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Research based news stories & highlights in science, engineering, technology & humanities in India.
In a series of articles, Research Matters tries to shed some insights into India’s mental health concern, its different aspects, including the lack of awareness about mental health in general — through the lens of science.
In a series of articles, Research Matters tries to shed some insights into India’s mental health concern, its different aspects, including the lack of awareness about mental health in general — through the lens of science.
In a series of articles, Research Matters tries to shed some insights into India’s mental health concern, its different aspects, including the lack of awareness about mental health in general — through the lens of science.
Here are some directions that the school curriculum could take in the coming year
This article is a tribute to Phillip Anderson, who passed away on March 29, 2020. Besides his pioneering works in condensed-matter physics, he also wrote extensively on the theme of reductionism and multiscale physics.
Modern science reveals that matter is made of atoms and molecules. Molecules in liquids and gases move randomly; there is an average distance between two nearest molecules. This distance is used to model the properties of the gas. However, there are certain problems, like turbulence, that cannot be solved using just the distance, which is a single scale. We need to consider all scales from large to small. Such systems are called multiscale systems.
To understand an extensive, complex physical system, thinkers break it up into smaller components and try to understand the properties of the most minor microscopic components. This method helps us understand many complicated things around us, and has helped us solve a lot of real-world problems. But it does not help us understand certain phenomena, such as turbulence in fluids. A different way of thinking, a method that considers the physical system as a whole is needed in such cases. This method is called the multiscale analysis.
In an earlier episode of The Joy of Science Shambhavi Chidambaram spoke to Professor Shravan Vasishth about, among other things, the joy of psycholinguistics. In this interview, Professor Vasishth talks in detail about teaching statistics and the need to understand uncertainty both to students and the general public. He is the author of “Shravan Vasishth’s Slog”, a blog about statistics. This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness and has been run past Prof Vasishth for accuracy before publication.
