Month: July 2024

Book Review: A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Pooja Kashyap

I have love-hate kinda relationship with “A Hundred Years of Solitude”. The book was written by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1967. It felt like I had been “reading” this manuscript for a “100 years”. Before picking up this book, I had just finished “Pedro Páramo” by Juan Rulfo, which captivated me with its brevity and intensity. These two books are often compared for their exploration of similar themes such as memory, history, and the supernatural, in a mix of magical realism. Although “A Hundred Years of Solitude” weaves…

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Interview: Dr. Eunhye Baek, Research Scientist at Tsinghua University, China

Pooja Kashyap

I’m excited to introduce our latest interviewee, Dr. Eunhye Baek, whose impressive academic journey and cutting-edge research make her a standout in the field of electrical engineering and nanotechnology. Dr. Baek studied Electrical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) from 2007 to 2010. In January 2011, she joined Professor Yoon-Ha Jeong’s group at POSTECH, where she focused on the biological functionalization of silicon nanowire BioFETs to detect biomolecules with high sensitivity.  

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CAMs: Key Players in Modulating Post-Stroke Immune Responses

Pooja Kashyap

When a blood clot blocks an artery, it leads to an ischemic stroke. The blockage or ischemic stroke prevents blood and oxygen from reaching areas of the brain. This gives rise to one of the following symptoms: According to the statistics, the older one gets, the higher the risk of experiencing ischemic strokes. Although, neuroscience has helped us understand what happens in the body during a stroke. However, we have no idea how the immune system helps with recovery after a stroke.

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Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Pooja Kashyap

It took me a while to read “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, but I’m glad I finished and experienced it. It is deeply moving and well-written novel. Published in the late 1920s, it deals with the profound and lasting impact of war on soldiers. The book, surely, is out in its genre for its powerful portrayal of the effects of war.

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Biomimicry: Mantis-Inspired Biomimetic Vision System

Pooja Kashyap

A self-driving car approaches a street with a parked car and a cyclist waiting to cross. The car detects the cyclist moving but has difficulty judging the distance and speed of both the stationary parked car and the slow-moving cyclist, leading it to miscalculate the necessary response and causing a collision. This is similar to how some insects see the world: their eyes are good at noticing movement and seeing a lot at once, but they struggle to tell how far away things are. However, this is not the case…

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Black Hole Mergers: Dark Matter Might Be the Missing Link

Pooja Kashyap

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is one of the farthest probes that we’ve sent so far. As of July 2024, it’s a whopping 24.4 billion kilometers away from Earth, making it the most distant human-made object ever. Yet, there are things in the space that we have absolutely zero clue. Yes, I’m referring to – Dark Matter. Dark matter helps slow the black holes down and lets them come together for supermassive black hole mergers, at least the recent research says so. Typically elusive, this invisible matter seems to play…

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Protein FAM110A’s Role in Cell Division Unveiled: Microtubule-Actin Interaction During Mitosis

Pooja Kashyap

An international research collaboration led by Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse, Dr. Libor Macurek, and Dr. Zdenek Lansky has uncovered a new mechanism of crosstalk between microtubules and the actin cytoskeleton during cell division. They revealed unique characteristics of the previously unexplored protein FAM110A, enhancing understanding of critical processes related to developmental disorders and cancer.

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Neutron Innovation: Precise Temperature Measurement for Electronics

Pooja Kashyap

We are constantly surrounded by electronics. From LEDs to batteries, these electronics have become part of our lives. And so, more advanced and intricate components are needed to make them more efficient and reliable. However, as these components become increasingly sophisticated, getting reliable temperature measurements of specific elements inside an object can be a challenge.

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Book Review: The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose

Pooja Kashyap

The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics was written by Sir Roger Penrose. It was first published in 1989. I decided to pick this book because I thought it would give me the physicist’s perspective on what consciousness is. However, this book is much more than that. It’s about Turing machines, lambda calculus, the Mandelbrot set, Gödel’s theorem, cosmology, space-time singularities, quantum mechanics, neurology, AI, and, of course, consciousness. So, it’s a comprehensive package covering nearly “everything”.

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Interview: Dr. Boris Goncharov, a Senior Scientist at the Albert Einstein Institute, Germany

Pooja Kashyap

I’m thrilled to introduce Dr. Boris Goncharov, a distinguished figure in the field of gravitational wave research. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist with the Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) group at the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Hanover, Germany, where he is exploring the fascinating world of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves.

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From Urine to Water: The Latest Breakthrough in Spacesuit Technology

Pooja Kashyap

Of all the things in movie, Dune, I particularly got fascinated with the idea how the people used those suits to recycle sweat and urine into drinkable water. It got me thinking: why can’t we make this tech a reality? Well, it turns out researchers at Cornell University are on it! They’ve developed a prototype for a new urine collection and filtration system for spacesuits. Isn’t that awesome?

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Book Review: The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman

Pooja Kashyap

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma is written by Mustafa Suleyman along with the researcher Michael Bhaskar in 2023.  Before reviewing the book, I’d like to mention Suleyman views that I came across in one of his interviews with The Guardian. The following lines cover almost everything that is mentioned in the book – The Coming Wave.

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Gravitational Wave Memory: A Tool for Measuring Spacetime Symmetries

Pooja Kashyap

When we talk about the fabric of reality, in terms of physics, we deal with interesting abstractions and tonnes of complexities. One such intriguing concept of Einstein’s theory of general relativity is the existence of gravitational waves. As the name suggests, these ripples are generated in the spacetime by some of the universe’s most violent and energetic processes, such as mergers of cosmic stars or dent in the landscape due to black holes. Interestingly, whenever these waves pass through, they leave a measurable imprint on the relative positions of objects—a…

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Brain-like Artificial System: Dendristor to Mimic Brain’s Dendritic Computations

Pooja Kashyap

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology is expanding its tentacles rapidly across globe, engineers around the world are designing new types of computer architectures and hardware. One interesting aspect of most brain-inspired technologies developed so far is that researchers focus on mimicking how neurons fire (i.e., send electrical signals) rather than replicating the entire structure of the brain.

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