' on account of this. On the other are those expressing reverence for they are the words of 'muftis', men 'well versed' with the Islamic jurisprudence. It consists as no surprise that the recent fatwa against A R Rahman for his contribution to the Iranian film Muhammad: The Messenger of God, has eleicited similar responses. "Hurting religious sentiments", the cringe-worthy, oft cited reason behind such calls, was one of the reasons behind the fatwa by Mumbai based Raza Academy which is said to be responsible for the Azad Maidan riots of 2012. But the folks at the academy, which has strong Sufi affiliations, did not stop at that. They went a step further, into his personal space. ...

How do we classify a species as endangered ? - A species is considered endangered when it is at a very high risk of extinction in the wild. When a living organism is at or goes below a baseline number of existing specimens projected to be the less for normal breeding and continuation of that species, then it is ranked as Endangered Species. This critical status means that the species may become extinct. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies a taxon under Endangered Species when the best available evidence indicates that it meets a rapid decline in population size of more than 50 percent to 70 percent over the last decade or three generations, whichever is the longer; an extent of occurrence of geographical range to be less than 5,000 km square; or area of occupancy estimated to be less than 600 km square; population size estimated to number fewer than 2,500 mature individuals or an estimated continuing decline f at least 20 percent within five years or ...

Is penetration power the property of radiation or of the material and on what factors does the penetration of electromagnetic radiation depend ? - Radiation is energy transmitted through space in the form of electromagnetic waves or energetic particles. Various radiations are alpha particle radiation, beta particle radiation, neutrons, gamma rays, x-rays, etc. All the radiations have low to very high energy carried with them so as to enable them to travel long distances and penetrate obstruction if any coming in their path. In the process of penetration, it removes electrons from atoms in materials through which it passes. This process is called ionisation, and the high frequency electromagnetic waves and energetic particles that can produce ionisations are known as ionising radiations. Non-ionising radiations are not energetic enough to ionise atoms and interact with materials in ways that create different hazards than ionising radiation. Examples of non-ionising radiation include v...

Getting a mine up and running on the moon or an asteroid would cost less than building the biggest gas terminals on Earth, according to research presented to a forum of company executives and NASA scientists. A mission to Ceres, a dwarf planet 414 million kms. from the Sun and the size of Texas, may cost about $ 27 billion. The expense includes 10 rocket launches to convey equipment, the extraction of metals and water, and the construction of an in-orbit facility to process the raw materials. The costing comes from graduate business students at Australia's University of New South Wales, which is also collaborating with the NASA on the economics of space mining. By comparison, Australia's biggest single resources development - Chevron Corp's Gorgon liquefied natural gas plant - has an expected price tag of about $ 54 billion. Still, getting investors to buy into the grand vision that mankind has a future in the stars is a high bar to clear. "We shouldn't drink t...

Many of us get vaccinated ahead of the flu season and the influenza vaccine is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. But before the vaccine could be developed, scientists first had to identify the cause of influenza - and, importantly, recognise that it was contagious. New research by Trevor Foulk, Andrew Woolum, and Amir Erez at the University of Florida takes that first step in identifying a different kind of contagious menace - rudeness. People exposed to rude behaviour tend to have concepts associated with rudeness activated int their minds, and consequently may interpret ambiguous but benign behaviour as rude. More significantly, they themselves are more likely to behave rudely towards others and to evoke hostility, negative effect and even revenge from others. Previous work on the negative contagion effect, however, has focused primarily on high-intensity behaviours like hitting or abusive supervision that are relatively infrequent in everyday life. Everyday Rudene...

In the aftermath of the Paris carnage, US President Barack Obama led the usual counterproductive finger-pointing telling Muslims to ask themselves how extremist ideologies took root. Obama's point is perhaps valid, but that is only a part of the problem. The West needs to answer far more serious questions. Besides waging destabilising, unjust wars and propping up despotic regimes in the Muslim world, it bears responsibility for planting cancer, which Daesh or the so-called Islamic State (IS) is a symptom of, in the process.  It is unfair to collectively blame Muslims for IS since they are and have been the worst victims of the mindless violence of the creed it represents for three centuries. Daesh has its roots in eighteenth century preacher Abd-al-Wahhab's doctrine, which rejected Islamic pluralism enshrined in the Quran and declared war on Muslims other than Salafis. The Ottoman Empire, which represented contemporary mainstream Muslims, resisted this challenge tooth and n...

Her diligence and face cream cleaned Nimrud's most famous ivory. She captured the archaeological dig in Iraq on celluloid and Kodak film, developing the prints in water painstakingly filtered from the nearby Tigris. And every day, after she balanced the books and arranged for the next day's meals, Agatha Christie sat down to write. The British mystery writer's second husband, Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist who build his career on digs in the 1950s in Nimrud, the remains of the ancient Assyrian city that survived 3,000 years only to be blown into rubble by ISIS in 2016. And Christie, then in her 1960s, was there to document his work, in photo and film. Every winter, according to her grandson Mathew Prichard, "they disappeared into Iraq or Syria and returned in May or June. To her it was just as important as writing. Her role was to go on these digs and help her husband with the photography and dealings with the local labour force", he said. Famed for her ...

