chakravarthy

Step into any college lecture hall and you are likely to find a sea of students typing away at open, glowing laptops as the professor speaks. But a growing body of evidence shows that over all, college students learn less when they use computers or tablets during lectures. They also tend to earn worse grades. The research is unequivocal: Laptops distract from learning, both for users and for those around them. It's not much of a leap to expect that electronics also undermine learning in school class rooms or that they hurt productivity in workplace meetings. Measuring the effect of laptops on learning is tough. One problem is that students don't all use laptops the same way. It might be that dedicated students who tend to earn high grades, use them more frequently in classes. It might be that the most distracted students turn to their laptops whenever they are bored. Researchers can solve that problem by randomly assigning some students to use laptops so that the students who...

Sudany Ausby, a 16-year-old high school student, squinted as she emerged from the darkroom holding a freshly printed 8-by-10 photograph. She had used a decades-old Pentax film camera with a 35-millimeter lens to shoot the photograph. But the borders on the glossy black-and-white print were out of proportion, again. "It rarely comes out the way you want it to", said Ausby, as she peered at the photograph, still wet from the chemicals used to make the print. "But when it does, it's satisfying". As younger generations embrace vintage things - like vinyl records and early gaming consoles - more students have become interested in old-school photography, increasing the demand for analog photography classes in high schools across Manhattan. Schools with rigorous art programs and darkrooms have become the stewards of the dying practice that dominated the world for over a hundred years. "Digital is too easy, in that you can take a lot of pictures at a time",...

An experimental therapy for people with schizophrenia that brings them face to face with a computer avatar representing the tormenting voices in their heads has proved promising in early stage trials. Scientists who conducted a randomised controlled trial comparing the avatar therapy to a form of supportive counselling found that after 12 weeks, the avatars were more effective at reducing auditory hallucinations, or voices inside the head. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that affects around one in 100 people worldwide. Its most common symptoms are delusions and auditory hallucinations. - Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy - -----------------------------------------------------------------

The amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) barring defaulting promoters from bidding for their own company's asset is expected to increase losses for banks as it would lower competition during the bidding process thereby impacting the valuation. According to market participants, there are promoters who want to regain control over the company by offering the most competitive bids during the resolution process. 'Mandatory settlement of overdue before submitting the plan will make it difficult for promoters to bid. Optimism in bids will also dip, thereby leading to a risk of resolution now happening at a lower-than-anticipated valuation. Promoters, in a bid to retain control of existing assets, would have potentially made a higher bid, thereby setting a benchmark for other bidders', said Edelweiss Financial Services. The government through an ordinance made amendments to the IBC Code, which prohibits promoters having Non Performing Assets (NPAs) accounts - ...

Scientists have developed 'smart' solar green-houses that can produce renewable electricity without reducing the growth of plants. The first crops of tomatoes and cucumbers grown inside electricity-generating solar green-houses were as healthy as those raised in conventional green-houses, researchers said. "We have demonstrated that 'smart green-houses' can capture solar energy for electricity without reducing plant growth, which is pretty exciting", said Michael Loik of the University of California Santa Cruz, United States. Electricity-generating solar green-house utilise Wavelength-Selective Photo-voltaic Systems (WSPVs), a novel technology that generates electricity more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional photo-voltaic systems. These green-houses are outfitted with transparent roof panels embedded with a bright magenta luminescent dye that absorbs light and transfers energy to narrow photo-voltaic strips, where electricity is produced. WS...

A three-year-old girl was anointed the new 'living goddess'of Kathmandu by Hindu priests on 28th September, 2017 (Thursday) and taken to a palace in the historic centre of the Nepali capital where she will remain until she reaches puberty. Wearing a red dress, Trishna Shakya was taken from her home to the ancient Durbar Square for a short initiation ceremony. Her father then carried her across the cobbled square - which still bears the scars of a powerful earthquake that hit in 2015 - to the temple-palace where she will live under the care of specially-appointed guardians. Shakya was flanked by her family and men in red tunics on the short walk, the last time she will be seen in public without the elaborate make-up of the Kumari, or living goddess, until puberty. Mixed feelings : "I have mixed feelings. My daughter has become the Kumari and it is a good thing. But there is also sadness because she will be separated from us", said her father Bijaya Ratna Shakya. Sh...

A fourth gravitational wave has been detected - this time with help from Italy-based equipment - after two black holes collided, sending ripples through the fabric of space and time, researchers said. Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity, but the first hard evidence of their existence came only in 2015, when two United States detectors found the first such signal. The latest space-time ripples were detected on 14th August at 10:30 GMT when two giant black holes with masses about 31 and 25 times the mass of the Sun merged about 1.8 billion light-years away. Spinning black hole : "The newly produced spinning black hole has about 53 times the mass of our Sun", said a statement from the international scientists at Virgo detector, located at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) in Cascina, near Pisa, Italy. "While this new event is of astrophysical relevance, its detection comes with ana ...