Anne Frank may not have been betrayed to Nazi occupiers, but captured by chance. A new study published by the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam says that despite decades of research, there is no conclusive evidence that the Jewish diarist and her family were betrayed to the Netherlands' German occupiers during World War II, leading to their arrest and deportation. Ronald Leopold, executive director of the museum, said new research 'illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered'. One possible theory is that the 04th August, 1944 raid that led to Anne's arrest could have been part of an investigation into illegal labour or falsified ration coupons at the canal-side house where she and other Jews hid for just over two years. Anne kept a diary during her time in hiding that was published after the war and turned her into a globally recognised symbol of Holocaust victims. She died in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp at age 15, shortly before it w...

Kerala's temple festivals have had their tragic casualties. Of the 19 captive elephants that have died this year, 17 were broken by the ghastly battering inflicted on them during the festivals. And during this same period, eleven human were killed by these over-worked angry elephants. Most of these deitified  animals that are paraded at even world-renowned spectacles such as the Thrissur Pooram (sometime in April) are drugged to make them fall in line. They are made to walk on melting-hot tarmac for hours, without rest or water. Many have broken bones falling out of trucks on which they were transported from one festival venue to the other. Keralites are obsessed with the elephant in a primitive sense - the way the medieval Romans fawned over gladiators. And much like the duelling gladiators who entertained for the baying Romans, the suffering of the idol-carrying elephant is carnival in the state. Not even the sternest Supreme Court diktats have deterred the Malayali from toying...

I write this piece with some trepidation. To explain this, let me relate how a (male) colleague reacted when he learnt that I would be attending a conference on women in science. "Why are you doing this?", he asked. "Don't you realise that you risk becoming known  as a woman in physics, rather than a physicist? This could be disastrous for your career". Indeed, I very much wish to be identified by my peers as a physicist first. However, I do believe that in India (as everywhere in the world), we do have a problem: there are too few women in science. Many Indians are surprised to find that in the supposedly liberal West, it is not uncommon to encounter the view that women simply do not have the intellectual ability to carry out complex thought processes required for scientific research (remember the notorious case of Larry Summers, President of Harvard). Leaving aside the regrettable mindset of the male IIT student - describing which would require a whole other...

Scientists have developed a low-cost, environmentally friendly way to create printed materials with re-writable paper that can reduce paper wastage. Even in the present digital age, the world still relies on paper and ink, most of which ends up in landfills or recycling centres. Researchers Ting Wang, Dairong Chen and colleagues from Shandong University in China made the new material by mixing low-toxicity tungsten oxide and polyvinyl pyrrolidone, a common polymer used in medicines and food. To 'print' on it, they exposed the material to ultra-violet light for thirty seconds, and it changed from white to a deep blue. To make pictures or words, a stencil can be used so that only the exposed parts turn blue. To erase them, the material can be put in ambient conditions for a day or two.  To speed up the erasing, the researchers added heat to make the colour disappear in thirty minutes. Alternatively, adding a small amount of polyacrylonitrile to the material can make the...

Faking a smile may not make you happier after all, according to a new study which contradicts the belief that our body's movements can affect our mood. The idea that faking a smile may brighten our mood, which came out of a psychological experiment from the 1980s, may not be true, as scientists were not able to repeat the results in a lab setting. In the facial feed-feedback hypothesis, dating back to 1988, participants rated the humour of cartoons while inadvertently mimicking either a smile or a point.  The participants were simply asked to hold a pen in their mouths, either with their lips (which pushes the face into a frown-like expression) or their teeth (which mimics a smile). The participants who used the pen to mimic a smile rated the cartoons as funnier. Now, a new study on 1,894 participants has found no evidence that such an effect exists, 'Live Science' reported.  Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, the lead researcher of the replication attempt from the University of A...

(1). Ship that vanished in 1846 found in Canadian Arctic : Two British exploration ships that vanished during a storied expedition to the Arctic in 1846 has been discovered, submerged but 'perfectly preserved' in the Northwest Passage, Canadian scientists say. The ill-fated HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which were under the command of Sir John Franklin, left the shores of Britain on 19th May, 1845, on a mission to discover the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. While the Erebus was located in 2014, the whereabouts of the Terror were unknown until 03rd September when it was discovered by scientists from the Arctic Research Foundation, which showed the sunken ship in a video that aired Monday on public broadcaster CBC. "Resting proud in 24 meters of water, we found HMS Terror...It is perfectly preserved in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage", foundation spokesperson Adrian Schimnowski said in the video. The three-mast ship, which was built...

Humans communicate by silent sexual chemistry, scientists have proved for the first time. Pheromones are odourless, invisible and air-borne chemicals. Ants, moths and beetles have to send each other messages. Hamsters choose a mate with them, while male elephants use them to signal dominance. Biologists have always believed that humans too give off pheromones and can detect them in others at sub-conscious levels. There is a future trade in supposedly aphrodisiac products based on human pheromones. Psychologists report definitive evidence that humans respond to pheromones. Kathleen Stern and Martha McLintock, from Chicago, started from the observed fact that menstrual cycles of women living together are likely to coincide. They collected underarm moisture on cotton pads from volunteers and dabbed the swabs - which also held alcohol - on the upper lips of other women. These women were asked not to wash their faces for six hours. The researchers did this daily for two months. The volu...