The mysterious 'bladed terrain' of Pluto is made almost entirely of methane ice, and likely formed as a kind of erosion that wore away the planet's surfaces, leaving dramatic crests and sharp divides, sceintists said. NASA's New Horizons mission - which flew past Pluto in July 2015 - discovered the strange formations resembling giant knife blades of ice. A team led by Jeffrey Moore, a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, has determined that formation of the bladed terrain begins with methane freezing out of the atmosphere at extreme altitudes on Pluto, in the same way frost freezes on the ground on the earth. - Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy - ---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Astronomers have discovered some of the oldest stars in our Milky Way galaxy by determining their locations and velocities. Just like humans, stars have a life span: birth, youth, adulthood, old age and death. Scientists at Georgia State University in the United States focussed on old or 'senior citizen' stars, also known as cool sub-dwarfs, that are much older and cooler in temperature than the Sun. In a study, astronomers conducted a census of our solar neighbourhood to identify how many young, adult and old star are present. They targeted stars out to a distance of 200 light years, which is relatively nearby considering the galaxy is more than 1,00,000 light years across. A light year is how far light can travel in one year. This is farther than the traditional horizon for the region of space that is referred to as 'the solar neighbourhood', which is about eighty light years in radius. Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy . ----------------------------------------...

After the vicious gun attack on his car in Lahore on 28th March, 2014, columnist and anchor Raza Rumi tweeted that he was 'dreading this day'. Mr. Rumi narrowly escaped with a minor injury but his driver Mustafa died in the attack. A little over three weeks before this incident, journalist Ibrar Tanoji, who was also travelling in his car, was shot at in Mansehra in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He later died in hospital. the incident sparked the usual outrage and protests as was seen after the attack on Mr. Rumi, along with the usual platitudes from the government. Mr. Rumi's well-publicised TV show 'Khabar se Aage' discussed and criticised in no uncertain measure the Taliban and obscurantism. Express News has been under fire from the so-called unidentified gunmen, almost a euphemism for terrorists, since last year. Bombs have exploded outside its office in Karachi and terrorists have fired at it twice. In a brazen attack in January this year, three of its staffers were sh...

The institution of governors in India is a colonial legacy. Today some people maintain that they are redundant and should be dispensed with. This is a debatable issue. The founding fathers of our Constitution in their wisdom decided that nominated governors should continue and function like a constitutional head of state as in a parliamentary democracy. In a federation of states, like the US, governors are elected heads of states with executive functions and there is no equivalent of a chief minister. If we now wish to abolish the appointment of governors, this should not be considered in isolation. We may consider a change over to a presidential form of democracy. Article. 156 of our Constitution states that a governor holds office at the pleasure of the President. He is appointed by the President on the advice of the Central government to withdraw his pleasure, terminating the tenure of a governor. The governor is a representative of the Centre in the state, but not an agent of t...

It is ironical that those who have always been an essential catalyst for a just society have also been those who have been kept at its margins. Activists have become increasingly unpopular and have become the targets of an upwardly mobile middle class. It is difficult to understand this phenomenon: why would those who have a comfortable life get so angry and upset at those who sacrifice their personal well-being for the good of others? The public and government reaction against NGOs, the killing of social activists, the cynicism towards those who decide not to follow the mainstream are all part of this larger trend, a symptom of the silent corporatisation of society itself. In the line of attack : Intellectuals, including artists and academics, also bear the brunt of this hatred. As many have pointed out, it has never been as difficult as it is now to disagree about something without being called names. These are symptoms of what our society is becoming. As a society, we lack a cul...

The irony was stark. All her life J. Jayalalithaa had shunned 24x7 media, snapping at Karan Thapar in an interview, "It was certainly not a pleasure talking to you, namaste". She was a self-declared hater of the limelight, contemptuous of the press, famously slapping criminal defamation charges against a newspaper. She preferred to remain shut away in her shrouded residence of Chennai's Poes Garden, an aloof lady of Shalott. Yet what she eschewed in life, she could not prevent in death as TV crews kept up minute to minute coverage of her deteriorating health, beaming out details of her bodily functions in an invasion of privacy she would have sternly curtailed if she had been able. Jayalalithaa did not need and had never needed the media. Among the thousands gathered outside Apollo Hospital in her last hours, the huge presence of women and poor was a reminder of her vibrant connection with her voters, however far removed she may have outwardly seemed. She required no ...

Back when we were kids, we were never allowed to say, "I am bored!" My father could not accept that in a house he had shocked with all kinds of books, encyclopaedias, good music, and sparkling conversations, aimed at burnishing his children's minds - anyone could find the opportunity to be bored. Indeed, he took our boredom as an affront to his creativity. Dad's argument was that saying you are bored was like admitting that you are no good for your own amusement and edification - what good then could you be for anyone else? This was, of course, a time when TV just beamed a few evening hours of serious educative stuff, and things like cell phones, laptops, video players, CDs, tablets or kindles, were unheard, undreamt of. What you did with your time was not dictated by the availability or lack of gizmos. Intellectual curiosity, romantic imagination and creative ideas kept the sparkle alive. The only adrenaline rush youngsters craved came from playing in the park or...